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Blog – Posted on Wednesday, May 20

The 115 best books of all time.

The written word is a pillar of human civilization — it signals complex thinking, it’s a tool to record history, and it allows for the development of ideas. Throughout our existence, so much has been written down, whether carved into stone or printed on paper, immortalizing thrilling tales and imparting wisdom. Many are lost, weathered by time or withered in flames like in the case of the Library of Alexandria; though plenty remain for us to peruse.

Let’s take a trip through time and discover the world’s literary trends by looking at 115 of the best books of all time! It took a while to compile this list (there is simply too much great writing!) but you’ll see that there’s a bit of everything: from poetry to plays to novels, from Chinese classics to Renaissance gems.

Ancient civilizations

1. the story of sinuhe by unknown (c. 1800 bc) .

More than three thousand years before the Bard was born, the Egyptian Shakespeare wrote the Hathor worshipper’s answer to Hamlet — and we don’t even know their name. Anonymously authored, the elegant and haunting Story of Sinuhe has been hailed as ancient Egypt’s best. This epic poem follows the titular Sinuhe, an official who goes AWOL when he gets some explosive intel about the assassination of his king. His new life in Canaan brings him glorious victories, a high-society marriage, and honorable sons…. but the guilt of his exit continues to eat away at him, and he never stops longing for his homeland. 

2. Epic of Gilgamesh by Sin-liqe-unninni (c. 1700 BC) 

This four thousand year-old page-turner flies under the radar compared to high school staples like the Odyssey, but the Epic of Gilgamesh is nothing short of, well, epic . It’s a must-read whether you love the redemptive power of a good bromance or have a taste for quirky math (the titular Gilgamesh is one-third moral and two-thirds divine)! Our genetically improbable protagonist begins the story as a a king who brutalizes his people — in other words, a true antihero. He rules over the city of Uruk with an iron fist until the gods themselves mold the wild man Enkidu out of clay and water to strike the wicked king down. But when Enkidu  finally confronts his target, the two destined enemies become fast friends — inspiring Gilgamesh to mend his ways and go on a monster-hunting quest with his new bestie. 

3. The Odyssey by Homer (c. 700 BC) 

4. Aesop’s Fables by Aesop (c. 500 BC)

City mouse and country mouse. Sour grapes. Slow and steady wins the race. Brought to life by an enslaved prisoner of war, Aesop’s Fables have shaped our everyday idioms and helped define how we see the world. These deceptively simple tales have clear moral messages that are served with a dash of darkness: in Aesop’s starkly enchanted world, anthropomorphic animals cavort, gambol, and sometimes die ignoble deaths, struck down by their own foolishness and arrogance. Whether you’re in the mood for Tweet-brief bedtime reading or hankering for a blunt reminder of life’s harshness, these timeless tales that have enriched the worlds of toddlers and philosophers alike will have you covered.

5. Oedipus the King by Sophocles (430 BC) 

This bleak masterclass in dramatic irony gave its name to the most famous of Freudian complexes, and it’s been reminding readers — and playgoers — for ages that sometimes you just can’t fight fate. The great tragedian Sophocles wrote it more than 2,000 years ago, so forgive us if we don’t issue any spoiler warnings. In any case, we all know how this story ends — with the unlucky Oedipus blinded and weeping blood, after accidentally killing his father and marrying his mother. The bitter fascination of reading Oedipus the King lies in following him to that grisly and inevitable conclusion. Trust us — the dread that grips you because you know exactly what’s coming will make your blood run colder than many a horror movie. 

6. The Mahabharata by Vyasa (c. 300 BC)

If you’re not quite sure where to start, we recommend diving into the Bhagavad Gita . In this philosophically rich, 700-verse passage from the sixth book, the warrior prince Arjuna struggles to master his emotions on the eve of battle. His enemies, after all, are also his own kinsmen. Can his friend and charioteer — who also happens to be a reincarnated god — help him find a way out of his turmoil?

7. Adelphoe by Terence (160 BC)

This quirky Roman classic proves two things: the ancients knew how to get a laugh out of theatergoers, and bumbling fathers and rebellious sons are literally) an age-old recipe for comedy. Adelphoe kicks off with a parenting experiment: rural patriarch Demea has two sons, and he sends one to be raised by his city-dwelling brother Micio while rearing the other himself. Thus the two brothers grow up apart: Ctesipho lives it up in Athens with his indulgent uncle, while Aeschinus stays in the countryside, under his despotic father’s thumb. In short, one brother becomes repressed, and the other has become a louche. But when Ctesipho falls in love with an enslaved musician, he turns to his brother for help. When Demea and Micio find out what their boys are up to, will they finally agree on the right way to raise kids?

8. The Aeneid by Virgil (c. 20 BC)

For Odysseus, the Trojan War led to a ten-year nightmare involving six-headed monsters, vengeful sea-gods, and a scorned witch capable of turning men into pigs — and he was one of the winners! Which makes you wonder what it was like to be on the losing side. Let’s just ask the Trojan hero Aeneas, whose own post-war adventures spawned another epic poem.

The star of the Aeneid , he flees Troy just after the murder of its king. For a while, destiny seems to be on Aeneas’ side: a prophecy dictates he’ll establish a glorious nation in Rome, and his own mother is none other than Venus herself. But even with divine blood flowing through him, he can’t count on support from all the gods: Juno, in particular, seems intent on turning his journey to Italy into a real ordeal. We know that Aeneas will make it to Rome. But what will he suffer in the process — and who will suffer with him?

9. The Satyricon by Petronius (c. 90 AD) 

10. The Tale of an Anklet by Unknown (c. 450 AD)

This Tamil answer to the Odyssey features one unforgettable heroine. Kannaki starts out as a long-suffering wife, but by the time the story’s done, she’s transformed into a goddess who sets cities on fire with her rage. But let’s rewind quickly to the start of The Tale of an Anklet , where she and the handsome Kovalan are married and living in bliss — as far as she’s concerned. Kovalan seems to feel differently: why else would he leave his wife at home to take up with a beautiful courtesan? 

But when Kovalan faces financial ruin, Kannaki swallows her betrayal and prepares to bail him out. She offers him a jeweled anklet to pawn — but he’s falsely accused of stealing it from the queen. Can Kannaki save him from a flawed justice system, or will she be forced to seek revenge for the husband who broke her heart? From the bitterness of love to the brokenness of law, this gorgeous, heartrending drama brings age-old issues to passionate life.

Post-classical literature

11. one thousand and one nights by unknown (c. 700)  .

This collection of Arabic-language folk tales shows the transformative power of a good cliffhanger — used right, it can apparently save your life! Over the course of, well, a thousand and one nights, the quick-witted storyteller Scheherazade (the latest in a long succession of King Shahryar’s unfortunate brides) draws on her imagination to stave off death. Embittered by a previous wife’s infidelity, King Shahryar has been marrying a new one every night — only to put her to death the next morning. Scheherazade, though, is different from these other one-night queens: she actually volunteered for the job. Every night, she regales her paranoid husband with a story but refuses to finish it — forcing him to push back her beheading in favor of the grand finale. And then she starts another one to keep him on the hook.

One Thousand and One Nights lets you listen in on these high-stakes bedtime stories. Scheherazade’s repertoire spans the spectrum from cozy childhood favorites ( Aladdin , anyone?) to historical, tragic, and erotic tales fit to stir a royal imagination. It turns out, the way to a king’s heart isn’t through his stomach — it’s through the magic of plot!

12. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 1010)

Unfortunately for Genji, his gifts seem to bring him more sorrow than joy: he falls in love with the worst possible woman — his own stepmother, Lady Fujitsubo. Unable to forget her, he kidnaps her niece, the preteen Murasaki, to raise as a replacement Fujitsubo — all while continuing his affair with the real Fujitsubo. Elegant, immersive, and dense, this strange and captivating classic blurs the line between truth and fiction. Did Murasaki, the author, name herself after her heroine? Or is Muraski the character a reflection of the woman who brought her to life?

14. Lais by Marie de France (c. 1100) 

If you’ve ever wanted to live out a courtly romance or daydreamed about saving lives as a dragon-slaying knight, you can thank Marie. This 12th-century poet — the first woman in French history to write verse — virtually invented chivalry through her Lais . Though we sadly don’t even know her real name today, we do know that her view of romance was subtle and even sometimes sinister — never sappy. In these twelve short narrative poems, werewolves suffer heartbreak, vassals betray their lords, and jealous husbands lash out against innocent wives with unimaginable cruelty. Love, Marie knew, could be as corrupting as it was powerful, making cunning and sophisticated beasts out of men. 

15. The Knight in Panther’s Skin by Shota Rusteveli (c. 1190) 

Up to a century ago, The Knight in Panther’s Skin was a part of every Georgian bride’s dowry. In this heart-stirring epic, medieval Georgia’s premiere poet uses a fictionalized Middle Eastern setting to glorify Queen Tamar, who presided over the kingdom’s golden age.

The poem opens on the warrior Avtandil as he takes on an unusual mission. Normally tasked with commanding the Arabian king’s armies, he’s been asked to spearhead a strange manhunt. His target? A mysterious knight dressed in a panther’s skin, whom the king’s men found weeping by a river — before he killed them and disappeared. Dangerous as he is, is this shadowy stranger a friend or a foe? The answer may surprise the noble Avtandil — and force him to turn against the king he’s served so faithfully.

16. The Song of the Nibelungs by Unknown (c. 1200) 

Beyond the fascinating plot, this poem immortalized Siegfried and Hagen, Gunther’s loyal right-hand man, as the embodiment of the German spirit when the country unified in the late 1800s. Its influence on European culture attests to its status as one of the most impressive works of German Medieval literature ever created. 

17. The Poetic Edda by Unknown (13th century) 

You can thank this anonymous batch of poems for The Hobbit — not to mention the superhero Thor. The Poetic Edda , one of the most important sources for Nose mythology, surfaced in Iceland sometime during the 13th century. It’s since cast a vast shadow on western literature, with writers from Tolkien to Jorge Luis Borges touting it as a major influence.

This verse collection brings the deeds of gods and heroes to life. You’ll hear a witch’s prophecy foretelling Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, see the All-father Odin match wits with the wisest of giants, and follow Heimdall, the divine watchmen, as he journeys through the land of mortals — fathering many children along the way. In the starkly beautiful world these poems sketch out, vows are binding, honor is everything, and not even the gods are safe from a painful death. 

17. Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (c. 1300)

If this glorious tale had to be described in three words, they would be: epic, tragic, and historical. One of the pillars of Chinese classical literature, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a mythicized account of 80 years of political intrigue and warfare between three dynastic families over rulership of Northern China. As beloved generals and cunning strategists form leagues and battle it out, we learn of their love, their righteousness, and their camaraderie. The riveting plot ends with a twist that’s too well-crafted to be true — although the story is based on real events. 

This masterpiece and its philosophical explorations transcends time and borders, and it remains one of the most well-known novels in East Asian cultures today.  

18. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320)

Dante’s lyrical and intricate depictions of immorality are pertinent throughout history, inspiring writers in the craft of storytelling while provoking reflection among readers. It’s truly one of the greatest literary works of all time.

19. Piers Plowman by William Langland (c. 1380)

Taking a large leap across France, Spain and the Channel from Italy we arrive in England, where Langland recorded his take on Christianity in a colossal, alliterated poem.

Rather than delving into death as Dante had several decades prior, this poem explores human behaviors and morality through the visions of a man called Will. In his dreamscape, Will meets all kinds of “people” who are personified virtues — from the Seven Deadly Sins to Dowel (“do well”) and Dobet (“do better”). The metafictional quality of presenting vision within vision, the complexity of Middle English literature, and the depth of theological knowledge make Piers Plowman a difficult but very rich and sophisticated text. 

20. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1400)

From knights to monks to cooks — Chaucer’s elaborate collection of 24 stories unravels the journey that people make to Canterbury and its majestic cathedral. While they embark on the same journey, the protagonists of these tales are as different as can be — each hails from a different background and represents a different tier in the social hierarchy of feudal society. 

The Canterbury Tales are fascinating to read on their own, providing a magical portal to medieval villages and quests that came to be the inspiration for countless Hollywood movies. These odysseys shine the most, however, when they are experienced together, because that’s when Chaucer’s brilliance at displaying the complexities of society reveals itself. 

21. The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (c. 1405)

In The Book of the City of Ladies ,  Reason, Rectitude, and Justice appear to the narrator — Pizan herself — and ask her to build a city just for women. It turns out that building this city requires the dismantling of the narrator’s own preconceived notions of gender and societal norms. 

The resulting monumental literary work includes stories of legendary female figures in history and mythology — from the Virgin Mary to Helen of Troy — as Pizan reveals to readers that women are every bit as capable as men. Elegantly written and daringly conceived, this book will be a place of refuge for believers of gender equality. 

22. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (c. 1601)

Though you may be familiar with the plot by virtue of The Lion King, it’s always worth getting back to basics with the source material — inasmuch as you can call Shakespeare’s longest and arguably most influential play “basic.”

For those unfamiliar, we’ll back it up: Hamlet is the son of the recently deceased king of Denmark, whose sudden death has been hastily papered over by his brother and successor, Claudius. Hamlet, of course, is suspicious, especially after a vision of his father claims that Claudius murdered him to take the throne. To distract others from his plan of revenge, Hamlet pretends that he’s gone mad, and what follows is a tangled web of deceit, violence, and tragedy for the royal family and their compatriots — especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether Hamlet is still faking his madness, or has genuinely gone off the deep end.

23. The Plum in the Golden Vase by Unknown (c. 1610) 

Arguably the world’s most famous erotic novel, The Plum in the Golden Vase seems to shape-shift depending on the angle you view it from. It’s a lavishly illustrated handbook of sexual peccadilloes and a harshly punitive morality tale; an irreverent fanfic for a foundational novel and an eminent classic in its own right. You can think of it as the late Ming answer to Lolita : artful in its execution, perverse and learned in its tone.

The Plum in the Golden Vase shines a spotlight (or a blacklight) on a minor figure from The Water Margin , the adventuresome ancestor of Chinese martial arts fiction. This, however, is a very different novel: light on honor among thieves and heavy on steamy social satire, its characters are much more likely to die by aphrodisiac poisoning than by the sword. The fabulously wealthy, fatally dissolute merchant Ximen Qing shares his bed with a rotating cast of six lovers — and counting. Needless to say, his appetites don’t always make for the most…  harmonious of households. As the novel tracks his social life with savage wit, the women around him take center stage, in all their cruel, bawdy complexity. 

24. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1615)

Part two of the novel introduces an impostor — a writer who pretends to be Don Quixote the knight and publishes recounts of his imaginary adventures. As the metafiction develops, the lines and meanings of imagination and reality blurs even more, leaving only one thing crystal clear: Cervantes’ mastery of the art of storytelling. 

25. The Imposter by Molière (1644)

The Imposter is a satirical play that stars Tartuffe, a pious and well-respected man who has won the love and adoration of Orgon, the head of a well-to-do family. As Tartuffe wines and dines with this family, it quickly comes to light that Tartuffe is not who he pretends to be; that behind his facade of civility is an array of selfish intentions. As the story goes on, Orgon’s family make many attempts to reveal Tartuffe’s true nature.

In a time when religiousness was never a quality not deserving of respect, the preachy and pretentious character of Tartuffe was so well-crafted that his name came to mean “hypocrite” in contemporary French. Molière also faced backlash from the Church and Christain community at the time, but his brilliance as a playwright refuses to be disregarded, and his play stands as a literary classic. 

Literature in the modern age

26. robinson crusoe by daniel defoe (1719).

In a rebellious act that has inspired the wanderlust of many, Robinson Crusoe denies the stability of life in England to travel the world. Thankfully, his colonial adventures feature encounters foreign to modern travellers: slave trades, cannibalism, and shipwrecks on foreign islands. Through this flurry of events, Crusoe comes to appreciate his own upbringing and culture more.

First published under the pseudonym Robinson Crusoe, Defoe’s vivid narration fooled many of its contemporary readers into thinking it was a travel memoir, which back then was a very popular genre. Defoe’s creativity marks this stunning novel as a trailblazer for adventure fiction .

27. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

28. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Widely considered to be one of the earliest English comic novels, Tom Jones is also an elaborate bildungsroman detailing the upbringing of the titular Tom. Born to an unwed mother and raised by the kindhearted squire Allworthy, Tom grows into a spirited but similarly compassionate young man, eventually falling in love with a neighboring squire’s daughter, Sophia. But after being foiled by a rival for her affections, Tom sets off on a series of adventures through England that are equal parts thrilling and purely comical, from accidental encounters with both of his alleged parents to a very Oscar Wilde-esque ending (though of course, Fielding preceded Wilde by 150 years!) wherein his true parentage is revealed at last.

29. Candide by Voltaire (1759)

As a boy, Candide was taught that everything in the world happens for a reason: that things good and bad serve their purpose in the grand scheme of it all. But as he ventures out into the world and comes face to face with hardships and sufferings, Candide begins to wonder if this optimistic philosophy is a manifestation of ignorance and indifference. 

Underneath this coming-of-age story is Voltaire’s brave effort to hold a mirror up to society, and make it examine its flaws. Hardly any author in his time dared to oppose the accepted virtues of the educated class  — Voltaire even refused to take credit for this masterpiece until years after the publication — and none did it with as much wit and passion as Voltaire did. 

30. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (c. 1767)

31. Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791) 

One of the longest and most treasured classics of Chinese literature, Dream of the Red Chamber centers around the life and loves of Jia Baoyu — heir of one of the most powerful families in the land. As with every dynastic family, there will always come a decline. And the Jias’ final days seem to be around the corner, as the political arena shifts and its heir appears bent on listening to his heart rather than his parents. 

From battles of the matriarchs, to noble garden parties and corrupt murder trials, this tale unravels the deepest and darkest corners of Chinese high society in the time of the Qing dynasty — all inspired by the author’s own prestigious upbringing. Dream of the Red Chamber ’s fame as a pillar of Chinese fiction extends far beyond its culture, astounding readers throughout the world with its thematic depth and allegorical intricacies. 

32. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

You are probably familiar with Pride and Prejudice , the love story of the bright and beautiful Elizabeth Bennet and the stoic and aristocratic Mr. Darcy. If you read it when you were younger, it perhaps presented itself as a mere love story set in Regency England. But of course, that barely scratches the surface of all the book holds. Austen had gracefully weaved snarky commentary about wealth, social class, and individuality into the narrative. Austen’s attention to detail and her wonderful wit ultimately show how thought-provoking and entertaining a story can become if it falls into the hands of the right author. 

33. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

34. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott (1819)

Often credited with renewing modern interest in the medieval period and its “romantic” culture, Ivanhoe tracks the adventures of its eponymous hero, who is disinherited by his Anglo-Saxon father for his allegiance to Richard the Lionheart. Undeterred, Ivanhoe accompanies his king on the Crusades as tensions mount back in England — and this is only the beginning of a rollicking ride full of trials and tournaments, secret identities and stormed castles, hard-won loves and loyalties, and much more. Coupling nineteenth-century sensibilities and style with a story that could otherwise have come straight from the quill of Chrétien de Troyes, Ivanhoe is a historical masterpiece that will enthrall fans of action, politics, and chivalric romance alike.

35. Faust by Goethe (1832)

We’ve all heard the phrase “a deal with the devil” — or, if you’re sufficiently literary, “a Faustian bargain.” The notion of a cursed contract did indeed originate with Faust, and was immortalized in this play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (though the story has much earlier roots). Goethe’s Faust, as he’s referred to, is a voracious scholar who desires to learn and achieve all that is possible in the human realm — yet suffers for the knowledge that he cannot. As another axiom goes, be careful what you wish for; Mephistopheles then appears to Faust, offering him all the worldly knowledge and pleasures that he can imagine, in exchange for Faust’s service in hell after death. Famously signing the contract in his own blood, Faust agrees… but how will their pact actually unfold? You’ll have to read this mesmerizing play to find out.

36. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)

37. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Arguably the first ever female bildungsroman, Jane Eyre is the story of a frail orphan girl who grows into a highly principled young woman. After a difficult childhood, Jane’s luck takes a turn when she’s employed by the wealthy and mysterious Edward Rochester, whose company she comes to enjoy a great deal. But just as Jane and Rochester become engaged to be married, increasingly frequent and disturbing occurrences take a toll on their relationship, and the revelation of a shocking secret forces Jane to reevaluate everything she once believed. (But fear not, dear reader; for all its Gothic overtones, this novel is still a superb romance above all.)

38. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery (1848)

An incisive satirist, William Makepeace Thackery intended this book as both social commentary and a deconstruction of conventional literary heroism. Vanity Fair follows the intertwined lives of two women, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, as they forge their own paths in Regency society. Amelia is a sweet, simple girl who devotes herself to her husband, despite his flaws; Becky is a savvy social climber who uses her feminine wiles to further her personal interests, even after she is married. The stark contrast between them serves not so much to ridicule the characters, however, as to criticize the society that would make respectability so impossible — and to point out the rife ignorance, hypocrisy, and opportunism even in supposedly upper-class circles.

39. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

40. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

“I hate metaphors. That’s why my favorite book is Moby-Dick .” Of course, anyone who’s actually read Moby-Dick will recognize the irony of this Ron Swanson quote — not only is the book packed with symbolism, but Melville’s prose is wonderfully ornate (albeit a little too descriptive when he gets into cetology, the study of whales). The surface story of Moby-Dick is thus: our narrator, Ishmael, boards a whaling ship and quickly discovers its maimed captain is bent on a mission of revenge. The captain, Ahab, spends the next three years searching for the white whale, Moby-Dick, unable to shake his convictions even as he and his crew start to unravel. A timeless tale of delusion and destruction, Moby-Dick does a particularly good job of juxtaposing the gritty everyday realities of whaling with the philosophical allegory of Ahab’s pursuit.

41. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862)

Though a 1,500-page tome promising certain misery might sound like an untenable read, we implore you to tackle this brick of a book for Victor Hugo’s glorious and masterful depiction of politics and the inherent tragedy of the human condition. The plot incites, as many likely know, with the peasant Jean Valjean stealing bread to feed his family and being imprisoned for 19 years. Upon his release, he remakes himself as an honest businessman, eventually growing wealthy and even rescuing a young girl, Cosette, from her abusive caretakers the Thénardiers.

All this occurs on the brink of Paris’s June Rebellion of 1832, a cause for which a young revolutionary named Marius risks his life. This event unexpectedly and movingly brings together a number of figures from the rest of the book… which is honestly impossible to explain in a mere synopsis. Just know this: for all the astonishing beauty and gut-wrenching emotion of the musical, Hugo’s source material makes it look like a joke on a candy bar wrapper. If you’re interested in a truly transcendent portrayal of humanity and history (and have enough time on your hands to fully appreciate it), please read Les Misérables .

42. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

43. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)

What is the true nature of man? According to Dostoyevsky, the answer might be “dark and twisted, yet still plagued by his conscience.” This is the tragic combination that befalls Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished young man who believes that he can rob and murder an elderly pawnbroker without any psychological consequences… only to botch the job and immediately begin agonizing over it (the “punishment” to which the title refers). As Raskolnikov descends further into madness and misery, he grapples with whether to turn himself in, especially with a policeman on his tail and his mother and sister’s reputations at risk. This classic tale of morality, mentality, and social values aptly criticizes the then-prominent notions of nihilism and egoism, while also making profound statements about what it means to be human.

44. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Such is stated the first of many contentious issues addressed in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina , considered by many to be the greatest and best book of all time. The plot revolves around a tumultuous affair between the high-society Anna and cavalry officer Vronsky, with a parallel narrative detailing the religious and ethical quandaries of country landowner Levin. But even as these characters’ lives become increasingly intertwined, and their circumstances increasingly desperate — especially for Anna, whose fate has become a well-known literary reference point — this novel is so much more than an 800-page soap opera. Tolstoy’s exploration of relationships, family, sin, virtue, and the cultural contrast between city and country produces incredibly nuanced and brilliant ideas, many of which are still relevant today.

45. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)

46. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

If you’ve ever heard someone referred to as “a real Jekyll and Hyde character,” you probably know this story has something to do with the duality of man… but what you may not know is how this duality comes to be. In Stevenson’s gothic novella , it’s the result of the scientific Dr. Jekyll’s attempts to indulge in his vices undetected — specifically, by drinking a potion that transforms him into the horrific Mr. Hyde. But the more frequently Jekyll yields to his alter-ego, the more powerful Hyde becomes, until even Jekyll cannot control him. The ensuing tale is both a thrilling feat of supernatural horror and a potent allegory that warns against giving into one’s dark side, even occasionally, for fear that one may never escape its compulsions.

47. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Long before Twilight and True Blood, vampires were no cause for swooning — or rather, they were, but in a manner more alarming than amorous. This is the iteration of vampires introduced by Bram Stoker’s genre-defining Dracula , an epistolary novel that traces the history and horrific deeds of the one and only Count Dracula. As more humans come into contact with Dracula, they start to understand what he is, and that he aims to infect and drink the blood of as many people as possible. Only Abraham van Helsing, a professor and bona fide vampire expert, has the power to stop him — and aided by his intrepid cohorts, that’s exactly what they set out to do.

48. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

49. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad (1904)

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said of this book, "I'd rather have written Nostromo than any other novel.” The story commences with the titular Nostromo, an Italian seaman, transporting a wealth of silver so that it cannot corrupt the local affairs of Sulaco (a port city in a fictional Colombia-like country). But when Nostromo’s ship is compromised, he stashes the silver on a nearby island, leading everyone to believe it was lost at sea. What follows is an incredibly affecting account of Nostromo’s increasing disillusionment and paranoia, as he realizes that other men see him as a pawn and grows obsessed with his hoarded silver. If you loved The Great Gatsby , but wanted it to be even darker and more geopolitical — as Fitzgerald apparently did — you’ll devour Nostromo faster than you can say “quicksilver.”

50. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)

The third of his published novels, Sons and Lovers brought D.H. Lawrence a new level of success and acclaim. It also established his reputation for bucking social mores — a talent which would eventually see him indicted for obscenity. Drawing from the author’s working-class upbringing, the book tells the story of Paul Morel, the son of an abusive father and a beloved mother. Escaping the trappings of the mining town where he grew up, Paul leaves for London and begins climbing the social ladder, even finding romance. But as the book’s title suggests, his attempts to separate his emotional identities of son and lover are futile, especially as his mother’s once-treasured affection poisons Paul against other women.

51. The Trial by Franz Kafka (1915)

52. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (1915)

A wrenching, partially autobiographical account of the author’s own life, Of Human Bondage follows young Englishman Philip Carey in his quest to find meaning and love. Traumatized by the deaths of his parents, Philip struggles throughout his childhood; in later years, he rebels and pursues art instead of attending Oxford, but eventually returns to England for medical school. It is there that he meets his femme fatale, Mildred Rogers, who will break his heart over and over as Philip flits from job to job. But this sorrowful tale has a surprisingly uplifting ending, containing a powerful message about the bonds of society and expectations and how we can shed them by taking life one day at a time.

53. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

With this book, Ford Madox Ford reinvigorated two crucial narrative elements that would go on to become huge parts of modern literature: flashbacks and the unreliable narrator. Basically, he was the original Gillian Flynn — a comparison that seems even more apt upon knowing the plot of The Good Soldier . It consists of domestic drama between two seemingly perfect couples: John and Florence Dowell, and Leonora and Edward Ashburnham. Edward, the soldier, seems committed to Leonora, but in truth she manipulates and controls him; Edward, meanwhile, is actually having an affair with Florence. John, the narrator, gravely recounts the deterioration of both marriages and the tragic repercussions of their repressive Edwardian era… but also, all is not as it seems, and what’s on the page is seen in a whole new light by the book’s end.

54. The Real Story of Ah-Q by Lu Xun (c. 1920)

Accompanying The Real Story of Ah-Q in this collection are short stories just as poignant and impactful. Lu Xun’s unconventional view of development and his ability to flesh out nuances from simple plots makes his stories bleakly insightful.  

55. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

Newland Archer — one of 1900s New York’s most eligible bachelors, with his upper-crust background and his established career as a lawyer — has been looking for a beautiful, traditional wife, and it appears May Welland is just the girl. She also grew up in high society, understands etiquette, and fits perfectly into his picture-perfect family. And yet, it is May’s cousin, Ellen Olenska — a dynamic character returning from her failed marriage in Europe — who catches Newland’s attention. The Age of Innocence follows Newland and his unprecedented dilemma between the two women — and by extension his struggle between upholding the prestige of old money, and seeking the real value behind the labels of social class. 

56. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

If you are only going to read one book from this elephantine list, it should be James Joyce’s literary jewel Ulysses . The tale mirrors that of Homer’s the Odyssey (hence the title), only this time, it’s set entirely during one of Leopold Bloom’s days in Dublin. A cast of characters — namely Bloom’s friends and wife — make up others who draw comparisons to the mythical ones in the Odyssey. While Joyce’s ability to bring a literary classic and its themes into modernity is astounding, the true beauty of this action-packed novel is its writing. Scattered across his paragraphs are intertwining perspectives and puzzles enamelled with pun and alliterations. Joyce’s illustration of the human mind, its processes, and its guardians is impeccable and unmatchable. 

57. A Passage to India by E. M. Foster (1924)

58. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Is it possible to now think of the Roaring Twenties and not think of The Great Gatsby ? Fitzgerald’s magnum opus has been adapted to the big screen numerous times, and its “green light at the end of the dock” symbolism is perhaps too well-known to all of us. But let’s still go through a quick summary: Nick Carraway moves to West Egg in Long Island and learns about his new, mysteriously well-to-do neighbor, Jay Gastby. Through endless house parties, Nick comes to know this man, his odd past, and his tragic love story with the lady of East Egg, Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald’s tale of sightless dream-chasing is the epitome of something small and yet mighty: with his succinct prose, the extravagance of post-WWI America is stripped bare, revealing the heartlessness underneath it all. 

59. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

When Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, she had no idea what a momentous day was in store for her — though of course, much of this book’s momentousness must be attributed to Virginia Woolf’s brilliant prose. But even besides the writing, it’s a fantastic little slice-of-life story: Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class, middle-aged woman in London, decides to host a party for her fellow society people, and spends most of the day prepping for said party. But what would have been a mundane tale in the hands of a less thoughtful author becomes remarkable in Woolf’s, her stream-of-consciousness narrative shifting ever so subtly between past and present, and rendering Clarissa’s emotions with unprecedented vibrancy.

60. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

61. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (c. 1927)

Composed of seven volumes written throughout a decade, In Search of Lost Time is a long novel detailing the development of the unnamed narrator from childhood to adulthood and his struggles to define himself. Said protagonist desires to be an author but is unsure of how to get there, he is seeing his relationships with his family in a new light while he’s discovering new connections with others. Memory is a recurring theme in this novel, especially the involuntary ones, whereby Proust shows how little details can trigger an outpour of thoughts and emotions. His impressive narrative revolutionized the way novels are written — Proust’s emphasis lies not in creating an airtight and sensational plot, but in exploring with astonishing depth the emotional experiences and development of his protagonist. 

62. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)

This classic Southern gothic novel might seem like a typical family saga, but its grim conditions and dark twists are unlike those of other tales. The story of The Sound and the Fury proceeds as follows: the Compson family are disgraced former aristocrats attempting to adapt now that they’ve lost their money, religion, and elevated reputation. Unfortunately, the four children of the Compson family perpetuate its fatal flaws of greed, selfishness, and outdated values and ideas about the world at large. As the story shifts among them, as well as back and forth in time, it becomes clear that the Compsons are beyond repair — but nevertheless, they continue to press on. With a tragic story on par with Macbeth (from which the book takes its title) and Faulkner’s revolutionary prose, it’s no wonder this story still looms so large in American literature.

63. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

64. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)

When it comes to historical novels, none is as well-celebrated as Robert Graves’s story of the Roman emperor, Claudius. Written in the first person perspective, this novel feigns an autobiography written by the nervous leader. Claudius is unlike his predecessors — he critically examined theirs and the corrupt system’s failures, exposing all the dramatic intrigue and high politics of this lauded empire to the world. He himself is spun into this entangled battle for the throne, although perhaps less willingly that his opponents. If you enjoy the political battles of Game of Thrones , you’ll without a doubt enjoy this novel , which would not only provide you with a good bit of entertainment, but also introduce to you the intricate structures of Roman civilization. 

65. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

Miller’s sombre novel was not well-received when it was first published — in fact it was banned in the US and not published until the late 1960s, decades after its conception. The basic storyline is simple — it’s a blend of Miller’s memories as a struggling writer in Paris, and fictional elements that he added. Miller focused on his feelings and perceptions, propelling the stream-of-consciousness style of writing that was gaining popularity among writers of the time. What made the book so controversial was its featuring of sexuality, which, along with descriptions of the desperation, the poverty, and the grief present in the lives of those without a clear sense of direction, is part of Miller’s candor. If a book can hold the soul of a writer, perhaps none is as potent as Tropic of Cancer . 

66. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936) 

67. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

The controversial author of Brideshead Revisited , Evelyn Waugh also wrote this rip-roaring satire that made waves when it was published in 1938. This time, Waugh’s target is the media, particularly the newspaper industry. As a promising little civil war erupts in the African Republic of Ishmaelia, Lord Copper sends his reporter in the continent to cover it — to hilarious consequences. Wickedly funny and not at all politically correct as it skewers Fleet Street and its overeager occupants, Scoop is a comedy that will never be old news. 

68. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939) 

First, there were ten who arrived on the island. Among the guests of the house in And Then There Were None were Mrs. Rogers, a homely cook; Anthony Marston, a handsome and irresponsible young man; Emily Caroline Brent, an old and religious spinster; Dr. Armstrong, a Harley Street doctor; and Philip Lombard, a soldier with money. Strangers to one another, they nevertheless shared one similarity: they had all murdered in the past. And when people begin dropping like flies and their numbers begin to thin on the island, they begin to suspect that they are the ones being murdered. But who is the murderer in their midst? That’s the question that will leave your head spinning in this timeless example of a mystery novel done right by no other than the Queen of Mystery herself.

Contemporary literature

69. native son by richard wright (1940).

70. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)

Carson McCullers’ debut novel — written when she was only 23! — was an instant classic when it was published. The author’s sheer prodigiousness is astonishing enough, but it is the rich wisdom and gentle insight that makes The Heart is a Lonely Hunter truly remarkable. You’ll probably never meet a protagonist quite as memorable as John Singer, a deaf and nonverbal man who sits in the same café every day. Here, in the deep American South of the 1930s, John meets an assortment of people: the café owner, Biff Brannon; Mick Kelly, a young girl who wants nothing more than to play music; Jake Blount, a desperate alcoholic; and Dr. Copeland, a frustrated and idealistic black doctor. 

John is the silent, kind keeper of their stories — right up until an unforgettable ending that will blow you away, placing The Heart is a Lonely Hunter squarely beside such southern classics as Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird. 

71. The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)

Albert Camus’ own summary of The Stranger is perhaps the best way to describe this iconic book: “I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: ‘In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.’ I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.” And so The Stranger duly opens with Meursault, our hero, learning of the death of his mother. From this point onward, the reader is led in a strange dance of absurdism and existentialism that makes Meursault confront something even crueler than mortality: society’s expectations. 

72. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (1948)

73. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

Big Brother is watching you: both the governmental slogan that has become synonymous with this iconic novel, and the eerie sense you’ll get as you’re reading it. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a landmark work in the dystopian genre for its affecting portrayal of a totalitarian state that strictly controls and surveils its citizens — though of course, few are content with such an existence. Our narrator, Winston Smith, is one such citizen; employed by the “Ministry of Truth” (which actually serves the opposite cause), Winston fully grasps the corruption of the government, yet feels powerless to stop it. Yet what’s most compelling about this book isn’t Winston’s individual experience, but the exceptional detail and social commentary Orwell injects into the story — potently warning readers of a reality that could all too easily come to pass.

74. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)

One of the most iconic coming-of-age novels in literature, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is still a must-read today — and Holden Caulfield is still one of the most recognizable protagonists ever. Told from Holden’s point of view, this classic at first seems like a simple tale about a boy wandering the streets of New York with no plan in mind and nothing to do. Yet any reader who digs deeper will encounter a cry of teenage disillusionment — not to mention a moving story that confronts the reality of growing up. 

75. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) 

76. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952) 

One of the perennial staples on “Books You Must Read Before You Die” lists, and possibly the best of John Steinbeck's books , East of Eden fully deserves its acclaimed place in American literature today. A family saga that spans generations, it follows two families — the Trasks and the Hamiltons — whose fates desperately entwine in the wild American West. It’s also a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis — particularly the fabled and tragic story of Cain and Abel. Ambitiously epic and thought-provoking, East of Eden is simply Steinbeck at his masterful, astonishing best. 

77. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

Firemen mean something different in Guy Montag’s world: they start fires. And (every bookworm out there, cover your eyes now) books are the illegal, radical property to be burned. As one such fireman, Guy is in charge of destroying every book remaining… until a series of events occurs in rapid succession, making Guy question the job for the first time. This is one of the most famous books ever written — a revolutionary and fiery work about the cost of censoring knowledge and the beauty of the written world. Just don’t read it next to your stove, because what’s the temperature at which books burn? Well, Fahrenheit 451 . 

78. In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming (1953)

Don’t walk into it expecting a straightforward story: Lammings’ style could be termed impressionistic, and he narrates many of his personal anecdotes and vignettes from the perspective of others. But this experimental effect is often dazzling, and it’s made In the Castle of My Skin one of the most important works of postcolonial literature in history. 

79. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) 

Though William Golding’s Lord of the Flies wasn’t initially well-received and sold poorly, Golding had the last laugh: Lord of the Flies is today one of the must-read books in every school curriculum. Its story about a group of schoolboys who have crashed on a lonely island is enduring not only for its shocking plot developments, but also the way that it reveals the truths of human nature at our basest. Today, it remains one of the most terrifying depictions of how quickly a society can fail — and a reminder of the fragility of the systems that we build to reassure ourselves. 

80. Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (c .1955) 

Lord of the Rings may be one of the most influential series ever written — not least for the way that it basically created the modern fantasy genre as we know it. The towering shadow that J.R.R. Tolkien cast over all fantasy books that followed in its path aside, Lord of the Rings should be read simply because it’s a rollicking good story. So if you also fall under the spell of Middle-Earth as you venture into Mordor with Frodo and his companions, don’t fear: there’s still a prequel ( The Hobbit ) and an origin story ( The Silmarillion ) to go. 

81. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

82. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

On the Road is the example of a good book that didn’t take years and years to produce: Jack Kerouac wrote it all in a mad three-week period in 1951. Decades later, it is regarded as a classic of the postwar Beat movement that captures the heart and soul of an entire generation. You’ll meet Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty: alter egos for Kerouac himself and his friend, Neal Cassady — On the Road is, at its heart, a semi-autobiographical account of Kerouac’s own travels across America. From New York to San Francisco, Sal and Dean tear through the streets  to a jazz rhythm all their own. Do they have any inkling of what they’re going to do with their lives? Heck no — but that’s the charm of On the Road , which will speak to the wanderlust in you, as it has done to millions of other readers since 1957.

83. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) 

As the name of the novel suggests, protagonist Okonkwo might’ve had a good start in his youth as wrestling champion of his clan, but horrid things are waiting on the horizon for him. As he climbs to the top of the social hierarchy, Okonkwo faces tough decisions between his pride and his morality. Things become complicated as white men come in and begin tearing apart the fabric of his society. 

Things Fall Apart is a modern African classic: it’s poignant, nuanced, and moving. Okonkwo is not different from ancient literary heroes — he has virtues, he has gods to please, and he has obstacles to overcome. That’s a thought many wouldn’t have about Africans in the 50s and 60s, and Achebe was amongst the first writers who sought to challenge this. 

84. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Set in rural Alabama, this book centers around Scout as her father, Atticus Finch, takes on an important trial. He’s been tasked with defending a black man falsely accused of sexually assaulting a white woman — not an easy case in the South in the 30s. Scout’s innocence may have been shaken by these events, but she comes to ground herself watching Atticus’s passionate defense, something that continues to inspire lawyers to this day. 

85. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) 

Although it takes place in World War II (and was loosely based on Heller’s own experiences), Catch-22 was actually a reaction to the Korean war and McCarthyism. This iconic satire follows Captain Yossarian, a bombardier who, along with his fellow service people, is attempting to navigate the absurdities of war in order to fulfill their service requirements so they can be sent home. Told in a non-linear, third person omniscient with plenty of anachronisms, it can seem a bit much to follow at first, but we promise it’s well worth the effort. This novel has been a staple of anti-war literature for decades, and with its perfectly tuned wit and wisdom, it’s not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.

86. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)

It’s tempting to describe The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as gender-bent Dead Poets Society , but that would be doing Jean Brodie a disservice — she predated the Robin Williams film by nearly three decades! Still, the comparison isn’t a bad one: set in Edinburgh during the 1920s and 30s, the novel explores what happens when a young teacher decides to take an active and unconventional interest in the futures of six of her students. Told through the eyes of these students, and full of tantalizing flashforwards, this book is a complicated, nuanced portrayal of mentorship and coming of age.

87. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)

88. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Following in the chilling tradition set by 1984 and A Brave New World, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange is its own terrifying vision of the future. In Anthony Burgess’ dystopia, the world is overrun by juvenile delinquents and ultra-violent gangs in the city. Anarchy reigns on any given day, but when Alex — a sociopathic “droog” who nevertheless longs for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony— is captured and taken in by the authorities, he’ll have to confront what free will really means to him, and what he’d give up himself to keep it. 

89. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)

Written at the height of Stalin’s regime, The Master and Margarita is a daring, defiant satire that weaves together the spiritual and the supernatural to create a fantasy world at once chillingly real and utterly unique.

The story begins with the Devil arriving in atheistic Soviet Moscow, though the plot is split between those events and another thread taking place in ancient Jerusalem. As if that wasn’t surreal enough, there’s also a walking, talking black cat in league with the Devil, causing all sorts of trouble. This novel is a vivid portrait of life under Soviet regime, and an important reminder of the need for unfettered artistic expression.

90. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967)

What follows is a gripping account of both the investigation as well as the impacts this event has upon the fate of the college itself. It’s a fascinating look into the impact that tragedy can have on ordinary circumstances, and a mystery that will leave you aching for answers that will never come.

91. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967) 

In this surrealist tale, José Arcadio Buendía flees his city with his wife after committing murder, and is now seeking refuge. Rather than finding life in a new city, he decides to found his own utopia — Macondo. This little town functions in its own odd way, separate from the rest of the world, save for a few interactions via a band of gypsies. But solitude doesn’t necessarily mean peace, as José’s descendants would discover, and neither can that solitude remain forever… 

One Hundred Years of Solitude is an outstanding blend of the fantastical and the real. Marquez’s prose will take you on a magical and sensational journey to discover the complex political developments of Latin America .

92. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974) 

In this rendition of reality, Earth is at war with the alien-kind called Taurans. In preparation for this drawn out conflict, William Mandella is drafted and enters a rigorous training program, starting first on Earth and then later on a foreign planet. Mandella hopes to survive the training and the war to return to his family, but his life will never be the same again, whether because of the time dilation between the planets, or because of the new lens that he will see life through, after participating in a lengthy and pointless war. 

Hats off to Haldeman for his creativity: he spectacularly spun his experiences as a drafted soldier in the Vietnam war into the moving interstellar story of The Forever War . 

93. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1978) 

94. So Long A Letter by Mariama Ba (1979)

So Long A Letter is a book of letters written by a Senegalese widow, Ramatoulaye Fall, to her friend during the time — four months and ten day, to be exact, as dictated by her religion and tradition — that she mourns her husband. As she explores her own emotions, Ramatoulaye reveals the complexities of the polygamous society that she lived in. Personal, raw, and unexpectedly relatable, this elegant novella extends beyond the illustration of the plight of women in 20th century Africa; Ramatoulaye’s sentiments and wonders are felt by all women. 

95. Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath (1981) 

Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems collates 274 pieces that she wrote from 1956 to the time of her death. Her poetry is intense and personal; in her writing she explored her relationships with her family and the state of her mentality. At a time where depression and bipolar disorder is hardly talked about as serious conditions, Plath’s verses bring ringing clarity to the detrimental effects that they may have on a person’s life. If you are a lover of poems , if you want to be moved by powerful, intricate images, then you will not want to miss out on this collection of poems. 

96. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

Using magical realism as a way to make the notion of common identity more tangible, Rushdie’s novel provides a fascinating inroad into the transition into modernity of a culture that has existed for many centuries. 

97. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

Set in early 1900s Georgia, The Color Purple is a striking story about the debilitating conditions of black women during the years of intense segregation. Celie and Nettie grew up in a broken household, and have long been separated and are living disparate lives. Despite the distance between them, they seek solace in one another through letters, and support each other through the abuses of domestic life and social tensions that they undergo as African American women. 

The Color Purple deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Walker’s refusal to shy away from the difficult issues of violence and sexual abuse — problems that she presented from the perspective of the victims in the rawest and most powerful form available.

98. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (1984)

In this philosophical novel, readers follow the “light” life of surgeon and womanizer Tomas. He lives to enjoy himself as much as possible because he believes his experience is a one-time and completely unique thing. In stark contrast to that is the perspective of Tereza, his wife, who’s a photographer who is faithful and puts “weight” on her every decision. Through the couple's struggles to harmonize themselves, with 1960s Czechoslovakia’s internal turmoil rife in the background, The Unbearable Lightness of Being reflects the intellectual rediscovery and transition into postmodernity that Eastern Europe at that historic time. 

99. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) 

It follows Sethe, a woman who escaped slavery by fleeing to Ohio eighteen years before the novel starts. Still, “Sweet Home,” the picturesque farm that was the scene of her many living nightmares, continues to haunt her. And it’s not the only shadow casted over her life. Sethe’s home is also haunted by the ghost of her baby whose tombstone displays a lone word: Beloved.

Beloved is a suspenseful, heartbreaking, and intimate story. It deserves a spot on all “best books of all time” lists for the way it stands as a monument to the “Sixty Million and More,” as the book’s dedication reads, who lost their lives to the Atlantic slave trade.

100. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Nobel Prize-winning author, and The Remains of the Day is a Man Booker Prize winner with a film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and which received eight Oscar nominations. No big deal, right?

Ishiguro’s impressive novel centres on Stevens, a butler who’s spent most of his life in service at Darlington Hall, a stately home near Oxford, England. When Stevens receives a letter from an old colleague who now lives in Cornwall, he decides to set out on a motoring trip through the West Country to visit her. Along the way, he reflects on England’s past, his own past, and his long-standing career serving Lord Darlington.

101. Angels in America by Tony Kushner (1991)

Angels in America is a two-part play and exploration of homosexuality and the AIDS crisis in America in the 1980s. The plays can be presented together or separately, and have been adapted for Broadway and as an HBO miniseries. 

The story starts with a gay couple living in Manhattan — Prior and Louis. When Louis discovers that Prior has AIDS, he finds himself unable to cope. He leaves Prior to have an affair with Joe, a Mormon, Republican clerk whose valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife is desperate to save their marriage. Several other storylines blossom as the play unfolds, many of which intersect and involve angels and ghosts.

If you need any more convincing of the power behind Kushner’s work, John M. Clum, a playwright and professor of theatre studies has called Angels in America , "A turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture.” 

102. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

The six protagonists of The Secret History are a group of Classics students studying at a small, elite college in Vermont. Under the guidance of their favorite professor, the students begin to collectively challenge the norms of academia and society as a whole, questioning the way they’ve been taught to see the world. They blur the lines between good and evil, looking for the morally grey around them. But as they start to push the boundaries they’ve always known, their own moral compasses begin to veer, and unspeakable acts follow.

103. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1995) 

It’s 1975, and India has just declared a State of Emergency. In the midst of this bleak upheaval and political turmoil, the fates of four unlikely strangers intertwine: a courageous widow, a young, uprooted student, and two sailors who have escaped the violence of their native village — who all end up living in one, small apartment as they contend with their uncertain futures.

Just as the title suggests, A Fine Balance does a wonderful job paralleling the realism of the testing, cruel, and corrupt circumstances with compassion, humor, and insight into the power of love and friendship.

104. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (1996)

Written by Canadian poet Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is a two-part novel that begins with an absolutely heart wrenching image: the war has just swept through a Polish city where seven-year old Jakob Beer’s family has just been murdered. The only reason he has survived is because he buried himself under mud until the coast was clear. A Greek geologist eventually comes across Jakob and rescues him — but the man doesn’t actually realize that Jakob is a human until the boy begins to weep.

The first part of the book continues to follow Jakob as he becomes a traveling artist, while the second explores different facets of WWII’s repercussions: it centers around Ben, a Canadian professor whose parents both survived the Holocaust. 

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award, and Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award, Fugitive Pieces depicts tough subject matters with captivating elements of mystery and evocative prose. 

105. The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy (1999)

The World’s Wife is a modern, feminist reflection on many of history’s most well-known figures. Or rather, the great women behind those historical figures. From Mrs. Darwin to Queen Kong and Mrs. Midas, the counterparts of famous men are finally getting their day in the sun! 

Take it from publisher Pan Macmillan: “Original, subversive, full of imagination and quicksilver wit, The World's Wife is Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at her beguiling best.”

106. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories, and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

From marriage problems to the peculiar experience of returning to a home you hardly remember, these stories provide a window into the culturally complex lives of first and second generation immigrants. The thread that weaves the story together is that of adaptation: they portray the lives of Indians and Indian Americans striving to find a connection between their roots and the “new world.”In the title short story, an Indian American family tours the India of their ancestors, accompanied by an interpreter who gets an unexpected insight into the family’s life. 

107. Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001) 

On a hot summer day in post-World War Two England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses — and misinterprets — a private moment between her older sister Cecilia, and the son of their housekeeper, Robbie Turner. But with the precocious confidence of a young storyteller, Briony begins to weave what she believes she saw into fantasies that have long-lasting and rippling effects on her family. Told in three parts — the latter two during the Second World War and present-day England — Atonement is a brilliant and provocative reflection on the nature of writing itself.

108. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002) 

The even-numbered chapters are about an aging war-vet called Nakata, who has an uncanny ability to find lost cats. One of his searches leads him out onto the road for the first time.

Both odysseys are vividly mysterious, and populated with imaginative accomplices and unexpected encounters that are characteristic of Murakami’s distinct and bizarre style .

109. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (2003) 

15 year-old Christopher John Francis Boone hates the color yellow and being touched by others. In fact, he’d much rather spend his time around animals and avoid complicated human emotions. He can also fire off all the countries of the world, their capitals, and every prime number up to 7,057. He thrives on logic, patterns, and carefully laid out rules. 

One day, in an unexpected turn of events, his neighbor’s dog dies. While Christopher is not a fan of plot twists, he decides to take a leaf out of his favorite, deerstalker-wearing detective’s book, and to solve — you guessed it — The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time .

110. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003) 

Set against a backdrop of chaos and tumult — such as the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime — this story details the unlikely friendship between Amir, the son of a well-to-do-family, and Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant. 

A sweeping tale of family, love, and friendship, it’s not uncommon for someone to clutch their heart or take on a sombre expression when someone brings up The Kite Runner . It’s an emotionally devastating read that stays with you long after you’ve finished it.

111. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)

Zusak’s spectacular humanization of this ominous narrator emphasizes perfectly the inhumanity of war and discrimination in a never seen before lightm despite this commonly-used setting. 

112. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006) 

“Epic,” “ambitious,” “triumphant,” “masterful” are all adjectives that have widely been used to describe Half of a Yellow Sun — and for good reason! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s haunting (another adjective for you!) novel is dedicated to retelling a seminal moment in modern African history: the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s, and Biafra’s struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria. 

Readers are guided through this conflict from the perspectives of three main characters: 13 year-old Ugwu, a revolutionary-minded houseboy who works for a university professor; Olanna, a young woman who’s abandoned her cushy life in Lagos to take up a passionate affair with said university professor; and Richard, a shy Englishman who quietly falls in love with Olanna’s twin sister. 

As the war unfurls around them, Ugwa, Olanna, and Richard are all forced to flee for their lives, facing challenges and struggles that test their spirits, ideals, and trust for one another.

113. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)

Oscar Wao has big dreams: he wants to become the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien, and to fall in love. But the fukú curse stands in his way, as it has for generations of Waos, dooming his family to ill fates for centuries. 

Told from the perspective of multiple characters, and interspersed with plenty of fantasy and sci-fi references, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao manages to capture a number of themes with warmth and honesty — from heartbreak to loss, and most strikingly, the Domincan-American experience — earning it the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

114. The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (2009)

One takes place in the thirteenth century, detailing the experiences of Rumi when he first met Shams of Tabriz, his mentor.

The other story is set in present day, and is about Ella Rubenstein, an unhappily married woman who’s just landed a job as a reader for a literary agent. One of the books she’s tasked to read is about Shams of Tabriz’s search for Rumi, and the transformation of the latter from an unhappy cleric into a passionate advocate of love. Ella becomes fascinated by the book, and as she reads, she can’t help but feel as though this book landed in her hands for a reason... 

115. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

When performing King Lear on stage one night, a Hollywood actor drops dead. Shortly after, civilization begins to collapse. This event is the middleground of Station Eleven , as the book pendulates back and forth between the actor’s early years and a dystopian future in which the world as we know it has changed forever. 

Hauntingly real and spellbindingly imaginative, it charts a theatre troupe called the Traveling Symphony as they roam wastelands and attempt to hold onto what it means to be human.

If you’d rather look at the latest hits, check out the 21 best books written in this century . Also, you might find the Kindle Cloud Reader useful in helping you make a dent to your reading lists. 

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12 Novels Considered the “Greatest Book Ever Written”

Literary critics, historians, avid readers, and even casual readers will all have different opinions on which novel is truly the “greatest book ever written.” Is it a novel with beautiful, captivating figurative language? Or one with gritty realism? A novel that has had an immense social impact? Or one that has more subtly affected the world? Here is a list of 12 novels that, for various reasons, have been considered some of the greatest works of literature ever written.

Anna Karenina

Any fan of stories that involve juicy subjects like adultery, gambling, marriage plots, and, well, Russian feudalism, would instantly place Anna Karenina at the peak of their “greatest novels” list. And that’s exactly the ranking that publications like Time magazine have given the novel since it was published in its entirety in 1878. Written by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy , the eight-part towering work of fiction tells the story of two major characters: a tragic, disenchanted housewife, the titular Anna , who runs off with her young lover, and a lovestruck landowner named Konstantin Levin , who struggles in faith and philosophy. Tolstoy molds together thoughtful discussions on love, pain, and family in Russian society with a sizable cast of characters regarded for their realistic humanity. The novel was especially revolutionary in its treatment of women, depicting prejudices and social hardships of the time with vivid emotion.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee , believed to be one of the most influential authors to have ever existed, famously published only a single novel (up until its controversial sequel was published in 2015 just before her death). Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and became an immediate classic of literature. The novel examines racism in the American South through the innocent wide eyes of a clever young girl named Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch. Its iconic characters, most notably the sympathetic and just lawyer and father Atticus Finch, served as role models and changed perspectives in the United States at a time when tensions regarding race were high. To Kill a Mockingbird earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962 , giving the story and its characters further life and influence over the American social sphere.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald ’s The Great Gatsby is distinguished as one of the greatest texts for introducing students to the art of reading literature critically (which means you may have read it in school). The novel is told from the perspective of a young man named Nick Carraway who has recently moved to New York City and is befriended by his eccentric nouveau riche neighbor with mysterious origins, Jay Gatsby . The Great Gatsby provides an insider’s look into the Jazz Age of the 1920s in United States history while at the same time critiquing the idea of the “American Dream.” Perhaps the most famous aspect of the novel is its cover art—a piercing face projected onto a dark blue night sky and lights from a cityscape—an image that is also found, in a slightly different configuration, within the text itself as a key symbol.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The late Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez published his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude , in 1967. The novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and follows the establishment of their town Macondo until its destruction along with the last of the family’s descendents. In fantastical form, the novel explores the genre of magic realism by emphasizing the extraordinary nature of commonplace things while mystical things are shown to be common. Márquez highlights the prevalence and power of myth and folktale in relating history and Latin American culture. The novel won many awards for Márquez, leading the way to his eventual honor of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his entire body of work, of which One Hundred Years of Solitude is often lauded as his most triumphant.

A Passage to India

E.M. Forster wrote his novel A Passage to India after multiple trips to the country throughout his early life. The book was published in 1924 and follows a Muslim Indian doctor named Aziz and his relationships with an English professor, Cyril Fielding, and a visiting English schoolteacher named Adela Quested . When Adela believes that Aziz has assaulted her while on a trip to the Marabar caves near the fictional city of Chandrapore, where the story is set, tensions between the Indian community and the colonial British community rise. The possibility of friendship and connection between English and Indian people, despite their cultural differences and imperial tensions, is explored in the conflict. The novel’s colorful descriptions of nature, the landscape of India, and the figurative power that they are given within the text solidifies it as a great work of fiction.

Invisible Man

Often confused with H.G. Wells’s science-fiction novella of nearly the same name (just subtract a “The”), Ralph Ellison ’s Invisible Man is a groundbreaking novel in the expression of identity for the African American male. The narrator of the novel, a man who is never named but believes he is “invisible” to others socially, tells the story of his move from the South to college and then to New York City. In each location he faces extreme adversity and discrimination, falling into and out of work, relationships, and questionable social movements in a wayward and ethereal mindset. The novel is renowned for its surreal and experimental style of writing that explores the symbolism surrounding African American identity and culture. Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes ’s Don Quixote , perhaps the most influential and well-known work of Spanish literature, was first published in full in 1615. The novel, which is very regularly regarded as one of the best literary works of all time, tells the story of a man who takes the name “Don Quixote de la Mancha” and sets off in a fit of obsession over romantic novels about chivalry to revive the custom and become a hero himself. The character of Don Quixote has become an idol and somewhat of an archetypal character, influencing many major works of art, music, and literature since the novel’s publication. The text has been so influential that a word, quixotic , based on the Don Quixote character, was created to describe someone who is, “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals; especially: marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action.”

Toni Morrison ’s 1987 spiritual and haunting novel Beloved tells the story of an escaped slave named Sethe who has fled to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the year 1873. The novel investigates the trauma of slavery even after freedom has been gained, depicting Sethe’s guilt and emotional pain after having killed her own child, whom she named Beloved, to keep her from living life as a slave. A spectral figure appears in the lives of the characters and goes by the same name as the child, embodying the family’s anguish and hardship and making their feelings and past unavoidable. The novel was lauded for addressing the psychological effects of slavery and the importance of family and community in healing. Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.

Mrs. Dalloway

Possibly the most idiosyncratic novel of this list, Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway describes exactly one day in the life of a British socialite named Clarissa Dalloway. Using a combination of a third-person narration and the thoughts of various characters, the novel uses a stream-of-consciousness style all the way through. The result of this style is a deeply personal and revealing look into the characters’ minds, with the novel relying heavily on character rather than plot to tell its story. The thoughts of the characters include constant regrets and thoughts of the past, their struggles with mental illness and post-traumatic stress from World War I, and the effect of social pressures. The novel’s unique style, subject, and time setting make it one of the most respected and regarded works of all time.

Things Fall Apart

The Western canon of “great literature” often focuses on writers who come from North America or Europe and often ignores accomplished writers and amazing works of literature from other parts of the world. Chinua Achebe ’s Things Fall Apart , published in 1958, is one such work of Nigerian literature that had to overcome the bias of some literary circles and one that has been able to gain recognition worldwide despite it. The novel follows an Igbo man named Okonkwo, describing his family, the village in Nigeria where he lives, and the effects of British colonialism on his native country. The novel is an example of African postcolonial literature, a genre that has grown in size and recognition since the mid-1900s as African people have been able to share their often unheard stories of imperialism from the perspective of the colonized. The novel is frequently assigned for reading in courses on world literature and African studies.

Charlotte Brontë ’s Jane Eyre , another novel often assigned for reading in school, was initially published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell to disguise the fact that the writer was a woman. Fortunately, a lot has changed with regard to women in literature since 1847, and Brontë now receives the credit she deserves for one of the most groundbreaking novels about women in history. At a time when the author felt compelled to hide her true identity, Jane Eyre provided a story of individualism for women. The novel’s eponymous character rises from being orphaned and poor into a successful and independent woman. The work combines themes from both Gothic and Victorian literature, revolutionizing the art of the novel by focusing on the growth in Jane’s sensibility with internalized action and writing.

The Color Purple

Though the epistolary novel (a novel in the form of letters written by one or more characters) was most popular before the 19th century, Alice Walker became a champion of the style with her 1982 novel The Color Purple , which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award . Set in the post-Civil War American South, the novel follows a young African American girl named Celie into adulthood in letters she writes to God and to her sister Nettie. Celie faces sexual abuse by her father and eventually her husband, chronicling her own suffering and growth as well as that of her friends and family. The novel explores themes of sexism , racism , gender, sexual orientation, and disability through its grouping of disadvantaged and damaged characters who, over time, grow to shape their own lives. The story was adapted into an Academy Award -nominated film in 1985 that, despite widespread critical acclaim, was notoriously snubbed of all 11 awards it was nominated for.

All-TIME 100 Novels

Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME.

Making the List

• How We Picked the List
• The Adventures of Augie March
• All the King’s Men
• American Pastoral
• An American Tragedy
• Animal Farm
• Appointment in Samarra
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• The Assistant
• At Swim-Two-Birds
• The Berlin Stories
• The Big Sleep
• The Blind Assassin
• Blood Meridian
• Brideshead Revisited
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Call It Sleep
• The Catcher in the Rye
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Confessions of Nat Turner
• The Corrections
• The Crying of Lot 49
• A Dance to the Music of Time
• The Day of the Locust
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• A Death in the Family
• The Death of the Heart
• Deliverance
• Dog Soldiers
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman
• The Golden Notebook
• Go Tell it on the Mountain
• Gone With the Wind
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Gravity’s Rainbow
• The Great Gatsby
• A Handful of Dust
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
• The Heart of the Matter
• Housekeeping
• A House for Mr. Biswas
• I, Claudius
• Infinite Jest
• Invisible Man
• Light in August
• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
• Lord of the Flies
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Moviegoer
• The Man Who Loved Children
• Midnight’s Children
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Naked Lunch
• Neuromancer
• Never Let Me Go
• On the Road
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• The Painted Bird
• A Passage to India
• Play It As It Lays
• Portnoy’s Complaint
• The Power and the Glory
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Rabbit, Run
• The Recognitions
• Red Harvest
• Revolutionary Road
• The Sheltering Sky
• Slaughterhouse Five
• The Sot-Weed Factor
• The Sound and the Fury
• The Sportswriter
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
• The Sun Also Rises
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Things Fall Apart
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• To the Lighthouse
• Tropic of Cancer
• Under the Net
• Under the Volcano
• White Noise
• White Teeth
• Wide Sargasso Sea

About the List

• TIME’S List of the 100 Best Novels

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Our Curated List Of The 75 Best Books Of All Time

The ultimate book bucket list: the 75 best books of all time, the best classic books of all time, jane eyre - charlotte brontë, emma - jane austen, the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald, the picture of dorian grey - oscar wilde, black beauty - anna sewell, anna karenina - leo tolstoy, hamlet - william shakespeare, the best fantasy books of all time, a game of thrones - george r. martin, the lord of the rings trilogy - j.r.r. tolkien, wheel of time series - robert jordan, brandon sanderson, a wizard of earthsea - ursula le guin, the eyes of the dragon - stephen king, name of the wind - patrick rothfuss, the broken earth trilogy - n.k. jemisin, the stormlight archive - brandon sanderson, children of blood and bone - tomi adeyemi, the best fiction books of all time, little women - louisa may alcott, my year of rest and relaxation - otessa moshfegh, no one is talking about this - patricia lockwood, the lovely bones - alice sebold, after you’d gone - maggie o’farrell, the secret history - donna tartt, the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay - michael chabon, gone girl - gillian flynn, we need to talk about kevin - lionel shriver, normal people - sally rooney, slaughterhouse-five - kurt vonnegut, betty - tiffany mcdaniel, invisible cities - italo calvino, based on a true story - norm macdonald, girl, woman, other - bernardine evaristo, the book thief - markus zusak, a little life - hanya yanagihara, they can't kill us until they kill us – hanif abdurraqib, the alchemist - paulo coelho, one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcía márque, to kill a mockingbird - harper lee, my brilliant friend - elena ferrante, the underground railroad - colson whitehead, white teeth - zadi smith, the best memoirs of all time, why be happy when you could be normal - jeanette winterson, trick mirror - jia tolentino, yes please - amy poehler, on writing - stephen king, i’m glad my mom died - jennette mccurdy, dress your family in corduroy and denim - david sedaris, just kids - patti smith, know my name - chanel miller, the year of magical thinking - joan didion, crying in h mart - michelle zauner, kitchen confidential - anthony bourdain, the best non-fiction books of all time, thinking, fast & slow - daniel kahneman, come as you are - emily nagoski, burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle - amelia nagoski and emily nagoski, period power - maisie hill, the obstacle is the way - ryan holiday, into thin air - jon krakauer, ariel - sylvia plath, de profundis - oscar wilde, sapiens: a brief history of humankind - yuval noah harari, why i'm no longer talking to white people about race - reni eddo-lodge, all about love: new visions - bell hooks, the best romance books of all time, book lovers - emily henry, red, white & royal blue - casey mcquiston, boyfriend material - alexis hall, the spanish love deception - elena armas, the duke and i - julia quinn, to all the boys i’ve loved before - jenny han, call me by your name - andré aciman, wuthering heights - emily bronte, the best dystopian books of all time, the handmaid’s tale - margaret atwood, station eleven - emily st. john mandel , klara and the sun - kazuo ishiguro, the road - cormac mccarthy, nineteen eighty-four - george orwell, more from books & art.

The 20 most popular books of all time, according to Goodreads members

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• Goodreads is the world's largest platform for readers to rate and review books.
• Below are the 20 most popular books of all time, ranked by Goodreads members. 
• Want more books? Check out the most popular books of 2021, based on Goodreads .

Goodreads is the world's largest site for readers to rate and review their favorite books and authors , track their reading, participate in challenges, and discover new book recommendations. No matter what you like to read, you can find it on Goodreads along with tons of fellow readers who love the same books. 

With millions of ratings and community reviews, readers are encouraged to share their opinions to help others determine their next read. We used the number of ratings of each book to determine the most popular books amongst Goodreads members, so whether you're curious if your favorite book made the list or are looking for a new read with millions of recommendations , here are the top 20 most popular books on Goodreads. 

The 20 most popular books of all time on Goodreads:

"harry potter and the sorcerer's stone" by j.k. rowling.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $6.98

With nearly 8 million ratings, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is the most popular book of all time on Goodreads and has sold over 120 million copies. In this first book of the "Harry Potter" series, readers meet a young orphan boy who learns he's a wizard and begins his magical training at Hogwarts, a special school for witches and wizards.

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $11.69

With almost 7 million ratings on Goodreads, "The Hunger Games" is the first book in a young adult dystopian series where the country is divided up into districts that annually select one boy and one girl to fight to the death in a highly publicized arena. When Katniss's little sister is chosen for the games, she volunteers in her sister's place and immediately begins training before entering the deadly arena.

"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $10.16

"Twilight" is an iconic young adult vampire romance novel about a high school girl named Bella who falls in love with a mysterious boy named Edward and quickly finds out he's a vampire. As the threat of a nearby nomadic vampire looms, Bella chooses to be with Edward and discovers the secrets of his world, despite the nearly constant risks to her life. 

"To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

"To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.19

"To Kill A Mockingbird" is an American classic from 1960, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and frequently voted as one of the best books of the 20th century . It's about a young girl named Scout who's growing up in a time of racial division, amplified as her lawyer father defends an innocent Black man wrongly accused of a horrible crime. 

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $5.97

First published in 1925, "The Great Gatsby" is a classic Jazz Age novel about millionaire Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy Buchanan. Narrated by Gatsby's neighbor, Nick Carraway, the novel follows Gatsby's shady business dealings, extravagant parties, and pursuit of Daisy's affection. 

"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $6.10

In this absolute tear-jerker, Hazel is battling a terminal cancer diagnosis, offered a few extra years by a miracle medical advancement. In her cancer support group, she meets Augustus Waters and they immediately begin to fall for each other in this tragic and beautiful young adult love story. 

"1984" by George Orwell

"1984" by George Orwell, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.48

In this novel predicting a dystopian future from its original publication in 1949, Winston Smith is living in a totalitarian world defined by strict mass surveillance and inundating propaganda. Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history to fit the government's narrative, and can't help but wonder what the world was truly like before the revolution. 

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $5.47

"Pride and Prejudice" is an 1813 romantic classic about Elizabeth Bennet, a young woman who is pressured to marry a wealthy man in order to provide for her family. She meets the brooding Mr. Darcy, with whom she begins a witty but civilized sparring banter as they slowly fall for each other in this novel about the influences of class and the importance of being true to yourself. 

"Divergent" by Veronica Roth

"Divergent" by Veronica Roth, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $8.46

In the dystopian science fiction world of "Divergent," all 16-year-olds must devote themselves to one of five factions in society, each dedicated to a virtue. Beatrice Prior is torn between staying with her family and being true to herself, so she makes a daring and shocking decision, thrusting her into an intense initiation and transformation while keeping a potentially deadly secret and discovering the growing conflict within her seemingly flawless society. 

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $8.78

When a murderer named Sirius Black escapes the wizarding world's highest security prison, rumor says he's headed to kill Harry since the dark Lord Voldemort's downfall was his as well. Even with the soulless prison guards searching the castle for Sirius, danger seems to follow Harry at every turn. 

"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien

"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.37

This fantastical classic introduces readers to magical Middle-Earth where Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, sets out on a quest to win a treasure guarded by a dragon. Initially written for the author's children, this adventure novel is a prequel to the epic "Lord of the Rings" series and is a charming favorite with over three million ratings and 1.6 million five-star reviews on Goodreads.  

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.98

In the final book of the "Harry Potter" series, Harry and his two best friends are on a cross-country journey to find the final answers that will help them defeat the dark wizard Lord Voldemort. Cumulating in an epic and devastating battle at Hogwarts, this intense novel closes the fantastical series with a shocking and emotional resolution. 

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.48

"Animal Farm" is a classic satirical novel about a group of mistreated farm animals who rebel against the human farmer to take over the farm and attempt to create a system where all animals are free and equal. But when the community is betrayed and collapses under a single dictator, the animals' hopes for equality diminish. 

"The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank

"The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.35

Written by Anne Frank during the Nazi occupation of Holland, this diary is a firsthand, nonfiction account of the two years Anne and her family spent hiding in a secret annex of an old office building. With thoughtful insight and emotional impressions of the time, Anne's diary is a testament to her courage during the final years of her life. 

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $6.98

Before returning to Hogwarts for his second year of school, Harry receives an ominous message of the danger that awaits him if he's to return. Needing to escape his dreadful aunt and uncle, Harry ignores the warning and happily returns to school — until students begin to turn to stone and a strange voice in the wall means Harry might be the only one who can save them.

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $5.21

"The Catcher in the Rye" is a young adult classic about a 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield and his three-day adventure through New York City. Heavily impacted by his experiences, Holden is an example of teenage rebellion as he navigates complex feelings about innocence, connection, and loss. 

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by J.K. Rowling, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $6.92

In this fourth book of the "Harry Potter" series, Hogwarts is one of three schools participating in a Triwizard Tournament where one representative witch or wizard from each school must complete three extremely challenging tasks. When Harry's name is picked in addition to the three competitors, he must compete in the tournament, despite not knowing how he was entered. 

"Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown

"Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.20

"Angels & Demons" is the first book in the "DaVinci Code" series, a thrilling mystery novel where readers meet world-renowned symbologist Robert Langdon as he's called to help explain the mysterious symbols left seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. His research takes him through an intense investigation that leads him towards a deadly vendetta from the Illuminati. 

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.19

In this international psychological thriller, Henrik Vanger is a billionaire whose niece disappeared over 40 years ago. Still searching for answers, he hires Mikal Blomkvist, a renowned journalist who recently lost a libel lawsuit, along with Lisbeth Salander, a mysterious but brilliant computer hacker. As the duo digs deeper into the investigation, they uncover a complex weave of family and financial secrets in this captivating Swedish thriller. 

"Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins

"Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.98

The second book in the "Hunger Games" saga follows Katniss and her public love interest, Peeta, after their historic arena win. Though they should be celebrating, rumors of a growing rebellion infuriate the Capitol and threaten their safety in this fast-paced, science-fiction sequel.

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The Best Novels Ever Written

As you embark on a quest to uncover the best novels of all time, you will find a treasure trove of literary masterpieces that have left indelible marks on the hearts of readers. Delving into the pages of these renowned works offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore the depths of artistic expression and creativity that have shaped the world of fiction. 

The realm of the best novels of all time is populated by immensely powerful works of fiction, capturing hearts and minds alike with their unparalleled storytelling and captivating themes. Their gripping narratives, unforgettable characters, and profound themes captivate audiences, transporting them to realms of imagination and insight. From epic sagas to thought-provoking dystopias, these books represent the pinnacle of literary brilliance, captivating the hearts and minds of generations with their rich, immersive stories. 

The best books of all time include masterpieces like Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Lord of the Rings , and Frankenstein. Nineteen Eighty-Four 's harrowing portrayal of totalitarianism has proven hauntingly relevant, while The Lord of the Rings remains an enduring testament to the power of friendship and courage amid an epic battle between good and evil. Frankenstein , meanwhile, birthed the modern science fiction genre with its riveting tale of ambition, morality, and the consequences of playing God. The enduring appeal of these best novels is further evidenced by the numerous successful movie adaptations that cement their status in popular culture. 

Shining like beacons in the literary landscape, the best novels of all time illuminate the path towards understanding the complexity and beauty of human existence in all its forms. As they lure readers into their worlds, they offer vital insights into humanity's triumphs and struggles, enriching lives with their wisdom and beauty. While countless novels have graced the shelves of libraries and bookstores, these best books of all time remain unrivaled, continuing to inspire and enthrall generations of readers with their timeless allure. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four

• Dig Deeper... The Best Selling Books of All Time
• # 9 of 271 on The Top Must-Read Books of All Time
• # 15 of 66 on The Best Satirical Novels

The Lord of the Rings

• # 45 of 271 on The Top Must-Read Books of All Time
• # 30 of 168 on Books You'll Never Finish Reading

Crime and Punishment

• # 123 of 271 on The Top Must-Read Books of All Time
• # 16 of 168 on Books You'll Never Finish Reading
• # 69 of 82 on 35+ Books Everybody Lies About Having Read

• # 25 of 271 on The Top Must-Read Books of All Time
• # 40 of 111 on The Best Overall Books for Kids

The Count of Monte Cristo

• # 71 of 271 on The Top Must-Read Books of All Time
• # 41 of 168 on Books You'll Never Finish Reading
• # 34 of 82 on 35+ Books Everybody Lies About Having Read

To Kill a Mockingbird

• # 1 of 62 on The Best Pulitzer Prize Winning Novels
• # 2 of 153 on The Greatest American Novels

Ebook Friendly

The top 100 kindle books of all time, based on annual bestseller lists.

