Customer Reviews

The New York Public Library's Books of the Century

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It isn't fair to characterize the entries as "summaries"; they're short, to-the-point statements of why the book was/is important. I particularly liked the "Public's Choice" selections. The cutout illustrations from the exhibit are delightful!

These days everybody's putting together lists: top 100 this, best 500 that, my top 10 which is better than yours, etc. Even a dozen years ago when this little volume was first published, the trend wasn't quite so extreme as it is now. Blame the Internet I suppose. But this strikes me as one of the more useful "books you should read" books; divided into a dozen themed chapters, each containing somewhere between 10 and 24 titles, there are 182 books in total, briefly summarized and given a bit of historical context.

Most of these books I would think that the typical educated adult would at least have heard of; few, though, will have read a large proportion of the books contained here, and that's probably all to the good as the breadth and scope of this survey is much larger than most, containing not just familiar English and American, or even European titles but a nice helping of major works from around the world, and with little or no discrimination against genre or medium: there are speeches and lectures her by such diverse figures as Bertrand Rusell and Chaiman Mao; plays by Shaw and Pirandello; novels by Achebe and Morrison; scientific papers by Einstein and Curie; ethnographic works, poetry, even Mein Kampf -- which is certainly as important in our shared history of the century as anything, no matter how despicable.

In short, as useful a guide in a couple hundred pages as any probably could be for a century so vast and full of great writing from all over the world.

Wonderful book for illiterates who may need a large-type, one paragraph summary of the great books of the century. Useless for the serious book-lover. Gracias

It is a great idea to offer a handly little volume that recommends the greatest books written in the 20th century but after reading this volume I am baffled. Instead of "The Yearling", any volumes by Laura Ingalls Wilder, "The Death of a President" by William Manchester or his two volume biography on Churchill ("The Last Lion") ,"Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis or "Knowing God" by J.I Packer (which has sold over one million copies) and other truly fabulous works of literature we are left with such drivel as "Lolita", "The Catcher in the Rye" (the most hyped book ever published) and books by Betty Friedan, Hitler and Margaret Sanger!

If controversy sells books then this should be on top of the charts. There were only three titles that I agreed should have been in the book. Don't waste your money or time on this volume.