
What’s the Most Influential Book of the Past 20 Years? - samclemens
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/influential-books
======
sixhobbits
\- If you want to find the most influential book, you should probably ask more
than a dozen people the question "what is the most influential book". And you
should probably look at how frequently certain titles get chosen. Otherwise
you just have a list of favourite books from some unrelated academics I've
never heard of.

\- You should also try and include some academics and/or authors outside of
America if you want to be taken seriously.

\- Perhaps also consider, if you insist on doing this through a survey, asking
people for some kind of evidence that supports the influential reach of their
chosen book.

\- Finally if you have a list of 20 books arranged vertically so people can
can scroll down them, don't have the back button attempt and fail to scroll to
each visited location on the page if you expect return visitors.

Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these books
I happened to read" type blog and I'll think twice before clicking on a
chronicle link in future.

~~~
CPLX
> Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these
> books I happened to read"

But... that’s valuable.

~~~
weego
Only if the opinion of the people you ask is considered valuable.

~~~
CPLX
Not really. Unless made by Nazis or people under the age of 7 I’m pretty much
always interested in skimming a thoughtful list of nonfiction book
recommendations.

~~~
jcwayne
...and then hitting back 40 times to return to HN.

~~~
CPLX
That part I was less pleased by. Though as any savvy HN reader knows just
holding down the back button on an iPhone, or the equivalent elsewhere, solves
that problem neatly.

~~~
beatgammit
Or just open in a new tab. When done, close the tab.

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marchenko
_Thinking Fast and Slow_ and various Malcolm Gladwellania have probably out-
influenced anything on that list. _Nudge_ by Sunstein has probably had a lot
of subtle influence. The Taleb books, esp. _Black Swan_ should be on the list
- he essentially introduced a term into common usage (as Gladwell did with the
10,000 hours idea). Piketty will probably have a long tail of influence.

A lot of these books describe social and historical phenomena - they may be
the most authoritative scholarly text, but don't really influence broader
society as much. The exception would be _Critical Race Theory_ , which has
outsized influence both inside and outside of academia.

------
throwaway9980
What a narrow minded list. I can think of at least three titles that have
surely been more influential on society: _PHP & MySQL for Dummies_, _Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ , and _Fifty Shades of Grey_.

We’d all like to believe otherwise of course, but these types of titles that
have massive reach are doing far more to influence lives than academic fare.

~~~
DanBC
I agree with you, but Harry Potter was first published in 1997. That makes it
outside the 20 year window that this article is focusing on.

In the UK we have the Mann Booker prize. It's a big deal.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize)

> The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured international renown
> and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book
> trade.

But the sales figures for the books are tiny.

[https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker-
prize-2012-winners-sales-data)

[https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-
bo...](https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-
what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you)

~~~
throwaway9980
I stand corrected and feel quite old. Hard to believe it’s been 21 years since
Harry Potter. Next up: _Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis_.

------
dmolony
That website will seriously screw with your browser's back button.

~~~
yann63
And I've not even finished to read the first sentence than an overlay slides
from the top to make me subscribe to their newsletter or tell me something. I
immediately left the site: the back button worked fine for me, but maybe the
site had not completely loaded at the time.

I am still surprised by this behavior of websites. I guess they did the math
and that these practices make them win more than then lose. The web in 2018 is
in a poor shape :-(

Anyway, back at the topic: which book _should_ , for you, be in the most
influencial list? Mine would be "A self-sufficient organic kitchen garden"
(automatic tranlation from French "Biopotager autosuffisant"): how to grow
yourself enough vegetables to not have to buy any.

------
WiSaGaN
<Capital in the Twenty-First Century> should be in the list. It's a pity that
mainstream media still tries to dodge the most pressing problem in US.

------
kstenerud
I think it would be more accurate to call it the most influential book _for
Americans_ of the past 20 years...

~~~
CJefferson
Also, by an academic, else surely the answer is one of the harry Potter novels

------
soneca
Misleading title. This is an opinion of influential books _" written by an
academic"_. It is implicit as this an academics website, but in HN it is out
of this context.

And to quote the article itself _" Ideally, then, the candidates would be like
On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But
those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic."_.
So there is a case to be made that academics written books are not that
influential.

~~~
CPLX
The title has a question mark at the end.

The article then contains the various answers of a variety of people they
posed that question to.

The publication is called the chronicle of higher education and the people
they asked for their thoughts on the answer all work in higher education.

That seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to see when clicking on
that headline.

------
DrNuke
“The Mechatronics Handbook”, 2nd ed., 2007, is mostly past it today but was a
milestone for mankind in so many fields.

------
DyslexicAtheist
Putnam's _Bowling Alone_ was so good it was listed twice.

------
internet555
Don Quixote

------
odiroot
The Quran?

~~~
fredoliveira
... was certainly not written in the past 20 years.

~~~
Geee
He probably meant that Quran has had the most influence on the world in the
past 20 years.

