The Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction was created in 1998 by the Modern Library. The list is what it considers to be the 100 best non-fiction books published since 1900.
The list includes memoirs, textbooks, polemics, and collections of essays. A separate list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century was created the same year.[1]
The following table shows the top ten books from the editors' list:[2]
| # | Year | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1918 | The Education of Henry Adams | Henry Brooks Adams |
| 2 | 1902 | The Varieties of Religious Experience | William James |
| 3 | 1901 | Up From Slavery | Booker T. Washington |
| 4 | 1929 | A Room of One's Own | Virginia Woolf |
| 5 | 1962 | Silent Spring | Rachel Carson |
| 6 | 1932 | Selected Essays, 1917–1932 | T.S. Eliot |
| 7 | 1968 | The Double Helix | James D. Watson |
| 8 | 1951 | Speak, Memory | Vladimir Nabokov |
| 9 | 1919 | The American Language | H.L. Mencken |
| 10 | 1936 | The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money | John Maynard Keynes |