100 Books for Men

I know the Essential Man’s Library from The Art of Manliness has been around for a while, and you may have already read it. But first of all, I just stumbled on this site and it looks so fun! Second of all, I like the way they put this list together—the book covers are great for bibliophiles who love books and see book covers as mini works of art. Like any list of this kind, I don’t fully agree with all of it (no Kavelier and Clay? And do we need ALL that Teddy Roosevelt?) and there are plenty of selections that make me go “Huh?” but book lists always get me thinking (and wishing I was better read). I’ve included the whole list, bolding the books I’ve read (only 28). Still, take a look at the complete list. The artwork and the descriptions are worth it.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
3. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
4. 1984 by George Orwell
5. The Republic by Plato
6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
8. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
9. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
10. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
11. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
12. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
13. How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
14. Call of the Wild by Jack London
15. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
16. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
17. Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
18. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
19. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
20. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
21. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
22. The Master and Margarita by by Mikhail Bulgakov
23. Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
24. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
25. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
26. Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
27. White Noise by Don Delillo
28. Ulysses by James Joyce
29. The Young Man’s Guide by William Alcott
30. Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
31. Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson
32. Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
33. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
34. The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry by Christine De Pizan
35. The Art of Warfare by Sun Tzu
36. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
37. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
38. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (well, 2/3rds anyway—haven’t done Paradiso)
39. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
40. The Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt
41. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
42. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
43. The Thin Red Line by James Jones
44. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
45. The Politics by Aristotle
46. First Edition of the The Boy Scout Handbook
47. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
48. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
49. The Crisis by Winston Churchill
50. The Naked and The Dead by Norman Mailer
51. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
52. Animal Farm by George Orwell
53. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
54. Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche
55. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
56. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
57. Essential Manners for Men by Peter Post
58. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
59. Hamlet by Shakespeare
60. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
61. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
62. A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
63. The Stranger by Albert Camus
64. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe
65. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
66. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
67. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
68. Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
69. Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco
70. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
71. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
72. Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
73. Paradise Lost by John Milton
74. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
75. American Boys’ Handy Book
76. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
77. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
78. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
79. A River Runs Through It by Norman F. Maclean
80. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
81. Malcolm X: The Autobiography
82. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
83. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
84. All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarq
85. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
86. Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch
87. The Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt
88. The Bible
89. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
90. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
91. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
92. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
93. The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden
94. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
95. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
96. The Histories by Herodotus
97. From Here to Eternity by James Jones
98. The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner
99. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
100. Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
And yes, this could have gone on the bookshelf, but since that has a low readership, I decided to post here.