Random House's 100 Best Nonfiction Books: A Lesson on Internet Polls

It is a good lesson to learn that the board largely picked the books their professors told them to like in college.

The link is to the nonfiction list, yet the title of the post says novels.<p>Here is the list of novels: <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html</a>

How very odd. I think that I've read 16 of the Board's 100; some I think great, e.g. Yeats's _Autobiographies_. Others, well, Fussell's _The Great War and Modern Memory_ is a fine book, but top 100? Dangerfield is fine, but again, top 100?<p>Also, are we to believe that a quorum of the board had worked its way through _Principia Mathematica_? In such cases my own suspicion would be that somebody said, Gee, we need a math book--anybody remember one?

Here are some book lists:<p>The 100 greatest books of all time everyone must read <a href="http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time-everyone-must-read" rel="nofollow">http://bighow.com/news/the-100-greatest-books-of-all-time-ev...</a><p>Top 15 Novels About Work <a href="http://bighow.com/news/book-list-top-15-novels-about-work" rel="nofollow">http://bighow.com/news/book-list-top-15-novels-about-work</a>

Besides the obvious in the reader lists, I'm extremely skeptical of Principia Mathematica being on the board's list.