15 March 2019
We all have our favorite novels, but sometimes a book comes along that has an intense and lasting impact on society, whether it’s because the story wins critical acclaim and awards, makes history come alive, creates a huge fan base, or generates controversy (and sometimes, all of the above)! Here are some books that changed the world, featuring a mix of diaries, facts, religious texts and contemporary novels.
Anne Frank’s diary
Written by the young teenager, the diary tells the story of when Anne and her family – who were Jewish – were forced to go into hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War Two.
They had to do this because the Nazis wanted to get rid of all European Jews.
It became one of the most important historical accounts of what life was like for Jewish people at this time.
The book is one of the most widely translated books in history, with millions of people learning the story of the family who hid away in an attic apartment above Otto Frank’s (Anne’s father’s) business.
The diary is one of many books that have gone on to change the world in some way – for example, by shaping society, changing the way people behave, explaining history or capturing important moments in time.
Here, we take a look at some of these influential works. If there are any books not included in the list below that have had a big impact on you, let us know in the comments below.
Samuel Pepys’ diary
Another personal diary that has provided an invaluable historical account of a moment in time is that of a man called Samuel Pepys.
He recorded ten years of his life in London during the 17th Century, which has provided historians with incredibly accurate information about what life was like there in the 1660s.
Three big events took place during this time – Charles II’s coronation in 1661, the Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666 – so the diary provided amazing insight into the impact that this had on people at the time.
He stopped writing the diary in 1669 as he was worried about losing his eyesight, but he never actually became blind.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
We’ve all heard of this one – and the six books that came after!
The Harry Potter books about the famous boy wizard are some of the most famous books in the world.
Millions of people became completely captivated by the world created by JK Rowling, which has gone on to inspire films, books, games, a play and so much more.
It’s hard to believe but the manuscript for the first book was actually rejected many times before it was first published in 1997, with just 500 copies being printed. We bet the publishers who rejected the book are now regretting that decision!
In December 2017, JK Rowling was awarded a Companion of Honour – a special award held by only 65 people at any one time – by the Duke of Cambridge in recognition of her achievements.
Aesop’s Fables by Aesop
This is a collection of stories, all of which are designed to teach a moral lesson.
They are credited to a slave in Ancient Greece called Aesop around the 6th Century BC – although many of the stories predate these times.
Not only that, but there is much debate even about Aesop himself. He didn’t necessarily write the fables, there isn’t much evidence from the period in history they’re attributed to, and there is very little evidence to suggest Aesop even existed!
Nevertheless, Aesop’s Fables have been told around the world for hundreds of years. There are over 650 of them in total and they all have an underlying message about life or how people should or shouldn’t behave. The main characters are generally animals with human-like qualities.
Famous fables include The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, The Hare and the Tortoise, and The Dog and His Reflection.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Published in 1960, many people feel that To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the best novels of the 20th Century.
The story follows a young girl called Scout as she grows up in Alabama in the south of America in the 1930s, at a time when injustice and racism was very common. It is told through her eyes. Her father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer who risks everything to defend a black man who is on trial for a crime that he did not commit.
One of the main messages of the story is how it is important to stand up for what is right – rather than follow the crowd, or do what is simply popular or easy – and to see the world through other people’s eyes.
A famous line from the book, said by Atticus to Scout, is: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
This book has been translated into many languages and sold millions of copies all over the world. It is also on school syllabuses, so you may study it at school one day.
The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien
If you haven’t read the book, you may well have seen or heard of the films.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been enjoyed by many generations ever since the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, was published in 1954. The books went on to become some of the best-selling books of all time.
They are so iconic as they were the first fantasy books of their kind, which would go on to inspire the genre in the years to come.
JRR Tolkein also wrote The Hobbit, which many people would say deserves to be included here. This, too, was turned into a big film.
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
You might not think that a dictionary should be considered as a really important book like the others on this list, but this one really was.
Back in the 18th Century, it is believed that a man called Samuel Johnson spent eight years compiling the enormous work with the help of six assistants.
Published in April 1755, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary is full of witty definitions of words, so some people believe it was actually fun to read anyway!
It was considered to be the most influential English dictionary up until the Oxford English Dictionary was published 173 years later, but Johnson is still considered by many to be the true father of the English dictionary as a result of this publication.
The Iliad by Homer
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem, which features war, gods, families and plenty of drama.
It tells the story of a period of time towards the end of the Trojan War, which broke out when the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, waged war with the Trojans because King Priam of Troy’s son, Paris, stole his brother’s wife.
It has served as a very important historical account of life in Ancient Greece and, in particular, of the Trojan War and its impact.
Homer also wrote another epic called The Odyssey, about Odysseus’ journey home from the Trojan War, which is another incredibly important Ancient Greek text.
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
You’ve probably heard of Charles Darwin as one of the most influential scientists of all time. That’s because he came up with some really important theories about how human beings evolved.
He came up with his ideas by studying lots of different plants and animals, and looking at how they adapted to the environments in which they lived.
The work included a famous theory called ‘survival of the fittest’, which explains how species that are best adapted to their environment would be most likely to survive. They would pass on their genes to their offspring, which would help the species evolve to be stronger and better suited to their environment.
His ideas would go on to inspire further research into life on Earth and lots of debate about where humans really came from.
1984 by George Orwell
Published in 1949, 1984 told the story of a society where people are being watched over by Big Brother, unable to have any identity or freedoms, and controlled by a repressive government. Fear is used to manipulate and control people in a highly technological world.
