Our Most Recommended Books
Looking for a book? We have the world’s largest collection of expert book recommendations. With more than a thousand topics to choose from, we have you covered from children’s books to computer science. Our experts range from philosophers to politicians, authors to anthropologists; they are all at the top of their professions and able to give insightful and engaging reading lists of a huge range of topics. Here are our most recommended books to help you discover your next great read…
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel written in 1948. Often a standard text in school for teenagers, 1984 is many people’s first introduction to totalitarianism. Ominously prescient in some ways, (such as the scope for surveillance to reach into our lives through the ubiquity of screens) and wide off the mark in others (Big Brother’s omnipresent, unitary police state is not a reality we live with in the West), it makes fascinating reading.
Some of Orwell’s inventions from 1984 entered the English language, like ‘Thought Police,’ ‘Big Brother’ ‘Newspeak’ and of course, the general concept of an ‘Orwellian’ society or future.
“In terms of how technology is working in our modern surveillance powers, it’s a terrifyingly prophetic book in some of its implications for 21st-century human life. Orwell would deny that it was prophecy; he said it was a warning. But in fact, distinguished Orwell scholar Professor Peter Davis once made a list of all the things that Orwell got right, and it was a couple of fairly long paragraphs, and it was really rather terrifying.” Read more...
“Nineteen Eighty-Four is seriously read in China by intellectuals, who see similarities between the world of George Orwell and present-day China.” Read more...
The best books on Dystopia and Utopia
Chan Koonchung, Novelist
On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
Is diversity of opinion valuable? Why should we care about free speech? When can someone legitimately interfere in our lives to stop us from doing something? What should restrict the scope of our personal liberty?
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill was originally published in 1859, but his exploration of these questions still feels incredibly contemporary. On Liberty remains a central text of the modern liberal tradition, as our interviews below with philosophers, politicians, historians and political commentators make clear:
“Mill points out that very often, throughout history, people have thought that they were certainly right, and then turned out to be quite wrong.” Read more...
Peter Singer on Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
Peter Singer, Philosopher
“Mill is one of those mildly irritating authors like Tocqueville, who say so much so well that it’s difficult to say it better.” Read more...
Timothy Garton Ash, Historian
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Which translation of the book War and Peace is best? What kind of reviews did Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece get when it was published? Why has the book War and Peace been chosen by philosophers, historians and novelists as one of the most important ever written? Find out more about one of our most recommended books by reading the expert commentary about War and Peace below. The audiobook is also highly recommended, narrated by the RADA-trained actor, the late Neville Jason.
“One of the key questions that Tolstoy asks in the appendix is the central question of War and Peace: how can we explain the fact that, on orders, millions of people go out and kill one another, when they know that killing another human being is morally wrong?” Read more...
Cécile Fabre, Philosopher
“Tolstoy does something which is very unusual in War and Peace and which, for his time, was pretty profound: he sees the conditions of the ordinary soldier on the battlefield.” Read more...
Tendai Huchu recommends the best Historical Fiction
Tendai Huchu, Novelist
“What he’s making is an incredibly modern, intimate, psychological diagnosis of the human condition.” Read more...
Simon Yarrow, Historian
“A lot of people think becoming a Christian is a decision you make. St Augustine doesn’t really think that.” Read more...
A N Wilson recommends the best Christian Books
A N Wilson, Biographer
The Looming Tower
by Lawrence Wright
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is a detailed narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews. Find out below why it is one of Five Books most recommended books.
“Reading this one book gives you an excellent grasp of the human story and the context from which al-Qaeda emerged.” Read more...
Audrey Kurth Cronin, Political Scientist
“Former counterterrorism agent John O’Neill, who died in 9/11, is the hero of this book. He played a central part in trying to take Al-Qaeda apart.” Read more...
The best books on Osama bin Laden
Peter Bergen, Journalist
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley started writing the Frankenstein story when she was 18, and it was published in London two years later. Her chilling tale of how Victor Frankenstein put together a creature by sewing together human parts is said to be the first true science fiction story. If you’ve never read it, or read it a long time ago, it’s definitely worth picking up again, as the subtleties of the original book, entitled Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus, may have been displaced in your mind by the various cartoons and monster-movies connected to the original only by the name ‘Frankenstein’ (and some people, who haven’t read the book, think Frankenstein is the name of the monster, rather than the name of the scientist who put the creature together).
