Contains profiles of fifty of history's most important and influential books, as selected by journalist and author Andrew Taylor, each with a summary of the contents, and a discussion of its historical context and legacy.

Introduction -- The Iliad -- The Histories -- The Analects -- The Republic -- The Bible -- Odes -- Geographia -- Kama Sutra -- The Qur'an -- Canon of Medicine -- The Canterbury Tales -- The Prince -- Atlas, or, Cosmographi Meditations / Gerard Mercator -- Don Quixote -- First Folio / William Shakespeare -- An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals / William Harvey -- Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems / Galileo Galilei-- Principia Mathematica -- A Dictionary of the English Language / Samuel Johnson-- Sorrows of Young Werther -- The Wealth of Nations -- Common Sense -- Lyrical Ballads -- Pride and Prejudice -- A Christmas Carol -- The Communist Manifesto -- Moby Dick -- Uncle Tom's Cabin -- Madam Bovery -- On The Origin of Species -- On Liberty -- War and Peace -- The Telephone Directory -- The Thousand and One Nights -- A Study in Scarlet -- The Interpretation of Dreams -- Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- Poems /Wilfred Owen -- Relativity: The Special and the General theory -- Ulysses / James Joyce -- Lady Chatterley's Lover -- The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money -- If This is a Man -- Nineteen Eighty-four-- The Second Sex -- Catcher in the Rye -- Things Fall Apart -- Silent Spring -- Quotations from Chairman Mao -- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.