My response to the Human Events article listing the 10 Most Dangerous Books of the Last Two Centuries is this list. I wrote a few days ago that there was no fiction on the Human Events list. This list is not definitive; it’s just my opinion. You’re welcome to comment and replace my picks with yours, but remember these are not the BEST books of the last two centuries, although most of them are very well-written, and they’re not the most influential books, but only those fiction books that have had the most influence for GOOD.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (b. June 14, 1811). When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he was supposed to have said, “So you’re the little woman who started this great war!” I guess someone could say that Mrs. Stowe caused a lot of harm with her story of Southern slavery, but she also gave people a picture of the horrors of slavery and made them care.
David Copperfield by Charles DIckens. Dickens magnified the problems of child labor and debtor’s prison and encouraged reformers to outlaw both of these institutions.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. What Harriet Beecher Stowe did to expose slavery, Solzhenitsyn did to expose Stalin’s gulags.
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Lewis talks about temptation, sin, and the Christian life in the form of letters from a junior devil to his superior.
Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell. Orwell taught us to see the dangers of totalitarianism in the form of futuristic fiction.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Neither Hercule Poirot nor Jane Marple approves of murder, and although they may understand the murderer’s reasons for his actions, they nevertheless eschew moral ambiguity. Because so many people have read Dame Agatha’s stories, she’s been quite helpful in maintaining some sort of moral standard in Western culture.
Lord of the Flies by WIlliam Golding. This one, too, has been widely read, and it’s helpful in showing the depravity of unrestrained, unregenerated human nature.
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Didn’t this book, more than any other, illustrate the evils of apartheid and the possibilities of redemptive love to change both whites and blacks in South Africa and elsewhere?
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I think this book gave many people, Christian and nonChristian, permission to imagine and dream and try to create a back-to-nature kind of community.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Published in 1960, this book may have been part of what made the Civil Rights Movement successful. How could anyone continue to condone the kind of injustice that is illustrated by Scout’s story of prejudice in a small Southern town?
Library Journal’s Most Influential Fiction List
Any other nominations?
Great list! Thanks for sharing it.
Much better list than that offered by the crabs at Human Events!
But you leave off The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn! That should be near the top of any list.
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I read David Copperfield in high school and hated it. On the other hand I was probably the only high school kid in history who likedSilas Marner.
Anyway, I’d add something by Raymond Chandler (you can take your pick),.Barney’s Version by Mordechai Richler (great anti-pc book), Fields of Fire by James Webb (also anit-pc but in a different way), and Wodehouse’s Mulliner stories
(Wodehouse uses language better than almost anyone.)
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Erm… I don’t think that The Gulag Archipelago is fiction. From the author’s note to the 1974 edition translated by Thomas P. Whitney:
“In this book there are no ficticious persons, nor ficticious events. People and places are named with their own names. If they are idenified with initials instead of names, it is for personal considerations. If they are not named at all, it is only becuase human memory has failed to preserve their names. But it all took place just as it is here described.”
Googling about, I can’t find anything that describes the work as fiction (such as Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Cancer Ward, or The First Circle).
OK, you caught me. I read The Gulag Archipelago many years ago, and I thought it was a fictionalized version of Solzhenitsyn’s experiences.
Obviously not.