书名：Books that Changed the World改变世界的书

作者：Robert B. Downs罗伯特·唐斯
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2004
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451529282
商品尺寸：10.6 x 2.3 x 17.5 cm
包装：简装
页数：352
美国前全国图书馆协会主席、伊利诺大学图书馆馆长罗伯特·唐斯（Robert B. Downs）出版了Books that Changed the World《改变世界的书》，书中介绍了影响世界历史的多本经典著作，并对每一本书的作者的生平、内容概要、历史的影响等都作了评述，从《圣经》、《伊利亚特》、《公民不服从》到《资本论》、《寂静的春天》都有涉及。此书出版后重印多次，是国外读书界的畅销书之一。

From the Bible, the Iliad, and the Republic to Civil Disobedience,DasKapital, and SilentSpring, this revised and greatly expanded edition is a monument to the power of the printed word—an informative discussion of many of the most important works ever created.

Robert B. Downsis an author and librarian, born in North Carolina. Downs was a major advocate for total intellectual freedom and free speech. He spent the majority of his career working against the tyranny of literary censorship. His titles include Books that Changed the World,FamousBooksAncientandMedieval,Freedom of the Press: An Annotated Bibliography, and more.

1. The Book of Books

The Bible
2. Epic Poet
Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
3. Judge of Nature and Mankind
Plato: Symposium, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Republic, Statesman, Laws, Timaeus
4. Universal Man
Aristotle: Organon, History of Animals, Physics, On the Heavens, Meteorologic, Mechanics, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric. Poetics
5. Masters of Dramatic Art
The Greek Playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander
6. Sense of the Past
Greek and Roman Historians: Herodotus, thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Sallust, Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus
7. Greek and Roman Scientists
Hippocrates: Aphorisms
Theophrastus: On the History of Plants, On the Causes of Plants
Archimedes: On the Sphere and Cylinder
Lucretius: De Rerum Natura
Pliny the Elder: Natural History
8. Fathers of the Church
St. Augustine: Confessions, City of God
St, Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
9. Celestial Revolution
Nicolaus Copernicus: De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
10. Father of Scientific Anatomy
Andreas Vesalius: De Humani Corporis Fabrica
11. Dawn of Scientific Medicine
William Harvey: De Motu Cordis
12. Anatomy of Power Politics
Niccola Machiavelli: The Prince
13. System of the World
Sir Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica
14. American Firebrand
Thomas Paine: Common Sense
15. Patron Salut of Free Enterprise
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
16. First of a New Genus
Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the rights of woman
17. Discovery of Vaccination
Edward Jenner: An inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the variolae Vaccinae
18.Too Many Mouths
Thomas Malthus: Essay on the Principle of population
19. Individual Versus State
Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience
20. Crusader for the Lowly
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
21. Survival of the Fittest
Charles Darwin: Origin of Species
22. Prophet of the Proletariat
Karl Marx: Das Kapital
23. Leviathan Against Elephant
Alfred T. Mahan: The Influence of Sea Power
24. Psychologist of the Unconscious
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
25. Heartland and World-Island
Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Geographical Pivot of History
26. Study in Megalomania
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf
27. Upsetting the Balance of Nature
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Index

The thesis of the present work is that certain bonks have exerted a profound influence on history, culture, civilization, and scientific thought throughout recorded time. The principal aim, therefore, has been to discover and to analyze two categories of writings: fusty, those that were direct, immediate instilments in determining the course of events, and second, works that have molded the minds over centuries of time, slower in their effect than the first, but sometimes penetrating more deeply. in every historical era, we find overwhelming evidences of the power of the written word, without which a high state of civilization and culture is inconceivable in any time or place.

The beginnings of history are lost in the mists of antiquity. Although in part the earliest stages can be painfully and laboriously reconstruct by the sciences of paleontology and archeology, much, in the nature of things, is irretrievably it Not until the evolution of writing—the pictograph, hieroglyph, ideogram, and, ultimately, the alphabet—did adequate records of the race begin to surge. Even these records, however, present serious dilemma, including the difficulty of deciphering ancient inscriptions and the partial or complete disappearance, by human design or natural attrition, of many chronicles of the past. For the first several millennia of recorded history, far more has vanished than has been preserved.