American Modern Library
The Modern Library, a division of Random House, was founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. It was bought in 1925 by Bennett Cerf. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidary of the Modern Library, but eventually became the parent company. The Modern Library identified itself as "The Modern Library of the World's Best Books". In keeping with that identity, they identified the 100 best novels and non-fiction books of the 20th century and conducted an unscientific web poll to gather public opinion on the same. The top ten books from both lists in each category are shown below.
Board Selections
Best 20th Century Novel
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Best 20th Century Non-fiction
- The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
- The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
- Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
- A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolff
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Selected Essays, 1917-1932 by T.S. Eliot
- The Double Helix by James Watson
- Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
- The American Language by H. L. Mencken
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes
Reader Selections
As David Ebershoff, the Modern Library division's publishing director, carefully stated "the people who were drawn to go to the Modern Library Web site and compelled to vote have a certain enthusiasm about books and their favourite books that many people don't, so that the voting population is skewed." In other words, it was an insecure web poll. [1]
Best 20th Century Novel
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
- Anthem by Ayn Rand
- We the Living by Ayn Rand
- Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
- Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
Best 20th Century Non-fiction
- The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
- by L. Ron Hubbard
- Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff
- 101 Things to do 'Til the Revolution by Claire Wolfe
- The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson
- Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life by Michael Paxton
- The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon
- Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
- Send in the Waco Killers by Vyn Suprynowicz
- More Guns, Less Crime by John R. Lott
External link
Referenced By
1900 in literature | 1901 in literature | 1902 in literature | 1903 in literature | 1904 in literature | 1905 in literature | 1907 in literature | 1908 in literature | 1911 in literature | 1913 in literature | 1915 in literature | 1916 in literature | 1918 in literature | 1919 in literature | 1920 in literature | 1922 in literature | 1924 in literature | 1925 in literature | 1926 in literature | 1927 in literature | 1928 in literature | 1929 in literature | 1930 in literature | 1932 in literature | 1934 in literature | 1938 in literature | 1939 in literature | 1945 in literature | 1946 in literature | 1947 in literature | 1948 in literature | 1949 in literature | 1951 in literature | 1954 in literature | 1955 in literature | 1957 in literature | 1960 in literature | 1961 in literature | 1962 in literature | 1965 in literature | 1966 in literature | 1971 in literature | 1975 in literature | 1979 in literature | 1980 in literature | 1983 in literature | Arnold Bennett | Booth Tarkington | Edith Wharton | ErnestHemingway | ErnestHemingway/BibliographY | ErnestHemingway/FamousatTwentyFiveThirtyaMaster | ErnestHemingway/FromBoytoManHemingwaysFirstWorldWar | ErnestHemingway/FromRealitytoFictionAFarewelltoArms | ErnestHemingway/SureShotsTheSecondWorldWar | ErnestHemingway/TheDownwardSpiral | ErnestHemingway/TheEndlessDarkNothingness | ErnestHemingway/TheTimeinBetween | ErnestHemingway/ThingsTurnSour | ErnestHemingway/ViolenceandRedemption | ErnestHemingway/WhyItWentWrong | ErnestHemingway/YoungandInnocent | Ernest Hemingway | Ernest Hemingway/Bibliography | Ernest Hemingway/Famous at Twenty-Five Thirty a Master | Ernest Hemingway/From Boy to Man Hemingways First World War | Ernest Hemingway/From Reality to Fiction A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway/Sure Shots The Second World War | Ernest Hemingway/The Downward Spiral | Ernest Hemingway/The Endless Dark Nothingness | Ernest Hemingway/The Time in Between | Ernest Hemingway/Things Turn Sour | Ernest Hemingway/Typed Letter | Ernest Hemingway/Violence and Redemption | Ernest Hemingway/Why It Went Wrong | Ernest Hemingway/Young and Innocent | F. Scott Fitzgerald | F Scott Fitzgerald | Famous at Twenty-Five Thirty a Master | Francis Scott Fitzgerald | Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald | From Boy to Man Hemingways First World War | From Reality to Fiction A Farewell to Arms | Graham Greene (writer) | Grapes of Wrath | Hemingway | Iris Murdoch | Jack Kerouac | Jack London | James A. A. Joyce | James Joyce | John Griffith Chaney | John Steinbeck | Joseph Conrad | Joseph Rudyard Kipling | Kipling | Lawrence Durrell | Max Beerbohm | Nabakov | Nabokov ...
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