I have a Waterstones book token and while browsing their website i found 'Books That Changed The World' and although there was some excellent books there such as To Kill A Mockingbird and 1984, they hardly changed the World which got me thinking just what can be considered the most influential and World altering book ever?
Throughout history authors have inspired debate, war and revolution. They have outraged, comforted and transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have enriched lives and destroyed them but which single book can lay claim to achieving the biggest change in the world we live today?
My initial thought was the religious texts which promised us God's reward or punishment according to our actions and changed the way we lived until Darwin’s 'On the Origin of Species' took God away again, changing our perceptions of everything we thought we knew.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 'The Social Contract' helped inspire the French Revolution while Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' work proved the call for Americans to revolt against the British and set into motion the USA of today.
Other contenders are Adam Smith's "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language" and Michael Faraday's "Experimental Researches in Electricity".
Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" gave us the knowledge that led to the moon almost 300 years later and then there is the book with the most quoted final paragraph in literary history that changed the face of the World.
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the World to win" by Karl Marx.
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