Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction
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 Education of Henry Adams by Henry Brooks Adams topped the list, followed by The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. The list included everything from memoirs (such as those listed above) to text books (such as The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by Keynes or The Elements of Style by Strunk and White) to polemics (like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson or Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King), to collections of essays (such as those of T. S. Eliot or James Baldwin).
A Reader's List 100 Best Nonfiction was released separately by the Modern Library in 1999. With close to 200,000 votes in total,[1] The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand was selected as the best non-fiction book.
A separate list of and the 100 best novels of the 20th century was created the same year. A list of reader choices was published separately by Modern Library in 1999.