Read below why it’s one of the books most frequently recommended by the experts we’ve interviewed—on subjects as diverse as fear of death, women and society, and transhumanism. Note: make sure to read the 1818 uncensored edition.
“Frankenstein can be seen as an experiment—or almost a laboratory—that brings together science and literature” Read more...
Nick Groom, Literary Scholar
“Shelley had no truck with modesty and restraint, or doing what was expected of her. She let her imagination go as far as it could.” Read more...
Sarah Perry recommends the best Gothic Fiction
Sarah Perry, Novelist
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
“The older I got and the more wars I covered – I have done about 18 – the more true it became”–Veteran BBC journalist Martin Bell on Evelyn Waugh’s journalistic satire Scoop.
“I think it is the best description of a foreign correspondent’s career, and I doubt it will ever be bettered.” Read more...
Richard Beeston, Foreign Correspondent
“Everything about this book is perfect, from the prose to the characters to the Swiss-clock workings of the plot.” Read more...
Andy Borowitz recommends the best Comic Writing
Andy Borowitz, Comedians & Humorist
Republic
by Plato
In Ancient Greek, Plato’s famous dialogue was known as Politeia. The Romans called it Res Publica, the title we now use. Below, philosophers and political scientists recommend which edition of Plato’s Republic to read and explain, in detail, why it remains a work of such significance:
“It’s very readable even if you aren’t a professional philosopher. Take the story of ‘The Ring of Gyges,’ which raises the question of whether you would continue to act like a good person if you had a ring of invisibility that let you get away with doing whatever you wanted to do. That’s a fascinating thought experiment that anybody can appreciate.” Read more...
The best books on World Philosophy
Bryan Van Norden, Philosopher
“Living today in Trump’s America, I am constantly reminded of specific passages in the Republic, most saliently his warnings of how a demagogue might arise in the midst of a democracy by fanning up resentments and fears.” Read more...
Rebecca Goldstein on Reason and its Limitations
Rebecca Goldstein, Philosopher
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was published in 1847 and achieved immediate success. This essential classic book is still relevant in today’s world. It is a successful mixture of romantic novel and gothic fiction.
“I think Charlotte Brontë’s most accomplished book is Villette. It’s probably a better book, it’s tighter and more sophisticated in some ways. But there’s something about Jane Eyre that is just deeply emotionally compelling for me.” Read more...
Lucy Atkins, Journalist
“It wasn’t until my third reading of the book that I realised Brontë had slipped the supernatural into Jane Eyre.” Read more...
Sarah Perry recommends the best Gothic Fiction
Sarah Perry, Novelist
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
Middlemarch by George Eliot (real name Mary Anne Evans), was first published in 1871 and is a quintessential Victorian novel. The novel is set in the fictitious English town of Middlemarch during 1829–1832, and follows several distinct, intersecting stories with a large cast of characters. It is one of Five Books’ most recommended books.
“I was in my early twenties and hungry for long, character-driven narratives. Dorothea Brooke was a wonder to me—Tolstoyan in her richness, truly good without a forced or irritating saintliness.” Read more...
Esi Edugyan on Books That Influenced Her
Esi Edugyan, Novelist
“Middlemarch is deeply ethical.” Read more...
Rebecca Goldstein, Philosopher
The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, is the founding text of modern economics. But as our interviews with experts below make clear, its author, Adam Smith, was a moral philosopher and no unabashed cheerleader for the capitalist system he saw flourishing around him in Glasgow, a city grown rich from trade with the American colonies:
“The Wealth of Nations is, of course, one of the most famous, though certainly not most read or understood, books of all time. It was first published in 1776. In fact, I was once asked on an exam in high school ‘Who invented capitalism in 1776?’” Read more...
“It’s a long book and it covers many things. But it’s particularly important for the history of reading.” Read more...
William St Clair on Reading the Romantics
William St Clair, Historian
“If I had to pick just one self-contained book that lays out Dawkins’s philosophy and methodology, and shows his literary skills, I would have to pick this one.” Read more...
