< Forum
What books do you think have had a major impact on the world?
First Pass[]
religious texts:
- Bible The King James Version
- Torah
- Koran
- Bhagavad Gita
- writings of Confucius
- Homer's The Odyssey and The Illiad
- The Republic by Plato
ideas and movements:
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Walden, or Life in the Woods
- Magna Carta
- Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton
- Discourse on Method by Rene Decartes
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbs
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
how we live
- Poetics by Aristotle
- works by Margaret Mead
Some other lists: Sex, maths and a spinning machine: the 12 British books that changed the world, OutsideOnline's Ten Books that Changed Our World, Books That Changed the World, by American Women, Amazon's 16 Books That Changed the World
Comments[]
Before King James' Bible I would add the first translation into greek and the cannonical latin version. Luther's translantion into German too.--Rataube 19:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Instead of King James' Bible, it could say the Christian Bible, Gutenberg or one of the others you mention. Maybe it's the "set"?
- -- CocoaZen 19:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Aristotle's Poetics? It had a great influence on literary criticism and production. But on how we live?--Rataube 05:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Maybe that's not titled correctly. I think that Poetics and the influence it has had on authors (including playwrights and other story tellers) has affected literature and the stories that influence our lives. Certainly all the works listed here are up for debate. I was hoping this page might start some of this debate.
- -- CocoaZen 19:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)