The best Kindle book of all time is Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , followed by Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand) and Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins).

Recently, we released an extensive set of charts comparing the best Kindle books published since November 2007.

As the main overview is accompanied by detailed rankings that list best authors and categories, as well as top Kindle Unlimited books, you can easily get lost in the flood of information.

A single-minded list that ranks Top 100 Kindle books is the most important outcome of our analysis of Amazon’s annual charts of top Kindle bestsellers. That’s why it deserves a separate post.

Each book in the annual bestseller list gets points. The #1 book gets 100 points; the last one receives 1 point. If a book is present on more than one annual list, its points are added. You’ll find more details about how we counted the books, in the main overview of the best Kindle books of all time .

As you see, this ranking is favoring books that managed to keep high sales for as long as possible and as high as possible.

Before the list, here are a few most interesting facts:

• The best Kindle book of all time is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , Stieg Larsson’s first book from the Millennium series.
• Top 10 includes all three parts of the bestselling YA dystopian series by Suzanne Collins, the Hunger Games .
• The best nonfiction book on the list is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which takes the second place.
• 15 titles in the Top 100 are available via Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription.

Data for annual Top 100 lists for 2007-2016 was gathered between July 25 and August 28, 2017. Data for the 2017 list was collected on November 19, 2017.

Details you can compare in the ranking are:

• # – a position of the book in Top 100,
• Points – a total number of points collected,
• Title (series) – a title of the book and a name of the series it belongs to,
• Author – an author or authors of the book,
• Ratg – rating,
• Revs – number of reviews,
• Cat  – a primary category the book is ranked in.

Below the chart, you will find detailed facts and figures about the top 10 Kindle books of all time.

Top 100 Kindle books of all time: 2007-2017

Data collected between July 25 and November 19, 2017.

Top 10 Kindle books of all time

Take a look at more details about the best of the best.

Each Kindle book from the all-time Top 10 comes with information about how long it stayed on annual charts, and the highest place it reached, among others.

All data was gathered between July 25 and November 19, 2017.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson Part of the series: Yes, book 1 of the Millennium series Main Category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Publication Date: September 16, 2008 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 439 First year in Top 100: 2008 Last year in Top 100: 2012 Highest place: 1 (2010) Lowest place: 23 (2008) Number of years in Top 100: 5 Number of years in Top 10: 2

Murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue combine into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel, the first in Stieg Larsson’s thrilling Millennium series featuring Lisbeth Salander. ⇢ Read more .

2. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Author: Laura Hillenbrand Part of the series: No Main Category: Biographies & Memoirs Publication Date: November 16, 2010 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 429 First year in Top 100: 2010 Last year in Top 100: 2015 Highest place: 6 (2011) Lowest place: 26 (2012) Number of years in Top 100: 5 Number of years in Top 10: 2

A story of an Army Air Forces bombardier Louis Zamperini, who, after his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943, was fighting to survive on a foundering life raft. ⇢ Read more .

3. Mockingjay

Author: Suzanne Collins

Part of the series: Yes, book 3 of the Hunger Games series Main Category: Teen & Young Adult Publication Date: August 24, 2010 Kindle Unlimited: Yes

Total number of points: 383 First year in Top 100: 2010 Last year in Top 100: 2014 Highest place: 4 (2011) Lowest place: 78 (2014) Number of years in Top 100: 5 Number of years in Top 10: 2

The final book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins will have hearts racing, pages turning, and everyone talking about one of the biggest and most talked-about books and authors in recent publishing history. ⇢ Read more .

4. Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn Part of the series: No Main Category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Publication Date: June 5, 2012 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 379 First year in Top 100: 2012 Last year in Top 100: 2015 Highest place: 2 (2014) Lowest place: 15 (2015) Number of years in Top 100: 4 Number of years in Top 10: 3

One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. ⇢ Read more .

5. The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett Part of the series: No Main Category: Literature & Fiction Publication Date: February 10, 2009 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 376 First year in Top 100: 2009 Last year in Top 100: 2012 Highest place: 1 (2011) Lowest place: 18 (2012) Number of years in Top 100: 4 Number of years in Top 10: 3

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women – mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends – view one another. ⇢ Read more .

6. The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins Part of the series: Yes, book 1 of the Hunger Games series Main Category: Teen & Young Adult Publication Date: September 1, 2009 Kindle Unlimited: Yes

Total number of points: 354 First year in Top 100: 2010 Last year in Top 100: 2017 Highest place: 2 (2011, 2012) Lowest place: 93 (2017) Number of years in Top 100: 5 Number of years in Top 10: 3

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them to send teenagers to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. ⇢ Read more .

7. Catching Fire

Author: Suzanne Collins Part of the series: Yes, book 2 of the Hunger Games series Main Category: Teen & Young Adult Publication Date: June 1, 2010 Kindle Unlimited: Yes

Total number of points: 353 First year in Top 100: 2010 Last year in Top 100: 2013 Highest place: 3 (2011, 2012) Lowest place: 26 Number of years in Top 100: 4 Number of years in Top 10: 2

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. The Capitol wants revenge. ⇢ Read more .

8. The Girl Who Played with Fire

Author: Stieg Larsson Part of the series: Yes, book 2 of the Millennium series Main Category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Publication Date: July 28, 2009 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 328 First year in Top 100: 2009 Last year in Top 100: 2012 Highest place: 3 (2010) Lowest place: 31 (2012) Number of years in Top 100: 4 Number of years in Top 10: 1

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, this second book in the Millennium series is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel. ⇢ Read more .

9. Water for Elephants

Author: Sara Gruen Part of the series: No Main Category: Literature & Fiction Publication Date: May 1, 2007 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 323 First year in Top 100: 2007 Last year in Top 100: 2012 Highest place: 11 (2011) Lowest place: 65 (2012) Number of years in Top 100: 5 Number of years in Top 10: 0

Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski’s ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. ⇢ Read more .

10. Divergent

Author: Veronica Roth Part of the series: Yes, book 1 of the Divergent series Main Category: Teen & Young Adult Publication Date: May 3, 2011 Kindle Unlimited: No

Total number of points: 285 First year in Top 100: 2012 Last year in Top 100: 2015 Highest place: 2 (2013) Lowest place: 77 (2015) Number of years in Top 100: 4 Number of years in Top 10: 2

The first book in Veronica Roth’s bestselling Divergent trilogy is the gripping story of a dystopian world transformed by courage, self-sacrifice, and love. ⇢ Read more .

Keep exploring. Here are more posts and lists:

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• 12 best personalized gifts for librarians and library supporters These library-themed gifts are extremely easy to personalize. All you have to do is add your own text!
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2 responses to “The top 100 Kindle books of all time, based on annual bestseller lists”

[…] books from the Millennium series are on the list of top 10 Kindle best sellers of all time. The second author to sell over 1 million Kindle ebooks, James Patterson, joined Larsson in the […]

[…] If you are someone who likes to enjoy some alone me-time, then you should get along with yourself an excellent book to read on the beach. A good book is a reliable source of entertainment, for me time while you are at the beach or when you are taking your sunbath while enjoying the mesmerizing sight around you with fresh air. Also if you are an e-reader on a vacation, carry a KINDLE and enjoy your read. Here are some suggestions.  […]

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Big magic: creative living beyond fear.

by ELIZABETH GILBERT

Once upon a time, there was a man named Jack Gilbert, who was not related to me – unfortunately for me. 

Jack Gilbert was a great poet, but if you’ve never heard of him, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. He never much cared about being known. But I knew about him, and I loved him dearly from a respectful distance, so let me tell you about him.

Jack Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh in 1925 and grew up in the midst of that city’s smoke, noise, and industry. He worked in factories and steel mills as a young man, but was called from an early age to write poetry. He answered the call without hesitation. He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence. I think this is probably a very good way to become a poet. Or to become anything, really, that calls to your heart and brings you to life.

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The New York Times Best Sellers - July 07, 2024

Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the united states, sorted by format and genre..

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only.

• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction

New this week

RED SKY MOURNING

by Jack Carr

The seventh book in the Terminal List series. Questionable allegiances and various threats bring James Reece back into action.

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

2 weeks on the list

THE HOUSEMAID IS WATCHING

by Freida McFadden

The third book in the Housemaid series. Dangers lurk in a quiet neighborhood.

by Elin Hilderbrand

Nantucket residents are alarmed when a home, recently sold at an exorbitant price, goes up in flames and someone goes missing.

WINTER LOST

by Patricia Briggs

The 14th book in the Mercy Thompson series. Mercy and Adam are trapped with strangers during a storm.

20 weeks on the list

by Kristin Hannah

In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

• Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction

by Anthony S. Fauci

The physician-scientist and immunologist chronicles his six decades of public service, including his work during the AIDS crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

13 weeks on the list

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

by Jonathan Haidt

A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health impacts that a phone-based life has on children.

8 weeks on the list

THE DEMON OF UNREST

by Erik Larson

The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

3 weeks on the list

THE WAR ON WARRIORS

by Pete Hegseth

The "Fox & Friends Weekend" host shares his experiences serving in the Army and his views on the current state of the American military.

LOVE & WHISKEY

by Fawn Weaver

A portrayal of the bond between Jack Daniel and the African American distiller Nearest Green.

• Hardcover Fiction

by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

The Big Island of Hawaii comes under threat by a volcano at the same time a secret held by the military comes to light.

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

by Riley Sager

Thirty years after the disappearance of his friend, Ethan returns to his childhood home and encounters unsettling experiences.

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• Hardcover Nonfiction
• Paperback Trade Fiction

61 weeks on the list

THE HOUSEMAID

Troubles surface when a woman looking to make a fresh start takes a job in the home of the Winchesters.

11 weeks on the list

A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES

by Sarah J. Maas

After killing a wolf in the woods, Feyre is taken from her home and placed inside the world of the Fae.

NOT IN LOVE

by Ali Hazelwood

A biotech engineer at a food science start-up has a secret affair with one of the business partners who took over the company.

LOVE UNWRITTEN

by Lauren Asher

The second book in the Lakefront Billionaires series. A workaholic becomes attracted to the songwriter who had a crush on him in high school.

• Paperback Nonfiction

296 weeks on the list

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE

by Bessel van der Kolk

How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery.

53 weeks on the list

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE

by Dolly Alderton

The British journalist shares stories and observations; the basis of the TV series.

173 weeks on the list

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

by David Grann

The story of a murder spree in 1920s Oklahoma that targeted Osage Indians, whose lands contained oil. The fledgling F.B.I. intervened, ineffectively.

219 weeks on the list

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.

167 weeks on the list

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

by Daniel James Brown

The story of the American rowers who pursued gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games; the basis of the film.

• Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous

239 weeks on the list

ATOMIC HABITS

by James Clear

17 weeks on the list

WORLD TRAVEL

by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever

6 weeks on the list

GOOD ENERGY

by Casey Means with Calley Means

75 weeks on the list

THE CREATIVE ACT

by Rick Rubin with Neil Strauss

THE NEW MENOPAUSE

by Mary Claire Haver

• Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover

448 weeks on the list

by R.J. Palacio

A boy with a facial deformity starts school. (Ages 8 to 12)

262 weeks on the list

by Alan Gratz

Three children in three different conflicts look for safe haven. (Ages 9 to 12)

THE MISFITS: A ROYAL CONUNDRUM

by Lisa Yee. Illustrated by Dan Santat

Olive is sent to Reforming Arts School and teams up with a group of crime-fighting outcasts. (Ages 8 to 12)

The friends Frank and Stanley give a vivid account of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Ages 8 to 12)

60 weeks on the list

THE SUN AND THE STAR

by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro

The demigods Will and Nico embark on a dangerous journey to the Underworld to rescue an old friend. (Ages 10 to 14)

• Children’s Picture Books

YOU CAN BE A GOOD FRIEND (NO MATTER WHAT!)

by Taraji P. Henson. Illustrated by Paul Kellam

A spirited young girl attempts to make friends at her new school. (Ages 4 to 8)

398 weeks on the list

THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU WILL BE

by Emily Winfield Martin

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18 weeks on the list

WHY A DAUGHTER NEEDS A DAD

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A father's love for his daughter. (Ages 4 to 8)

22 weeks on the list

BLUEY: SLEEPYTIME

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DRAGONS LOVE TACOS

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A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER

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Pippa Fitz-Amobi solves murderous crimes. (Ages 14 and up)

114 weeks on the list

THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TRILOGY

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A beach house, summer love and enduring friendships. (Ages 12 and up)

797 weeks on the list

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney

The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

730 weeks on the list

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS

by Rick Riordan

A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

332 weeks on the list

THE HUNGER GAMES

by Suzanne Collins

In a dystopia, a girl fights for survival on live TV. (Ages 12 and up)

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33 weeks on the list

by Lauren Roberts

Forbidden love is in the air when Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, become romantically involved. (Ages 14 and up)

Adena is on her own in Loot, after Paedyn is selected for the Purging Trials. (Ages 14 and up)

12 weeks on the list

THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE

Annabel Price's mother was presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

DIVINE RIVALS

by Rebecca Ross

Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection. (Ages 13 to 18)

THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US

by Tricia Levenseller

Alessandra plots to kill the Shadow King and take his kingdom for herself. (Ages 13 to 18)

Weekly Best Sellers Lists

Monthly best sellers lists.

Amazon's Most Sold charts rank books according to the number of copies sold and pre-ordered through Amazon.com, Audible.com, Amazon Books stores, and books read through digital subscription programs (once a customer has read a certain percentage – roughly the length of a free reading sample). Bulk buys are counted as a single purchase. Amazon's Most Read charts rank titles by the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners each week. Categories not ranked on Most Read charts include dictionaries, encyclopedias, religious texts, daily devotionals, and calendars.

There are no corrections for this list.

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50 Greatest Books of All Time

This is one of the 305 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The novel follows the journey of a young boy named Huckleberry Finn and a runaway slave named Jim as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. Set in the American South before the Civil War, the story explores themes of friendship, freedom, and the hypocrisy of society. Through various adventures and encounters with a host of colorful characters, Huck grapples with his personal values, often clashing with the societal norms of the time.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

This renowned novel is a sweeping exploration of memory, love, art, and the passage of time, told through the narrator's recollections of his childhood and experiences into adulthood in the late 19th and early 20th century aristocratic France. The narrative is notable for its lengthy and intricate involuntary memory episodes, the most famous being the "madeleine episode". It explores the themes of time, space and memory, but also raises questions about the nature of art and literature, and the complex relationships between love, sexuality, and possession.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

This groundbreaking work presents the theory of evolution, asserting that species evolve over generations through a process of natural selection. The book provides a comprehensive explanation of how the diversity of life on Earth developed over millions of years from a common ancestry. It includes detailed observations and arguments to support the idea that species evolve by adapting to their environments, challenging the prevailing belief of the time that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

In this epic poem, the protagonist embarks on an extraordinary journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). Guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil and his beloved Beatrice, he encounters various historical and mythological figures in each realm, witnessing the eternal consequences of earthly sins and virtues. The journey serves as an allegory for the soul's progression towards God, offering profound insights into the nature of good and evil, free will, and divine justice.

The Republic by Plato

"The Republic" is a philosophical text that explores the concepts of justice, order, and character within the context of a just city-state and a just individual. It presents the idea of a utopian society ruled by philosopher-kings, who are the most wise and just. The dialogue also delves into theories of education, the nature of reality, and the role of the philosopher in society. It is a fundamental work in Western philosophy and political theory.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

This classic novel follows the adventures of a man who, driven mad by reading too many chivalric romances, decides to become a knight-errant and roam the world righting wrongs under the name Don Quixote. Accompanied by his loyal squire, Sancho Panza, he battles windmills he believes to be giants and champions the virtuous lady Dulcinea, who is in reality a simple peasant girl. The book is a richly layered critique of the popular literature of Cervantes' time and a profound exploration of reality and illusion, madness and sanity.

Ulysses by James Joyce

Set in Dublin, the novel follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman, as he navigates the city. The narrative, heavily influenced by Homer's Odyssey, explores themes of identity, heroism, and the complexities of everyday life. It is renowned for its stream-of-consciousness style and complex structure, making it a challenging but rewarding read.

Das Kapital by Karl Marx

This influential work is a comprehensive critique of political economy, exploring the complex nature of capitalism, its production processes, and its societal impact. The book delves into the intricacies of commodities, labor theory of value, surplus value, and exploitation, arguing that capitalism is inherently unstable and prone to periodic crises. It also posits that the capitalist system ultimately leads to the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, causing social inequality and paving the way for its own demise. The book is widely regarded as a foundational text in the development of socialist and communist ideologies.

Confessions by Augustine

"Confessions" is an autobiographical work by a renowned theologian, in which he outlines his sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is written in the form of a long, introspective prayer directed to God, exploring the author's spiritual journey and deep philosophical ponderings. The book is renowned for its eloquent and deeply personal exploration of faith, making it a cornerstone of Christian theology and Western literature.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

This classic work of political philosophy provides a pragmatic guide on political leadership and power, arguing that leaders must do whatever necessary to maintain authority and protect their states, even if it means compromising morality and ethics. The book explores various types of principalities, military affairs, the conduct of great leaders, and the virtues a prince should possess. It is known for its controversial thesis, which suggests that the ends justify the means in politics.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Set in the summer of 1922, the novel follows the life of a young and mysterious millionaire, his extravagant lifestyle in Long Island, and his obsessive love for a beautiful former debutante. As the story unfolds, the millionaire's dark secrets and the corrupt reality of the American dream during the Jazz Age are revealed. The narrative is a critique of the hedonistic excess and moral decay of the era, ultimately leading to tragic consequences.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Set in the fictitious English town of Middlemarch during the early 19th century, the novel explores the complex web of relationships in a close-knit society. It follows the lives of several characters, primarily Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of idealistic fervor, and Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor, who both grapple with societal expectations, personal desires, and moral dilemmas. Their stories intertwine with a rich tapestry of other townsfolk, reflecting themes of love, marriage, ambition, and reform, making a profound commentary on the human condition.

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

This influential economic book presents a groundbreaking theory that argues for free market economies. The author posits that individuals acting in their own self-interest within a system of natural liberty will result in societal benefit, a concept often referred to as the "invisible hand" theory. The book also critiques mercantilism and explores concepts such as the division of labor, productivity, and free markets. It is widely considered one of the foundational texts in the field of economics.

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

This groundbreaking work explores the theory that dreams are a reflection of the unconscious mind and a means of understanding our deepest desires, anxieties, and fantasies. The book delves into the symbolism of dreams and their connection to repressed thoughts and experiences, proposing that they are a form of wish fulfillment. The author also introduces the concept of "dream work," which transforms these unconscious thoughts into the content of dreams, and discusses various methods of dream interpretation.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

This classic satire follows the travels of a surgeon and sea captain who embarks on a series of extraordinary voyages. The protagonist first finds himself shipwrecked on an island inhabited by tiny people, later discovers a land of giants, then encounters a society of intelligent horses, and finally lands on a floating island of scientists. Through these bizarre adventures, the novel explores themes of human nature, morality, and society, offering a scathing critique of European culture and the human condition.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

This novel is a multi-generational saga that focuses on the Buendía family, who founded the fictional town of Macondo. It explores themes of love, loss, family, and the cyclical nature of history. The story is filled with magical realism, blending the supernatural with the ordinary, as it chronicles the family's experiences, including civil war, marriages, births, and deaths. The book is renowned for its narrative style and its exploration of solitude, fate, and the inevitability of repetition in history.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

This classic tragedy revolves around the aging King Lear, who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters based on their declarations of love for him. The two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, flatter him with insincere praises, while the youngest, Cordelia, refuses to play the game and is disowned. As the king's sanity deteriorates, his kingdom falls into chaos under the rule of his deceitful elder daughters. The play explores themes of power, loyalty, madness, and justice, culminating in a tragic ending where almost all the main characters, including King Lear and Cordelia, die.

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

This philosophical work delves into the nature and limits of human knowledge, proposing that while our knowledge begins with experience, it doesn't necessarily arise out of experience. The author argues that pure reason itself has the ability to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the universe. He further explores the concept of metaphysics, asserting that while it is possible, it is also severely limited by the human mind's ability to comprehend it.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Set in early 19th-century England, this classic novel revolves around the lives of the Bennet family, particularly the five unmarried daughters. The narrative explores themes of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage within the society of the landed gentry. It follows the romantic entanglements of Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest daughter, who is intelligent, lively, and quick-witted, and her tumultuous relationship with the proud, wealthy, and seemingly aloof Mr. Darcy. Their story unfolds as they navigate societal expectations, personal misunderstandings, and their own pride and prejudice.

The Iliad by Homer

This epic poem focuses on the final weeks of the Trojan War, a conflict between the city of Troy and the Greek city-states. The story explores themes of war, honor, wrath, and divine intervention, with a particular focus on the Greek hero Achilles, whose anger and refusal to fight have devastating consequences. The narrative also delves into the lives of the gods, their relationships with humans, and their influence on the course of events.

The Odyssey by Homer

This epic poem follows the Greek hero Odysseus on his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. Along the way, he encounters many obstacles including mythical creatures, divine beings, and natural disasters. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus fend off suitors vying for Penelope's hand in marriage, believing Odysseus to be dead. The story concludes with Odysseus's return, his slaughter of the suitors, and his reunion with his family.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This classic novel explores the complex, passionate, and troubled relationship between four brothers and their father in 19th century Russia. The narrative delves into the themes of faith, doubt, morality, and redemption, as each brother grapples with personal dilemmas and family conflicts. The story culminates in a dramatic trial following a murder, which serves as a microcosm of the moral and philosophical struggles faced by each character, and by extension, humanity itself.

Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot by T. S. Eliot

This collection includes the works of a renowned 20th-century poet, featuring his most famous pieces such as "The Waste Land," "Four Quartets," and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The poet's works are known for their profound exploration of existential despair, disillusionment, and spiritual emptiness, often employing complex, fragmented structures and numerous allusions to mythology, religion, and contemporary culture. This compilation provides a comprehensive look at the poet's influential contribution to modernist literature.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a man with a disturbing obsession for young girls, or "nymphets" as he calls them. His obsession leads him to engage in a manipulative and destructive relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Lolita. The narrative is a controversial exploration of manipulation, obsession, and unreliable narration, as Humbert attempts to justify his actions and feelings throughout the story.

The Quran by Unknown

This book is a compilation of the religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is divided into chapters, which are then divided into verses. The text discusses various aspects of life and provides guidance on morality, ethics, law, and personal conduct. It also includes narratives of several prophets, their lives, and their interactions with their communities. The book is considered the ultimate source of spiritual guidance for Muslims worldwide.

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

In this classic novel, a complex web of characters is spun around a central plot involving a mysterious inheritance. The narrative explores various themes such as love, greed, social class, and human nature, set against the backdrop of Victorian London. The story unfolds through the lives of numerous characters including a dust contractor, his charming daughter, a lawyer, a teacher, and a couple of greedy, scheming relatives, all of whom are connected by the mysterious fortune left by a deceased man to his estranged son, who is presumed drowned.

The Histories of Herodotus by Herodotus

"The Histories of Herodotus" is an ancient text that provides a comprehensive account of the Greco-Persian Wars. It is often considered the first work of history in Western literature. The author, often referred to as the 'Father of History', provides a narrative that not only discusses the conflicts between the Greeks and Persians, but also delves into the customs, geography, and history of each civilization. This detailed and pioneering work has greatly contributed to our understanding of the ancient world.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The novel is a detailed narrative of a vengeful sea captain's obsessive quest to hunt down a giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg. The captain's relentless pursuit, despite the warnings and concerns of his crew, leads them on a dangerous journey across the seas. The story is a complex exploration of good and evil, obsession, and the nature of reality, filled with rich descriptions of whaling and the sea.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary is a tragic novel about a young woman, Emma Bovary, who is married to a dull, but kind-hearted doctor. Dissatisfied with her life, she embarks on a series of extramarital affairs and indulges in a luxurious lifestyle in an attempt to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Her desire for passion and excitement leads her down a path of financial ruin and despair, ultimately resulting in a tragic end.

Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka

This collection of stories offers a comprehensive look at the work of a renowned author, known for his surreal and often unsettling depictions of modern life. The stories explore themes of existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity, often through narratives in which ordinary people face extraordinary, inexplicable circumstances. The collection showcases the author's unique style and his profound influence on 20th-century literature.

The Bible by Unknown

The Bible is the central religious text of Christianity, comprising the Old and New Testaments. It features a diverse collection of writings including historical narratives, poetry, prophecies, and teachings. These texts chronicle the relationship between God and humanity, detail the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and follow the early Christian church. Considered divinely inspired by believers, it serves as a foundational guide for faith and practice, influencing countless aspects of culture and society worldwide.

Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton

This seminal work is a comprehensive exploration of classical physics, laying the groundwork for much of modern science. The author presents his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, effectively bridging the gap between the abstract world of mathematics and real-world phenomena. The book also delves into the principles of calculus, a mathematical discipline the author significantly developed. This work has had a profound influence on the scientific understanding of the physical universe.

Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats

This book is a comprehensive collection of poems by a renowned Irish poet. The collection spans his entire career, showcasing his evolution as a poet, from romantic and aesthetic works to more complex, mature pieces reflecting his interest in spirituality and Irish mythology. The book includes his most famous works, as well as lesser-known pieces, providing a thorough overview of his contribution to 20th century literature.

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo

This scientific work presents a series of discussions between three characters, each representing a different perspective on the cosmological theories of the time. Throughout the dialogue, the characters debate the merits of the Ptolemaic geocentric system, which asserts that the Earth is the center of the universe, and the Copernican heliocentric system, which proposes that the Sun is the center. The author uses these discussions to subtly argue in favor of the Copernican system, challenging the traditional religious and scientific beliefs of his time.

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

"Oedipus the King" is a tragic play that revolves around the life of Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother. Despite his attempts to avoid this fate, Oedipus unknowingly fulfills the prophecy. When he discovers the truth about his actions, he blinds himself in despair. The play explores themes of fate, free will, and the quest for truth, highlighting the tragic consequences of human hubris and ignorance.

Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

"Oedipus at Colonus" is a tragic play that follows the final days of Oedipus, the former king of Thebes. Oedipus, now blind and exiled, arrives at the town of Colonus where he is initially rejected due to the curse that follows him. However, after revealing a prophecy that his burial place will bring prosperity to the city that hosts it, he is allowed to stay. The play explores themes of fate, guilt, and redemption, ending with Oedipus's peaceful death and ascension to a semi-divine status.

Antigone by Sophocles

This ancient Greek tragedy follows the story of Antigone, a young woman who defies the king's edict in order to bury her brother according to their religious customs. The king, her uncle, sentences her to death for her disobedience, leading to a series of tragic events including his own son's suicide. The play explores themes of loyalty, honor, obedience, and the conflict between the laws of the state and the laws of the gods.

Mahabharata by Vyasa

The book is an English translation of the ancient Indian epic, originally written in Sanskrit, which tells the story of a great war that took place between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The narrative explores themes of duty, righteousness, and honor while also featuring a rich array of gods, goddesses, and supernatural beings. It is not only a tale of war and conflict, but also a profound philosophical and spiritual treatise, containing the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hindu philosophy.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This novel follows the story of a young girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantastical world full of peculiar creatures and bizarre experiences. As she navigates through this strange land, she encounters a series of nonsensical events, including a tea party with a Mad Hatter, a pool of tears, and a trial over stolen tarts. The book is renowned for its playful use of language, logic, and its exploration of the boundaries of reality.

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The Social Contract" is a philosophical work that discusses the concepts of sovereignty and the social contract. The author argues that all men are born free, but everywhere they are in chains, suggesting that society and its rules are a form of enslavement. However, he also posits that a social contract, where individuals come together to form a collective or a society, is necessary for the preservation of their freedom. This contract allows for the creation of a sovereign that is made up of the collective and expresses the general will, which is always right and tends towards the public utility.

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The book is a tragic play in two parts that tells the story of a scholarly man named Faust, who becomes dissatisfied with his life and makes a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles. In exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures, Faust agrees to give his soul to Mephistopheles after death. The narrative explores themes of ambition, despair, love, and redemption, ultimately leading to Faust's salvation.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

This influential environmental science book presents a detailed and passionate argument against the overuse of pesticides in the mid-20th century. The author meticulously describes the harmful effects of these chemicals on the environment, particularly on birds, hence the metaphor of a 'silent spring' without bird song. The book played a significant role in advancing the global environmental movement and led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides in the United States.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

This philosophical work explores the nature of human knowledge, arguing that all of our understanding comes from experience rather than innate ideas. The author challenges the idea of causality, suggesting that our belief in cause and effect is based on habit rather than logical reasoning. The book also discusses the limitations of human understanding, including the inability to fully comprehend the concept of God or the soul, and the impossibility of certain knowledge. The author's skepticism about traditional philosophical concepts has had a significant influence on later philosophers and the field of epistemology.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Set in the backdrop of the Napoleonic era, the novel presents a panorama of Russian society and its descent into the chaos of war. It follows the interconnected lives of five aristocratic families, their struggles, romances, and personal journeys through the tumultuous period of history. The narrative explores themes of love, war, and the meaning of life, as it weaves together historical events with the personal stories of its characters.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

This influential work from the late 18th century argues passionately for the education and societal recognition of women. The author asserts that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. The book is considered one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy.

Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

"Decameron" is a collection of 100 stories told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The tales, which range from the erotic to the tragic, the hilarious to the instructional, are embedded in a rich framework narrative that provides a detailed portrait of the society of the Italian Renaissance.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

"Waiting for Godot" is a play that explores themes of existentialism, despair, and the human condition through the story of two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly for a man named Godot, who never arrives. While they wait, they engage in a variety of discussions and encounter three other characters. The play is characterized by its minimalistic setting and lack of a traditional plot, leaving much to interpretation.

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

"The Tale of Genji" is a classic work of Japanese literature from the 11th century, often considered the world's first novel. The story revolves around the life of Genji, the son of an emperor, exploring his political rise, romantic relationships, and the complex court life of the Heian era. The novel is celebrated for its detailed characterization and its analysis of the different forms of love.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

This classic novel explores the life of a young, independent American woman who inherits a large amount of money and moves to Europe, where she falls into a manipulative and oppressive marriage. The story delves into themes of personal freedom, responsibility, and betrayal, as the protagonist navigates the complexities of high society, love, and the consequences of her choices.

Encyclopédie by Denis Diderot

This comprehensive work is a pioneering encyclopedia that aimed to present all the world's knowledge in a systematic and accessible way. It covers a wide range of topics including arts, sciences, crafts, professions, and technology. The book is also notable for its radical and enlightenment ideas, challenging traditional institutions and advocating for freedom of thought. It played a significant role in shaping the intellectual landscape of the 18th century and beyond.

The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

This collection of short stories explores the complexities of human nature and society in 19th-century Russia. Written by a renowned Russian author, the stories range from humorous to tragic, often focusing on the everyday lives and struggles of ordinary people. The author's keen observation and deep understanding of human nature shine through in these tales, making them timeless classics that continue to resonate with readers today.

Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

"Collected Fiction" is a compilation of stories by a renowned author that takes readers on a journey through a world of philosophical paradoxes, intellectual humor, and fantastical realities. The book features a range of narratives, from complex, multi-layered tales of labyrinths and detective investigations, to metaphysical explorations of infinity and the nature of identity. It offers an immersive and thought-provoking reading experience, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, past and present, and the self and the universe.

Essays by Michel de Montaigne

This collection of essays explores a wide range of topics such as solitude, cannibals, the power of the imagination, the education of children, and the nature of friendship. The author employs a unique and personal approach to philosophy, using anecdotes and personal reflections to illustrate his points. The essays provide a profound insight into human nature and condition, and are considered a significant contribution to both literature and philosophy.

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The 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time

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“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

If any eight words could sum up the best Western movies in their entirety, it’s those from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” At times misunderstood, at times marginalized, at times written off by Hollywood as less than bankable even following periods of extraordinary success, the Western is nonetheless the most enduring genre in the history of American movies. Assembling IndieWire’s list of the 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time resulted in movies appearing there that represent every single decade since the turn of the last century: The earliest film on the list is from 1903 and the most recent from 2023, with movies from five continents represented.

That endurance is not just because of sagebrush and spurs and cowboy hats and horses and train robberies and six-shooters, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. It’s because the best Western movies — whether modern Westerns or those made a century ago — are unparalleled vehicles for ideas about what America is, what it represents, how it was founded, and all the hypocrisies and contradictions and agreed-upon myths therein. Ideas so powerful they inspired reflection among filmmakers from other nations using that cinematic grammar about what their own cultures’ say about themselves too. (The Soviet bloc even made a series of “Osterns” using the imagery of the Western, sometimes displaced to the steppes of Central Asia, to tell their own stories about themselves.) Even unintentionally on many occasions, this is a genre that looks, more than any other, dead-on at race, gender, capitalism, environmentalism, colonialism, and the deepest question of all: Who are you really when there’s no or little authority hanging over you to mediate your behavior? When you don’t have all the creature comforts of civilization? What would you become?

Is that, deep down, who you are already?

That’s why, even though the Western is the ultimate American genre, the ultimate lens through which to examine America, it can even transcend it’s American-ness. Because above all: The Western is a genre about why people are the way that they are. And the many myths we tell ourselves about who we’d like to think we are.

In 1894, at his studio in New Jersey, Thomas Edison made short “actuality” films featuring stars of the touring “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show, such as Annie Oakley. 130 years later, the genre continues with Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga.” But even before those Edison shorts, Buffalo Bill’s traveling show had been touring the country for over a decade peddling its vision of what the Old West was like… as the Old West was actually happening. Mythmaking about the Old West was happening from the very start — there was a book written about Buffalo Bill in 1869 — simply because, more than anything, America loves to tell stories about itself. An obsession that Hollywood would deepen even so much more.

The Western, as an idea, as a vehicle for other ideas, was so potent that the rest of the world then picked it up. John Ford , as essential a driver of creating an idea of what America is as anyone ever was, influenced Akira Kurosawa, who found a grammar all his own to tell stories about Japan that, when you squint, look a bit like the Western. They’re distinctly not, of course, instead rooted in the traditions of jidaigeki , but Kurosawa’s films influenced Italy’s stunning explosion of Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s that brought an entirely different lens to the genre. A number of Spaghetti Westerns are on IndieWire’s list of the 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time, as is a Korean Western set in 1930s Manchuria, an Australian Western, and a couple of South American Westerns.

Assembling IndieWire’s list of the 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time resulted in a dawning awareness of the genre’s elasticity: There’s a sci-fi Western serial (doubling as a “singing cowboy” saga) in 1935’s “The Phantom Empire” that paved the way for “Nope.” There are avant-garde short-film takes on the Western, such as Carroll Ballard’s “Rodeo.” There are Westerns set at the time of those films’ actual release, such as “Paris, Texas,” that nonetheless feature journey and reunion motifs central to films set 100 years earlier. There’s the fact that, as much as Black experiences in the Old West have been marginalized by Hollywood (even though around a third of all cowboys in the Old West were Black) there have been many more Black Westerns than are typically acknowledged by the canon today — and that it’s on us now in the present to appreciate what those films have offered. And there’s the realization of iconoclastic, even form-busting, storytelling elements we’ve taken for granted in canonical classics: Which is to say, paraphrasing Robin Wood, that if you don’t love “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” in “Rio Bravo,” you don’t love movies.

Read on and enjoy, pardner.

This Top 100 Westerns list is a living document and will be added to over time to go beyond 100. With editorial contributions from Tom Brueggemann, Bill Desowitz, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Marya E. Gates, Jim Hemphill, Ryan Lattanzio, Tony Maglio, Tambay Obenson, Harrison Richlin, Sarah Shachat, Anne Thompson, Brian Welk, and Christian Zilko.

100. ‘Heaven’s Gate’ (dir. Michael Cimino, 1980)

We know what you’re thinking. ‘Heaven’s Gate’? The film widely associated with the end of the American independent cinema movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s? Really? Yes. There are many versions of this much maligned relic of cinema’s history, but the one we recommend is the latest cut, currently available through the Criterion Collection, ‘Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.’ The director’s full and final vision is a masterpiece on every level — a Western that’s as rich and textured as a Renaissance painting. A historical triptych that tracks wealth’s grip on the American soul, a soul born out of a European influence, now desperate to be excised, but that time carries on in new forms. 

The cost overruns on Cimino’s production famously helped tank United Artists, but it should not be viewed through that lens alone. ‘Heaven’s Gate’ is not only a work of art, but a vital historical document. Its examination of the Johnson County War — one of many forgotten genocides committed on American soil — and those involved with its tragic outcomes remains a relevant study of power bastardizing America’s promise of free enterprise. — HR 

99. ‘The Gunfighter’ (dir. Henry King, 1950)

Most of the action of this small-scale Western takes place in a saloon. One might call this setting a frontier courtroom, where community gathers, past offenses are deliberated, and the life of a man hangs in the balance. The main character of ‘The Gunfighter’ — a criminal named Jimmy Ringo whose myth has grown beyond his control — has seen many a saloon and been forced to deliver justice within them just as often, but is growing more and more tired by the second. Why does this space that’s supposed to be for leisure and relaxation always have to turn into an arena? Part of Ringo knows he’s brought this on himself, but it doesn’t stop him from arguing his case for redemption and desire to make good with society by being a family man. 

There’s a ticking clock element to this drama, as at a previous saloon Ringo shot a man down and now his three brothers are heading his way. The town Ringo absconds to also happens to be full of decent folk who resent Ringo’s presence just as much and are willing to shoot him dead based on conjecture alone. So goes the struggle of being a gunfighter in the Old West. Everyone wants the reputation, but once you get it, it’s all you are. As played by screen legend Gregory Peck, Ringo is a tragic figure in desperate need of a break and who’s started to fear that it’ll only come with a bullet. As he tries to create another path for himself, he’s reminded of all the mistakes that led him to this place — in another saloon, in another town that doesn’t want him there. ‘The Gunfighter’ serves as a precursor to many of the psychological Westerns popularized in the 1950s, as well as an influence on more recent films of the genre, such as ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.’ —HR 

98. ‘City Slickers’ (dir. Ron Underwood, 1991)

Jack Palance won his lone Oscar for his supporting role of Curly in ‘City Slickers.’ If there was a Best Cow Academy Award, Norman would have had it in the bag. Well, Best Calf — Norman didn’t age great. ‘City Slickers’ is a heartfelt buddy comedy in which Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby, faced with turning the big 4-0, leave their yuppie lives for a fantasy-camp cattle drive. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then Curly dies, the rain comes, and the west gets wild. The trip ceases to be a vacation (though to be honest it wasn’t super fun when Curly was alive either) when the guys must go it on their own. But in doing so, they learn Curly’s secret to life: Their ‘one thing.’ —TM

97. ‘The Professionals’ (dir. Richard Brooks, 1966)

Before ‘The Wild Bunch,’ there was Richard Brooks’ marvelous ode to friendship, loyalty, and disillusionment: A prestigious film that earned two Oscar nominations for Brooks (director and adapted script) and cinematographer Conrad Hall. While it lacked the stylistic bravado and fatalistic doom of the legendary Sam Peckinpah Western, Brooks’ crack at the genre was action-packed (with a sequence aboard a fast-moving train) and philosophically insightful (with lots of sarcastic quips).  Oil baron Ralph Bellamy hires four soldiers of fortune to rescue his kidnapped wife (Claudia Cardinale) from revolutionary leader-turned bandit Jack Palance: Planner Lee Marvin, dynamite handler Burt Lancaster, wrangler Robert Ryan, and archer Woody Strode. Turns out Marvin and Lancaster were friends with Palance, and, sure enough, nothing is what it seems. Filmed mostly on location in Death Valley and near Lake Mead in Nevada, the 87-day shoot required lots of efficient planning and day-for-night shooting by Hall and his crew. Fittingly, it ends in disappointment for both Bellamy and Marvin. ‘You bastard!’ Bellamy declares. ‘Yes, sir, in my case an accident of birth. But you, sir, you’re a self-made man,’ Marvin replies. —BD

96. ‘The Cowboys’ (dir. Mark Rydell, 1972)

John Wayne’s last great performance, arguably, was as aging, embittered rancher Wil Andersen, who becomes a reluctant paternal figure in Mark Rydell’s gritty, progressive Western (one of the last of the ‘roadshow’ releases). It’s a coming-of-age adventure and modern portrayal of masculinity, beautifully shot by Robert Surtees and rousingly scored by John Williams, in which Andersen desperately hires 11 schoolboys (including newcomers Robert Carradine and A. Martinez) on a 400-mile cattle drive when his crew gets gold dust fever. Joining them is Roscoe Lee Browne’s scene-stealing Black cook, Nightlinger, who helps Andersen mentor the inexperienced kids. The themes of diversity and inclusion were topical in 1972, as was the violence, which received criticism for turning the kids into bloodthirsty killers. They exact revenge on psychotic Bruce Dern (Long Hair) and his gang of rustlers after he brutally murders Andersen by shooting him in the back and steals their cattle. It was a rare and shocking onscreen death for Wayne, which harmed Dern’s reputation as an actor, consigning him to a string of psychotic roles. For actor-turned director Rydell, it was a tough shoot with an ensemble cast of youngsters on location in New Mexico and Colorado. He even got off to a bad start when reprimanding Wayne for yelling ‘cut’ out of turn. Rydell was certain the superstar was going to have him fired, but Wayne respectfully apologized, and they got along well from then on. —BD

95. ‘The Daughter of Dawn’ (dir. Norbert A. Myles, 1920)

Director Norbert A. Myles’ historical epic ‘The Daughter of Dawn’ was filmed with a cast entirely composed of members of the Kiowa and Comanche tribes. Drawing on melodrama tropes, the film centers on the love quadrangle between the Kiowa chief’s daughter, Dawn (Esther LeBarre); White Eagle (White Parker, who was the actual son of Comanche leader Quanah Parker), the man she loves; Black Wolf (Jack Sankadota), the man her father wants her to marry; and Red Wing (Wanada Parker), another woman who loves Black Wolf. The film stands out from other Westerns of its time not only for its native cast, but also because it cements on celluloid pre-reservation era Kiowa and Comanche customs like buffalo hunts (the stunning footage of buffalos will move you to tears), ceremonial dances, and even a version of sign language, known as Plains Indian Sign Language, that allowed disparate tribes to communicate with each other.— MG

94. ‘Open Range’ (dir. Kevin Costner, 2003)

Directing his second Western after the triumph of ‘Dances With Wolves,’ Kevin Costner went darker and more inward to tell a riveting tale of revenge, though he didn’t leave his eye for beautiful landscapes behind. The setting for screenwriter Craig Storper’s story of free range cowboys (played by Costner, Robert Duvall, and Diego Luna) up against an evil rancher (Michael Gambon) is muddier and less superficially appealing than the lovely vistas of ‘Dances With Wolves,’ as Costner channels ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller’-era Robert Altman to explore the specific, not always pretty, details of how people really lived in the Old West. Yet in this world Costner finds a different kind of beauty and creates visual poetry out of the makeshift town in which much of the film takes place. There’s also a wonderful attention to detail in the characterizations; Duvall is particularly entertaining, and there’s a quiet, adult poignancy to the romance between Costner and Annette Bening that places ‘Open Range’ on a par with the best Western novels of Larry McMurtry. —JH

93. ‘Tombstone’ (dir. George P. Cosmatos, 1993)

We’ll be your Huckleberry. ‘Tombstone’ is not the only film about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the OK Corral gunfight — it’s just the best one. (Well, other than ‘My Darling Clementine.’) It also came out at the right time — or at the very least, at not the wrong time. Kevin Costner’s ‘Wyatt Earp’ film was released in theaters just six months after ‘Tombstone.’ Costner would have had a better chance of beating Doc Holliday in a gunfight than beating ‘Tombstone’ at the box office. (‘Wyatt Earp’ made about half what ‘Tombstone’ did; ‘Tombstone’ was also the much-better-reviewed of the two.) In ‘Tombstone,’ Val Kilmer was particularly excellent as Holliday; decades later he’d play Wyatt Earp in ‘Wyatt Earp’s Revenge.’ Kurt Russell was (and always will be) our Wyatt Earp, and in this excellent and entertaining Western, he put a lot of cowboys beneath their own tombstones. —TM

92. ‘Little Woods’ (dir. Nia DaCosta, 2018)

‘Little Woods’ is a redefinition of the Western that situates its story in the contemporary American Midwest, a setting that starkly contrasts with the traditional locales of the Old West. Additionally, unlike classic Westerns that often focus on lawmen and outlaws, DaCosta’s confidently directed feature debut centers the trials of everyday survival faced by two sisters in a small North Dakota town.

What makes ‘Little Woods’ a compelling addition to a list of great Westerns is its exploration of frontier themes via the lens of present-day socioeconomic issues. The protagonists, believably played by Tessa Thompson and Lily James whose strong performances ground the film, contend with inadequate healthcare access, housing insecurity, poverty, and the opioid crisis, in an overall densely bleak atmosphere that gets underneath the skin.

Its ‘desperate times-desperate measures’ throughline does echo the lawlessness and moral ambiguity characteristic of Westerns, and DaCosta’s direction is subtle and nuanced. Its haunting score and stark cinematography enhance the desolation and harshness of this relatively underrepresented frontier. And its focus on stories of resilience and agency from the perspective of women in front of and behind the camera updates the genre’s scope, and challenges the typical vision of the West as a place of clear-cut masculine conflicts and resolutions. —TO

91. ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ (dir. William Wellman, 1943)

‘There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience’ is part of a letter that Henry Fonda reads aloud at the end of ‘The Ox-Bow Incident.’ William Wellman’s searing lynch mob movie is about exactly how men come to ignore their conscience, and what happens when they do. This is a dark Western, not just in tone but in look, too, taking place mostly over a long night of some townsfolk trying to find and hang murderous cattle rustlers; it eventually settles in a forsaken stretch of ground with the burnt-out shell of a building and gnarled trees beside a small creek that may as well be the River Styx. The shadows are long; the mist roils through the night; the way the light hits the assembled posse’s faces on Wellman’s slow, patient closeups brings out fear, hypocrisy, posturing. The very beauty of the frame-in-frame compositions separating the mob from the men they accuse feels like a slap in the face.     Every cinematic tool is bent toward anger at the kind of arrogant machismo that leads us into mob justice. And there’s a furious precision in how the story is constructed, too. Each character actor, and each type they play, implicates a piece of our civilization. Fonda is the name that most people will know, playing a cool outsider who is unconvinced by the posse’s actions and whose star image promises us that eventually he will step up and shame them all back into line. Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn, as two of the hapless men ensnared by the mob, exude an inner-strength and decency. But it’s not about decency, or innocence. ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ is about how relying on Western justice is no justice at all. The fact that it does so inside of a tautly suspenseful Western is all the more impressive, and all the more damning. —SS 

90. ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ (dir. Kim Jee-woon, 2008)

‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ isn’t just in conversation with Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns by way of 1930s Manchuria. It takes the template Leone built, pours gasoline over it, and explodes it in an almost musical crescendo of style. This is a movie that runs on the Rule of Cool, supported secondarily by Rule of Funny, and only occasionally by any sort of causality or emotional interaction. But director Kim Jee-woon is very clear about the ride he wants to take you on from the very start. There’s a classic train robbery with a virtuosic tracking shot, of course. But the three Korean outlaws drawn into it from different sides, the Good (Park Do-won), the Bad (Park Chang-yi), and the Weird (Yoon Tae-goo), have wildly different aesthetics and styles. The movie supports a character who is more of a straight-up cowboy, a character who is more of a straight-up a gangster in a suit, and a character who is… wearing goggles, I guess. But it’s a hodgepodge. One senses the movie is meant to be as fun as being able to pick out all your favorite desserts from the buffet.     Or, perhaps, ‘kid in a candy shop’ is a better metaphor, because that seems like it’s the amount of fun that the filmmakers had making ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird.’ The color choices, the layering of any props or costumes from anywhere remotely near to the movie’s time and place, the relentless action, the even-more relentless soundtrack full of bangers, the dolly zooms… the camera on ‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ is in love with movement the way a bird is in love with flying. It has to do it. And magically, even in riffing off hundreds of different Western tropes and Hollywood reference points, the movie becomes wholly its own thing. ‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ provides A New Hope™ for Westerns in the 21st Century, just by being itself. —SS 

89. ‘Black Rodeo’ (dir. Jeff Kanew, 1972)

A documentary departure from director Jeff Kanew’s later mainstream comedy work, ‘Black Rodeo’ captured a rodeo Harlem event with African American cowboys, in what would’ve felt like a unique cultural context. A director perhaps best known for the 1984 comedy ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ and ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ (1989), Kanew effectively cut his teeth with ‘Black Rodeo,’ his first feature, which stood out in the landscape of Western films by shining a light on African American cowboys and cowgirls via a vibrant, observational documentary lens.

It remains a culturally significant work with appearances by icons like Muhammad Ali and Woody Strode, the latter providing depth and historical context. Strode’s insights as a Western legend himself, coupled with a mixture of live rodeo footage and interviews, made ‘Black Rodeo’ a celebration of Black heritage within the traditionally white cowboy narrative. 

As with other titles on this list, the backdrop of the film’s release is crucial for contextualizing ‘Black Rodeo.’ Released in 1972, the film emerged during a period of major social and cultural shifts in the USA, particularly civil rights and the increasing acceptance of the diversity of African American culture in mainstream media. 