Jerry Coyne, Biologist
“In the Dawkins book I chose, The Blind Watchmaker, he brilliantly explains how complex mechanisms and structures are put together by the process of evolution. It is true that he makes certain theological points that I don’t agree with.” Read more...
Kenneth Miller recommends the best Arguments against Creationism
Kenneth Miller, Biologist
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
by David S Landes
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998) was written by Harvard economics and history professor David Landes (1924-2013). An unlikely bestseller that took on Adam Smith’s key question—why some nations are rich and others poor—it’s also a great read. See what our experts have said about this book and why it’s so important below:
“Landes argues, for example, that the most significant invention of the last 800 years was the mechanical clock, because until you…can reliably subdivide time, you can’t have capitalism” Read more...
The best books on Negotiating the Digital Age
Nick Harkaway, Novelist
“It’s the most erudite examination of what causes economic development and growth that’s been written in many decades.” Read more...
The best books on Understanding the Burmese Economy
Sean Turnell, Economist
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Recommended five times on Five Books by economists, politicians and others, Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s brilliant dystopian masterpiece.
“It shows the ways in which technology, our need for certain creature comforts and consumer culture can be used to manipulate us.” Read more...
The best books on Alternative Futures
Catherine Mayer, Politician
“It is a hilarious, and also very prescient, parody of utopias.” Read more...
Ellen Wayland-Smith, Miscellaneous
“Depending how you count, almost any nation could be portrayed as argumentative. But he uses this central theme to range over an amazing breadth of scholarship” Read more...
The best books on The Indian Economy
Kaushik Basu, Economist
“He shows that in fact there were roots of a democratic culture in India long before the British ever got there, and that is what he means by the ‘argumentative Indian’.” Read more...
The best books on The End of The West
David Marquand, Political Scientist
“In my view, The Road is the greatest novel ever written, and McCarthy one of the most important writers of the last hundred years. Its bleakness is interspersed with sentences so beautiful I wept.” Read more...
“There is no creature that has been transformed by leaking chemicals or radioactive satellites. But, on the other hand, there are human beings who consume other humans and that informs the major conflicts of the book. So, you’ve got a post-apocalyptic setting and you’ve got ethical quandaries for the main characters. There’s the sense of menace that permeates the zombie apocalypse. It’s not bad enough that they’re going to kill you, they’re also going to eat you. What I love about this story is its literary quality. We tend to think of the zombie apocalypse as a low-culture, pulp phenomenon.” Read more...
On the Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin
On the Origin of Species is Charles Darwin’s book on evolution that changed our understanding of the world, and our place in it, irrevocably. It is one of Five Books’ most recommended books.
“An educated person is someone who knows at least a little bit about the major disciplines in human endeavour. And in biology, this is what you need to know – not only historically but also contemporaneously, because Darwin was right, and still is right, about so many things.” Read more...
Jerry Coyne, Biologist
“It is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it.” Read more...
Mark Kurlansky recommends his Favourite Science Books
Mark Kurlansky, Science Writer
“Thoreau can be thorny to read but Walden is a tremendously important work in the history of environmental thinking and in the history of understanding our relationship with nature.” Read more...
“There’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today.” Read more...
The best books on American Philosophy
John Kaag, Philosopher
“I think that the most important contributions, the best books, in the philosophy of religion are these two little books that David Hume writes” Read more...
The best books on Atheist Philosophy of Religion
Graham Oppy, Philosopher
“What the rest of Great Expectations shows is that having Christmas lasting all the way through your life might not be a good thing. Having a Santa Claus figure who keeps throwing gifts and money at you when they’re not necessarily wanted or deserved might be a handicap.” Read more...
The best books on Dickens and Christmas
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Literary Scholar
“It is one of the most perfect novels ever written.” Read more...
The Best Charles Dickens Books
Jenny Hartley, Biographer
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler
Life and Fate, the masterpiece by Soviet writer Vasily Grossman, is one of our most recommended books. Modeled on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, it bore witness to the horrors of both the Soviet experience of World War II and the Holocaust. Sadly for Grossman, it was considered too harmful to be published in his lifetime. Read what historians and literary scholars have to say about it below:
(Stalingrad is the precursor to Life and Fate, newly translated into English.)
