100 Books That Changed the World

Author: Deng Shusheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The purpose of the "World 100 Series" is to make an effort to help readers understand the outside world. It outlines a rough picture of the development of human history through five aspects: major world events, wars, figures, works, and cultures. The development of human history is a long and complex process of negating oneself, overcoming oneself, and gradually improving oneself. How many figures have played positive or negative roles on the stage of world history? How many major events, both accidental and inevitable, have occurred in the long river of history? How many wars, which promote or hinder historical development, can be recorded in history books? How many chapters of books that survived disasters can be counted? How can the colorful and diverse ancient and modern civilizations of humanity be contained within a few artificially divided forms? With 100 as a fixed number, the series inevitably leaves much to be desired. It is like picking a handful of rice from the vast ocean, and it is also limited by the length of the pages. The five books included in the series—The 100 People Who Influenced the World, The 100 Events That Influenced the World, The 100 Wars That Influenced the World, The 100 Books That Influenced the World, and The 100 Cultures That Influenced the World—can only select 100 topics related to foreign influences on the world, with each article being around 3,000 words, and each book containing over 300,000 words. Together, the five books total 1.5 to 1.6 million words, though not a monumental work, it is still quite substantial. In The 100 Books That Influenced the World, 26 literary figures are reviewed, but to avoid excessive repetition, only key introductions are provided for some artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci. Books are one of the main indicators of the level of civilization. In the 1990s, audio-visual products broke the monopoly of books as the sole cultural carriers, but in the foreseeable future, for most people, books remain irreplaceable. Holding a book is more meaningful than typing on a keyboard and searching on a screen, as the Tang Dynasty poet once said: "When one acquires a sword, it is like adding a strong servant; when one loses a book, it is like losing a good friend." The sea of books is vast, and The 100 Books That Influenced the World is willing to serve as a small boat in this sea. To include as many authors as possible in this book, in addition to Marx and Engels, the principle is one book per author. Many masters and scholars have left behind numerous works, but only one is selected. The only exception is Aristotle from ancient Greece, who is featured with two books: Politics and Metaphysics. The former is a seminal work in political science, while the latter is a foundational classic in Western philosophy. Among the 24 books on political science, it also includes Plato's Republic, a utopian scheme in the history of human thought, the valuable ancient Indian legal document Manusmriti, and the representative works of figures such as Bacon, Locke, and Montesquieu. It also includes the classic works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, Mahan's theory of sea power, and Du theory of air power. Even Hitler's Mein Kampf, as a book with a profoundly negative influence, is included as an anti-book. The 11 books on history include classical works such as Herodotus' History, Xenophon's Anabasis, Tacitus' Annals, and Appian's Roman History. It also includes The Travels of Marco Polo, which is called "one of the greatest wonders of the world," Ranke's History of the Popes, and Toynbee's monumental A Study of History. The 15 books on philosophy, in addition to Aristotle's Metaphysics, include Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, Diderot's Encyclopédie, Kant's Introduction to the Future of Metaphysics, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and the representative works of Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Jung, Weber, Russell, and Heidegger. Engels' Anti-Dühring is included as a representative of Marxist philosophy, making it a unique classic in the philosophy category. The 7 books on economics, in addition to Marx's Capital, include the works of Adam Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Malthus, Keynes, and the contemporary American economist Samuelson. The 26 books on literature begin with Homer's The Iliad, which has enduring charm, and include One Thousand and One Nights, Aesop's Fables, The Divine Comedy, The Decameron, Don Quixote, Hamlet, The Hypocrite, Robinson Crusoe, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, among others. The 14 books on science and reference include Euclid's Elements, Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Galileo's Two New Sciences, Harvey's On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Morgan's Ancient Society, Newton's Principia Mathematica, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The religious classics The Bible and The Quran are also included in the 100 books. The Encyclop?dia Britannica is recommended to readers as a high-quality reference book with global influence.