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Начало - тут.
Душечки и кисочки - Тойнби и Элиот, Ханна Арендт и Честертон, Милтон Фридман и Хайек - под катом. Ах да, и Оруэл, "Памяти Каталонии". Вот за это - УБИТЬ. Или хотя бы руки оторвать.
The Fifty Best Books of the Century
THE VERY BEST ...
1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Pessimism and nostalgia at the bright dawn of the twentieth century must
have seemed bizarre to contemporaries. After a century of war, mass
murder, and fanaticism, we know that Adamss insight was keen indeed.
2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)
Preferable to Lewiss other remarkable books simply because of the title,
which reveals the true intent of liberalism.
3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
The haunting, lyrical testament to truth and humanity in a century of lies
(and worse). Chambers achieves immortality recounting his spiritual
journey from the dark side (Soviet Communism) to thein his eyes
doomed West. One of the great autobiographies of the millennium.
4. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)
Here, one of the centurys foremost literary innovators insists that innova-
tion is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition. Every
line of Eliots prose bristles with intelligence and extreme deliberation.
5. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1934-1961)
Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious
historians. Though ignored by academic careerists, Toynbee is still read by
those whose intellectual horizons extend beyond present fashions.
... AND THE REST OF THE BEST
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
A very big brain and not without flaws. Still, her account of the peculiarly modern
phenomenon of totalitarianism forced many liberals to consider the sins of
communism in the same category as those of facism, and that is no small achieve-
ment.
Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (1945)
Barzun fought a heroic struggle against the Germanization of the American
university.
Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1975)
The most psychologically astute biography of one of the most psychologically astute
writers who ever lived. In an age of debunking and trivializing biographies, Bates
beautifully written book stands out as a happy exception.
Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (1938)
Interpreting literature in the style of the New Criticism was the vehicle by which a
half-century of Americans gained access to the intellectual life. This textbook by two
of the brightest lights of the most important literary group in America this century
the Vanderbilt agrarianshas never been out of print.
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield
provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
The master of paradox demonstrates that nothing is more original and new
than Christian tradition.
Winston Churchill, The Second World War (1948-1953)
A work comprehensive in scope and intimate in detail by a master of English prose
whose talents as an historian have been vastly underrated. Indispensable for
understanding the twentieth century.
Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy (1946-53)
The most comprehensive, accurate, and readable history of philosophy, written by
a philosopher who believed that the purpose of philosophy is the search for Truth.
Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950)
An essential work of European history that shows how the rise of Christianity
altered civilization in the West. Credits the Roman Catholic Church with keeping
civilization alive after the fall of Rome and during the barbarian invasions.
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
Revisionist history as it was meant to be written: as a correction to centuries of
Whig historiography. Demonstrates that the brute force of the state can destroy
even the most beloved institutions. What do you know...Belloc was right.
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-74)
The American Iliad.
Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee (1934-35)
The tragic life of a great Southern traditionalist beautifully chronicled by a great
Southern traditionalist.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
They are connected, after alla great anti-communist book.
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (1972)
The finest analysis of slave life and culture, the complexities of the master-slave
relation, and the impact of slavery on American history that we are likely ever to
have.
Frederick von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
Thoughtful reflections on the conditions and limitations of liberty in the modern
world, written by a deeply cultured Austrian who found his home in the Anglo-
Saxon world. The Summa of classical political economy in our century.
Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955)
The first sociologist to take religion in America seriously.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Jacobs was the first to see that modernist architects and urban planners were
creating not simply ugly buildings but entire urban environments unsuited to
human communities.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times (1983)
Somehow the most personal, yet the most objective, history of our time.
James Keegan, The Face of Battle (1976)
A tour de force of military history that often explains strategy and tactics in terms
of culture.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (1953)
Did the impossible: showed a self-satisfied liberalism that conservatism in America
could be intellectually respectable. A book that named a major political movement.
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (1936)
The classic historical narrative of the coherent and complex worldview that lies at
the foundation of the West.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981)
Won a new hearing for virtue ethics after nearly two centuries of intellectual
domination by Kantian morals. We live today in the time After MacIntyre.
Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (1948-81)
A masterpiece of monumental historical biography. Malones prose, narrative, and
analysis are wonderfully eighteenth-century in their balance and restraint.
H. L. Mencken, Prejudices (1919-27)
This centurys greatest exhibition of satire in non-fiction, demonstrating extraor-
dinary aesthetic and literary taste. The author had street smarts too. Ah, the glory
that was Mencken.
Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948)
A Catholic convert and Trappist monk, Mertons natural gifts as a writer enabled
him to introduce tens of thousands of readers to the spiritual fulfillments of
contemplative lifea stunning achievement for an American.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941)
A biting critique of secular thought and a persuasive and inspiring exposition of
mans Christian destiny.
Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953)
Anticipated all the concerns of contemporary communitarians and did so with the
sophistication of the centurys premier sociological imagination.
Flannery OConnor, The Habit of Being (1978)
The beautiful letters of Americas most profound writer this century. The best
imaginable bedtime reading.
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1952)
The savagely incisive song of a great writers disillusionment with the bloody inhu-
manity of the Left.
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
True therapy for the therapeutic age. Percy shows that the best human life is being
at home with our homelessness, not to mention that modern science, properly
understood, need not have atheistic and materialist implications.
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986)
This magisterial, balanced account of the worlds most ambitious scientific project
serves as a vigorous retort to those who make much of American naivetéor who
would deny the American century.
Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)
A neglected classic. Rieff shows that the real danger to humanity in our time is not
socialism but therapy.
George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (1944)
Like everything else from the pen of George Santayana, Persons and Places is elegant,
witty, perspicacious, and profounda distinguished autobiography relating the
tangled transatlantic life of one of the centurys most original minds.
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)
A great economist presents a dark vision of politics in a book which is accurately
reasoned and brilliantly written.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953)
Strauss revealed the philosophical nerve of the Modern Project and retrieved the
political dimension of classical philosophy.
William Strunk & E.B. White, The Elements of Style (1959)
An extraordinary little book that explains with clarity the use and misuse of the
written word. In it the reader will not only learn the difference between such words
as while and although, and which and that, but also find demonstrated
beyond a doubt that language and civilization are inextricably intertwined.
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Trilling shows that literature is relevant to politics not because it affirms any
political doctrine but because it provides a corrective to any political ideology
whatsoever.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920)
Using as his primary sources beliefs that earlier had been felt rather than thought,
Turner made those most American characteristicsoptimism, grit, unflinching
determinationcentral to the study of American history. One of the few truly
original works of history this century.
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (1952)
Here, one of this centurys most learned political philosophers powerfully critiques
the modern quest for secular salvation.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)
A classic of Southern autobiography describing one mans heroic and successful
efforts to overcome the legacy of slavery.
James D. Watson, The Double Helix (1968)
An eminently readable book about the unraveling of DNA, one of the most
important scientific discoveries of the century. The book also offers an interesting
look at English society after the Second World War.
Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (1962)
A careful reader of American literature works to restore our past.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)
In a century littered with ill-considered arguments about the linguistic construc-
tion of reality, this landmark of the later Wittgenstein stands in a wholly different
category. At once ingenious, humane, and humble, it puts philosophy on the right
track after the sins of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
The dazzling story of the test pilots and Mercury astronauts is narrated by Wolfe as
a compelling affirmation of the American spirit and traditional values.
Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The spiritual journey of a sensitive and intelligent man who had to wrestle with his
own demons and contradictions while battling the condescension of paternalist
liberals and the enervating effects of the welfare state on his people.
Душечки и кисочки - Тойнби и Элиот, Ханна Арендт и Честертон, Милтон Фридман и Хайек - под катом. Ах да, и Оруэл, "Памяти Каталонии". Вот за это - УБИТЬ. Или хотя бы руки оторвать.
The Fifty Best Books of the Century
THE VERY BEST ...