“Life and Fate…is probably the most important work of fiction about World War II. But, in fact, it is more than just a fiction because it is based on very close reporting from his time with the soldiers. It is a deliberate act of literary homage to Tolstoy as one can see in the title. It is definitely the War and Peace of the 20th century.” Read more...
The best books on World War II
Antony Beevor, Military Historian and Veteran
“It’s the first novel to come out of the 1940s and 50s that attempts a comparative indictment of Hitlerism and Stalinism, the two varieties of totalitarianism that Grossman knew too well.” Read more...
The Best Vasily Grossman Books
Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar
“Most military historians and most students of war will say there’s never been a book as important as Clausewitz’s On War.” Read more...
The Best Military History Books
Hew Strachan, Military Historian and Veteran
“The key message is that strategic principles that we, as practitioners, might use in war depend on what the nature of war is. Which is where we get to a shifty terrain because there are any number of ideas about what the nature of war is.” Read more...
The best books on Military Strategy
Antulio Echevarria II, Military Historian and Veteran
“Part of the Iliad’s brilliance is that it only takes four or five days of the action but you feel like it captures the 10 years’ war as a whole.” Read more...
The best books on Ancient Greece
Christopher Pelling, Classicist
“A lot of people who had public school educations, classical educations, might have gone into the First World War thinking that they were fighting Homer’s war.” Read more...
Kate McLoughlin, Literary Scholar
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
To Kill an Mockingbird was Harper Lee’s only published novel and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. This celebrated novel depicts the issues of racism that she observed as a child in her hometown in Alabama.
To Kill an Mockingbird was first published in November 1960. Subsequently an early 1957 version was published in 2015 under the title Go Set A Watchman.
“It’s dated in many ways; it’s extremely sentimental. But it’s beautifully done – you can’t take a thing away from it.” Read more...
Scott Turow, Thriller and Crime Writer
“The case is about racism, but it’s also about white sexual fear of the black man, and the failed effort of white America to stop intermixing. I think the notion of the scary black man still permeates the American justice system today. I don’t think To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever, but it is a very good window into the ingrained sexual fear that permeated at least the southern American justice system.” Read more...
The best books on Sex and Society
Eric Berkowitz, Journalist
Here Comes Everybody
by Clay Shirky
Here Comes Everybody, How Change Happens When People Come Together by Clay Shirky is an enlightening exploration of how technology can empower social and political organizers. Shirky is simply the best person at articulating what’s very weird and new about what’s going on. Read what Five Books experts have to say about this highly recommended book.
“If you had to pick one individual who was the sharpest and most prescient commentator on the web and the internet it would be Clay.” Read more...
Tyler Cowen, Economist
“The smartest thing that I have read, of book length, about social media and what it means and will mean.” Read more...
The best books on The Changing Business of Journalism
Richard Tofel, Journalist
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice is a book that speaks to everyone across the centuries, with engaging characters and a well-planned plot around the fairy tale classic of a poor girl growing up and (eventually) marrying her Prince Charming.
But the book is more than just the template for every romance novel and Mills & Boon written since. Philosophers and literary scholars are just some of the experts we’ve interviewed who have chosen Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as essential reading on their topic.
Pride and Prejudice is a perennial favourite book that means it’s still well read today. Along with many other people, it is Austen scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks’s favourite Austen book. In her interview with us she spoke about the best Austen novels and what they mean to her. She has also produced Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition which includes over 2,000 annotations to text giving in-depth analysis.
Our commentary section below highlights some of the reviews of this book when it was first published in 1813. The popularity and strength of the storyline means there have been several theatre and screen adaptions of the book.
Many Five Books experts have chosen Pride and Prejudice as one of the best books in their field of expertise. You can read the reasons why they chose it below:
“I think it’s always been my favourite, as it’s many people’s favourite among Austen’s novels. But I was always vaguely embarrassed by that as a scholar, because I didn’t think it was the best.” Read more...
Patricia Meyer Spacks, Literary Scholar
“The book is about the pleasure of being wrong. We forget that wrongness can be deeply pleasurable, but thankfully we have literature and art to remind us.” Read more...
