50 Books That Have Influenced Me
Updated: March 25, 2008
This is a list of 50 books that have strongly influenced me over the years. I offer it for your perusal as an end in itself but also as a catalyst (to encourage you to develop your own list and keep it current).
For more books, see here.
This is not the same list I'd make if I
were going to compile a list of books that "every undergraduate should
read", nor a list of the "greatest books of world cultural
history". Some of the books on the list below would make one or both
of those lists; many would not. Some books below are
"great" (i.e., "inexhaustible" in Adler's sense);
others are definitely not, but all have influenced me at some point over the
past 5 decades and remain important enough in determining my worldview that they
deserve to remain on the list.
One stricture I placed on myself in generating this list was a rule not to include more than one book from any single author. In the case of some very prolific writers on the list below, this was very difficult, but I tried to select the single book by such authors that I found most helpful or influential.
I appear to favor books whose titles have colons in them. This is a common academic failing. If I ever write my autobiography, it will likely be titled Portrait of a Life: Reflections in Autobiography and Historiography. This forbidding title will virtually guarantee that no one will ever read it, thus preserving my anonymity. Who says that the colon has no purpose as a punctuation mark?
Happy reading! (For another take on a related idea, see here.)
The Bible (in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek)
Adler, Mortimer. How to read a book.
Bolles, Richard. The three boxes of life and how to get out of them.
Bridges, William. Job shift: Surviving a world without jobs.
Brunner, Emil. Man in revolt.
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish saved civilization.
Centore, F. F. Persons: A comparative account of the six possible theories.
Chesterton, G. K. The everlasting man.
Clouser, Roy. The myth of religious neutrality.
Colson, Charles. Kingdoms in conflict.
Covey, Stephen. Seven habits of highly effective people.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life.
De Bono, Edward. Six thinking hats.
De Riencourt, Amaury. The coming Caesars.
Douglas, Lloyd. White banners.
Ellis, Joseph. Founding brothers: The revolutionary generation.
Feiler, Bruce. Abraham: A journey to the heart of three faiths.
Florida, Richard. The rise of the creative class.
Frankl, Viktor. Man’s search for meaning.
Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the olive tree.
Grandin, Temple. Animals in translation.
Guinness, Oswald. The dust of death.
Hawking, Stephen. A brief history of time.
Hoover, Helen. The years of the forest.
Keirsey, David. Please understand me.
Kelly, George. The psychology of personal constructs.
Kung, Hans. Does God exist? An answer for today.
Kuhn, Thomas. The structure of scientific revolutions.
Lasch, Christopher. The true and only heaven: Progress and its critics.
Levine, Mel. A mind at a time.
Lewis, C. S. Surprised by joy.
McGrath, Alister. The twilight of atheism.
Miller, Adrienne. The Hamlet syndrome: Overthinkers who underachieve.
Moussieff-Masson, Jeffrey. When elephants weep: The emotional life of animals.
Myers, Isabel Briggs. Gifts differing.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees.
Pipher, Mary. Another country: Navigating the landscape of our elders.
Potok, Chaim. The promise.
Potter, Beverly. The way of the ronin.
Schaeffer, Francis. Escape from reason.
Selye, Peter. The fifth discipline.
Sire, James. The universe next door.
Sizer, Theodore. Horace’s compromise.
Strauss, William, and Howe, Neil. The fourth turning: An American prophecy.
Tannen, Deborah. You just don’t understand.
Thomas, Elizabeth. The tribe of tiger.
Tournier, Paul. The strong and the weak.
Wojtyla, Karol. The splendor of truth.
Wright, N. T. The resurrection of the Son of God.
Zinn, Howard. A people's history of the United States.