Books that might change the world

I am in grad school getting my Masters in Social Work and this year they have us reading The Democracy Owners' Manual: a practical guide for changing the world and it has got me thinking about books that might just change the world.

What books have this incredible power?

Uncle Tom's Cabin did, or so they say.

No matter what you believe or don't believe, the Bible and the Quran seem to have made impacts!

Try reading In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day by Mark Batterson.

The Rights of Man?

The Communist Manifesto.

It might not have changed the world, but On the Beach a novel by Neville Shute published in the mid 1950's, made a lot of people question the use of atomic energy. The movie made from the book reached an even wider audience & led to efforts to ban the bomb & also to the nuclear test ban treaty

Some books have changed the world -- think Sir Isaac Newton's Principia and Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, for example. Others change the views of some people living in the world -- think The Autobiography of Malcolm X or -haha- The Warren Commission Report.

I think the message contained in the Fortune at the Bottom of the pyramid might change the world.

I might recommend perusing R. Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path, or Fuller's work in general. A book with much to say about humanity's predicament, and what our options as a species are.

Some might say he was ahead of his time, but sadly I think that most people are simply behind theirs.

The Jungle had a lot of power in its day...made more amazing by the fact that it was a work of fiction. This book gripped the public when it was published in 1905. A year later the Food and Drug Act was approved by congress. The Act created one of the first government regulatory agencies, now known as FDA.

I read this book after reading Fast Food Nation. Both were eye opening reads.

I remember that reading The Republic by Plato when I was 15 made me think about life, society and almost about everything.

It was not difficult as I was afraid in the beginning. Instead it showed critical points of view about everything.

Even though I do not agree with some of his points of view I have to acknowledge that he made me think on my own.

It might one of the reasons why people have been reading this book generation after generation for about 2500 years.

The Critique of Pure Reason... because even the paperback copy I have is heavy enough to be used to bludgeon a statesman to death.

Okay, seriously: how about Lessig's Free Culture? If it eventually inspires even small changes to legal/social/political convention, those could have an impact on what other books are written and how they're disseminated.

It's hard to find a more easily observable changes in our cultural zeitgeist than the ones caused by Animal Liberation and Silent Spring.

The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs is a good book about how the world can be changed. Sachs is discussing extreme poverty -- income less than $2 per day -- and shows how people in developing nations at this level of income need help to improve their state. Certain kinds of targeted international aid could end extreme poverty, and while it wouldn't be cheap, it could be achieved by a fraction of today's military budgets. The number of extremely poor people worldwide has been steadily falling. Two factors Sach cites are the green revolution and the Chinese privatization of agriculture.

A Vindication on the Rights of Woman and The Second Sex in the feminist movement...

The Celestine Prophecy...ALL of them!
The Tenth Insight and The Secret of Shambahla.....by James Redfield

I heard there is a fourth book

And "The Secret"
I believe in Universal Laws and the Law of Attraction is one.

Adding to #18, I'd say A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle seems to be getting traction after the Oprah series. I've read several of his books, and they have definitely changed the way I try to live my life.

The Interpretations of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Thus spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, if it were more widely read, understood and dialogued would change the world. As John Galt states.

"The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."

The Bible and Koran certainly have created tension in the world. I wonder how many of the extreme adherents have truly read this works, or are simply being influenced by their preached about with an attitude potential.

The books listed thus far are great works, and are agents for change.

Lies my Teacher Told me and A People's History of the United States: 1492-PRESENT. I think dispelling the myth that the US was blessed by God in some way and is perfect would do a lot to improve life for everyone.

The Holy Bible, The Gulag Archipelago, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
Any introduction to Lit Theory (Eagleton's Literary Theory would work just fine.
The First Casualty by Philip Knightley

LOL I have a book about books that changed the world... listed is Mein Kampf

Such a grand topic worthy of thought and a curiosity of mine in a similar way! I must admit, I am uneasy in my suggestions. I am unsure if these books have the power to change the world, but they have the power to profoundly affect a certain type of person or a person with a certain type of problem, question or pursuit/curiosity.

In my middling teenage years, reading Ayn Rand "The Fountainhead" and then "Atlas Shrugged" had a profound effect on my thinking. "Atlas Shrugged" more so. I remember being thrown into a bout of contemplative rapture, if you will, where the books, their stories, their characters became the lens by which I saw others in relation to myself and vice versa.

My curiosity was intensified in a way, my pursuit of this elusive curiosity fevered, and I seriously began to believe that the sublime glimmerings and phantasms that rarely made their tantalizing appearance were somehow within my reach if I were to approach them a certain way. Ayn Rand seemed to crystallize these scenarios and bring real contours and form to abstract thinking.