Kathryn Schulz, Journalist
Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl was a concentration camp survivor and a psychotherapist and psychologist. Just after the war he wrote a book which has been translated as Man’s Search for Meaning. (The original title translates as Saying Yes to Life Anyway: A Psychologist Survives the Concentration Camp.)
“Frankl says, let me tell you and show you how I and my friends lived in the concentration camps. And if I can do it there, and suffer at that level, so you can you.” Read more...
“Walk into any bookstore and somewhere there’s a shelf that’s labelled self-help. In my view, you can just ignore the whole shelf and read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.” Read more...
The best books on Navigating the Future: a reading list for young adults
Chris Kutarna, Political Scientist
“Possibly more so than any other leader today, she lives strong values in her every decision. There is no more powerful leadership story.” Read more...
Brett Wigdortz, Nonprofit Leaders & Activist
“For more than two decades, every conversation in Burma or about Burma has ended up being about Aung San Suu Kyi.” Read more...
The best books on Human Rights
Steve Crawshaw, Journalist
“I still have an image of Odysseus in my head from when I was a child – he’s very Anglo-Saxon and stubbly, a bit like Michael Fassbender” Read more...
Max Porter on the Books That Shaped Him
Max Porter, Novelist
“These stories enable us to rehearse bad situations without actually having to be in danger.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books for Children
Peter Worley, Philosopher
“If you want to get a perspective on how the politics of power and ruthlessness work, or simply see some of the thinking behind Game of Thrones, this short, slightly fragmentary book, written in the 16th century, is still the best around.” Read more...
Summer Reading 2019: Philosophy Books to Take On Holiday
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
“It was a book about how to deal with the crisis of Italy after the French invasions. Machiavelli’s response, in The Prince, was that the only way Italy was going to maintain its independence, and freedom, and drive out the barbarians—which is a term he always used for northern Europeans—was to beat them at their own game, to be more violent, more vicious, more brutal, and more faithless” Read more...
Kenneth Bartlett, Historian
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
The novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, was first published under the pen name Ellis Bell in 1847, just a year before Emily’s death in 1848. Below, in our interviews with literary critics and journalists, you’ll see why many people still view it as one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Also worth looking at are the contemporary reviews, some of which were found in Emily’s desk after her death. These are available on the web (see links below), but are also included in the Norton Critical Edition of Wuthering Heights.
“Wuthering Heights is a strange novel in a lot of ways. It’s a standalone—there’s not really another book like it.” Read more...
“In Wuthering Heights once again it’s the landscape that underlines the choices the characters must make. Cathy must choose between the grand house in the lush valley: protected, comfortable and tame; or the wild, exhilarating bleakness of Wuthering Heights.” Read more...
Rachel Hickman recommends the best Novels Set in Wild Places
“What this book does quite brilliantly is show that there was actually a high degree of intentionality in creating the crisis.” Read more...
Francis Fukuyama recommends the best books on the The Financial Crisis
Francis Fukuyama, Political Scientist
“If I had any criticism of the book, it’s that he makes it seem too obvious. It becomes mysterious how anyone could have been confused.” Read more...
The best books on Unexpected Economics
Tim Harford, Economist
Moneyball
by Michael Lewis
This is about a guy using econometrics to predict which baseball players will do better in advancing wins, a remarkable use of economic thinking.
“I like this book because statistics is a very dry subject, but Lewis makes the numbers come to life by integrating them into Beane’s life story.” Read more...
Timothy J. Jorgensen, Biologist
“What the book is really about is a guy who is using some econometrics to predict which players will do better in advancing wins, which is a remarkable use of economic thinking.” Read more...
Books that Show Economics is Fun
Daniel Hamermesh, Economist
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
Dracula by Bram Stoker is the classic 1897 Gothic horror story. The most famous vampire story, Dracula has underlying themes of race, religion, superstition, science, and sexuality. Find out why Dracula is one of Five Books’ most recommended books. Also worth looking at are Bram Stokers Notes for Dracula which contains Stoker’s research notes.
“Dracula is very explicit. That’s what’s so surprising about it.” Read more...
