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The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written
The 100 Most Influential Books Ever The History of Thought From Ancient Times to Today
498 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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284 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 27, 2011
I love the way author tries to get cocky over those authors he has no idea of (Lacan, Foucault, Heidegger).
March 15, 2011
It is interesting, but the author's opinion of each book seems to be more important than the book itself...
July 24, 2022
Nie wiedziałam, że książka znaleziona gdzieś na zakurzonej półce da mi tyle zabawy. Nie chodzi nawet o same książki, ale o opinie autora, który jedzie po bandzie.
Np. "Poematy Homera tworzą fundament kultury greckiej, a tym samym także i naszej. Żaden poeta, nawet Wergiliusz czy Dante, nie dorównał arcydziełom Homera. Ludzie, którzy mieli okazję je czytać (w przekładzie) i tego nie zrobili, nie mogą powiedzieć, że są pełnymi istotami ludzkimi - o czym niektórzy mają przekonać się, gdy szczęśliwie po nie sięgną. Jednak w naszej epoce edukację zastąpił trening w sztuce chciwości i obłudy, toteż nic dziwnego, że urzędnicy - roboty z plastikowymi identyfikatorami w klapie, którzy układają programy nauczania, nie widzą w szkole miejsca dla Homera. Jedynie na wzmiankę, że sprzedaż jego dzieł przez stulecia była dochodowa, w ich martwych oczach pojawia się jakiś błysk."
The audacity!
Ogółem jednak meh, zbyt chaotyczna.
Np. "Poematy Homera tworzą fundament kultury greckiej, a tym samym także i naszej. Żaden poeta, nawet Wergiliusz czy Dante, nie dorównał arcydziełom Homera. Ludzie, którzy mieli okazję je czytać (w przekładzie) i tego nie zrobili, nie mogą powiedzieć, że są pełnymi istotami ludzkimi - o czym niektórzy mają przekonać się, gdy szczęśliwie po nie sięgną. Jednak w naszej epoce edukację zastąpił trening w sztuce chciwości i obłudy, toteż nic dziwnego, że urzędnicy - roboty z plastikowymi identyfikatorami w klapie, którzy układają programy nauczania, nie widzą w szkole miejsca dla Homera. Jedynie na wzmiankę, że sprzedaż jego dzieł przez stulecia była dochodowa, w ich martwych oczach pojawia się jakiś błysk."
The audacity!
Ogółem jednak meh, zbyt chaotyczna.
January 23, 2020
I thought this would be a did not finish for me about halfway through because the author writes about ancient cultures through a very modern political lense. I’m no expert in ancients but I know enough to recognize that it’s very rare that our current modes of thinking a relevant. I will say that the list is a very impressive creation and each of these books is important to know about. The political lens becomes more and more relevant as time goes on though and I will say that the author is opinionated which becomes helpful in hearing a perspective that is different from a simple summary of the work. By the end I was able to compensate somewhat for the authors perspective and as a result gain more from his summations then I would from just a cliff notes reading.
February 22, 2017
I'm really, really, glad to have read this book. I hope to one day read the books it lists, but if I don't get to them all that's okay.
In the course of reading Martin Seymour-Smith's book, one discovers as much or more about his implicit opinions and worldview as about the books he discusses. Seymour-Smith's overriding value is basic human decency. And he values human spirituality and human sexuality. He often slips in tidbits about the great authors' conflicted sex lives. And he reserves his most bitter denunciations for those who reduce human life to mere mechanistic existence.
In the course of reading Martin Seymour-Smith's book, one discovers as much or more about his implicit opinions and worldview as about the books he discusses. Seymour-Smith's overriding value is basic human decency. And he values human spirituality and human sexuality. He often slips in tidbits about the great authors' conflicted sex lives. And he reserves his most bitter denunciations for those who reduce human life to mere mechanistic existence.
Currently reading
February 25, 2010hehe, a very partial take, but if like me you enjoy Martin Seymour-Smith's particulary opinionate partiality, then this could be one of the most influential books that you ever read. Certainly it's influenced me, helped me find my way through the human record. I bought copies for friends.
August 17, 2012
Although one can argue with some of the selections, I liked that the author stayed true to the concept of influence versus general popularity.
April 1, 2015
όπως προείπα είναι για μακροχρόνια μελέτη και απόσβεση των περιλαμβανομένων βιβλίων όταν και εφόσον διαβαστούν.
Σίγουρα αξίζει τον κόπο.
Σίγουρα αξίζει τον κόπο.
September 16, 2014
This sort of project is unavoidably idiosyncratic but this one goes beyond that (Eliot was "a very minor poet"). Still, some of the writer's perspectives are illuminating or thought-provoking.
November 14, 2023
One expects a book like this to be opinionated, and Seymour-Smith doesn't disappoint.
