Read Modern Library's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century

Fascinating and depressing history/examination of American history from the end of the slavery of black Americans to the granting of full civil rights to them in the 1960s. This period is known as Jim Crow. I didn’t realize there was a period of relative harmony in the U.S. South after slavery was revoked while whites and blacks remained in proximity to each other and maintained amicable relationships, largely based on the kind of power structure that prevailed before the end of slavery. But it was also a period of huge advances in opportunity and status for many black Americans. And then, when the South (and much of the rest of the country) realized what was going on, there was a huge swing to the right and virulent segregation became the norm. Why are human beings so bigoted and fearful? The history of the racism of white Americans against black Americans is appalling, terrifying, and very hard to understand. It still affects the lives of black America today, in terrible ways. This book was very informative about a period of American history I knew nothing about, a period of much more contradiction and complexity than I knew. Slavery didn’t just end and civil rights begin: it was a long, painful struggle for freedom and justice.

William Styron is an American novelist, author of the harrowing Sophie’s Choice among many others. This slim book is an account of his descent into depression in 1985. Although he is a wonderful writer, I didn’t find this a clear account of the experience of depression. Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon was a much more detailed, educational, and compelling book on the subject.

This is one for later. Ones in blue I have read. Ones in green I possess.

1. “THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS,” Henry Adams

2. “THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE,” William James

3. “UP FROM SLAVERY,” Booker T. Washington

4. “A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN,” Virginia Woolf

5. “SILENT SPRING,” Rachel Carson

6. “SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932,” T.S. Eliot

7. “THE DOUBLE HELIX,” James D. Watson

8. “SPEAK, MEMORY,” Vladimir Nabokov

9. “THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE,” H.L. Mencken
10. “THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY,” John Maynard Keynes
11. “THE LIVES OF A CELL,” Lewis Thomas
12. “THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY,” Frederick Jackson Turner
13. “BLACK BOY,” Richard Wright
14. “ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL,” E.M. Forster
15. “THE CIVIL WAR,” Shelby Foote
16. “THE GUNS OF AUGUST,” Barbara W. Tuchman
17. “THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND,” Isaiah Berlin
18. “THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN,” Reinhold Niebuhr
19. “NOTES OF A NATIVE SON,” James Baldwin

20. “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS,” Gertrude Stein

21. “THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE,” William Strunk and E.B. White
22. “AN AMERICAN DILEMMA,” Gunnar Myrdal
23. “PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA,” Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
24. “THE MISMEASURE OF MAN,” Stephen Jay Gould
25. “THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP,” Meyer Howard Abrams
26. “THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE,” Peter B. Medawar
27. “THE ANTS,” Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson
28. “A THEORY OF JUSTICE,” John Rawls
29. “ART AND ILLUSION,” Ernest H. Gombrich
30. “THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS,” E.P. Thompson
31. “THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK,” W.E.B. Du Bois
32. “PRINCIPIA ETHICA,” G.E. Moore
33. “PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION,” John Dewey
34. “ON GROWTH AND FORM,” D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
35. “IDEAS AND OPINIONS,” Albert Einstein
36. “THE AGE OF JACKSON,” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

37. “THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB,” Richard Rhodes

38. “BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON,” Rebecca West

39. “AUTOBIOGRAPHIES,” W.B. Yeats

40. “SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA,” Joseph Needham
41. “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT,” Robert Graves

42. “HOMAGE TO CATALONIA,” George Orwell
43. “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN,” Mark Twain
44. “CHILDREN OF CRISIS,” Robert Coles
45. “A STUDY OF HISTORY,” Arnold J. Toynbee
46. “THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY,” John Kenneth Galbraith
47. “PRESENT AT THE CREATION,” Dean Acheson
48. “THE GREAT BRIDGE,” David McCullough
49. “PATRIOTIC GORE,” Edmund Wilson
50. “SAMUEL JOHNSON,” Walter Jackson Bate

51. “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X,” Alex Haley and Malcolm X

52. “THE RIGHT STUFF,” Tom Wolfe

53. “EMINENT VICTORIANS,” Lytton Strachey

54. “WORKING,” Studs Terkel

55. “DARKNESS VISIBLE,” William Styron
56. “THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION,” Lionel Trilling
57. “THE SECOND WORLD WAR,” Winston Churchill
58. “OUT OF AFRICA,” Isak Dinesen
59. “JEFFERSON AND HIS TIMES,” Dumas Malone
60. “IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN,” William Carlos Williams

61. “CADILLAC DESERT,” Marc Reisner
62. “THE HOUSE OF MORGAN,” Ron Chernow
63. “THE SWEET SCIENCE,” A. J. Liebling

64. “THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES,” Karl Popper
65. “THE ART OF MEMORY,” Frances A. Yates
66. “RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM,” R. H. Tawney
67. “A PREFACE TO MORALS,” Walter Lippmann
68. “THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE,” Jonathan D. Spence
69. “THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS,” Thomas S. Kuhn

70. “THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW,” C. Vann Woodward
71. “THE RISE OF THE WEST,” William H. McNeill
72. “THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS,” Elaine Pagels
73. “JAMES JOYCE,” Richard Ellmann
74. “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE,” Cecil Woodham-Smith

75. “THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY,” Paul Fussell
76. “THE CITY IN HISTORY,” Lewis Mumford
77. “BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM,” James M. McPherson
78. “WHY WE CAN’T WAIT,” Martin Luther King Jr.
79. “THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT,” Edmund Morris
80. “STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY,” Erwin Panofsky
81. “THE FACE OF BATTLE,” John Keegan
82. “THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND,” George Dangerfield
83. “VERMEER,” Lawrence Gowing
84. “A BRIGHT SHINING LIE,” Neil Sheehan

85. “WEST WITH THE NIGHT,” Beryl Markham

86. “THIS BOY’S LIFE,” Tobias Wolff

87. “A MATHEMATICIAN’S APOLOGY,” G.H. Hardy
88. “SIX EASY PIECES,” Richard P. Feynman
89. “PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK,” Annie Dillard

90. “THE GOLDEN BOUGH,” James George Frazer
91. “SHADOW AND ACT,” Ralph Ellison
92. “THE POWER BROKER,” Robert A. Caro
93. “THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION,” Richard Hofstadter
94. “THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY,” William Appleman Williams
95. “THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE,” Herbert Croly
96. “IN COLD BLOOD,” Truman Capote
97. “THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER,” Janet Malcolm
98. “THE TAMING OF CHANCE,” Ian Hacking
99. “OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS,” Anne Lamott

100. “MELBOURNE,” Lord David Cecil