“Personally, I like to read Dracula as one of the great novels of London. Stoker himself was an Irish immigrant to London. The Count is a central European immigrant to London. He initially moves to Carfax Abbey, in the suburbs, before gentrifying himself and moving to Piccadilly. In some ways, the Count is a symbolic representative of the many central and eastern European Jews who immigrated to London at this time.” Read more...
Darryl Jones recommends the best Horror Stories
Darryl Jones, Literary Scholar
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a charming, prize-winning novel by Mark Haddon. Written as a mystery, the story is told through the eyes of a teenage boy who is great at maths but finds many other aspects of life difficult. The narrator’s naïveté makes the audiobook particularly perfect, because especially when you’re listening to a book, long, convoluted sentences are annoying. It’s perfect for family trips as the book appeals to adults and kids alike.
“In fiction the writer has some licence to deviate from what is real – it’s a work of art, ultimately, for people’s interest and enjoyment, but I think that the character is very recognisable of many people with Asperger syndrome. I think the author has done a very good job.” Read more...
The best books on Autism and Asperger Syndrome
Simon Baron-Cohen, Psychologist
“It looks at the world through someone else’s eyes and sees how things that we take for granted might be a terrifying experience for other people.” Read more...
Simon Baron-Cohen, Psychologist
“It’s a masterpiece of sociological and political analysis. Tocqueville’s work still helps us understand America, 170 years after he wrote it.” Read more...
Stephen Breyer on his Intellectual Influences
Stephen Breyer, Lawyer
“Tocqueville was seized by the sharp contrast between Paris and America, where people did not wait for the central government, but went ahead on their own, and I think that’s vital part of what it is to be both an American and a vital part of what is America.” Read more...
The best books on Compassionate Conservatism
Karl Rove, Political Commentator
“This is the greatest philosophical book of all time. This is Kant’s masterpiece.” Read more...
The best books on Immanuel Kant
Adrian Moore, Philosopher
“I find reading Kant a bit like understanding cricket as a foreigner: hard to get at first, but once you get it, it’s very enjoyable.” Read more...
The best books on The Philosophy of Information
Luciano Floridi, Philosopher
“Nick Hornby doesn’t revel in, ‘Oh I’m such a football geek, isn’t that funny?’ He treats it as something suspect.” Read more...
Best Football Books (in English)
Simon Kuper, Journalist
“Sporting fandom is very interesting philosophically: it’s a case of partiality, partisanship, valuing something when you can see that what you value isn’t going to be valued by other people.” Read more...
The best books on Philosophy and Sport
David Papineau, Philosopher
“This book taught me something I knew on a much deeper level but did not have the language or the reasoning to state: that innocence is something very durable and interior, and also evanescent.” Read more...
Rachel Kushner on Books That Influenced Her
Rachel Kushner, Novelist
“A host of deep philosophical questions are at work in the book: about, say, the existence of God, the nature of morality without God, and the role of free will.” Read more...
The best books on Moral Character
Christian B Miller, Philosopher
“This book is about an old-fashioned Second World War hero and it was popular at the time but somehow it still resonates because it’s a damn good story.” Read more...
Jeffrey Archer, Novelist
“Hitchcock said of The Thirty-Nine Steps that it was a wonderful book to film because you didn’t need to do a storyboard, it was all there already.” Read more...
Michael Farr, Literary Scholar
If This Is a Man
by Primo Levi
Horror follows horror. It’s hard to believe that the human frame can survive under such circumstances, let alone survive to write something like this.
“It’s hard to believe that the human frame can survive under such circumstances, let alone survive to write something like this.” Read more...
Kate McLoughlin, Literary Scholar
“Levi regains reason, by treating his experience in Auschwitz as something that is subject to rational analysis.” Read more...
Aleksandar Hemon on Man’s Inhumanity to Man
Aleksandar Hemon, Novelist
“What’s wonderful about the Arabian Nights is that the tales are really rather stripped down and there’s not a lot of deep psychology. You’re not reading Middlemarch. There’s not all that much in the way of description. The palaces would be conventionally described, the beautiful woman would have eyebrows like this and lips like that, all conventional similes – they rush through it. What you’re getting is a pure story; the Nights is kind of like an engine of stories. It’s wonderful to see how stories work in a very nuts-and-bolts way as you work through them: how tension is managed and how characters are introduced and so on” Read more...
