As humankind faces the end of the tumultuous 20th century, one manifestation of millennial fever is the flurry of "best of the century" -- and even "best of the millennium" -- lists put out by publishers and critics.
Each list, of course, provokes debate.
One of the most carefully compiled of the recent lists is the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction Books written in English during the 20th century, which has a fair amount of Cornell representation.
M.H. ("Mike") Abrams, who is the Class of 1916 Professor Emeritus in English, is included at No. 25 in the Modern Library list for his influential book of literary criticism, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, published in 1953. The book won the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Prize in 1954 and in 1957 was cited in a poll of 250 critics and professors of literature as one of five "works published within the last 30 years which ... have contributed most to an understanding of literature."
Other books on the Modern Library list written by people connected to Cornell are:
8)Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. One of the most famous writers of the 20th century for Lolita and other novels, Nabokov was a member of the Cornell faculty from 1948 to 1959. He completed this autobiography while he was at Cornell.
21)The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. William Strunk, a professor of English at Cornell, wrote his stylebook in 1918. E.B. White, Class of 1921, who later wrote Charlotte's Web, among other notable books, was his student. White's supplementary chapter to Strunk's rules produced what is arguably the most influential book on the mechanics of writing in the English language.
26)The Art of the Soluble by Peter B. Medawar. A biologist who won the 1960 Nobel Prize in medicine, Medawar was an A.D. White Professor at Large from 1965 to 1971.
28)A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Rawls served as a professor in the Department of Philosophy from 1953 to 1960.
29)Art and Illusion by Ernest H. Gombrich. This influential art historian was an A.D. White Professor at Large from 1970 to 1976.
88)Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman. The dynamic physicist was a Cornell faculty member from 1945 to 1950. He won the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics.
David McCullough, who was an Olin lecturer this semester and a visiting professor previously, is listed at No. 48 for The Great Bridge. And there is even a Cornell-Ithaca connection to The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X. Haley was born in Ithaca, and Malcolm debated James Farmer at Cornell in 1964.
The judges who compiled the list were members of the editorial board of the Modern Library, a division of Random House. Judges included A.S. Byatt, Caleb Carr, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Stephen Jay Gould, Vartan Gregorian, Charles Johnson, Jon Krakauer, Edmund Morris, Elaine Pagels, John Richardson and Arthur M. Schlesinger.
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