His encyclopedic forays into literature are, or at least were, reasonably well known, and I've found his judgments to be usually sound (which may say more about me than about him), and unfailingly entertaining. The present book is entertaining too, and drips knowledge and intellect on every page, and yet . . .
I suppose one should start with the selection itself. There really isn't much of a way to decide what is fundamentally influential in world civilization(s), so beyond some obvious choices -- the Old and New Testaments, the Koran -- the selection ends up reflecting something of an agenda. Philosophy and the social sciences are well represented, but there are also some curious omissions: Hitler, for instance, and Bernays. One might be surprised that few authors of what we might consider literature make the cut: I count only Homer, Virgil, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bunyan (?!), Voltaire, Tolstoy, Kafka, and Orwell. This is fair, I suppose -- how influential *is* literature, really, compared to political and religious word-weaponry? -- and it's almost charming how S.-S. makes so little attempt to justify including Tolstoy. (Hint: It's primarily on the basis of Tolstoy's theory of history . . . which just about nobody has ever taken seriously.)
As for the rest, once one gets past such reasonably obvious inclusions such as the most canonical of philosophers . . . oh heck, maybe I should just cut to the chase: if you're a Major Figure in the pantheon of authors but are positivist, materialist, non-spiritual, and/or (god forbid) atheist, S.-S. will treat you with something ranging from superb condescension to outright contempt. Sometimes a grudging admiration emerges despite everything, as in the case of the essays on Pareto, Sartre, and Nietzsche; the ones he despises outright rarely get entries, of course, with one notable exception (the admittedly loathsome B.F. Skinner). Poststructuralists, few of whom S.-S. seems to have read, come in for particularly dismissive abuse: Derrida is routinely (and ignorantly) labeled with the descriptor "nihilistic"; Foucault is dismissed as "messy and unhappy" and unable to attract as big a funeral crowd as Sartre; Lacan, Deleuze, and Baudrillard (who probably understood Homo postmodernus better than anyone else) don't merit mention anywhere in the volume. But of course all these judgments redound on the reader: after all, I found myself cheering every snide comment he made about Heidegger.
Spiritualists of various stripes get sympathetic readings and, I suspect, more attention than they deserve. Buber is, I suppose, arguably worth including, fluffy and vacuous though his “philosophy” may be; Gurdjieff certainly isn't. The Kabbala is included but, curiously, the Talmud isn't. (This may be a case of excessive prudence: after all, (mis)quoting the Talmud is a favorite enterprise of both faithful Jews and vicious antisemites, and how many of us read Hebrew well enough to know what's really in it?)
The content of the individual essays can be perverse as well. The essay on Dante is almost as much about T.S. Eliot, of all people, as it is about Dante. I would find this irritating if I didn't loathe Eliot as much as S.-S. does, but such pleasure is a guilty one. (S.-S. displays a remarkable facility for shoehorning nasty comments about Eliot and a few others, notably Heidegger, into the most unlikely entries. Show us on the doll, S.-S., . . . ) The essays on the Old and New Testaments do a remarkable job of almost completely avoiding their nominal subjects: the New Testament entry, for instance, is mostly about the dualist heretic Marcion. S.-S. includes Martin Luther on the basis of the latter's *On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church* -- and then proceeds to not discuss it at all!
Three stars for a book that is marginally more brilliant than it is irritating.
His encyclopedic forays into literature are, or at least were, reasonably well known, and I've found his judgments to be usually sound (which may say more about me than about him), and unfailingly entertaining. The present book is entertaining too, and drips knowledge and intellect on every page, and yet . . .
I suppose one should start with the selection itself. There really isn't much of a way to decide what is fundamentally influential in world civilization(s), so beyond some obvious choices -- the Old and New Testaments, the Koran -- the selection ends up reflecting something of an agenda. Philosophy and the social sciences are well represented, but there are also some curious omissions: Hitler, for instance, and Bernays. One might be surprised that few authors of what we might consider literature make the cut: I count only Homer, Virgil, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bunyan (?!), Voltaire, Tolstoy, Kafka, and Orwell. This is fair, I suppose -- how influential *is* literature, really, compared to political and religious word-weaponry? -- and it's almost charming how S.-S. makes so little attempt to justify including Tolstoy. (Hint: It's primarily on the basis of Tolstoy's theory of history . . . which just about nobody has ever taken seriously.)
As for the rest, once one gets past such reasonably obvious inclusions such as the most canonical of philosophers . . . oh heck, maybe I should just cut to the chase: if you're a Major Figure in the pantheon of authors but are positivist, materialist, non-spiritual, and/or (god forbid) atheist, S.-S. will treat you with something ranging from superb condescension to outright contempt. Sometimes a grudging admiration emerges despite everything, as in the case of the essays on Pareto, Sartre, and Nietzsche; the ones he despises outright rarely get entries, of course, with one notable exception (the admittedly loathsome B.F. Skinner). Poststructuralists, few of whom S.-S. seems to have read, come in for particularly dismissive abuse: Derrida is routinely (and ignorantly) labeled with the descriptor "nihilistic"; Foucault is dismissed as "messy and unhappy" and unable to attract as big a funeral crowd as Sartre; Lacan, Deleuze, and Baudrillard (who probably understood Homo postmodernus better than anyone else) don't merit mention anywhere in the volume. But of course all these judgments redound on the reader: after all, I found myself cheering every snide comment he made about Heidegger.