This was the early 1970s which saw the rise of Blaxploitation films. ‘Black Rodeo’ stood out with a different kind of vision of the African American experience, albeit one that, like many Blaxploitation movies, was not directed by a Black filmmaker. Still, even with a certain lack of documentary finesse, it contributed to a broader understanding and appreciation of African American contributions to broader American culture. —TO

88. ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’ (dir. Don Siegel, 1970)

By the time Clint Eastwood starred in ‘Two Mules,’ he had already firmly embedded himself in the Western cinema canon. His iconic roles and contributions to the genre began with the TV series ‘Rawhide’ and culminated in Sergio Leone’s iconic Spaghetti Western ‘Dollars Trilogy,’ which Eastwood had just wrapped up a few years earlier. ‘Two Mules’ was his third post-‘Dollars Trilogy’ American Western following ‘Hang ‘Em High’ (1968) and the musical ‘Paint Your Wagon’ (1969) with Lee Marvin.

And while Eastwood didn’t direct ‘Two Mules,’ the 1970s marked the beginning of his career as a director, stepping behind the camera for several more Westerns to come including ‘High Plains Drifter’ (1973), ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ (1976), ‘Pale Rider’ (1985), and much later, the Oscar-winning ‘Unforgiven’ (1992).

‘Two Mules’ stars Eastwood as a graying mercenary and Shirley MacLaine as a woman posing as a nun, forming an unlikely partnership. A blend of Western elements with humor and even romantic comedy, it’s a mix that sharply contrasts with Eastwood’s earlier darker Westerns, particularly the more stylistically innovative approaches in Leone’s epics, with characters drenched in moral ambiguities.

Against the backdrop of the French intervention in Mexico in the mid 1800s, as the interplay between Eastwood and MacLaine in ‘Two Mules’ unfolds, secrets are revealed that complicate their relationship and, as a result, the story. His pragmatic and cynical nature clashes with her mysterious and performative pious front.

Siegel’s direction strikes a balance between light-hearted moments and serious action sequences. And it works. —TO

87. ”49-’17’ (dir. Ruth Ann Baldwin, 1917)

The first Western directed by a woman, Ruth Ann Baldwin’s hilariously complex ”49–’17’ is a meta twist on the already popular genre. Filmed for Universal, where Baldwin was one of several women directors employed there at the time, this parody Western stars her husband, actor Leo O. Pierson, as an Eastern city slicker hired by his boss, Judge Brand (Joseph W. Girard), to recreate Nugget Notch, the Western town where he and his partner struck it rich during the Gold Rush. Once Brand arrives at the newly re-built town, populated by hired actors with shady pasts, Baldwin’s film enacts, with a winking grin, every cliché of the genre. Through the use of actors playing actors who are actually ‘real’ Westerners, Baldwin calls into focus that the very nature of the Western film genre is itself mostly just grown men from the East playing at being rough and tumble cowboys and outlaws. —MG

86. ‘Blood on the Moon’ (dir. Robert Wise, 1948)

Robert Mitchum, already the consummate performer of American antiheroes just six years into his screen career, plays a morally ambiguous gunslinger in Robert Wise’s taut and shadow-cloaked ‘Blood on the Moon.’ Wise, then an established filmmaker of genre projects from ‘The Body Snatcher’ to ‘Born to Kill,’ transposes the urban claustrophobia of noir to the vastness of the Southwest, where corruption and rot fester in wide open spaces.

Mitchum plays Jim Garry, a drifting cowman roped into a dispute between cattle herders, homesteaders, and the Native Americans with which they share the land. Robert Preston (15 years before starring in the Warner Bros. musical ‘The Music Man’) co-stars as Tate Riling, a longtime friend who entreats Garry into the conflict — only to reveal a criminal plot of his own to trick another local rancher out of his money. Based on a Luke Short novel, ‘Blood on the Moon’ lulls you with its seemingly ambling place before erupting into tense action. B-horror movie cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca is a fascinating match to the material, often shrouding it in such darkness that it’s hard to surmise where we are in space and time. But where we are is firmly in noir country, despite the cowboy trappings surrounding it, and with a sturdy performance from silent-type Mitchum, an outlaw who’s not here to save the day. —RL

85. ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (dir. George Roy Hill, 1969)

The most onscreen magical moments in Hollywood history aren’t easily explained or reverse-engineered — sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle and ride it out to cinematic immortality. That was certainly the case with ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ a film that paired Robert Redford and Paul Newman, electrified the zeitgeist, and created perhaps the most iconic onscreen duo in the history of the Western genre.

George Roy Hill’s film lives and dies by the chemistry of its two leads. As Hole-in-the-Wall gang leader Butch Cassidy, Newman exhibits the same smooth-talking cockiness that powered films like ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and ‘The Sting,’ while Redford gives a brilliant performance as the Sundance Kid, a soft spoken marksman who never misses a shot. William Goldman’s script is filled with brilliantly quippy dialogue for the two men to feast on, and cinematic touches like Burt Bacharach’s original song ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ soften the rough edges of the genre on the way to turning ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ into one of the most approachable Westerns ever made. It’s such a treat to revisit the onscreen friendship between Newman and Redford that it’s easy to forget that the film ends in tragedy. But those final freeze frames are a perfect metaphor for how firmly Newman and Redford’s cowboys would insert themselves into the fabric of American pop culture. —CZ

84. ‘Posse’ (dir. Mario Van Peebles, 1993)

‘Posse’ was a breath of fresh air when it was released in 1993. It combined traditional Western elements with a vivid portrayal of African American soldiers and outlaws in a post-Civil War setting, something that hadn’t been much explored in mainstream American cinema. Directed by Mario Van Peebles, who also starred in the film, ‘Posse’ was distinguished by the assertive way Peebles effectively reclaimed the Western arena for stories about Black heroes and the communities from which they emerged. 

The backdrop of its release is also key. The early 1990s were a great moment for Black Cinema, what some key voices like Roger Ebert referred to as a renaissance period. Van Peebles was a leading personality in the movement, particularly following the success of his ‘New Jack City’ two years prior. 

As a result, ‘Posse’ was arguably more than just a film about a group of Black soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War battling outlaws and racialized violence. It was part of a broader cultural moment that saw African American filmmakers gaining new ground in Hollywood, telling stories that had long been neglected or handled by non-Black filmmakers. 

Van Peebles’ focus on Black cowboys and soldiers challenged traditional narratives of the Western, which typically marginalized or excluded their experiences despite their historical presence in the American West. This was a time when the industry was more receptive to diverse voices, and the film, however unintentionally, contributed to a rethinking of genre conventions and a more inclusive depiction of American history on the big screen. —TO

83. ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)

Where would the Western be without ‘A Fistful of Dollars’? This was the film that ignited the Spaghetti Western movement, that gave us Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood as a superstar, and Ennio Morricone, and that helped rewrite the film history books on the genre. ‘Fistful’ is the first of the ‘Dollars Trilogy,’ or the adventures of the Man With No Name (technically he’s referred to here as ‘Joe’). And though Leone may have made an unauthorized ripoff of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movie ‘Yojimbo,’ Leone makes it all his own. The dramatic, operatic close-ups of Clint’s eyes, the slow-building, endless stare downs, the piccolo trills on Morricone’s score, they’re all attributes filmmakers would try and copy for decades. But the cool factor of hearing Eastwood say ‘get three coffins ready’ and whipping back his poncho can’t be matched. —BW

82. ‘Tumbleweeds’ (dir. King Baggot, 1925)

At the height of the silent era, Hollywood had two major Western stars: Tom Mix and William S. Hart. While Mix was known for his flashy costumes and action prowess, Hart, who was both a trained Shakespearean actor and friends with legendary Old West lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, brought an understated honor and integrity to his western heroes. His final film, ‘Tumbleweeds’ centers on cattlemen dealing with the influx of settlers during the Oklahoma Territory’s 1889 land rush. The film perfectly distills the ethos of the white men who ‘founded’ the American West. For them, it was land for the taking (native inhabitants be damned!), and when regulations changed to encourage more settlers, the betrayal and distrust of the government that took root then has yet to be fully shaken even now. All of the complexities and myths and lies — and beauty — of the American West are on full display here. —MG

81. ‘The Learning Tree’ (dir. Gordon Parks, 1969)

Directed by Gordon Parks, ‘The Learning Tree’ was one of the first major films directed by an African American that was backed by a major studio. A pioneering work based on Parks’ semi-autobiographical novel, the film is set in 1920s Kansas and follows the life of Newt Winger, a young Black man contending with the complexities of growing up amid pervasive racial prejudice. In a key moment, Newt witnesses a crime, and the handling of this crime by the community and the justice system becomes a vehicle for examining the hate and prejudice within. 

Injustice, personal growth, the importance of community, and resilience are on the menu and Parks, a seasoned photographer, captures his mixed community of characters against the imposing plains of Kansas, with an unflinching eye. 

Yet, ‘The Learning Tree’ is also a personal statement. His direction gives the film an intimate and reflective quality. It not only tells a story of harsh realities faced but also celebrates the moments of joy and of course learning that shapes Newt’s journey to adulthood. 

In many ways it was the forerunner of future successful rural America-set African American family films, from ‘Sounder’ (1972) to ‘Down in the Delta’ (1995). —TO

80. ‘The Covered Wagon’ (dir. James Cruze, 1923)

The second highest-grossing film of 1923, ‘The Covered Wagon’ was so popular that President Warren G. Harding held a special screening of it at the White House. According to Jesse Lasky Jr., son of Paramount Pictures founder Jesse Lasky, the goal of director James Cruze was to ‘elevate the Western, which had always been sort of a potboiler kind of film, to the status of an epic.’ To achieve this, Cruze not only employed one of the largest casts, which include extras from the Northern Arapaho Nation, and crews assembled at the time, he also filmed mostly on location, utilizing the deserts of Palm Springs, Nevada, and Utah. There’s even footage of the Antelope Island Bison Herd, who make their home near the Great Salt Lake. The wagons themselves were borrowed from the families of real pioneers, many of whom served as the film’s wagon train extras. —MG

79. ‘The Settlers’ (dir. Felipe Gálvez, 2023)

Set in 1901 in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, this South American Western, which debuted at Cannes 2023 before playing the festival circuit, is gorgeously shot by rookie director Felipe Gálvez and cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo, with a powerful dissonant score by Harry Allouche. But the rugged landscape reveals harsh colonial violence against the Indigenous population. The two-part narrative starts as rapacious Spanish entrepreneur José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro) hires three horsemen to clear a passage to the sea for his sheep herds, with orders to wipe out anyone who stands in his way. Segundo (Camilo Arancibia) is a marksman of Spanish and Indigenous descent; he works for Scottish ex-soldier Alexander MacLennan (Mark Stanley), while the third man is Apache-hunter mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall). The three men do not trust each other and soon fall into back-biting and fighting as they mow down their human prey. The second part, some years later, shows Segundo settled with a family, as government representatives seek to learn the truth of the earlier massacres. ‘The Settlers’ is a powerful western noir with disturbing parallels to North America’s own destructive history. —AT

78. ‘Dances with Wolves’ (dir. Kevin Costner, 1990)

The Western had been pronounced dead by virtually everyone when actor, producer, and director Kevin Costner brought it roaring back to life with this 1990 hit, a great American epic that triumphed against industry expectations to win seven Oscars including Best Picture. While the film was not revolutionary in the way some less informed commentators believed (there had been Westerns going back to the silent era that were sympathetic to Native American characters — this was hardly the first), it was an exquisite piece of classical craftsmanship — elegant and expressive in its visuals, rousing and affecting in its characterizations and musical score, and sweeping in its ambition. As with much of Costner’s work, its earnest sincerity is both its greatest strength and the thing that makes it an easy target for cynics; Costner wears his heart on his sleeve, and the emotional purity of his vision makes ‘Dances with Wolves’ a deeply moving piece of old-fashioned Hollywood mythmaking. —JH

77. ‘Harlem on the Prairie’ (dir. Sam Newfield, 1937)

‘Harlem on the Prairie’ broke ground as an all-Black Western. Released during the Great Depression’s tail end, it defied Hollywood’s racial norms during a period steeped in racial segregation, a bold move that challenged the genre’s tradition of white heroes, placing a Black cowboy (Herb Jeffries) at the fore.   

The all-Black cast is certainly the most significant aspect of the film in the context of Westerns, but Jeffries’ character still embodies the classic Western hero’s spirit, albeit with a fresh cultural perspective. This charming cowboy who fights outlaws and helps a young woman search for her father’s lost gold contrasted with the crude characterizations of Black characters in 1930s mainstream American movies. And seemingly simple, classic Western acts performed by a Black man is what redefines the hero in a way that resonated with Black audiences.

It’s worth pointing out that Jeffries’ mixed heritage — born to a father of Sicilian descent and a mother who was of Irish and African-American descent — allowed him some freedom to shapeshift during a deeply racialized Hollywood era, playing various ethnicities, including non-Black characters. To be sure, he identified as Black, and films like ‘Harlem on the Prairie,’ where he deliberately positioned himself as a Black leading man, were important during a time when racial definitions were very rigid in America. Jeffries purposefully sought opportunities to positively represent Black people, particularly in Westerns where they were rare.

Ultimately, the film, which bridged the gap between traditional Westerns and elements of the musical, primarily makes a statement through its existence rather than anything explicitly radical in its form. It’s an early example of breaking cinematic color barriers, even though it wasn’t much interested in making commentary on the social conditions of the time. —TO

76. ‘The Iron Horse’ (dir. John Ford, 1924)

The first major success for director John Ford, ‘The Iron Horse’ centers on the construction of America’s first transcontinental railroad, culminating in the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit. The sweeping spectacle was Fox’s answer to Paramount’s popular epic from the year before, ‘The Covered Wagon.’ Filmed largely on location, it features the stunning, painterly use of landscape that would come to define Ford’s directing career. George O’Brien stars as Davy Brandon, a Pony Express rider whose railroad surveyor father was killed a decade earlier. Although the film features roughly 300 extras from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation its depiction of its native characters, like many films within the genre, oscillates between showing them as average people trying to survive a changing world and as ruthless, violent murderers. The reveal that its primary villain is actually a shady white businessman masquerading as a renegade Cheyenne, foresees the kind of subversion of tropes more commonly found in revisionist westerns. —MG

75. ‘Westward the Women’ (dir. William Wellman, 1951)

A movie so good that it almost lives up to its incredible premise, William A. Wellman’s ‘Westward the Women’ tells the plausible enough, not-at-all true story of an old California landowner named Roy Whitman (John McIntire) who realizes that his precious valley — a painstakingly tamed pocket of the American frontier — won’t have a future unless his farm hands can start families there. The solution is obvious: Roy, along with his smoldering misogynist of a wagon master (Robert Taylor as Buck Wyatt), will travel to Chicago, where they’ll recruit 140 ‘good women’ (a motley crew of widows, immigrants, and prospectless bachelorettes) to accompany them back home. But that journey proves to be every bit as perilous as Buck threatens it will when he warns that only a third of the women will live to see Whitman’s Valley, as the brides-to-be soon face a slew of dangers, some of which come from within their own wagon train.

Significantly more brutal than you’d ever expect from a rootin’-tootin’ road movie whose story is credited to Frank Capra (the wagon train is witness to rapes, executions, and accidental child slayings within just a few days of leaving Chicago), ‘Westward the Women’ is sustained by the friction it creates between the hokeyness of its stereotypical characters and the mercilessness of their unsparing circumstances. Yes, modern viewers might blanche at the short Japanese cook who’s used for comic relief (Henry Nakamura) and roll their eyes at the slap-happy romance that develops between Buck and a showgirl named Fifi (Denise Darcel, who helps to disprove the wagon master’s belief that women are basically just cattle but scarier). But Wellman mines a raw and enduring thrill from watching social prejudices succumb to the base realities of life on the trail, which exposes people for what they really are, and in turn reveals the hidden strengths that made America so powerful. —DE

74. ‘The Proposition’ (dir. John Hillcoat, 2005)

Australia might not always be the expected setting for a Western, but it is always the Most setting for a Western. Director John Hillcoat’s coverage of the Outback, far more than the monoliths of Monument Valley, is The Landscape; it’s simultaneously an expression of alien beauty and a reminder that one day the sun is going to explode. It admits no human life. The atmosphere is hellish, there is a palpable fear of it, but you cannot dismiss it. There is some barbarous truth here — although probably not for the damned souls who choose to try and colonize it.     On its face, ‘The Proposition’ is a story about three criminal brothers. The middle one (Guy Pearce) is captured by a lawman (Ray Winstone) clinging to his duty with the whitest of white knuckles and proposes a deal to his captive: If he finds and kills his older brother (Danny Huston), then he and his also-captured younger brother (Richard Wilson) will not be executed. That should give you an idea for how bleak and grubby the film is. What these characters will do in order to not die quickly stops being subtextual motivation and starts being the suspense that powers the movie. And it is a much more interesting question, honestly, when everyone is a little bit mad, and a little bit doomed, and desperate not to die. Hillcoat’s imagery blends terror and murder with beauty and power and becomes something that feels ever bigger than the Outback itself. ‘The Proposition’ is a nasty Western, but the film argues pretty persuasively that so is the nature of the West itself. —SS

73. ‘Hell’s Heroes’ (dir. William Wyler, 1929)

Made at the tail end of the silent era — and later re-released with synced sound — ‘Hell’s Heroes,’ William Wyler’s impressionistic take on Peter B. Kyne’s oft-filmed ‘The Three Godfathers,’ is perhaps the acclaimed director’s most spiritual film. Rife with allegorical Christian imagery and filmed under the blazing Mojave sun, the film centers on three bad men (Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton, and Fred Kohler) who rob the bank of New Jerusalem a few days before Christmas, then light out for the desert, followed by a posse hellbent on bringing them to justice. Lost and delirious for lack of water, the trio come across a newborn babe and a dying woman — the wife of the cashier they just murdered — sheltering in a stranded wagon. The outlaws must then sacrifice their riches — and their lives — in order to bring the child back to safety, and in the process they may just redeem their very souls. —MG

72. ‘Lone Star’ (dir. John Sayles, 1996)

‘Lone Star’ is a modern Western that weaves mystery and drama within the setting of a small Texas border town. Spanning multiple generations, past and present are interlaced to unravel the complex relationships of the townspeople. It’s a canvas upon which identity, legacy, and racial harmony are explored in Sayles’ fashion, driven more by character development and a nuanced handling of social issues than conventional Western genre action.

Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) uncovers a long-buried skeleton that leads him to investigate the mysterious past of his father, the respected former sheriff Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey). The film uses the investigation as a catalyst to examine the intertwining destinies of its characters. Naturally, secrets are revealed that shape the dynamics of the community.

A Sayles storytelling trademark, ‘Lone Star’s’ mosaic-like structure and 135-minute runtime allow character arcs to unfold naturally and interconnect seamlessly. 

He insists on realistic portrayals of human struggles, creating a panorama that tackles heavy themes like segregation, heritage, and the search for belonging, minus purely Western conventions, with keen commentary.

Ultimately, this ‘redefinition’ of the Western is where its impact lies. —TO

71. ‘True Grit’ (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010)

The Coen brothers went to Charles Portis’ 1968 novel for this Western, which they describe as a ‘beautiful young adult adventure story,’ a far cry from the 1969 John Wayne version. Critics gave the Coens high marks, and the movie proved a surprise Christmas hit ($252 million worldwide). Its success relies on Hailee Steinfeld (cast over 15,000 applicants), as Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl mourning her dead father, who hires U.S. Deputy Marshall Rooster Cogburn (a delightful comic turn from Jeff Bridges) to find her father’s murderer. They confront a motley crew of characters along the way played by Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Barry Pepper, among others, who all have fun with Portis’ flowery 19th-century argot. The action comedy earned 10 Oscar nominations, won none. —AT

70. ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’ (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1974)

It’s hard not to be sucked into Peckinpah’s stark, gritty, intense exploration of human desperation and moral decay, set against the harshness of rural Mexico in the early 1970s. It’s a film that diverges from conventional Westerns in its depiction of the disintegration of personal ethics, embodied by its protagonist, Bennie, played by Warren Oates.

Although the setting is no mere backdrop. It acts as a mirror of Bennie’s inner turmoil, on his quest to retrieve the head of Alfredo Garcia for a major bounty. 

Peckinpah’s methodical coverage of the physical barrenness of the landscape captures Bennie’s isolation and the desperation he faces. The chosen time period — an era of social and political unrest and the evolution of a raw and realistic filmmaking aesthetic — compared to the idealized landscapes of classic Westerns, added a layer of authenticity.

And like other films of the period, the violence in ‘Alfredo Garcia’ is brutal and consequential. Bennie’s hunt for the head becomes a descent into madness. Greed warps his humanity, as seen in his bizarre conversations with the severed head.

Basically, it’s bleak with a pervasive sense of doom that hangs over its characters. It’s human frailty laid bare. —TO

69. ‘The Ruthless Four’ (dir. Giorgio Capitani, 1968)

With a title that clearly inspired a certain Tarantino film, you’d expect Giorgio Capitani’s Spaghetti Western to be a showcase for Mexican standoffs among tick-riddled characters as prone to firing verbal barbs as bullets. And you’d be right.     Gilbert Roland, built like a boxer even in his early 60s (and always great to see in Westerns as someone who grew up in a town taken over by Pancho Villa), is so jittery he can barely stop shaking to take the quinine pills needed for his malaria. Then there’s Klaus Kinski as a milk-drinking vagabond posing as a minister (and forgetting he’s supposed to be playing the part even when people call him ‘reverend’). George Hilton as Kinski’s vainglorious toady. And Van Heflin as the kind of grizzled sap he always played. Heflin is a gold prospector who needs help mining his claim and whose choice of helper (Hilton) quickly ropes in an unwanted Roland and Kinski. (The passive-aggressive ‘three pairs of hands are better than two’ soon becomes ‘four pairs of hands are better than three.’) The result is more of a gunfighters’ ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre,’ told with pulp verve and melodramatic whip zooms. Four there may be, but you know only one will be standing in the end. —CB   

68. ‘The Phantom Empire’ (dir. Otto Brower, B. Reeves Eason, 1935)

The great utility of the Western genre has been the set of symbols it provides. Through the idea of the cowboy, the railroad man, the hired gun, and more, we can collectively imagine the country we want America to be. Do we want the forces of capitalism and exploitation to run roughshod over the land? Or do we want Queen Tika of the Muranians, sitting on her wells of radium in her technologically-advanced kingdom hidden deep under the ground, to control everything? ‘The Phantom Empire’ is a 12-part serial from 1935 that rocketed ‘Singing Cowboy’ Gene Autry into the zeitgeist and is widely hailed as the first Sci-Fi Western. With its combination of adventure hooks, kids being menaces (in a good way), fun-spirited fights, kidnappings, and so many chase sequences, it’s not hard to draw an evolutionary line from ‘The Phantom Empire’ to things like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Outer Range’ — as well as, of course, ‘Nope.’     But ‘The Phantom Empire’ is interesting in its own right, not just for its place in film history. The story feels straight-up made up, almost on the spot, in an infectiously fun way. The costumes are big and loud and maybe made out of kitchen pots. The Gene Autry songs? Well, they’re in there too. ‘The Phantom Empire’ brims with a radioactive energy that folds the audience into the story’s sense of play. Few feature films, of any era or any genre, feel as creative as this silly serialized story about a queen with wireless telephones (!) and a cowboy who runs a ranch with a radio show. —SS 

67. ‘Nope’ (dir. Jordan Peele, 2022)

As ‘Nope’ informs its 21st century audience early on, one of the first moving images in history was a reel of a Black man riding upon a majestic stallion. And yet, film depictions of Black cowboys are scarce at best, despite the many historic examples to pull from. Jordon Peele’s science-fiction film may not be a Western in the traditional sense, but it does subtly correct the discrepancy it points out by making a modern cowboy out of Daniel Kaluuya’s taciturn protagonist OJ. The quiet son of a rancher and horse trainer, OJ grows, via a hair-brained scheme to capture footage of a mysterious UFO haunting the Agua Dulce valley, from a depressive to an action hero.  