I could no longer read other books like I once used to. I switched into more complicated written works including Carl Jung, Nietzsche, anything Mythology and Anthropology. Books like Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus followed along with endless gazing at artistic forms, the reading of biographies, understanding the art of dreams and the paradigm of philosophy and thinking.

My sister had a similar experience. She said she was a bit afraid of finishing "The Fountainhead", because it made her think a certain way and she wasn't sure if it was right for her. Perhaps it cannot change the world, but it certainly shook mine given the other catalyzing forces in my life. Makes me think of Bibliotherapy a bit, but don't think I want to dive into why it had such a transformative effect here on Library Thing.

Given you are into Social Work, I found Anthropological Ethnographies to be especially paradigmatic in my thinking. Anything by Geertz was a favorite amongst my professors. You might be interested in a book called The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene. Anything to do with charismatics could be helpful. Ok, I am done, I don't think this is quite what you are looking for, but take it as you will.

Good luck!

A couple more thoughts: My father has recently discovered the wonder of audiobooks during long trips in the car. He is adament about reading Ken Follet's "Three Pillars of the Earth" and "At World's End". Also he just finished listening to "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann and hasn't stopped talking about any of them. He says it has changed the way you will consider Mankind and history.

^ 27 Your dad is right Guns, Germs and Steel and Botany of Desire had a similar effect on me as 1491 had on your dad.

The three most influential books in my life:

The New Jerusalem Bible

Witness by Whittaker Chambers

The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Vol. I (Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Blatchford Controversies)

Some books that changed the way I look at the world and the way I look at myself:

White Noise by Don Delillo
Amazing Grace by Jonathon Kozol
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer

Of course every book we read changes us whether we know it or not... And these books may not mean anything to other people, but they changed me.

I'm going to have to nominate Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care.

All these dusty old tomes. How about Hot, Flat, and Crowded?

In it's own way Baby and Child Care may have been the most important book of the last hundred years. It certainly changed an entire generation (the Boomers) and beyond.

^33
I have thought that the idea of even writing B and C C was revolutionary since previously it was presumed that people instinctually knew how to raise kids.

One book that should change the world is 50 Facts that Should Change the World, but it probably won't.

I know we are all idealists here but what about books that change the world for the worse? - 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help? Starting with Malleus Maleficarum that started the witch hunts. See:http://listverse.com/literature/10-books-that-screwed-up-the-world/

Nietzche and Machiavelli aren't THAT good, are they???

LOL ^37 Maybe Machiavelli is BAD but not Nietzche since it was his sister that was closer to the Nazis and Nietzche in essence denounced them.

LOL ^37 Maybe Machiavelli is BAD but not Nietzche since it was his sister that was closer to the Nazis and Nietzche in essence denounced them.

Added Listverse.com to my Bookmarks. Thanks frdiamond - fascinating site.

James Joyce's Ulysses certainly shook things up. Finnegan's Wake, too. I think in terms of the novel, Joyce took language to whole different level in his efforts to emulate human consciousness. I think the works of Samuel Beckett took words as far as they could go. And Proust also did some remarkably different things with time, consciousness, and narrative.

Blue Ocean Strategy? Not just for business i think. Works in life as well.

To Kjelllika and frdiamond:

Machiavelli & Nietzsche:
I wonʻt try to comment on their influence; they both obviously had a lot --or perhaps I should say personal versions of them have had a lt of influence.

You might be interested in a remark the late Conor Cruise OʻBrien made about them:

Theyʻre the only authors to whom no one will do the courtesy of believing that they meant what they said. (didnʻt put that in quotes, because Iʻm quoting the gist of it, from memory.)

Of course, that "didnʻt mean what they said" is OʻBrienʻs reference to their would-be defenders and supporters, who are taking for granted that the popular idea of them -- as bad guys -- is upheld only by a superficial reading of their works. In other words that they only "seem" to be bad guys, because they "didnʻt mean what they said". (i.e. didnʻt mean it the way you, as one of the superficial readers, are interpreting it.

OʻBrien is saying that, on the contrary, they did mean exactly what they said.

to frdiamond:

It was chronologically impossible for Nietzsche to have "denounced" the Nazis, because he died about 1904, and I donʻt think there was a Nazi party that early.

He may have denounced some who had ideas, anti-Semitic "ideas", for example, which were going to be staples of Nazism later. But it was Bebel, a Marxist, not Nietzsche who said, "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools."

When I read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, I thought for sure it was going to change the world. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, and have my own theories about the US government and world government, but that book changed my views on it completely. It's not exactly great literature, but I thought it brought to light some very damning facts about what's going on in the world. Additionally, it all just seemed to make logical sense, rather than being some paranoid conspiracy theory. In fact, the main point of the book was that there's not an actual conspiracy, but something else altogether.

Then again, I also thought The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz would change the world, or at least America. The FairTax Act would be a huge step towards eliminating the Federal Reserve, which I am convinced is the cause of the vast majority of problems here in America, and the rest of the world by default.

