The 100 Best Non-fiction Books of all Time

The 100 best Non-fiction Books of All Time as Chosen by The Guardian

For their non-fiction November month, the Classics Club published a link to Robert McCrum's "The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time" (to be found in The Guardian here). I have read a few of those, there are some on my TBR pile but have never even thought about the majority (though I've heard of most of them which is probably a good sign).

I never considered plays non-fiction unless they are based on a true event but it looks like I'm alone there. Also, a lot of the books here are not real classics but I'm sure they will become one once they're old enough.

I am sure we can all find a few classic non-fiction books to add to this. What would be your suggestion?

1. Kolbert, Elizabeth "The Sixth Extinction" - 2014
2. Didion, Joan "The Year of Magical Thinking" - 2005
3. Klein, Naomi "No Logo by Naomi Klein" - 1999
4. Hughes, Ted "Birthday Letters" - 1998
5. Obama, Barack "Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama" - 1995
6. Hawking, Stephen "A Brief History of Time" - 1988
7. Wolfe, Tom "The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe" - 1979
8. Said, Edward "Orientalism" - 1978
9. Herr, Michael "Dispatches" - 1977
10. Dawkings, Richard "The Selfish Gene" - 1976
11. Heaney, Seamus "North" - 1975
12. Sacks, Oliver "Awakenings" - 1973
13. Greer, Germaine "The Female Eunuch" - 1970
14. Cohn, Nik "Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom" - 1969
15. Watson, James D. "The Double Helix" - 1968
16. Sontag, Susan "Against Interpretation" - 1966
17. Plath, Sylvia "Ariel" - 1965
18. Friedan, Betty "The Feminine Mystique" - 1963
19. Thompson, EP "The Making of the English Working Class" - 1963
20. Carson, Rachel "Silent Spring" - 1962
21. Kuhn, Thomas S. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" - 1962
22. Lewis, C.S. "A Grief Observed" - 1961
23. Strunk, Willam; White, E.B. "The Elements of Style" - 1959
24. Galbraith, John Kenneth "The Affluent Society" - 1958
25. Hoggart, Richard "The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life" - 1957
26. Baldwin, James "Notes of a Native Son" - 1955
27. Clark, Kenneth "The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art" - 1956
28. Berlin, Isaiah "The Hedgehog and the Fox" - 1953
29. Beckett, Samuel "Waiting for Godot" - 1952/53
30. David, Elizabeth "A Book of Mediterranean Food" - 1950
31. Leavis, F.R "The Great Tradition" - 1948
32. Trevor-Ro.per, Hugh "The Last Days of Hitler" - 1947
33. Spock, Dr. Benjamin "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" - 1946
34. Hersey, John "Hiroshima" - 1946
35. Popper, Karl "The Open Society and Its Enemies" - 1945
36. Wright, Richard "Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth" - 1945
37. Fisher, M.F.K. "How to Cook a Wolf" - 1942
38. Connolly, Cyril "Enemies of Promise" - 1938
39. Orwell, George "The Road to Wigan Pier" - 1937
40. Byron, Robert "The Road to Oxiana" - 1937
41. Carnegie, Dale "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - 1936
42. Brittain, Vera "Testament of Youth" - 1933
43. Churchill, Winston "My Early Life: A Roving Commission" - 1930
44. Graves, Robert "Goodbye to All That" - 1929
45. Woolf, Virginia "A Room of One’s Own" - 1929
46. Eliot, T.S. "The Waste Land" - 1922
47. Reed, John "Ten Days That Shook the World" - 1919
48. Keynes, John Maynard "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" - 1919
49. Mencken, H.L. "The American Language" - 1919
50. Strachey, Lytton "Eminent Victorians" - 1918
51. Du Bois, WEB "The Souls of Black Folk" - 1903
52. Wilde, Oscar "De Profundis" - 1905
53. James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience" - 1902
54. Clark, Andrew, ed. "Brief Lives by John Aubrey" - 1898
55. Grant, Ulysses S. "Personal Memoirs" - 1885
56. Twain, Mark "Life on the Mississippi" - 1883
57. Stevenson, Robert Louis, "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes" - 1879
58. Lear, Edward "Nonsense Songs" - 1871
59. Arnold, Matthew "Culture and Anarchy" - 1869
60. Darwin, Charles "On the Origin of Species" - 1859
61. Mill, John Stuart "On Liberty" - 1859
62. Seacole, Mary "The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands" - 1857
63. Gaskell, Elizabeth "The Life of Charlotte Brontë" - 1857
64. Thoreau, Henry David "Walden" - 1854
65. Roget, Dr. Peter Mark "Thesaurus" - 1852
66. Mayhew, Henry "London Labour and the London Poor" - 1851
67. Martineau, Harriet "Household Education" - 1848
68. Douglass, Frederick "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" - 1845
69. Emerson, R. W. "Essays" - 1841
70. Trollope, Frances "Domestic Manners of the Americans" - 1832
71. Webster, Noah "An American Dictionary of the English Language" - 1828
72. Quincey, Thomas de "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" - 1822
73. Lamb, Charles and Mary "Tales from Shakespeare" - 1807
74. Park, Mungo "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa" - 1799
75. Franklin, Benjamin "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" - 1793
76. Wollstonecraft, Mary "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" - 1792
77. Boswell, James "The Life of Samuel Johnson LLD" - 1791
78. Burke, Edmund "Reflections on the Revolution in France" - 1790
79. Equiano, Olaudah "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" - 1789
80. White, Gilbert "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne" - 1789
81. 'Publius' (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay) "The Federalist Papers"- 1788
82. Burney, Frances "The Diary of Fanny Burney" - 1778
83. Gibbon, Edward "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" - 1776-1788
84. Smith, Adam "The Wealth of Nations" - 1776
85. Paine, Tom "Common Sense" - 1776
86. Johnson, Samuel "A Dictionary of the English Language" - 1755
87. Hume, David "A Treatise of Human Nature" - 1739
88. Swift, Jonathan "A Modest Proposal" - 1729
89. Defoe, Daniel "A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain" - 1727
90. Locke, John "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" - 1689
91. Cranmer, Thomas "The Book of Common Prayer" - 1662
92. Pepys, Samuel "The Diary of Samuel Pepys" - 1660
93. Browne, Sir Thomas Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk" - 1658
94. Hobees, Thomas "Leviathan" - 1651
95. Milton, John "Areopagitica" - 1644
96. Donne, John "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions" - 1624
97. Shakespeare, William "The First Folio" - 1623
98. Burton, Robert "The Anatomy of Melancholy" - 1621
99. Raleigh, Walter "The History of the World" - 1614
100. King James Bible: The Authorised Version - 1611

See my classics club list here. 

There is also a list of the 100 Greatest Fiction Books as Chosen by The Guardian. See my post here.