“The Arabian Nights was a collection of popular, vernacular tales that was actually rather despised by scholars – the Arabic apparently is quite rough, compared to the elegance of the Farsi used in the much better known, more established and highly valued Persian romances of the time. The Nights tales were considered trifles and not looked after – the same has happened with a lot of early children’s literature. We don’t have a lot of it because no one saw fit to preserve it.” Read more...
Marina Warner, Novelist
Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell
He doesn’t lose faith in the righteousness of those fighting to preserve Republican Spain, but he becomes deeply disillusioned. He was willing to acknowledge and expose things. The Left regarded it as a betrayal, and many of them just attacked this book.
“The reason why I am so fond of Homage to Catalonia, and see it as an even more relevant precursor to dissent, is that in it you can see a man of the Left learning to make the distinction that breaks down the Left with a big L into lots of little lefts. He comes to understand what Soviet power actually is, and that it is qualitatively different to the other sorts of Spanish left, or to European left-wing intellectuals or Labour in England.” Read more...
Timothy Snyder, Historian
“This is just a wonderful book. Like all of Orwell’s work it’s incredibly well written. It’s a very powerful piece of prose. Usually this book is seen as a picturesque account of an ultimately failed attempt to fight fascism, but what made a big impression on me was the fact that people like Orwell and 30,000 other foreign volunteers went to fight fascism in Spain at all. It’s in such contrast to the way we think politics works now.” Read more...
The best books on The Leaderless Revolution
Carne Ross, Political Commentator
The Nicomachean Ethics
by Aristotle
It is a sophisticated and subtle analysis of the various virtues: courage, temperance, and wisdom among many others. It’s incredibly subtle and precise, especially when you compare it with the way a lot of moral words are used today.
“According to Aristotle, it is hard to become virtuous, and hard to become vicious too. The character of most people is somewhere in the middle.” Read more...
The best books on Moral Character
Christian B Miller, Philosopher
“It is a sophisticated and subtle analysis of the various virtues: courage, temperance, and wisdom among many others.” Read more...
Edward Skidelsky, Philosopher
“I defy anyone to read those opening pages…and not have it slightly get under their skin and haunt them.” Read more...
Nick Clegg on his Favourite Books
Nick Clegg, Politician
“The Master and Margarita is brilliant for the complexity of the relationship between good and evil in it.” Read more...
The best books on Surrealism and the Brain
Bradley Voytek, Medical Scientist
The Catcher in the Rye
by J D Salinger
This made me want to live in New York and go to the bars where Holden went. For all its satire, it’s a very romantic portrait of the city
“With Holden I discovered that there were other people that felt the way I did” Read more...
The best books on Teenage Mental Health
Rae Earl, Memoirist
“He sees everybody as phony because they take life too seriously.” Read more...
The best books on Boyhood and Growing Up
Chigozie Obioma, Literary Scholar
“Oxiana is a coinage of his, and it doesn’t geographically specifically exist. It was a way of saying Persia (as it was to him) and Afghanistan. Byron’s journey starts in Venice and ends in what is now Pakistan. He went there in 1933-34, not long before he died in World War II, drowned when his ship was torpedoed. Although the book is terrifically chauvinistic – he’s appalling when he writes about the local people, almost always without sympathy and sometimes with extreme colonial arrogance – it’s full of wonderful descriptions.” Read more...
Colin Thubron, Travel Writer
“Byron was Chatwin’s first conscious model. The book is a candid account of a journey made in 1933 in search of Seljuk tombs.” Read more...
Nicholas Shakespeare on Bruce Chatwin
Nicholas Shakespeare, Biographer
The Bible
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
“It leaves you to think and read for yourself.” Religious studies professor Timothy Beal recommends the New Oxford Annotated Bible as a good version to read if you’re studying the Bible.
“Chapters 7 to 12 of the Book of Daniel constitute, in my opinion, the first genuinely global history ever written.” Read more...
“I teach biblical studies at a secular university and I use this version a lot. It’s the standard critical edition for academic study, but many people use it for personal reasons. It uses the New Revised Standard Version translation, which I think is among the best.” Read more...
Timothy Beal, Theologians & Historians of Religion
