Alison Flood ~ The 20 Most Influential Academic Books Of All Time: No Spoilers

The Guardian ~ Open Culture. Sometimes I’ll meet someone who mentions having written a book, and who then adds, “… well, an academic book, anyway,” as if that didn’t really count. True, academic books don’t tend to debut at the heights of the bestseller lists amid all the eating, praying, and loving, but sometimes lightning strikes; sometimes the subject of the author’s research happens to align with what the public believes they need to know. Other times, academic books succeed at a slower burn, and it takes readers generations to come around to the insights contained in them — a less favorable royalty situation for the long-dead writer, but at least they can take some satisfaction in the possibility.

The shortlist of these most important academic books of all time runs as follows (and you can read many of them free by following the links from our meta list of Free eBooks):

Amongst others:
Stephen Hawking ~ A Brief History of Time
Immanuel Kant ~ Critique of Pure Reason
Germaine Greer ~ The Female Eunuch
Niccolò Machiavelli ~ The Prince
Adam Smith ~ The Wealth of Nations

http://www.openculture.com/the-20-most-influential-academic-books