Peele’s film is constantly concerned with the queasy nature and morality of spectacle, and it extends its ambivalence to the Western, populating its story with cowboy-themed amusement parks and a high-brimmed hat-clad Steven Yeun as a child star looking to recapture his former glory by making an attraction out of the flesh-eating UFO. Still, Peele seems to want to have his cake and eat it too, poking at how the genre makes entertainment out of crime and conflict while embracing its eternal appeal. When Kaluuya rides through the desert dust on his horse in ‘Nope’s’ closing scenes, the director can’t resist a money shot that takes the audience’s breath away. —WC   

66. ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Kelly Reichardt makes movies so small and specific that they feel like memories from your own life. It’s a style that feels unconducive to the transportive, epic sweep that the Western is associated with, but her contribution to the genre, ‘Meek’s Cutoff,’ bends those conventions to her unique vision. Presenting the audience with a mere sliver of a settler group’s journey along the Oregon Trail, ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ intimately details the rising tensions on the caravan, as the men turn on Bruce Greenwood’s untrustworthy guide and the wives (represented by a remarkably unsentimental and stern Michelle Williams) grow frustrated at their inability to take control of the situation. Loosely based on a real historical incident, ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ captures the tension and fear of the unknown that defined the West for those who settled there. Few other films have made the frontier feel more real, at one beautiful and ordinary. —WC 

65. ‘Companeros!’ (dir. Sergio Corbucci, 1970)

Fernando Rey as a turtle-collecting college professor who’s inspired his own militia movement in the Mexican Revolution. Franco Nero as a spats-wearing Swedish dandy/arms dealer. And of course, Jack Palance as a one-handed, weed-smoking fiend whose best friend is a hawk named Marsha. Right there, that’s a recipe for an all-time classic Spaghetti Western. Add in one of the MVPs of the genre, Tomas Milian, as a revolutionary, and you’ve got a character piece for the ages.     Technically, ‘Companeros!’ is a Zapata Western — a subgenre of a subgenre — which means, like a whole strain of Italian-produced Westerns, it’s specifically about the Mexican Revolution. In practice, it’s really a buddy comedy, as unlikely friends-in-the-making Nero and Milian pair their own unique skillsets through a succession of increasingly elaborate action sequences. Corbucci’s lighter riff on his own ‘The Mercenary’ is sometimes dismissed for being overly comedic, even though his approach to action had clearly become that much more sophisticated. But why so serious? If you don’t appreciate one particular jump cut sight gag featuring Marsha the Hawk, you probably could use some of what Palance is smoking. —CB 

64. ‘Buck and the Preacher’ (Sidney Poitier, 1972)

Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut is one of the most flat-out entertaining Westerns ever made, largely thanks to the hilarious camaraderie between Poitier (as a taciturn wagon master) and Harry Belafonte (as a wild con man) as they team up to protect a wagon train of Black settlers from the white bounty hunters out to terrorize them. Belafonte in particular is revelatory in his comic characterization — he’s gleefully off-putting here, a far cry from the suave leading man roles that he was known for. Poitier and Belafonte make this one of the first great buddy films, but it’s so much more; there’s as much rage here as there is humor, and as much sadness as rage — which is saying a lot. A corrective to decades in which Black characters were underrepresented in Western movies and a history lesson about race relations in post-Civil War America, ‘Buck and the Preacher’ is long on serious intent yet never feels weighted down by it; it accomplishes its mission within a spectacularly entertaining action-comedy framework. Jazz great Benny Carter provides a score that adds to the buoyancy, and the supporting cast is deep and rich, with one of the all-time great bad guys in Cameron Mitchell. Few movies are so good at being simultaneously so much fun and so ground-breaking. —JH   

63. ‘Rodeo’ (dir. Carroll Ballard, 1969)

A nose. An eye. An ear. A horn. The bull assembles itself in your mind as Carroll Ballard shows you its constituent parts in extreme close-up. In fact, most of his 20-minute short film showing the 1968 National Radio in Oklahoma City is built around tight close-ups, especially of legendary bull rider Larry Mahan. Without sync sound, this experimental film is an epic of the miniature. One moment, Ballard and his camera operators (among them, Caleb Deschanel) will linger on Mahan’s hand slipping in for an underhand grip of the rein, and the next, the bull starts out of the gate. But there’s no frantic explosion of kineticism: Mahan’s ride is in slow motion, all ambient sound absent, with just a single, solitary violin for accompaniment. This is more Bruce Conner than John Ford, but ‘Rodeo’ is still the essence of the Western: It’s about the interplay of humans and animals, where civilization meets nature, and flesh meets its match in will. The Western shows its elasticity here, capable of accommodating visions of classicism, modernism, and even the non-narrative avant-garde. —CB 

62. ‘Bend of the River’ (dir. Anthony Mann, 1952)

One of the great shifts in movie history is the move from pre-war trustworthy, people-friendly Jimmy Stewart to post-war James Stewart. This craggier and sadder Stewart not only gave some of his best performances for Alfred Hitchcock (‘Rear Window,’ ‘Vertigo’) but carried a series of five Anthony Mann Westerns of which the second, ‘Bend of the River’ contends for the best. (OK, reviews weren’t great when it opened, but its reputation has improved over time. The first Mann-Stewart collaboration, 1950’s ‘Winchester ’73,’ is damned good. They all are.) In these Mann character studies we find less Western myth-building, more unsettling violence. Mann’s Stewart isn’t asking you to like him. He’s asking you to wonder want he might be capable of doing under enough duress. The old Western honor codes do not apply here. These movies, featuring Stewart wearing the same hat and riding the same horse, Pie, proved to be hugely popular.

In this, Mann’s first color film, Stewart’s character is beaten and abandoned by his so-called friend (Arthur Kennedy) and wanders the lush Oregon mountains as he seeks revenge. Mann figured out how to unleash Stewart’s inner rage. Still to come: ‘The Naked Spur,’ ‘The Far Country,’ and ‘The Man from Laramie,’ their last movie together. —AT

61. ‘Sergeant Rutledge’ (dir. John Ford, 1960)

Ford’s ‘Sergeant Rutledge’ is a compelling addition to the Western canon, groundbreaking in its exploration of race and justice through the lens of a Black cavalry officer, Braxton Rutledge, played by all-time Western stud Woody Strode. Like several of the films on this list, the historical and social backdrop is crucial in understanding and appreciating it. Ford uses this post-Civil War era setting not just to tell a story of individual heroism but to critique the racial injustices that were still prevalent at the time of the film’s release, and, frustratingly, still are, more than six decades later: Collectively, racial bias in the American judicial system.

A Black cavalry sergeant in the post-Civil War era is falsely accused of rape and murder of a white girl and the murder of the girl’s father, in a film that combines elements of a courtroom drama with a traditional Western, centering Rutledge’s trial where he faces racial prejudice and must prove his innocence in a system clearly stacked against him. 

As the story unfolds, Rutledge is steadfast in maintaining his dignity. And it’s Ford’s portrayal of a dignified Black male protagonist that subverted typical racial stereotypes, unlike many films of its time. 

A role that seemed tailormade for Strode (the story is that the studio wanted Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte), Rutledge is not submissive or villainous, but instead is a figure of strength, integrity, and heroism.

Courtroom dramas where race plays a central role are aplenty in the history of American cinema, often reflections of their eras. In the context of ‘Sergeant Rutledge,’ its distinctiveness lies in the film’s head-on confrontations of racial prejudice not commonly addressed in its era and genre. —TO

60. ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’ (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1970)

For Sam Peckinpah to follow ‘The Wild Bunch’ with this raffish Western comedy would be like if Stanley Kubrick followed ‘2001’ with ‘Men in Black.’ Despite its limited violence, this is consistent with much of the director’s films in its interest in oddball characters, led by the long-time struggling prospector whose fortunes improve after he discovers water on his property. It features a brilliant (and rare lead) performance by Jason Robards, Jr., 180 degrees away from the usual well-groomed professionals he usually played, with the never-better Stella Stevens, as a local prostitute kicked out of town he befriends, and David Warner as a minister of a church he invented, as his cohorts in adventure.

Like ‘The Wild Bunch’ and many Westerns of its time, ‘Cable Hogue’ is set at a time when the west is seeing modern ways begin to encroach, and its characters confront that their time might be passing (perhaps parallel to Peckinpah’s own sense of his position).

Along with its many charms, it features a supporting cast of character actors such as Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Gene Evans, Slim Pickens, Kathleen Freeman, and others most in the final stages of their careers, all celebrating an individualistic and idiosyncratic way of life and movies that was coming to an end. —TB

59. ‘The Man from Laramie’ (dir. Anthony Mann, 1955)

When you think of James Stewart, you don’t necessarily think of him first and foremost as a Western star, so thoroughly has his efforts in the genre been overshadowed by ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ or his masterful psychological turn in ‘Vertigo.’ But his contributions to the genre are vast, and they include five films he made with director Anthony Mann. ‘The Man from Laramie’ stars Stewart as a vigilante who arrives in the Western town of Coronado looking for the man responsible for his brother’s death. His suspects are all men who work and live on the ranch of cattle baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), and his presence is the powder keg needed to kick off a violent power struggle for control over the ranch. Shot in vivid technicolor and in widescreen CinemaScope, ‘The Man From Laramie’ looks gigantic, which is only appropriate for a Shakespearean revenge story of such sweeping scale. Despite Stewart’s innate likability and pathos, lurking underneath the film’s conventional premise and cheery opening theme song is a black-hearted and morally queasy psychological fable. —WC

58. ‘Django’ (dir. Sergio Corbucci, 1966)

For a sensation to truly become a phenomenon, there must always be two. Having Clint Eastwood and his Dollars Trilogy wasn’t enough for the Spaghetti Western to become a truly global phenomenon with a grammar and affect all its own. It needed ‘Django.’ It needed Franco Nero in a Union officer’s cape dragging a coffin behind him. Even heavily dubbed in the English-language version, Nero’s Django represents one of the most charismatic breakout performances in movie history. In fact, has there ever been a more handsome man onscreen than Nero?     Not idly is that question asked. There’s a line of thought that the vivid yellow of the wheatfield and blue of the sky in ‘Shane’ reflect young Brandon deWilde’s hair and eye color, and that he only sees his landscape in terms of himself. With ‘Django,’ how can you not see the stubble on Nero’s cheek as the mud covering everything in the town. His piercing blue eyes like the water of the lake where Django’s love Maria (Loredana Nusciak) is gunned down and he finally recognizes the depth of his feeling for her. The tufted brown of his hair like the crosses in the cemetery where he finally seizes his destiny. Nero is a pinnacle of male beauty, and set against a film that in so many other ways revels in ugliness: There’s certainly never been an uglier town in any Western, and ruled over by a racist Confederate exile, Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo), whose followers wear red klansmen hoods. Salvation for these bastards can only come via what’s in Django’s coffin.     So popular that it spawned literally dozens of unofficial sequels starring other actors — and ensured the global viability of the Italian Western beyond Eastwood — it’s here where the Spaghetti Western took a more violent turn: An ear sliced off and fed to its owner, Django’s hands crushed and broken, a woman whipped by her captors. Even if Nusciak’s Maria has about the agency of a typical Bond girl of this period, like most Spaghetti Western heroines, the chemistry she has with Nero is palpable. And of course, Hollywood would call upon the film’s leading man shortly. Like Eastwood and ‘Paint Your Wagon,’ Nero would find, with ‘Camelot,’ that the logical next step of Spaghetti Western superstardom was a Lerner & Loewe roadshow musical. —CB 

57. ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Sam Peckinpah at his most elegiac and lyrical. ‘The Wild Bunch’ is more revolutionary and ‘Ride the High Country’ a more objectively perfect film, but even in its many bastardized forms (the movie was taken out of Peckinpah’s hands and no definitive director’s cut exists) ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ packs an emotional punch few Westerns — hell, few movies period — can top. The friendship gives the movie its title (and thanks to the layered performances of James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, Peckinpah has two of his greatest characters) and the movie oscillates between tenderness, brutality, humor, and regret in a manner that leaves the viewer completely shaken by what the characters, and by allegorical extension, America itself, have lost. Add to that some of Peckinpah’s most memorably staged moments of violence (the image of Billy firing a shotgun full of dimes that explode in the air singlehandedly justifies the entire film), a typically rich supporting cast of character actors (including Peckinpah stalwarts L.Q. Jones and R.G. Armstrong), and a classic score by Bob Dylan, and you’ve got a wounded Western classic — a movie as broken and beautiful as its lead characters. —JH

56. ‘River of No Return’ (dir. Otto Preminger, 1954)

This CinemaScope Western shot on location in the Canadian Rockies opens on Robert Mitchum cutting down a tree with an axe. It falls. Then he leaves it. No timber to be collected, no mention of the cutting ever again. He rides off. Maybe Preminger felt the swing of his axe across the frame looked good in widescreen.      Or maybe it’s that clearing the land is enough. ‘River of No Return’ is about clearing a path for oneself through life. Recently released from prison, Mitchum’s character journeys to a town where his nine-year-old son has been looked after by a dance hall girl (Marilyn Monroe) while he’s in prison for killing a man. The boy barely knows his father. And of course, father and son get caught up in Marilyn’s own drama. If the Western later had a profound influence on Italian cinema, here’s a case where Italian cinema influenced the Western: ‘River of No Return’ is loosely based on ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ in that Marilyn’s corrupt boyfriend (Rory Calhoun) steals Mitchum’s horse and gun. Arthouse pretensions abound, but in Preminger’s hands, it works: The action on the river, when Monroe, Mitchum, and his son take to a raft is genuinely thrilling, and the Banff landscapes are a spectacle precisely suited to the ‘Scope format. —CB 

55. ‘Rancho Notorious’ (Fritz Lang, 1952)

Marlene Dietrich and a bunch of good time gals save some horses and ride cowboys instead. There’s allegedly other stuff that happens in ‘Rancho Notorious’ — and to be fair to director Fritz Lang, that other stuff includes a whole-ass mystery Arthur Kennedy is keen to solve around ‘HATE, MURDER, and REVENGE!’ as the film’s opening ballad intones. But this movie is by, for, and focused around Marlene Dietrich’s alter-ego, Altar Keane. She is its gravity. Everything else is secondary, and the movie is all the better for it. ‘Rancho Notorious’ is this weird, hilarious fantasyscape that has the same logic and pathos as a Road Runner cartoon — which is the only other setting this writer can think of where a secret legendary crime lair called “Chuck-a-Luck” makes any kind of sense. It would be futile to talk about what happens or the performances or the color combinations in the sets and costuming, or the musical numbers (of which there is certainly more than one). Suffice it to say that if you are looking to have a good, absurd time with a Western, you need look no further; and that is a strength of Westerns themselves that Marlene can do a takeover of this kind and it doesn’t ruin the genre — she makes the genre better. —SS  

54. ‘El Topo’ (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)

Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky dipped into the Western genre — and possibly some LSD as well — for this surreal odyssey through a nameless mystical landscape that sought to recreate, for viewers, the experience of taking psychedelic drugs. Jodorowsky himself plays the title character, a gunfighter clad in all black and on a warped hero’s journey with his six-year-old child, Hijo (Brontis Jodorowsky, the director’s real son).

Jodorowsky shot the film in Mexico, though its landscapes are made increasingly strange with Eastern religious symbolism and outré production design credited to the director himself. ‘El Topo’ meditates on mythic Western themes of vengeance, as the gunslinger sets out to reap retribution for a slaughter of his village, and masculinity, as Hijo is primed for rites of passage that will carry him into adulthood while inheriting the next cycle of generational violence. The film was controversial for a graphic rape scene that Jodorowsky at one point suggested was unsimulated. For all of its provocation, ‘El Topo’ is certainly one of the boldest and bizarre Westerns ever made, and among the most successful attempts of an international filmmaker to reshape American iconography with their own sensibility. —RL

53. ‘Near Dark’ (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)

An inventive, stylish mixing of the blood of a slasher with the sweat of a Western, ‘Near Dark’ arrived in 1987 as a grittier alternative to teen vampire films of the era like ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘Fright Night.’ Whereas those films place their vampiric antagonists in placidly familiar suburban landscapes, Kathryn Bigelow (in her first solo directorial effort) expands the horizons for her bloodsuckers by setting the story in the deserts and plains of the midwest, gleefully fashioning the adventures of the central nomadic vampire crew after a classic western. Maybe a bit too closely, because the romantic leads — Adrian Pasdar’s newly turned Oklahoma farm boy and Jenny Wright’s sympathetic ingenue — are frankly total drips. The real star is Bill Paxton as charming, serpent-like coven member Severan, who he plays with the swagger and sex appeal of a classic gunslinger antihero and imbues with the menace of an unforgettable horror creation. —WC    

52. ‘Forty Guns’ (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1957)

Barbara Stanwyck couldn’t give a bad performance if she tried, and even her more obscure films see her give a masterclass in playing flinty, uncompromising, and original women. ‘Forty Guns,’ Samuel Fuller’s 1957 Western, gives the femme fatale master a particularly rich part in Jessica Drummond, an uncompromising landowner who rules over a tiny Arizona town with her entourage of 40 hired men. She’s unscrupulous and unsentimental, willing to do whatever it takes to keep her hold over her territory, even as sparks fly between her and Griff (Barry Sullivan), a gunslinger looking to put one of her men behind bars. In lesser hands she could be reduced to an unsympathetic shrew, but as played by Stanwyck she’s a vivacious and unforgettable creation. In a film shot in panoramic CinemaScope to capture every inch of the sweeping landscape, Stanwyck’s performance is consistently the biggest thing onscreen. — WC   

51. ‘Day of the Outlaw’ (dir. Andre de Toth, 1959)

A winter Western! Trust André de Toth to come up with a way to keep the endless wars between ranchers and homesteaders interesting. He’s not the eyepatch-wearing director with the most Westerns to his name, but what he does in ‘Day of the Outlaw’ is worth consideration alongside his more famous counterparts. It’s set in a town gleefully named Bitters — writers who use subtext are cowards — that, in the middle of a blizzard, finds itself terrorized by Burl Ives (yes, that Burl Ives), who is clearly having the time of his life in a cavalry uniform and a cowboy hat. The stripped down photography and clever staging — you can see everything in a room except a way out — makes this town-wide hostage crisis deliciously suspenseful. There’s only a little snappy gunplay in this Western, which feels particularly clever. De Toth is much more interested in the squirrel-y, panic-y looks on people’s faces as they desperately try to work out what to do than he is the flash of a muzzle. Robert Ryan is hanging out, too, ostensibly dealing with a love triangle between him, Tina Louise, and Alan Marshal, but really there so that he can be the one who howls and rages against the blizzard. ‘Day of the Outlaw’ executes a number of tricky tonal and structural shifts, battering the tropes of the Western down like a storm. It’s a delight. —SS 

50. ‘The Rider’ (dir. Chloe Zhao, 2018)

When IndieWire reviewed Chloé Zhao’s second feature film in 2017, this writer opened with a statement that distills the insight and authenticity of ‘The Rider’: ‘You can’t fake ‘The Rider.” Zhao’s lyrical, Cannes-winning docudrama blends fact and fiction to build not just a portrait of modern American masculinity, but of one rodeo rider’s incredible journey in particular. 

Zhao’s early bent toward casting non-actors — she found her ‘Rider’ star Brady Jandreau while making her first feature ‘Songs My Brothers Taught Me,’ a festival favorite set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota — adds potency to this small-scale story with major implications. She started with pain: Jandreau’s own rodeo accident, which nearly robbed him of not just his career, but his life.  

‘The Rider’ opens with Jandreau (here cast as ‘Brady Blackburn’) removing a series of tightly wound bandages, ultimately revealing the skull-spanning wound that slashes across the right side of his skull. Brady searches for meaning in his rodeo-set accident, one that seems mostly random, but unable to compete and reticent to get literally back on the horse, Brady’s life chugs along at a muted pace.   

Who is Brady Blackburn without rodeo? Who is a cowboy without his horse? These massive questions don’t just frame Zhao’s film, but the best of the genre itself. As Brady inches his way back, he returns to the very creatures that hurt him: His beloved horses. The future of Brady’s rodeo career may be a question mark for much of the film, but his affinity for animals is never in doubt, and scenes of Jandreau training and riding a variety of horses — often easing the most skittish ones, breaking them in gentle ways — beautifully illuminates why it’s so hard for him to walk away from the only world he’s ever known. —KE

49. ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (dir. John Sturges, 1960)

‘The Magnificent Seven’ wins as both a testament to the lasting appeal of the Western and the power of a well-assembled cast. An adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece ‘Seven Samurai,’ Sturges’ film takes the core concept — a desperate village hiring samurai warriors for protection — and transplants it to the American West, with gunslingers replacing sword-wielding fighters, hired to protect a small Mexican village from a band of marauding bandits.

A classic example of the ‘assemble a team’ film, it helped establish a template for how a group of diverse characters with unique skills can come together to achieve a common goal. 

In this context, it’s a group whose appeal to audiences hinged heavily on its star power. Yul Brynner leads the ensemble as a stoic gunslinger who assembles the team. He’s joined by the likes of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Horst Buchholz, each actor bringing a unique persona playing characters with ‘particular sets of skills.’ It was, and still is, an impressive line-up, further starrified by the villainous turn of the versatile Eli Wallach as the bandit leader terrorizing the village.

Its straightforward yet compelling depiction of heroism contrasts Kurosawa’s more technically innovative and complex film, relying on more conventional Western tropes and shootouts, which effectively catered to American audiences. And it worked!

‘The Magnificent Seven’ spawned sequels, a television series, and even Antoine Fuqua’s 2016 remake starring Denzel Washington. —TO

48. ‘The Ballad of Little Jo’ (dir. Maggie Greenwald, 1993)

Maggie Greenwald’s 1993 masterpiece is one of the best Westerns from an era that had quite a few great ones, the period immediately following ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘Unforgiven’ that saw the American film industry returning to the genre for a few gloriously productive years. The story of a society woman who, shunned by her family after giving birth out of wedlock, rides West and reinvents herself as a man, ‘The Ballad of Little Jo’ delivers the traditional satisfactions of all those Westerns — ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ ‘The Gunfighter,’ ‘Shane’ — that explore both the liberation of a life defined by rugged individualism and its limitations, but deepens and expands on the mythology. Like most Westerns, ‘The Ballad of Little Jo’ takes place in a world where maleness is glorified as a source of power and progress, a fact that Greenwald sharply interrogates via the unique perspective Little Jo’s character provides. Greenwald asks the viewer to consider and reconsider ideas many Westerns (and American films in general) take for granted by posing two simple questions: What does Little Jo gain by becoming a man, and what does she lose? The way Greenwald explores these issues makes this essential viewing for any Western enthusiast. —JH

47. ‘There Will Be Blood’ (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus may begin in 1898 and traverses the Old West California desert, but is it a Western? There are no shootouts, no stand-offs, no stagecoach chases, and evoking ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ thanks to its magnificent sweep and off-kilter Jonny Greenwood score doesn’t do it any favors in the genre department. But it is about a lone wolf, tirelessly and endlessly toiling and fighting for his principles even as he looks out at people and sees ‘nothing worth liking.’ It is a showdown between two unlikely adversaries who each aim to seek power and glory through money, fear, or faith. And above all, it is a film about America, how capitalism and wealth will bleed you dry and wipe you off the back of its bootheel. That Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview gives one of the all-time great screen performances is just the cherry on top of the milkshake that’s all been drunk up. —BW

46. ‘3:10 to Yuma’ (dir. Delmer Daves, 1957)

There’s nothing quite like a great opening title song. Bond films know this. Westerns do too, and ‘3:10 to Yuma’ may have one of the best. It’s a mournful earworm with a steady, haunting beat, like chains clanking as prisoners walk in a row, and portends the moody, trapped feeling of the film it bookends on both a sonic and lyrical level. Sung by crooner Frankie Laine, the song, like the film, is about lost chances, fleeting romances, and wanting to make good on the life you set out to lead. For stagecoach robber Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), that means staying a free man by any means necessary. For rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin), it means providing for his family, but that’s hard to do in a drought.

Two forces put in opposition to one another, Evans is tasked with getting Wade to the town of Contention and onto a train bound for Yuma prison. Though doing so will provide Evans with the money he needs to keep his family’s land, the risk of Wade’s gang trying to intercept him or Wade himself laying a trap bring tension to an already fraught marriage between Dan and his wife Alice. Adapted from a short story by Elmore Leonard, the story harnesses a psychological tension unique for Westerns of the time, with Evans and Wade fighting nearly as much with words as they do with guns. The black-and-white cinematography also allows us to appreciate the bleakness of life in the Old West and how the lines between good and evil, fair and unfair are so crudely drawn. —HR

45. ‘The Shootist’ (dir. Don Siegel, 1976)

Most of John Wayne’s movies after ‘True Grit’ were Westerns, and most were mediocre. ‘The Shootist,’ his final film with his health declining rapidly, was a return to form and one of the most fitting fade outs of an iconic screen legend ever. He plays a gunman credited with over 30 killings, all justified he claims, who learns he is dying from cancer. Though he craves a restful end to life, his identity is soon learned in the town where he decides to settle in. Director Don Siegel (‘Dirty Harry,’ ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’) wasn’t out to make an elegiac film, but rather, though quieter than some of his films, focuses on the impact of the presence of potential violence. That is strongly conveyed as the gunman befriends and mentors the son of his widowed landlady, with a particularly poignant shootout finale. Wayne’s costars include Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, Ron Howard, and multiple familiar character acting veterans. — TB

44. ‘The Wild Bunch’ (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

‘If they move, kill ‘em.’ Revisionist Westerns preceded ‘The Wild Bunch,’ but Sam Peckinpah murdered any notion of romance and nobility among its gunmen when William Holden spits those lines. We haven’t counted, but we’d wager Peckinpah’s film has the largest body count of any Western ever made. It’s all depicted in true carnage, with hyper kinetic cross cutting and dashes of slow-motion anarchy that still hold up as masterful examples of the craft. The opening robbery shootout should be taught in film schools till the end of time. But it’s the cadre of unlikable characters, the bleak, meaningless deaths all for a ‘dollar’s worth of steel holes,’ and the crushing feeling of obsolescence that make ‘The Wild Bunch’ a true masterpiece. The heroes here are the scorpions being overwhelmed by a mass of ants, only to be set ablaze by onlookers that no longer have any use for them. —BW

43. ‘The Quick and the Dead’ (dir. Sam Raimi, 1995)

The Western is all about its landscapes. But what are landscapes if not populated by compelling, unforgettable characters? Raimi’s gal-gunslinger drama has a baker’s dozen, and all presented via an incredible structure to introduce them to us fast: A quickdraw contest. In bracket format, no less! Think ‘Enter the Dragon’ but with six-shooters in the Old West.     Among the contestants, you’ve got Keith David, Lance Henriksen (who only signs his name with an ace of spades symbol), and of course the extraordinary quartet of Leonardo DiCaprio as ‘The Kid’ (‘Woo! I’m fast!’ he declares in maybe his most purely entertaining pre-‘Titanic’ role), Russell Crowe as killer turned preacher Cort, Gene Hackman as the town’s overlord who presides over the whole contest, and a mysterious stranger known by most as just ‘The Lady,’ played by Sharon Stone. ‘The Lady’ drifts into town looking to get into the contest, and of course, like any Western hero, she has her own motivations that will only be revealed over time. Remarkably free of the ‘strong female character’ cliches male directors sometimes think are necessary with female action leads, ‘The Quick and the Dead’ has style to spare and personality by the barrel, down to an appearance from Western legend Woody Strode. —CB 

42. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (dir. Ang Lee, 2005)

Nearly two decades later, and we still don’t know how to quit ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ Ang Lee’s sweeping adaptation of Annie Proulx’s devastating short story about two shepherds who fall in love in Wyoming. There had never been an explicitly gay cowboy movie until Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) came to screens, in a movie that daringly introduced straight moviegoers to male-on-male sex onscreen in surely the gayest wide release of all time up to that point in 2005.

