Bible and Charles Darwin among world's most influential books
The Bible, Charles Darwin’s The Origin Of Species and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time have been named as the books which have had the greatest impact on the modern world.
The survey, commissioned by the UK's Folio Society, asked people to rank the books which have had the most influence on today’s society.
Religion and science took the top spots, with Albert Einstein’s Relativity in fourth place.
But fiction also made the top 10, with Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s dystopian novel about a society under surveillance, coming fifth in the list.
Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill A Mockingbird, about racism in the American South, was seventh.
The top 10 also featured Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica in sixth place and the Koran in eighth.
It was followed by The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith’s seminal work on economics, and The Double Helix by James Watson, on the discovery of the structure of DNA.
Tom Walker, the Folio Society’s editorial director, said he was surprised to find that there was “relatively little on economics despite the financial climate and only two, overtly political, fiction titles in the list”.
The study asked more than 2,000 British people which three books from a list of 30 they considered to be the most valuable in its influence and significance on the modern world.
1. The Bible (37%)
2. The Origin Of Species, Charles Darwin (35%)
3. A Brief History Of Time, Stephen Hawking (17%)
4. Relativity, Albert Einstein (15%)
5. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (14%)
6. Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton (12%)
7. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (10%)
8. The Koran (9%)
9. The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith (7%)
10. The Double Helix, James Watson (6%)
