Must-read: 50 books that changed the World: Most influential books of all time

“Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask, there is an idea, Mr. Creedy. And ideas are bulletproof.” says V from the movie V for Vendetta (2005). And the best ways to spread those ideas in long term are books. 

That's how all those ideas, knowledge, stories, and more reach us from centuries ago. If there were no books we would not know about Plato and other Greek philosophers. And while books carry ideas through time they also change the World. Shape our history. We see many books that changed the World in one way or another. 

So what are the books that changed the world and influenced world history? In this blog post article, I am sharing with you 50 books that changed the world. I made detailed research and came out with almost 200 most influential books of all time. Here is the TOP 50 from the list.

More: The most banned books list

The 50 books that changed the World: Most influential books of all time

The list includes both nonfiction and fiction books. We can say that the most influential books in the World are religious books. But there are literature books that change society and the way people see things. So it does not matter if a book is a nonfiction or a novel. In the list, you will see some children's books or fantasy fiction like Harry Potter by Rowling or Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. The first one made children read again. Second one helped shape the high fantasy genre that gave a new form to mythology.

All books in this list have one way or another changed the World, and society and had an important role in history. So here are 50 books that changed the World.  

More: 30 best fantasy books, novels, and book series of all time

The 50 most influential books of all time: Books that changed the World

1. The Bible

2. The Qur'an - Exploring the Quran: A Journey of Divine Messages and Clear Proofs (Book Review)

3. 1984 by George Orwell

4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

5. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

6. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

7. The Analects by Confucius

8. The Republic by Plato

9. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

10. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

11. The Complete Works or First Folio by William Shakespeare

12. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

13. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton

14. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

15. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

16. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

17. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

18. Beloved by Toni Morrison

19. The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.

20. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

21. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

22-23. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer

24. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

25. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

26. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

27. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

28. A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson

29. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

30. Common Sense by Thomas Paine

31. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

32. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

33. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

34. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

35. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

36. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

37. The Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights

38. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

39. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

40. The Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft.

41. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

42. The Torah

43. I Ching: The Book of Changes

44. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

45. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein

46. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

47. Aesop’s Fables

48. Essays by Michel de Montaigne

49. Das Kapital by Karl Marx

50. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

50+1 (Editors' Choice). V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd