GREAT NON-FICTION OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Paul Cummins
Mirror contributing writer

   Because my article on fifty great novels of the 20th century generated a surprising response from readers, I decided to try it again -- this time with fifty works of non-fiction.
   My list is admittedly idiosyncratic and reflective of my own interests in history, politics, literature, and social reform. It is, also, as a friend pointed out, a bit skimpy on works of science and technology. I excluded biography just to reduce the boundaries.
   This list, by the way, is not prioritized or even alphabetized. It is a somewhat random list, but I hope it will provoke readers to think of their own favorites and, perhaps, to read a few from this list of fifty.

• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
• Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel
• Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
• Simone De Beauvior, The Second Sex 
• George Orwell, Essays
• Eduardo Galeano, Masks of Fire 
• Milovan Djilas, The New Class
• Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities
• J.P. Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions
• Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
• Alexander Solzhenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago
• C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
• Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma
• John Muir, The Yosemite
• Eric Goldman, Rendezvous With Destiny
• Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds
• Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light and Children of Darkness
• C.J. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
• Michael Harrington, The Other America
• Albert Schweitzer, Out Of My Life and Thought
• Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death
• Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be
• John Dewey, Democracy and Education
• Martin Luther King, Jr., Collected Speeches
• William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
• Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth
• Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie
• Richard Hofstader, The American Political Tradition
• John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State
• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
• Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
• Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity
• Erick Erickson, Childhood and Society
• Andre Malraux, The Voices of Silence
• Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents; An Interpretation of Dreams
• Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom
• Karl Menninger, Man Against Himself
• Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
• Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
• Eugen Herrigel, Zen and The Art of Archery
• Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey
• Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
• Erich Auerbach, Mimesis
• William Barrett, Irrational Man
• William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
• Martin Buber, I And Thou
• George Gamov, The Creation of the Universe
• Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry

   I look forward to more reader response, and both the Santa Monica Mirror and I encourage letters to the Editor.