The Modern Novel

From the website of the conservative weekly National Review:
“Earlier this year, Random House announced that it would release a list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century. The publisher had enjoyed success (and controversy) with its 100 best novels; now it would do this. Here at National Review, we decided to get a jump on them by forming our own panel and offering our own list. Under the leadership of our reporter John J. Miller, we have done so. We have used a methodology that approaches the scientific. But-certainly beyond, say, the first 40 books-the fact of the books’ presence on the list is far more important than their rankings. We offer a comment from a panelist after many of the books; but the panel overall, not the individual quoted, is responsible for the ranking. So, here is our list, for your enjoyment, mortification, and stimulation.”

THE PANEL:
Richard Brookhiser, NR senior editor
David Brooks, senior editor of The Weekly Standard
Christopher Caldwell, senior writer at The Weekly Standard
Robert Conquest, historian
David Gelernter, writer and computer scientist
George Gilder, writer
Mary Ann Glendon, professor at Harvard Law School
Jeffrey Hart, NR senior editor
Mark Helprin, novelist
Arthur Herman, author of The Idea of Decline in Western History
John Keegan, military historian
Michael Kelly, editor of National Journal
Florence King, author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
Michael Lind, journalist and novelist
John Lukacs, historian
Adam Meyerson, vice president at the Heritage Foundation
Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things
John O’Sullivan, NR editor-at-large
Richard Pipes, historian
Abigail Thernstrom, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
Stephan Thernstrom, historian
James Q. Wilson, author of The Moral Sense.

1. Churchill, Winston S: The Second World War
Brookhiser:”The big story of the century, told by its major hero.”
2. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I: The Gulag Archipelago
Neuhaus:”Marked the absolute final turning point beyond which nobody could deny the evil of the Evil Empire.”
3. Orwell, George: Homage to Catalonia
Herman:”Orwell’s masterpiece-far superior to Animal Farm and 1984. No education in the meaning of the 20th century is complete without it.”
4. Hayek, F. A. von: The Road to Serfdom
Helprin:”Shatters the myth that the totalitarianisms ‘of the Left’ and ‘of the Right’ stem from differing impulses.”
5. Orwell, George: Collected Essays
King:”Every conservative’s favorite liberal and every liberal’s favorite conservative. This book has no enemies.”
6. Popper, Karl: The Open Society and Its Enemies
Herman:”The best work on political philosophy in the 20th century. Exposes totalitarianism’s roots in Plato, Hegel, and Marx.”
7. Lewis, C. S: The Abolition of Man
Brookhiser:”How modern philosophies drain meaning and the sacred from our lives.”
8. Gasset, José Ortega y: Revolt of the Masses
Gilder:”Prophesied the 20th century’s debauchery of democracy and science, the barbarism of the specialist, and the inevitable fatuity of public opinion. Explained the genius of capitalist elites.”
9. Hayek, F. A. von: The Constitution of Liberty
O’Sullivan:”A great re-statement for this century of classical liberalism by its greatest modern exponent.”
10. Friedman, Milton: Capitalism and Freedom
11. Johnson, Paul: Modern Times
Herman:”Huge impact outside the academy, dreaded and ignored inside it.”
12. Oakeshott, Michael: Rationalism in Politics
Herman:”Oakeshott is the 20th century’s Edmund Burke.”
13. Schumpeter, Joseph A: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Caldwell:”Locus classicus for the observation that democratic capitalism undermines itself through its very success.”
14. Weber, Max: Economy and Society
Lind:”Weber made permanent contributions to the understanding of society with his discussions of comparative religion, bureaucracy, charisma, and the distinctions among status, class, and party.”
15. Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Caldwell:”Through Nazism and Stalinism, looks at almost every pernicious trend in the last century’s politics with stunning subtlety.”
16. West, Rebecca: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Kelly:”For its writing, not for its historical accuracy.”
17. Wilson, Edward O: Sociobiology
Lind:”Darwin put humanity in its proper place in the animal kingdom. Wilson put human society there, too.”
18. II, Pope John Paul: Centissimus Annus
19. Cohn, Norman: The Pursuit of the Millennium
Neuhaus:”The authoritative refutation of utopianism of the left, right, and points undetermined.”
20. Frank, Anne: The Diary of a Young Girl
Helprin:”An innocent’s account of the greatest evil imaginable. The most powerful book of the century. Others may not agree. No matter, I cast my lot with this child.”
Caldwell:”If one didn’t know her fate, one might read it as the reflections of any girl. That one does know her fate makes this as close to a holy book as the century produced.”