Written just after the end of World War II – when millions of people had become victims of terror, hatred and discrimination – the book served almost as a warning about the life nobody wanted to live.
Even to this day, it reminds people of the importance of being able to freely express ourselves and have our own thoughts.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Have you ever heard someone talking about ‘not trying to rewrite War and Peace’? That’s because it’s an expression referring to this book, which is incredibly long with loads of characters.
Some people believe it is one of the greatest novels ever written. It tells a story from the time of the Napoleonic wars, when the French invaded Russia in 1812, but it is so much more than this.
It looks at the effect that this had on people, at how individuals found their place in the world and at the way people were thinking at the time – all of which are important still today and teach us lessons about human experiences.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.
Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure.
His quest will lead him to riches far different — and far more satisfying — than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing — his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
Unparalleled in scope and execution, A Game of Thrones is one of those rare reading experiences that catch you up from the opening pages, won’t let you go until the end, and leave you yearning for more.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but 18 years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Before you let your feelings about communism or knowledge about how the political structure has played out in history through various communist dictatorships make you think Marx was a bad guy, it’s worth giving The Communist Manifesto a chance. The short political manifesto was published in 1848 and sparked many a revolution before being misinterpreted by the very people seeking to create its ideals in the real world. The book is one of the most influential works in political theory ever written and also a lesson in how some good or at least well-intentioned ideas can get really twisted by bad people. Many would argue that this book is the epitome of “good in theory but not in practice,” while some still think it’s possible for people to make a society like the one Marx describes work for the benefit of humankind.
The Republic by Plato
This is the most famous of ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s dialogues, centering on the regular figure of his works, Socrates. In this work, Socrates considers the question of justice and whether the just person is happier than the unjust person. To support his very long argument that a just person is happier, Socrates imagines a pretend city called Kallipolis where he and the other philosophers he argues with set the stage with imaginary citizens and situations for their philosophical debate. Over the course of the conversation, Socrates addresses nearly every imaginable aspect of society and the nature of being.
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
When the young law student Hanns Sachs first opened The Interpretation of Dreams, his life changed. It was a “moment of destiny”, wrote the future analyst, like meeting a “femme fatale”. Many of Freud’s early circle describe a similar epiphany, yet today this 800-page book tends to have a less dramatic impact. The long series of prefaces and the extended and rather arid first chapter on the history of dream interpretation put off many readers. Nevertheless, Freud was right to feel that he had written something momentous (he even imagined a plaque to commemorate where the “secret of dreams” had been discovered).
To reduce this secret to the ubiquitous formula “A dream is a fulfilment of a wish” does this complex book little justice. Freud distinguished between a wish and a desire. A dream can be organised around a wish – say, to pass an exam – and unconscious desire will act like a hitchhiker, using the wish to smuggle itself into the dream. We might pass or fail the exam, but the clues to desire lie in the details of the room we are in, the tie the examiner is wearing, the sounds in the background. These seemingly unimportant elements allow us to track unconscious material.
Freud shows the central place of sexuality and violence in our mental lives. Writers and poets have always been alert to the troubling and darker sides of the psyche, but it was the dream book that showed so carefully how exactly these currents are forged and encrypted, how they undergo distortion and censorship and how they are formed and shaped by language. The detail of the famous Chapter 7 on the psychology of dream processes is unparalleled, and its discussion of the relations between perception and consciousness puts most of today’s neuroscience to shame.
The danger of the book was quickly apparent to Freud. Just as a femme fatale can lead you astray, so the book could set readers on a fruitless quest for hidden symbolism. All his later work on dreams was an effort to correct this. The search for hidden meaning is ultimately unhelpful, and, as he wrote in 1899, there is a navel to the dream, a point that cannot be interpreted and where meaning fails. The dream book opened up both of these worlds to future generations: that of meaning, so exciting to the early analysts, and that of non-meaning, crucial to the whole intellectual landscape of the 20th century and beyond.
King James’ Bible
While this wasn’t the first English translation of the Christian Bible, it is the most well-known version, the most widely read, and the most printed book in history. The work is considered a stunning achievement in literature in terms of its beauty and the scholarly effort that was put into creating it, as the translation was compiled from different books in various languages to create the best English Bible possible under the order of King James I. The translation was done by 47 different scholars, all of them members of the Church of England. The project was started in 1604 and the King James Bible was first published in 1611. The Bible is the founding text of the Christian faith and much of the morals and thought of Western society is based on the book.
The Qur’an
The Qur’an is the founding text of Islam, which Muslims believe was revealed by God to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Similarly to the Christian Bible, this ancient text is revered for its poetic beauty, storytelling, and moral lessons that are pervasive in the Muslim world. Since Islam currently has 1.2 billion followers, or a quarter of the world’s population, it’s easy to see why this book is still so important. While there’s a lot of misunderstanding and prejudice about Islam in the West, which the Pew Research Center says is so pervasive it may affect the patterns of Muslim migration, Islam is an Abrahamic faith that has a great amount in common with Christianity.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic is credited with sparking the second wave feminist movement. While the first wave of feminism focused on issues like women’s suffrage and property rights, the second wave raised questions about sexuality, family, the workplace, and reproductive rights. Friedan was inspired to write the book when she was asked to do a survey of her former classmates at Smith College upon their fifteenth reunion and found that most of them were very unhappy in their roles as housewives and mothers. The research for the book involved delving into psychology and the media as well as conducting interviews with suburban housewives to try and figure out why they were unfulfilled. The New York Times said that the book “permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States” in Friedan’s obituary.
