The 25 best books of the 1970s
The 25 highest-ranked books first published in the 1970s in our ranking of 2,816, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 131 books of the 1970s in all. How we rank
- 1
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York91.2Must-Read ScoreThe Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert Moses never won an election, yet for forty years he was the most powerful man in New York.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1975)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 2
Roots89.5Must-Read ScoreRoots
In 1767, Kunta Kinte, a young man in the Gambia, is captured while searching for wood to make a drum, survives the Middle Passage and is sold into slavery in Virginia, where he never stops trying to keep his name and his memory of Africa alive.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Special Citation) winner (1977)#1 New York Times bestseller (22 weeks at #1) - 3
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid88.9Must-Read ScoreGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
What does a mathematician's proof, a printmaker's impossible staircases and a composer's endlessly rising canons have in common?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1980)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1980)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 4
The Stand86.5Must-Read ScoreThe Stand
A weaponized superflu escapes from a military lab and wipes out most of humanity in weeks.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1990 (Publishers Weekly)PBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big Read - 5
The Right Stuff86.2Must-Read ScoreThe Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe's account of the test pilots who pushed jets past the sound barrier in the Mojave Desert, led by the legendary Chuck Yeager, and of the Mercury Seven astronauts chosen for America's first space program in the race against the Soviets.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1980)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 6
The Stories of John Cheever86.2Must-Read ScoreThe Stories of John Cheever
Sixty-one stories from the writer known as the Chekhov of the suburbs, published over three decades in The New Yorker.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1979)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1981)NBCC Award (Fiction) winner (1978) - 7
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West86.1Must-Read ScoreBury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
Dee Brown tells the history of the American West from 1860 to 1890 from the side of the Native Americans who lived there.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (24 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 8
The Dispossessed85.9Must-Read ScoreThe Dispossessed
Shevek is a brilliant physicist from Anarres, a barren moon settled two centuries earlier by revolutionaries who built a society with no government, no property and no money.
Why it made the listHugo Award winner (1975)Nebula Award winner (1974) - 9
Sophie's Choice85.6Must-Read ScoreSophie's Choice
Brooklyn, 1947.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1980)#1 New York Times bestseller (6 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1979 (Publishers Weekly)Modern Library 100 Best Novels - 10
Angle of Repose85.3Must-Read ScoreAngle of Repose
Lyman Ward, a retired historian confined to a wheelchair and estranged from his family, sets out to write about his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, a talented artist from the East who married a mining engineer in the 1870s and followed him to the raw mining camps of California, Colorado, Mexico and Idaho.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1972)Modern Library 100 Best Novels - 11
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt85.0Must-Read ScoreThe Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
The first volume of Edmund Morris's three-part life of Theodore Roosevelt follows him from a sickly, asthmatic boy in 1850s New York to the man who became the youngest president in American history at forty-two.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1980)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 12
The Day of the Jackal85.0Must-Read ScoreThe Day of the Jackal
France, 1963.
Why it made the listEdgar Award winner (1972)#1 New York Times bestseller (7 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1971 and 1972 (Publishers Weekly)BBC's The Big Read - 13
The Winds of War84.8Must-Read ScoreThe Winds of War
Victor "Pug" Henry is a U.S.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (21 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1971 and 1972 (Publishers Weekly)National Book Award (Fiction) finalist (1981, for War and Remembrance) - 14
The Killer Angels83.9Must-Read ScoreThe Killer Angels
The four days of the Battle of Gettysburg, from June 30 to July 3, 1863, told through the men who fought it: Robert E.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1975) - 15
Song of Solomon83.7Must-Read ScoreSong of Solomon
Milkman Dead is born the day after a neighborhood eccentric leaps from a rooftop trying to fly, and for the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Fiction) winner (1977)Guardian 100 Best Novels in English - 16
Shōgun83.5Must-Read ScoreShōgun
In 1600, John Blackthorne, an English pilot, is shipwrecked in Japan, a country almost no Englishman has seen, where the Portuguese and their Jesuit priests hold a trade monopoly.
Why it made the listOne of the ten best-selling books of 1975 (Publishers Weekly)BBC's The Big Read - 17
Working83.5Must-Read ScoreWorking
Studs Terkel interviewed more than a hundred Americans about their jobs: a steelworker, a waitress, a gravedigger, a stonemason, a hooker, a corporate executive, a farmer, a baseball player and many more.
Why it made the listModern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 18
The Shining83.2Must-Read ScoreThe Shining
Jack Torrance takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, high in the Colorado Rockies, hoping for a fresh start with his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, and time to write.
- 19
The Thorn Birds83.2Must-Read ScoreThe Thorn Birds
In 1915 the Cleary family moves from New Zealand to Drogheda, a vast sheep station in the Australian outback owned by Paddy Cleary's wealthy sister.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 33 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (16 weeks at #1)BBC's The Big Read - 20
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor83.2Must-Read ScoreThe Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
This collection gathers all thirty-one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, set mostly in the rural Georgia of the 1940s and '50s.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1972) - 21
Orientalism82.8Must-Read ScoreOrientalism
Edward Said argues that Western scholarship, art and literature about "the East" — the peoples of Asia, North Africa and the Middle East — built a patronizing, distorted image of them, and that this knowledge was bound up with the empires that produced it.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 22
Dispatches82.6Must-Read ScoreDispatches
Michael Herr went to Vietnam in 1967 as a correspondent for Esquire and stayed through the siege of Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive and the battle for Hue.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 23
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy82.6Must-Read ScoreThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
One Thursday, Arthur Dent wakes up to find his house about to be demolished for a highway bypass.
Why it made the listPBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big Read - 24
All Things Wise and Wonderful81.9Must-Read ScoreAll Things Wise and Wonderful
James Herriot, a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales, has left his practice in Darrowby to train with the Royal Air Force during World War II.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (24 weeks at #1) - 25
The Selfish Gene81.8Must-Read ScoreThe Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution is best understood from the gene's point of view.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