21. Conquest, Robert: The Great Terror
Herman:”Documented for the first time the real record of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. A genuine monument of historical research and reconstruction, a true epic of evil.”
22. Muggeridge, Malcolm: Chronicles of Wasted Time
Gilder:”The best autobiography, Christian confession, and historic meditation of the century.”
23. Einstein, Albert: Relativity
Lind:”The most important physicist since Newton.”
24. Chambers, Whittaker: Witness
Caldwell:”Confession, history, potboiler-by a man who writes like the literary giant we would know him as, had not Communism got him first.”
25. Kuhn, Thomas S: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
26. Lewis, C. S: Mere Christianity
Neuhaus:”The most influential book of the most influential Christian apologist of the century.”
27. Nisbet, Robert: The Quest for Community
28. ed., 11th: Encyclopedia Britannica
Helprin:”The infinite riches of the world, presented with elegance, confidence, and economy.”
29. Mitchell, Joseph: Up in the Old Hotel
30. Chesterton, G. K: The Everlasting Man
Lukacs:”A great carillonade of Christian verities.”
31. Chesterton, G. K: Orthodoxy
O’Sullivan:”How to look at the Christian tradition with fresh eyes.”
32. Trilling, Lionel: The Liberal Imagination
Hart:”The popular form of liberalism tends to simplify and caricature when it attempts moral aspiration-that is, it tends to ‘Stalinism.'”
33. Watson, James D: The Double Helix
Herman:”Deeply hated by feminists because Watson dares to suggest that the male-female distinction originated in nature, in the DNA code itself.”
34. Feynman, Richard Phillips: The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Gelernter:”Outside of art (or maybe not), physics is mankind’s most beautiful achievement; these three volumes are probably the most beautiful ever written about physics.”
35. Wolfe, Tom: Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
O’Sullivan:”Wolfe is our Juvenal.”
36. Camus, Albert: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
37. Banfield, Edward C: The Unheavenly City
Neuhaus:”The volume that began the debunking of New Deal socialism and its public-policy consequences.”
38. Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams
39. Jacobs, Jane: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
40. Fukuyama, Francis: The End of History and the Last Man
41. Becker, and Ethan: Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker
42. Hofstadter, Richard: The Age of Reform
Herman:”The single best book on American history in this century, bar none.”
43. Keynes, John Maynard: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Hart:”Influential in suggesting that the business cycle can be modified by government investment and manipulation of tax rates.”
44. Jr., William F. Buckley: God & Man at Yale
Gilder:”Still correct and prophetic. It defines the conservative revolt against socialism and atheism on campus and in the culture, and reconciles the alleged conflict between capitalist and religious conservatives.”
45. Eliot, T. S: Selected Essays
Hart:”Shaped the literary taste of the mid-century.”
46. Weaver, Richard M: Ideas Have Consequences
47. Jacobs, Jane: The Economy of Cities
48. Bloom, Allan: The Closing of the American Mind
49. Sowell, Thomas: Ethnic America
50. Myrdal, Gunnar: An American Dilemma
51. Freud, Sigmund: Three Case Histories
Gelernter:”Beyond question Freud is history’s most important philosopher of the mind, and he ranks alongside Eliot as the century’s greatest literary critic. Modern intellectual life (left, right, and in-between) would be unthinkable without him.”
52. Wilmot, Chester: The Struggle for Europe
53. Parrington, Vernon Louis: Main Currents in American Thought
King:”An immensely readable history of ideas and men. (Skip the fragmentary third volume-he died before finishing it.)”
54. Huzinga, Johann: The Waning of the Middle Ages
Lukacs:”Probably the finest historian who lived in this century.”
55. Pannenberg, Wolfhart: Systematic Theology
Neuhaus:”The best summary and reflection on Christianity’s encounter with the Enlightenment project.”
56. Tyng, Sewell: The Campaign of the Marne
Keegan:”A forgotten American’s masterly account of the First World War in the West.”
57. Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Hart:”A terse summation of the analytic method of the analytic school in philosophy, and a heroic leap beyond it.”
58. Lonergan, Bernard: Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
Glendon:”The Thomas Aquinas of the 20th century.”
59. Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time
Hart:”A seminal thinker, notwithstanding his disgraceful error of equating National Socialism with the experience of ‘Being.'”
60. Blake, Robert: Disraeli
Keegan:”Political biography as it should be written.”
61. Babbitt, Irving: Democracy and Leadership
King:”A conservative literary critic describes what happens when humanitarianism over takes humanism.”