1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Pessimism and nostalgia at the bright dawn of the twentieth century must
have seemed bizarre to contemporaries. After a century of war, mass
murder, and fanaticism, we know that Adamss insight was keen indeed.
2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)
Preferable to Lewiss other remarkable books simply because of the title,
which reveals the true intent of liberalism.
3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
The haunting, lyrical testament to truth and humanity in a century of lies
(and worse). Chambers achieves immortality recounting his spiritual
journey from the dark side (Soviet Communism) to thein his eyes
doomed West. One of the great autobiographies of the millennium.
4. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)
Here, one of the centurys foremost literary innovators insists that innova-
tion is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition. Every
line of Eliots prose bristles with intelligence and extreme deliberation.
5. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1934-1961)
Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious
historians. Though ignored by academic careerists, Toynbee is still read by
those whose intellectual horizons extend beyond present fashions.
... AND THE REST OF THE BEST
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
A very big brain and not without flaws. Still, her account of the peculiarly modern
phenomenon of totalitarianism forced many liberals to consider the sins of
communism in the same category as those of facism, and that is no small achieve-
ment.
Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (1945)
Barzun fought a heroic struggle against the Germanization of the American
university.
Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1975)
The most psychologically astute biography of one of the most psychologically astute
writers who ever lived. In an age of debunking and trivializing biographies, Bates
beautifully written book stands out as a happy exception.
Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (1938)
Interpreting literature in the style of the New Criticism was the vehicle by which a
half-century of Americans gained access to the intellectual life. This textbook by two
of the brightest lights of the most important literary group in America this century
the Vanderbilt agrarianshas never been out of print.
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield
provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
The master of paradox demonstrates that nothing is more original and new
than Christian tradition.
Winston Churchill, The Second World War (1948-1953)
A work comprehensive in scope and intimate in detail by a master of English prose
whose talents as an historian have been vastly underrated. Indispensable for
understanding the twentieth century.
Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy (1946-53)
The most comprehensive, accurate, and readable history of philosophy, written by
a philosopher who believed that the purpose of philosophy is the search for Truth.
Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950)
An essential work of European history that shows how the rise of Christianity
altered civilization in the West. Credits the Roman Catholic Church with keeping
civilization alive after the fall of Rome and during the barbarian invasions.
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
Revisionist history as it was meant to be written: as a correction to centuries of
Whig historiography. Demonstrates that the brute force of the state can destroy
even the most beloved institutions. What do you know...Belloc was right.
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-74)
The American Iliad.
Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee (1934-35)
The tragic life of a great Southern traditionalist beautifully chronicled by a great
Southern traditionalist.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
They are connected, after alla great anti-communist book.
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (1972)
The finest analysis of slave life and culture, the complexities of the master-slave
relation, and the impact of slavery on American history that we are likely ever to
have.
Frederick von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
Thoughtful reflections on the conditions and limitations of liberty in the modern
world, written by a deeply cultured Austrian who found his home in the Anglo-
Saxon world. The Summa of classical political economy in our century.
Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955)
The first sociologist to take religion in America seriously.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Jacobs was the first to see that modernist architects and urban planners were
creating not simply ugly buildings but entire urban environments unsuited to
human communities.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times (1983)
Somehow the most personal, yet the most objective, history of our time.
James Keegan, The Face of Battle (1976)
A tour de force of military history that often explains strategy and tactics in terms
of culture.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (1953)
Did the impossible: showed a self-satisfied liberalism that conservatism in America
could be intellectually respectable. A book that named a major political movement.
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (1936)
The classic historical narrative of the coherent and complex worldview that lies at
the foundation of the West.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981)
Won a new hearing for virtue ethics after nearly two centuries of intellectual
domination by Kantian morals. We live today in the time After MacIntyre.
Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (1948-81)
A masterpiece of monumental historical biography. Malones prose, narrative, and
analysis are wonderfully eighteenth-century in their balance and restraint.