Spiritualists of various stripes get sympathetic readings and, I suspect, more attention than they deserve. Buber is, I suppose, arguably worth including, fluffy and vacuous though his “philosophy” may be; Gurdjieff certainly isn't. The Kabbala is included but, curiously, the Talmud isn't. (This may be a case of excessive prudence: after all, (mis)quoting the Talmud is a favorite enterprise of both faithful Jews and vicious antisemites, and how many of us read Hebrew well enough to know what's really in it?)
The content of the individual essays can be perverse as well. The essay on Dante is almost as much about T.S. Eliot, of all people, as it is about Dante. I would find this irritating if I didn't loathe Eliot as much as S.-S. does, but such pleasure is a guilty one. (S.-S. displays a remarkable facility for shoehorning nasty comments about Eliot and a few others, notably Heidegger, into the most unlikely entries. Show us on the doll, S.-S., . . . ) The essays on the Old and New Testaments do a remarkable job of almost completely avoiding their nominal subjects: the New Testament entry, for instance, is mostly about the dualist heretic Marcion. S.-S. includes Martin Luther on the basis of the latter's *On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church* -- and then proceeds to not discuss it at all!
Three stars for a book that is marginally more brilliant than it is irritating.
December 30, 2020
I was not expecting to enjoy this book nearly so much as I did. I rarely agreed with the author on anything, but he was so full of snark and snobbery that I found myself laughing.
Other reviewers have complained about Seymour-Smith's abhorrence of Christianity. They are correct. He can't stand it. However, unlike most authors, he is not prejudiced. Oh no. He's an equal-opportunity misanthrope, eviscerating New Atheist classics like The Selfish Gene with as much gusto as The New Testament. Perhaps more so, because he doesn't accuse St. Paul of battling "near-total illiteracy" while writing his Epistles, like he does with Dawkins.
(I've never verified Seymour-Smith's statement, but I found the audacity and spitefulness of it amusing. And that's just in the Foreword!)
People always complain about how dry history is, especially the history of literature. This is the opposite of that. It may not be accurate. You probably won't agree with the author. But you'll be entertained.
Enjoy.
Other reviewers have complained about Seymour-Smith's abhorrence of Christianity. They are correct. He can't stand it. However, unlike most authors, he is not prejudiced. Oh no. He's an equal-opportunity misanthrope, eviscerating New Atheist classics like The Selfish Gene with as much gusto as The New Testament. Perhaps more so, because he doesn't accuse St. Paul of battling "near-total illiteracy" while writing his Epistles, like he does with Dawkins.
(I've never verified Seymour-Smith's statement, but I found the audacity and spitefulness of it amusing. And that's just in the Foreword!)
People always complain about how dry history is, especially the history of literature. This is the opposite of that. It may not be accurate. You probably won't agree with the author. But you'll be entertained.
Enjoy.
April 29, 2021
"What has been called religion has always been an uneasy mixture of reverence for God and politics."
(p 11)
This author also believes that Jesus was a gnostic. (p. 12) "Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in the late 1st century CE among Jewish and early Christian sects." (Wikipedia) Wow, how strange can you get.
The author comes across as very educated in literature with his densely packed references to works unfamiliar to most of us. However, since he does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, it was enough that I read hardly any of his text. Even before that there was something keeping me from reading in it very much.
(p 11)
This author also believes that Jesus was a gnostic. (p. 12) "Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in the late 1st century CE among Jewish and early Christian sects." (Wikipedia) Wow, how strange can you get.
The author comes across as very educated in literature with his densely packed references to works unfamiliar to most of us. However, since he does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, it was enough that I read hardly any of his text. Even before that there was something keeping me from reading in it very much.
September 12, 2025
Expected to find how these books influenced whatever but instead the author jumped from biography to opinions about the book or the author and his personality. Sometimes the books seemed like randomly chosen from what the author had to offer. Still you can find entertaining information in it. Difficult to read though and the translation was bad.
February 5, 2017
Good. But not very objective.
January 29, 2010
Ok. Great. Now go read them.
January 11, 2018
A good read - but super uneven. Some works are treated with one level of analysis, the next yet another. Some are explained in impact; others simply explained.
Oh, and he really really really really really hates Christianity. But don't worry, you'll learn than in the first few pages. And the several hundred that follow. (To the author: We get it. Time to move on)
Oh, and he really really really really really hates Christianity. But don't worry, you'll learn than in the first few pages. And the several hundred that follow. (To the author: We get it. Time to move on)
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews