The
Modern Library, a division of
Random House, was founded in
1917 by
Albert Boni[?] and
Horace Liveright[?]. It was bought in
1925 by
Bennett Cerf[?]. Random House began in
1927 as a subsidary of the Modern Library, but eventually became the parent company. The Modern Library identified itself as "The Modern Library of the World's Best Books". In keeping with that identity, they identified the 100 best novels and non-fiction books of the 20th century and conducted a Web poll to gather public opinion on the same. The top ten books from both lists in each category are shown below.
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man[?] by James Joyce
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Sound and the Fury by Willian Faulkner[?]
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Darkness at Noon[?] by Arthur Koestler
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Anthem by Ayn Rand
- We the Living[?] by Ayn Rand
- Mission Earth[?] by L. Ron Hubbard
- Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
- The Education of Henry Adams[?] by Henry Adams
- The Varieties of Religious Experience[?] by William James
- Up From Slavery[?] by Booker T. Washington
- A Room of One's Own[?] by Virginia Wolff[?]
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Selected Essays, 1917-1932[?] by T.S. Eliot
- The Double Helix[?] by James Watson
- Speak, Memory[?] by Vladimir Nabokov
- The American Language[?] by H.L. Menchken[?]
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money[?] by John Maynard Keynes
- The Virtue of Selfishness[?] by Ayn Rand
- Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health[?] by L. Ron Hubbard
- Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand[?] by Leonard Peikoff[?]
- 101 Things to do 'Til the Revolution[?] by Claire Wolfe[?]
- The God of the Machine[?] by Isabel Paterson[?]
- Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life[?] by Michael Paxton[?]
- The Ultimate Resource[?] by Julian Simon
- Economics in One Lesson[?] by Henry Hazlitt
- Send in the Waco Killers[?] by Vyn Suprynowicz[?]
- More Guns, Less Crime by John R. Lott[?]