Neither of these are what I would call "ground-breaking" works; I just thought they got a message across which was important to the progress of our society. Neither seemed to have made much of an impact on anything, though.

I had hoped The Devil's Apocrypha by John A. De Vito would change the world, but I had no great expectations for it...

Hi burningbooks:

My son and I have both read and admired Perkinsʻs "Economic Hitman". (Weʻre not related to the author.) We heard of it independently of each other.

I suppose the main reason it doesnʻt change the world (assuming a book CAN change the world when itʻs only one of several media, not the main medium) is that it just isnʻt very well known. Itʻs a book I read in a library copy, but that Iʻm thinking of acquiring.

To burningbooks:

The Fair Tax Book and the Devilʻs Apocrypha and their authors are new to me, b t w.

For the former, the title wouldnʻt attract me; for the latter - very much so, as Iʻm a Bible student, though I suppose the "Apocrypha" of the title is metaphorical.

I'm in the middle of the Self-Esteem Trap at the moment, and I think it could be hugely influential in reforming parenting gone seriously wrong since the early second half of the 20th Century.

Seven Spiritual laws of Success Deepak Chopra.
The Self Aware Universe Amit Goswami
Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life Wayne Dwyer
Harmonise with life Tycho Photiou
Man and his symbols Carl Jung
Infinite love is the only truth everything else is illusion
David Icke
Lucid Living Timothy Freke
The Jesus Mysteries Timothey Freke & Peter Gandy
Quantum Question Ken Wilber
Seven experiements to change the world Rupert Sheldrake
The Biology of Belief Bruce Lipton

You might want to look at Ruins of Empires by C.F. Volney

While serving as Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson seriously imperiled his political future by secretly joining with the noted anti- slavery poet and founder of ''the American Mercury", Joel Barlow to provide his friend Constantin-Francois Volney with an English translation of The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, a translation from the French Les Ruines ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires, published in 1796 by William A. Davis, in New York. This is an admittedly radical work even by today's Liberal standards. Maybe that is why it took the University of Virginia 185 years to remember that Jefferson had given it not one, but two copies of his personally selected translations of Volney's work.

One copy was presented to the Library of Congress just in time for it's 200th birthday. This translation of Volney's work is the same edition as the one Jefferson had sold to The Library of Congress in 1815, but which was sadly lost to flames in 1851.
Now everyone can ponder these stirring words:

"Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces, the parent of cities and the monument of the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature , those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down those dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of mountains was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. "

Count Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney - 1793- Thomas Jefferson, trans.

Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections division at the Library of Congress, has called Volney's work an “important source,..”, “that influenced Jefferson's thinking”. Just think, “Afro-Centric Scholars” (Not an oxymoron) have been teaching for decades that this particular translation of this work is an important primary source. Its taken almost 200 years, but thanks to the ongoing deification of Thomas Jefferson, more mainstream scholars may finally work up the nerve to examine Volney's message in the exact words that President Jefferson chanced so much to pass along.

Seconding the Self Aware Universe, and Biology of Belief. I haven't read Wilber's Quantum Questions yet, but I think his Integral Spirituality definitely deserves a spot on the list as well.

Check out Candice O'Denver's suggestions for a better life included in the book, "One Simple Change Makes Life Easy." Check some download-able samples of her talks on the website www.greatfreedom.com
As someone interested for many years in Buddhism and Hindu mysticism, I've found Candice's approach very simple and refreshingly 'American' (no Sanskrit or Tibetan terms): "Short moments of awareness, repeated many times" until they all chain together.

rabar, I think you mean greatfreedom.org.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust..........if we all could learn to forgive as Immaculee Ilibagiza has, the the world would definitely change.

". . .I am not a member of any of them. That should
give you a clue of their condition."

I dissent from that. I DON"T think individual memberships in any denomination prove anything about "their condition". Still less does NON-membership prove anything.

So, Mother Teresaʻs being a Catholic, Martin Luther Kingʻs being a Baptist, and the dalai Lamaʻs being a Buddhist does not convince me that the Catholic Church, the Baptist churches, or Buddhism* "has the whole Truth".

As for "NOT being a member", I, as a former Catholic, was only embarassed when Nobel Prize Laureate Heinrich Boll made a formal (and to me pretentious) resignation from the Catholilc Church, the religion of most of his lifetime. I had the same reaction to Anne Riceʻs recent formal abjuring of the Catholicism that she had only recently returned to. (Not that I put the 2 of them in a class with each other as writers.) But I guess Iʻve begun to talk aesthetics, more than religion.



*And Buddhism, too, is very divided into denominations, but it has a less violent history of
fighting with other denominations and other religions than Christianity and Islam have.

>57 rolandperkins: Seconded