| First posted 5/26/2018; updated 11/11/2025. |
 | All-Time Books:Top 100 |
Inspired by the 2018 PBS special The Great American Read, I assembled more than 170 best-of-books lists (see sources here) and aggregated them to create one master list of the all-time books. While these are mostly novels, there are some non-fiction books and even a few children’s picture books. Here are the results:
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| First posted 11/11/2025. |
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A Farewell to ArmsErnest Hemingway
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First Publication: May to October 1929 in Scribner’s magazine Category: semi-autobiographical war novel Sales: ? |
Accolades: 
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About the Book: Written when he was thirty years old, Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical novel is a “gripping…work [which] captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.” AZ “The title is taken from a poem by the 16th-century English dramatist George Peele.” WK It has been “lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I.” AZ The story is “set during the Italian campaign of World War I.” WK “It is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant…in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army.” WK The novel also “describes a love affair between the expatriate Henry and an English nurse, Catherine Barkley.” WK The story also explores “the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion” AZ as “weary, demoralized men march…in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto.” WK “The novel has been adapted a number of times, initially for the stage in 1930; as a film in 1932 and again in 1957, and as a three-part television miniseries in 1966. The 1996 film In Love and War, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Chris O’Donnell and Sandra Bullock, depicts Hemingway’s life in Italy as an ambulance driver in the events prior to his writing of A Farewell to Arms.” WK Resources and Related Links: |
| First posted 6/16/2020; updated 7/5/2020. |
 
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The Old Man and the SeaErnest Hemingway
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First Publication: September 1, 1952 Category: literary fiction Sales: 13 million |
Accolades:
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About the Book: “The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works.” AZ He wrote it in Cuba in 1951. WK “This hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world.” AZ It was the last major work of fiction published during his lifetime. WK “Told in language of great simplicity and power,” AZ “it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman,” WK “down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal – a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin” AZ “far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.” WK “Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss.” AZ It “served to reinvigorate Hemingway’s literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work…It restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author.” WK “Many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner’s short story The Bear and Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick.” WK “It was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.” WK Resources and Related Links: |
| First posted 7/4/2020; last updated 7/5/2020. |
 
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For Whom the Bell TollsErnest Hemingway
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First Publication: October 21, 1940 Category: novel/war story Sales: ? |
Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):
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About the Book: “In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from ‘the good fight,’ For Whom the Bell Tolls.” AZ The novel is “a sparse, masculine, world-weary meditation on death, ideology and the savagery of war in general, and the Spanish civil war in particular.” TG It “depicts war not as glorious but disillusioning.” LC “‘If the function of a writer is to reveal reality,’ Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, ‘no one ever so completely performed it.’ Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author’s previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.’” AZ Robert Jordan is “a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit” AZ “during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.” WK “In his portrayal of Jordan’s love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo’s last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise.” AZ The story “tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal.” AZ The novel “was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and became a literary triumph. Based on his achievement in this and other noted works, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.” LC Resources and Related Links:
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| First posted 6/25/2020; last updated 7/5/2020. |
 
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The Sun Also RisesErnest Hemingway
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First Publication: 1926 Category: semi-autobiographical novel Sales: ? |
Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):
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About the Book: “The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation.” AZ Hemingway presents the idea that the generation which was “considered to have been decadent, dissolute, and irretrievably damaged by World War I – was in fact resilient and strong.” WK “Additionally, Hemingway investigates themes of love and death; the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity.” WK “The Sun Also Rises is “a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style.” AZ It “helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.” AZ “It received mixed reviews upon publication. However, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now ‘recognized as Hemingway's greatest work,’, and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel.’” WK “The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.” AZ “The characters are based on real people in Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events,” WK including “Hemingway’s trip to Spain in 1925. The setting was unique and memorable, depicting sordid café life in Paris and the excitement of the Pamplona festival, with a middle section devoted to descriptions of a fishing trip in the Pyrenees.” WK Resources and Related Links: |