62. White, William Strunk & E. B: The Elements of Style
A. Thernstrom:”If only every writer would remember just one of Strunk & White’s wonderful injunctions: ‘Omit needless words.’ Omit needless words.”
63. Burnham, James: The Machiavellians
O’Sullivan:”Burnham is the greatest political analyst of our century and this is his best book.”
64. Pobedonostsev, Konstantin P: Reflections of a Russian Statesman
King:”The ‘culture war’ as seen by the tutor to the last two czars. A Russian Pat Buchanan.”
65. Berlin, Isaiah: The Hedgehog and the Fox
66. Genovese, Eugene D: Roll, Jordan, Roll
Neuhaus:”The best account of American slavery and the moral and cultural forces that undid it.”
67. Pound, Ezra: The ABC of Reading
Brookhiser:”An epitome of the aging aesthetic movement that will be forever known as modernism.”
68. Keegan, John: The Second World War
Hart:”A masterly history in a single volume.”
69. Parry, Milman: The Making of Homeric Verse
Lind:”Genuine discoveries in literary study are rare. Parry’s discovery of the oral formulaic basis of the Homeric epics, the founding texts of Western literature, was one of them.”
70. Wilson, Angus: The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling
Keegan:”A life of a great author told through the transmutation of his experience into fictional form.”
71. Leavis, F. R: Scrutiny
Hart:”Enormously important in education, especially in England. Leavis understood what one kind of ‘living English’ is.”
72. Gaulle, Charles de: The Edge of the Sword
Brookhiser:”A lesser figure than Churchill, but more philosophical (and hence, more problematic).”
73. Freeman, Douglas Southall: R. E. Lee
Conquest:”The finest work on the Civil War.”
74. Mises, Ludwig von: Bureaucracy
75. Merton, Thomas: The Seven Storey Mountain
Neuhaus:”A classic conversion story of a modern urban sophisticate.”
76. Zweig, Stefan: Balzac
King:”On the joys of working one’s self to death. The chapter ‘Black Coffee’ is a masterpiece of imaginative reconstruction.”
77. Lippmann, Walter: The Good Society
Gilder:”Written during the Great Depression. A corruscating defense of the morality of capitalism.”
78. Carson, Rachel: Silent Spring
Lind:”For all the excesses of the environmental movement, the realization that human technology can permanently damage the earth’s environment marked a great advance in civilization. Carson’s book, more than any other, publicized this message.”
79. Pelikan, Jaroslav: The Christian Tradition
Neuhaus:”The century’s most comprehensive account of Christian teaching from the second century on.”
80. Bloch, Marc: Strange Defeat
Herman:”A great historian’s personal account of the fall of France in 1940.”
81. Douglas, Norman: Looking Back
Conquest:”Fascinating memoirs of a remarkable writer.”
82. Adams, Henry: Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
83. Jarrell, Randall: Poetry and the Age
Caldwell:”The book for showing how 20th- century poets think, what their poetry does, and why it matters.”
84. Rougemont, Denis de: Love in the Western World
Brookhiser:”What has become of eros over the last seven centuries.”
85. Kirk, Russell: The Conservative Mind
86. Gilder, George: Wealth and Poverty
87. McPherson, James M: Battle Cry of Freedom
88. Edel, Leon: Henry James
King:”All the James you want without having to read him.”
89. White, E. B: Essays of E. B. White
Gelernter:”White is the apotheosis of the American liberal now spurned and detested by the Left (and the cultural mainstream). His mesmerized devotion to the objects of his affection-his family, the female sex, his farm, the English language, Manhattan, the sea, America, Maine, and freedom, in descending order-is movingly absolute.”
90. Nabokov, Vladimir: Speak, Memory
91. Wolfe, Tom: The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
92. Behe, Michael J: Darwin’s Black Box
Gilder:”Overthrows Darwin at the end of the 20th century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning.”
93. Foote, Shelby: The Civil War
94. Wanniski, Jude: The Way the World Works
Gilder:”The best book on economics. Shows fatuity of still-dominant demand-side model, with its silly preoccupation with accounting trivia, like the federal budget and trade balance and savings rates, in an economy with $40 trillion or so in assets that rise and fall weekly by trillions.”
95. Wilson, Edmund: To the Finland Station
Herman:”The best single book on Karl Marx and Marx’s place in modern history.”
96. Clark, Kenneth: Civilisation
97. Pipes, Richard: The Russian Revolution
98. Collingwood, R. G: The Idea of History
99. Manchester, William: The Last Lion
100. Starr, Kenneth W: The Starr Report
Hart:”A study in human depravity.”