Recommended Books
Here, in their own words, are the answers to the question, "What book did you read when you were young that most influenced your life?" The answers reflect the wonderfully varied power of books, and remind us of some neglected timeless classics and other works we may want to take into our own lives.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Recommended by
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
R.E. Lee, A Biography
by Douglas Southall Freeman
Recommended by
Stephen E. Ambrose, Ph.D.
The Little Grey Men
by B.B. (Denys Watkins-Pitchford)
Recommended by
Dame Julie Andrews
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
Recommended by
Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Recommended by
A. Scott Berg
A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle
Recommended by
Jeffrey P. Bezos
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
Recommended by
Sergey Brin
A Study of History
by Arnold J. Toynbee
Recommended by
J. Carter Brown
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
by James Agee
Recommended by
Jimmy Carter
The Third Wave
by Alvin Toffler
Recommended by
Steve Case
The Two-Ocean War
by Samuel Eliot Morison
Recommended by
Tom Clancy
Mere Christianity
by C.S. Lewis
Recommended by
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Miss Susie Slagle's
by Augusta Tucker
Recommended by
Denton A. Cooley, M.D.
A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Recommended by
Francis Ford Coppola
The Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
Recommended by
William C. DeVries, M.D.
Arabian Nights
by Sir Richard Burton
Recommended by
Rita Dove
Galapagos: World's End
by William Beebe
Recommended by
Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.
The Microbe Hunters
by Paul de Kruif
Recommended by
Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.
Napoleon
by Vincent Cronin
Recommended by
Larry J. Ellison
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
Recommended by
Shelby Foote
The Scarlet Plague
by Jack London
Recommended by
Milton Friedman, Ph.D.
Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
Recommended by
Ernest J. Gaines
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
Recommended by
William H. Gates III
Profiles in Courage
by John F. Kennedy
Recommended by
Rudolph Giuliani
One Two Three...Infinity
by George Gamow
Recommended by
Sheldon L. Glashow, Ph.D.
The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle
by Hugh Lofting
Recommended by
Dame Jane Goodall
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox
by James MacGregor Burns
Recommended by
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.
The Little Engine That Could
by Watty Piper
Recommended by
Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Recommended by
John Grisham
The Reason Why
by Cecil Woodham-Smith
Recommended by
David Halberstam
Edmund Dulac's Picture Book
by Edmund Dulac
Recommended by
Olivia de Havilland
The Warlord of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Recommended by
Sir Edmund Hillary
Amusing Ourselves to Death
by Neil Postman
Recommended by
Reid Hoffman
Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius
Recommended by
Elizabeth Holmes
The Name Above the Title
by Frank Capra
Recommended by
Ron Howard
Gray's Anatomy
by Henry Gray
Recommended by
Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.
Moby-Dick, or The Whale
by Herman Melville
Recommended by
John Irving
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin
Recommended by
Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.
The Republic
by Plato
Recommended by
Philip C. Johnson
The Song of Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Recommended by
James Earl Jones
Roughing It
by Mark Twain
Recommended by
Chuck Jones
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
Recommended by
Anthony M. Kennedy
Escape From Freedom
by Erich Fromm
Recommended by
Henry R. Kravis
My Name is Aram
by William Saroyan
Recommended by
Charles Kuralt
The Meaning of Relativity
by Albert Einstein
Recommended by
Leon M. Lederman, Ph.D.
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Recommended by
Wynton Marsalis
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
Recommended by
Craig McCaw
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
Recommended by
Frank McCourt
Reveille in Washington
by Margaret Leech
Recommended by
David McCullough
Lost Illusions
by Honore de Balzac
Recommended by
James A. Michener
The Moon is Down
by John Steinbeck
Recommended by
George J. Mitchell
Smoky the Cowhorse
by Will James
Recommended by
N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
Recommended by
Story Musgrave, M.D.
The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair
Recommended by
Ralph Nader
The Cloister and the Hearth
by Charles Reade
Recommended by
Paul H. Nitze
The Moviegoer
by Walker Percy
Recommended by
Peggy Noonan
The Story of Ferdinand
by Munro Leaf
Recommended by
Jessye Norman
Walden and Civil Disobedience
by Henry David Thoreau
Recommended by
Joyce Carol Oates
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire
Recommended by
Suzan-Lori Parks
The War of the Worlds
by H.G. Wells
Recommended by
Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Recommended by
Shimon Peres
The Holy Bible
by World Bible Publishing
Recommended by
Dan Rather
The Island Within
by Ludwig Lewisohn
Recommended by
Jonas Salk, M.D.
Manchild in the Promised Land
by Claude Brown
Recommended by
Barry Scheck
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
Recommended by
Vincent J. Scully, Ph.D.
Arrowsmith
by Sinclair Lewis
Recommended by
Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.
Forever
by Pete Hamill
Recommended by
John E. Sexton, Ph.D.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Recommended by
Hilary Swank
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Recommended by
Amy Tan
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Recommended by
Bernie Taupin
The Waste Land
by T.S. Eliot
Recommended by
John Updike
Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars
by Ellen MacGregor
Recommended by
Bert Vogelstein, M.D.
The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and Other Stories
by Franz Kafka
Recommended by
Elie Wiesel
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
Recommended by
Oprah Winfrey
Studs Lonigan
by James T. Farrell
Recommended by
Tom Wolfe
All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren
Recommended by
Bob Woodward