H. L. Mencken, Prejudices (1919-27)
This centurys greatest exhibition of satire in non-fiction, demonstrating extraor-
dinary aesthetic and literary taste. The author had street smarts too. Ah, the glory
that was Mencken.
Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948)
A Catholic convert and Trappist monk, Mertons natural gifts as a writer enabled
him to introduce tens of thousands of readers to the spiritual fulfillments of
contemplative lifea stunning achievement for an American.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941)
A biting critique of secular thought and a persuasive and inspiring exposition of
mans Christian destiny.
Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953)
Anticipated all the concerns of contemporary communitarians and did so with the
sophistication of the centurys premier sociological imagination.
Flannery OConnor, The Habit of Being (1978)
The beautiful letters of Americas most profound writer this century. The best
imaginable bedtime reading.
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1952)
The savagely incisive song of a great writers disillusionment with the bloody inhu-
manity of the Left.
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
True therapy for the therapeutic age. Percy shows that the best human life is being
at home with our homelessness, not to mention that modern science, properly
understood, need not have atheistic and materialist implications.
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986)
This magisterial, balanced account of the worlds most ambitious scientific project
serves as a vigorous retort to those who make much of American naivetéor who
would deny the American century.
Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)
A neglected classic. Rieff shows that the real danger to humanity in our time is not
socialism but therapy.
George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (1944)
Like everything else from the pen of George Santayana, Persons and Places is elegant,
witty, perspicacious, and profounda distinguished autobiography relating the
tangled transatlantic life of one of the centurys most original minds.
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)
A great economist presents a dark vision of politics in a book which is accurately
reasoned and brilliantly written.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953)
Strauss revealed the philosophical nerve of the Modern Project and retrieved the
political dimension of classical philosophy.
William Strunk & E.B. White, The Elements of Style (1959)
An extraordinary little book that explains with clarity the use and misuse of the
written word. In it the reader will not only learn the difference between such words
as while and although, and which and that, but also find demonstrated
beyond a doubt that language and civilization are inextricably intertwined.
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Trilling shows that literature is relevant to politics not because it affirms any
political doctrine but because it provides a corrective to any political ideology
whatsoever.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920)
Using as his primary sources beliefs that earlier had been felt rather than thought,
Turner made those most American characteristicsoptimism, grit, unflinching
determinationcentral to the study of American history. One of the few truly
original works of history this century.
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (1952)
Here, one of this centurys most learned political philosophers powerfully critiques
the modern quest for secular salvation.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)
A classic of Southern autobiography describing one mans heroic and successful
efforts to overcome the legacy of slavery.
James D. Watson, The Double Helix (1968)
An eminently readable book about the unraveling of DNA, one of the most
important scientific discoveries of the century. The book also offers an interesting
look at English society after the Second World War.
Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (1962)
A careful reader of American literature works to restore our past.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)
In a century littered with ill-considered arguments about the linguistic construc-
tion of reality, this landmark of the later Wittgenstein stands in a wholly different
category. At once ingenious, humane, and humble, it puts philosophy on the right
track after the sins of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
The dazzling story of the test pilots and Mercury astronauts is narrated by Wolfe as
a compelling affirmation of the American spirit and traditional values.
Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The spiritual journey of a sensitive and intelligent man who had to wrestle with his
own demons and contradictions while battling the condescension of paternalist
liberals and the enervating effects of the welfare state on his people.
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"Но, как ты тепл, а не горяч и не холоден, то извергну теб
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Или просто некоторым можно, но не всем?
"Убить и руки оторвать" :)))
А мне лично понравилось, что Адорно, да еще и именно "Авторитарная личность" - у них в "худших". Во тоталитаризм-то лезет из-под либертантской оболочки...
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Люьис и Честертон в лучших совершенно удивительны - список составляли правые религиозные мракобесы??? Зато Хомский в списке плохих - 300% попадание. Только как же на один гектар с ним попал Поппер?
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Очевидно, потому что этот автор чрезвычайно неприятен всем, кто "знает, как надо".