But as much as ‘Brokeback Mountain’ broke ground, it feels as sturdy and classic as any traditional Western, here supplanting a story of the demise of the new frontier with one of how male souls are crushed by their own societally forced repression. Ennis and Jack suffer across decades for their love, their lives inevitably ruined because of it when they are finally unable to transcend the obstacles (homophobia chief among them) to achieve a perfect union. Here’s a movie that breaks your heart open and is most revolutionary for how it deconstructs the silhouette of the American cowboy, which would never be the same on screens again. —RL

41. ‘Paris, Texas’ (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984)

A film about the lonesome and the lost. About brothers and sons. About vast plains, both physical and emotional. About bright lights and broken dreams and trying to put your life back together again. Or at least the lives of those you love. The ones you were responsible for tearing apart. ‘Paris, Texas’ is as much about the maintaining of myths as it is about breaking through them. Following an amnesiac found in the desert (Harry Dean Stanton) and his journey back to remembering the brother, father, and husband that he was — one who, as it turns out, was not so great — German director Wim Wenders’ ode to the beauty and mystery of the American Southwest is also a modern reinterpretation of classic Hollywood Western storytelling that evokes George Stevens’ ‘Shane’ as much as it does Wenders’ earlier ‘Road Trilogy.’ The making of the film was also an odyssey in the best of Western traditions.

Shot in only five weeks in chronological order, meaning production would have to travel back and forth between Texas and California and back again, the script for the film also wasn’t completed by the time they started. Actor, author, and playwright Sam Shepard wrote the first half based on his novel ‘Motel Chronicles,’ as well as monologues for Wenders to insert where he saw fit, then Wenders and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson broke for two weeks to figure out the second half, which Shepard contributed to by dictating monologues over the phone. The result is a stunningly vibrant and lore-worthy emotional unearthing set against the desolate beauty of dusty roads. —HR

40. ‘Hud’ (dir. Martin Ritt, 1963)

If you found any horseshoe of hope in the final minutes of Martin Ritt’s existentially anguished neo-Western ‘Hud,’ you missed the wagon entirely. Based on a book by, of course, Larry McMurtry, ‘Hud’ deconstructed the matinee idol persona of Paul Newman, here as the prodigal and spiritually empty son of a rancher, and against the Texas Panhandle backdrop of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak killing all their cattle. In this black-and-white masterpiece of disappointment and regret, Newman cuts a mean figure as the original antihero of the 1960s, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance. Patricia Neal rightly won a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying the ranch’s housekeeper Alma, broken down by Hud’s abuse but who manages to escape. Paul Newman would reprise his place in the Western canon six years later with ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ but ‘Hud’ is the actor’s finest hour, burrowing himself into a character so unlikable that audiences would never see him the same way again. And Ritt’s despairing vision of the American West would go on to presage the bleak soul of the United States depicted throughout the New Hollywood that came later in the 1960s. —RL

39. ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1972)

The 1960s and ’70s saw several Westerns that included allegories for the ongoing war in Vietnam, in some eyes including ‘The Wild Bunch,’ ‘Little Big Man,’ and ‘The Outlaw Josie Wales.’ ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ came from Robert Aldrich who, among the many genres in which he excelled (including Westerns), directed war films ‘Attack’ and ‘The Dirty Dozen.’

An early original screenplay from Scottish novelist Alan Sharp (Arthur Penn’s ‘Night Moves’ was another standout), inspired, per Sharp, by ‘The Searchers,’ and similar in its stark portrayal of the brutality of the settler versus Native American violence.

Ulzana, a Comanche warrior, escapes confinement to avenge injustices U.S. authorities have committed. This takes the form of horrific carnage against all settlers found. A veteran Army scout (Burt Lancaster), no fan of government policy but aware he might save lives, leads an inexperienced army troop on a search for Ulzana.

Aldrich is as unsentimental a director as any, perfect for this bleak but riveting story full of tension and increased moral complexity. The naivete of the troops following the scout, their increased awareness that they are disadvantaged against those fighting for their own survival on their turf, the disillusionment that undercut their mission, all paralleled the Vietnam War experience. —TB

38. ‘The Hanging Tree’ (dir. Delmer Daves, 1959)

A proto-#MeToo Western, ‘The Hanging Tree’ is a startlingly progressive look at sexual politics and exploitation in a gold mining town. Gary Cooper’s Doc Frail is a physician who tends to the miners and their families and takes in a blind young woman, Elizabeth (Maria Schell), who’s the lone survivor of a stagecoach robbery. The town gossips spread horrible rumors that he and Elizabeth are lovers, or that she’s paying him for his medical services in an illicit way, or that he’s exploiting her. None of it’s true, but it’s a form of projection that at least one of the more predatory miners uses to justify his own attempted rape of Elizabeth. That predatory miner is played by none other than Karl Malden, who’s capable of playing venality like few others in the history of cinema. He’s there when Frail first rescues Elizabeth, blind and horribly sunburned from days out in the wilderness, and the first thing Malden’s character says is that she’s ‘sure a lot of woman.’ Thankfully, Frail is as skilled with a six-shooter as he is a scalpel, because he’s gonna need to be.     If there’s any director who deserves reclamation, it’s Delmer Daves, whose handling of this story, beautifully photographed amid the rivers and wooded hillsides of Washington state, is propulsive and energizing. He weaves the critique of institutional and individual sexism (and where it aligns with mob violence) into a genuinely thrilling package that also features George C. Scott, in his feature film debut, as a grifter of a preacher who enables Malden’s predatory behavior. Heady stuff. —CB 

37. ‘The Winning of Barbara Worth’ (dir. Henry King, 1926)

Notable for offering pre-fame Gary Cooper his breakout role, Henry King’s ‘The Winning of Barbara Worth’ is an irresistible melange of breathtaking locations (California’s Imperial Valley and Nevada’s Black Rock Desert), timeless cowboy clichés, and a hopelessly swoony romance. Hungarian-born beauty Vilma Bánky stars as Barbara Worth, a young woman who was orphaned as a child after her pioneering parents perished attempting to cross the desert. Years later two men, Willard Holmes (the impossibly charming Ronald Colman), an engineer intent on diverting the Colorado River in order to irrigate the desert, and local cowboy Abe Lee (Cooper), vie for Barbara’s affections. When corporate greed leads to a man-made disaster of epic proportions (the climactic flood sequence that depicts the formation of the Salton Sea is still impressive today), both men are given the opportunity to showcase their heroism as they attempt to save that day, but only one can win the girl. —MG

36. ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ (dir. John Huston, 1948)

‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ is a classic, although not discussed as much one might think as part of the Western canon. The film incorporates elements of the genre, for sure, to explore greed and morality, but it stands apart by focusing on the psychological unraveling of its characters in what is more of a blend of adventure with a deep character study.

Set in Mexico, it follows three gold prospectors, played by Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt, as they search for fortune in the Sierra Madre mountains. A tale of how greed can corrupt even the most basic of men, it’s a darker, more introspective examination of human nature, less reliant on typical Western heroics.

‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ does share several thematic elements with classic Westerns on this list, particularly Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ in its exploration of greed, moral ambiguity, and the corrupting power of wealth. Furthermore, both films use their settings not just as backdrops but as integral elements that shape the story and the characters’ journeys.

Most emblematic of this in ‘Sierra Madre’ is the transformation of Dobbs (Bogart), whose degeneration into obsession and even insanity is quite alarming. But overall, the interactions among the characters, against the film’s realistic depiction of the harsh environment, is a showcase for how trust can deteriorate, and how fragile human relationships can become when the possibility of wealth is introduced, all timeless themes that resonate today. —TO

35. ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ (dir. John Sturges, 1955)

‘High Noon,’ whatever its other debatable merits, gets credit for the better films it inspired. Howard Hawks’ brilliant ‘Rio Bravo’ can be seen as a rebuttal to the earlier film. ‘Bad Day at Black Rock,’ similar to ‘High Noon,’ has anti-McCarthy elements in its portrayal of one man (Spencer Tracy playing a one-armed stranger arriving in a remote desert town) fighting off toxic racism and bigotry as he investigates the death of a Japanese-American. Set only a few years before its 1955 release, it is one of the great contemporary-set Westerns in terms of utilizing genre standards — stunning landscape visuals, a sense of isolation, the need for unlikely heroes, a standout group of villainous characters. Director John Sturges made 14 other Westerns, including ‘The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ and ‘The Magnifcent Seven,’ but none captured the essence of the genre better. Absolutely standout are the Cinemascope visuals, one of the greatest early uses of the format. An unusually short (81 minutes) MGM A-level movie release and Best Picture nominee, its supporting cast included Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Dean Jagger, and Walter Brennan among the locals he confronts. —TB

34. ‘No Country for Old Men’ (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

Who would have guessed in the ‘90s that Joel and Ethan Coen would become the filmmakers responsible for keeping the Western alive in the next millennium? Although perhaps it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise: The brothers are quintessentially American filmmakers, concerned with stories about ambition, greed, and scraping by that couldn’t be produced in any other country than the US of A. Their greatest achievement in the most American genre of all, ‘No Country for Old Men,’ is as close a canonical classic as any movie less than 20 years old could hope to be, a bitter and elliptical tale of fate and self-determination.  

Faithfully adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel, the brothers track three hunters and hunted — Josh Brolin’s thief, Javier Bardem’s hitman, and Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff — with a curious sense of inevitability, as if their paths are already handed to them by fate. Best remembered is Javier Bardem’s haunting performance as the emotionless, stony Anton Chigurh, and his presence adds much menace to the film. But in so many respects, ‘No Country for Old Men’ is an oddly bleak and terrifying experience, filled with stretches of silence and elliptical edits that make what could be an ordinary crime thriller feel nightmarish. For all the gritty takes on the Western throughout cinema, the Coens’ classic stands apart as a movie that purges the genre of all the grandeur and the romance, leaving only lingering melancholy and despair. —WC 

33. ‘Shane’ (dir. George Stevens, 1953)

‘Shane’ is the quintessential Western, a story of a charismatic former gunfighter who tries to escape a mysterious past but becomes entangled in the land struggles of homesteading families in Wyoming. Using Shane’s interactions with the community, particularly the Starrett family, director Stevens explores survival in the American West, including the myth of the frontier, and the struggle between the encroaching civilization and ‘untamed’ wilderness.

Alan Ladd’s Shane embodies the archetypal Western hero with a dark past, while Jack Palance’s menacing gunslinger Jack Wilson is a compelling contrast. The unfolding drama against the expansive beauty of the West captured by DP Loyal Griggs actually does challenge the myth of the rugged individualist, though, presenting a more nuanced vision of frontier life where the proverb ‘it takes a village’ truly takes hold. The collective efforts of a community are essential for overcoming the challenges they face.

As a cultural artifact, ‘Shane’ does reflect the overall climate of 1950s America into which it was released. In hindsight, it was an exploration of post-World War II American unity against the era’s anxieties about the spread of communism.

In this context, it’s timeless, asking questions about an American identity that continues to shift. —TO

32. ‘Silver Lode’ (dir. Allan Dwan, 1954)

Allan Dwan, a contemporary of D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille as pioneers of Hollywood movies, made Westerns in five different decade, all at least worthy, many excellent. But though he achieved his biggest acclaim making silent period adventure films with Douglas Fairbanks (1922’s ‘Robin Hood’ a massive success), what typifies his Westerns is combining elevated tension with limited violence. ‘Silver Lode’ is an exemplary example.

Dwan in the sound era usually made two to four features a year, many falling somewhere between A and B level productions. He regretted his contract with producer Benedict Bogeaus at RKO, yet somehow turned out a series of taut genre films, most shot by the great John Alton (best known as a key film noir DP) in color that came out of that partnership.

At a time when Hollywood was tip-toeing into post McCarthy-era films, unexpectedly one of the most effective is this story about a prominent businessman on the verge of marriage (John Payne) who’s wrongly accused of murder by a man named McCarty (Dan Duryea) posing as a marshal. Dwan, always known for his character studies whatever the scope of his films, focuses on how the townspeople are manipulated into hysteria and how difficult it is to defend someone against a thug.

A thrifty 81 minutes with not a dull moment, ‘Silver Lode’ is a gem found amid routine circumstances that didn’t seem exceptional when released, but now stands as an example of what could be accomplished within the genre when a pro who lived to make movies got his hands on a story with potential. —TB

31. ‘The Lusty Men’ (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1952)

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose in Nicholas Ray’s glorious rodeo melodrama ‘The Lusty Men.’ It’s got one of the best, punchiest, most economical opening sequences of any Western ever, and also Robert Mitchum, and that should be enough. But it’s really wild to think about how this movie came out in 1952 — the same year as ‘High Noon,’ the period between John Ford making ‘Wagon Master’ and ‘The Searchers,’ aka Peak Hollywood Westerns — and it so deftly and thoroughly deconstructs the heroic status of the cowboy and the valor of the Western hero. It’s likely not the first of the gritty Neo-Westerns that have since enraptured Coen Brothers and Taylor Sheridan fans alike; but it is the Neo-Western that has an incredibly steamy situationship among Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy, and Susan Hayward.     Mitchum’s a burnt-out rodeo lifer who, to salvage his pride, Kennedy wants to be a bronco-riding real man. And Hayward wants safety and security from somebody. What’s at stake for all of them isn’t necessarily who will get with whom, but what does each of them need to take from the others in order to survive? The action’s great, the mood is greater, and the pace compliments them both — long stretches of desperation punctuated by sudden violence. This writer once heard a film professor talk about the challenges of ‘simmering’ a plot — you have to control the pace of the edit, and the specific shot choices, and the performances so they all hint at something, flavor it, but not overwhelm the palate until just the right moment. Nobody can create a marinade quite like Nicholas Ray, and ‘The Lusty Men’ packs one hell of a punch. —SS 

30. ‘Kill and Pray’ (dir. Carlo Lizzani, 1967)

The Spaghetti Western subgenre quickly became a vehicle for progressive politics. Leftist Italian filmmakers found the Old West to be the perfect way to hold a mirror to the present moment and address issues of race, gender, and class discrimination. (Unlike in the American Western, those who were aligned with the Confederacy are never anything but the vilest villains in the Spaghetti Western.) ‘Kill and Pray’ takes this even a step further by literally having Pier Paolo Pasolini play a socialist priest engaged in revolutionary struggle. He’s just a side character, but a notably direct reminder of where director Carlo Lizzani himself is coming from here.     Lou Castel plays Requiescant, an instantly legendary duelist who, raised by a preacher, prays over his nemeses after he guns them down with his lightning-quick trigger finger. Requiescant was a Mexican orphan taken in after his entire family was massacred by a genocidal Confederate named George Bellow Ferguson (Mark Damon), whose appearance becomes increasingly pasty and vampiric. If there is any singular inspiration for Calvin Candie in ‘Django Unchained’ it has to be here with Ferguson. At one point, he even engages in a game where he forces a beautiful Mexican woman to hold a candelabra while he tries to shoot out the flames from an ever-increasing distance. Damon, who parlayed his acting career into becoming an indie film buyer and producer (and died on May 12, 2024, shortly before he would have been seen once again at Cannes), turns in an all-time great villain performance. Not only did his character kill Requiescant’s whole family, he also forces Requiescant’s adopted sister into prostitution! (That adopted sister was actually played by Damon’s then-wife, Barbara Frey.)      ‘Kill and Pray’ also represents a couple other trends notable to the Spaghetti Western post-Dollars Trilogy: Most of these movies go under multiple titles, so this film is also commonly called ‘Requiescant’ as well as ‘Kill and Say Your Prayers’ and ‘Let Them Rest.’ Also, like so many other Spaghetti Westerns, it does not let its progressive politics get in the way of featuring a parade of gorgeous actresses in sexy attire, much the way the original ‘Star Trek’ always paired serious social issues with scantily clad women. A unique ‘60s phenomenon: Call it babe-centric liberalism. —CB 

29. ‘Black God, White Devil’ (dir. Glauber Rocha, 1963)

Everybody always talks about the influence of Kurosawa — particularly ‘Yojimbo’ — on the development of the Spaghetti Western. Much more rarely do they mention Glauber Rocha’s polemical Brazilian Western, about a farmhand (Geraldo del Rey) who kills his boss when denied his wages, then goes on the run with his wife, running afoul of a liberation-theology-tinged agrarian revolution in the process. They should mention it.    ‘Black God, White Devil’ premiered in Competition at Cannes in 1964, a full four months before ‘Yojimbo’ remake ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ premiered and kicked off the Spaghetti craze. And ‘Black God, White Devil’ has all the hallmarks the Italian directors to come would seize upon. There’s heightened violence — a scene of ritualistic infanticide literally drew gasps from the MoMA crowd when shown there in recent years — and a bounty hunter character who lives by an enigmatic code in Antonio das Mortes, absurdist plotting, and a starkly political dimension. It even has something else that the Spaghetti filmmakers would end up loving: franchise potential. Yes, that Antonio das Mortes character, played by Mauricio do Valle, would appear in two follow-up films. But above all, ‘Black God, White Devil’ shows how pulpy genre storytelling can be a supreme vehicle for ideas; entertainment value can always make a manifesto-worthy polemic go down easier. —CB

28. ‘Dead Man’ (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995)

Jim Jarmusch doesn’t stretch himself to work in new genres so much as he stretches genres to fit himself. A cultural omnivore whose extensive knowledge is often masked by his aura of far being too cool for whatever medium he works with, the auteur has managed to filter everything from samurai films and vampire love stories through the lens of his own punk rock slacker brilliance. So it should have come as no surprise that his one foray into Westerns is arguably the most singular work of postmodernism the genre has ever seen. Starring Johnny Depp as an accountant named William Blake who flees through the West after committing a murder, ‘Dead Man’ sees Jarmusch gleefully mashing together influences ranging from 19th century poetry and acid rock into a psychological study of life and death in America. The film is equally notable for its Neil Young soundtrack and elements of psychedelia as its nuanced portrayals of Native Americans, many of whom speak to each other in native languages without subtitles. Westerns are often mislabeled as a dead genre whose only modern purpose is to cultivate nostalgia for the past, but ‘Dead Man’ is the perfect counterpoint to that line of thinking. It’s a film that proves Westerns still offer a rich blank canvas to any artist brave enough to attempt something new with them. —CZ

27. ‘Blazing Saddles’ (dir. Mel Brooks, 1974)

‘Blazing Saddles’ is often cited as a movie that could never be made today. Well, thank goodness it was made in 1974. ‘Blazing Saddles’ was the third film directed by Mel Brooks, and it is probably the first one that comes to mind at the mention of his name. ‘Blazing Saddles’ was, of course, a sendup of the Western genre; a parody amalgamation of so many of the serious films on this very list. It’s almost certainly the only one in which a man punches out a horse. Cleavon Little plays Bart, the new sheriff in (a very racist) town. Gene Wilder is the town drunk Jim, Harvey Korman is Hedy, I mean, Hedley Lamarr, and Madeline Kahn is the Oscar nominee of the bunch — for acting. Brooks was also nominated for writing the title track’s lyrics with music by John Morris. —TM

26. ‘The Misfits’ (dir. John Huston, 1961)

The West, as a concept, has always been synonymous with freedom, of an escape from society’s restrictions. A modern Western, ‘The Misfits’ translates that yearning for something new and unformed out of the pioneering days and into the ennui of modern existence. The eponymous misfits are a motley crew — played by magnetic movie stars Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, all surprisingly believable as rough-on-their-luck losers — who abandon their humdrum lives to camp a half-completed home in the middle of untouched Nevada land. Lust, jealousy, and discontent poison their attempts to build a paradise in the scorching sun, and yet John Huston’s film (with a typically contemplative script from Arthur Miller) still proves beguiling in how it captures the appeal of running away from civilization and into the wide-open desert. —WC  

25. ‘The Tall T’ (dir. Budd Boetticher, 1957)

In a Budd Boetticher Western, it’s the landscape that matters most. Not just in terms of the harsh rocks and desert that fill his frames, but also the roles each character he studies feel they must take on in order to survive the horrors of the American West. Everyone has their own code to live by, some more ruthless than others, but all governed by a desire to see another sunrise. With ‘The Tall T,’ Boetticher tests those codes by putting a rancher caught in the wrong place at the wrong time against the conflicting wits of three murderous thieves who end up robbing the wrong coach and need to pivot their plan. The film isn’t exactly a real-time thriller, but it plays out in such a quick, direct manner as to evoke an almost theatrical morality play.

Like ‘3:10 to Yuma’ and other Westerns of the time, the film’s script was adapted from a story by Elmore Leonard called ‘The Captives’ and plays on the more psychological elements of the Western experience. In placing his rancher Brennan (played by Randolph Scott, who’s his partner and star in all of the ‘Ranown Cycle’ of films) and copper mine heiress Ms. Mims (Mia Farrow’s mother Maureen O’Sullivan) in a position where they must kill to live, Boetticher cuts to the dark reality of life on the frontier with little sentimentality. —HR

24. ‘Man of the West’ (dir. Anthony Mann, 1958)

Can even the worst among us be redeemed? That’s the premise of Anthony Mann’s supremely refined character study starring Gary Cooper, a reformed member of a vile gang headed by Lee J. Cobb, who finds himself crossing paths with the gang once again. They, of course, want him back in the fold. He wants no part of it, even as his skills are such that he realizes they’ll probably never leave him alone now. Does he go along with them at least for a while? Maybe to protect the saloon singer (Julie London) in his company? How much can you pretend to be a thing without becoming the thing? And how could he have ever ridden with this gang in the first place?     Here’s a Western about one’s capacity to lead many lives and even become a different person. There aren’t a lot of genuine paths for redemption in American society, but the West, the frontier, unspoiled by civilization and its baggage, at least offered a potential clean slate — a tabula rasa that alone elevated the idea of the Western to the idea of myth in the American mindset. Out there you could become anybody. Maybe even a better person. With Cooper’s character in ‘Man of the West,’ that potential is put to its limit.     What’s particularly unique about Cooper’s Westerns is how often his characters have a sympathetic understanding of women. That’s once again the case here as he becomes Julie London’s champion even as his old gang horribly demeans her, even forcing her to do a striptease at gunpoint that’s about as devastating a critique of the male gaze as classic Hollywood ever offered up. —CB 

23. ‘Pale Rider’ (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1985)

Clint Eastwood’s 1985 Western was his first film in the genre since 1976 (when he made the brilliant “The Outlaw Josey Wales”) and the first major Hollywood studio Western in five years after the commercial failure of “Heaven’s Gate” all but killed the tradition. It was a big hit, and it’s not hard to see why: Eastwood’s film has the perfect blend of classical satisfactions and revisionist tweaks, as he and his ‘Gauntlet’ screenwriters Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack take the raw materials of ‘Shane’ and rework them for a 1980s audience. Eastwood plays an enigmatic figure who emerges out of nowhere to help a community of ragtag miners take on the corporation that hopes to wipe them off the face of the earth; he’s the literal answer to their prayers, and Eastwood expertly rides the line between presenting his character as a mortal man or a creature of supernatural origins. He could plausibly be either, and part of the film’s fun is its refusal to pick a side.

Throughout the movie Eastwood balances the gritty, earthbound, and sociopolitical (addressing ecological concerns of the era from a liberal perspective that might surprise younger audiences who only know him as the guy who talked to the chair at the Republican National Convention) with the lyrical, allegorical, and poetic. The result is one of the director’s best films, a movie that somehow feels both reliably old-fashioned and utterly modern at the same time. —JH      

22. ‘Red River’ (dir. Howard Hawks, 1948)

On the Chisholm trail that stretches from Texas to Missouri, Thomas Dunson (John Wayne, already the mythic marquee man of the Western genre by 1948) leads a tense 1851 cattle drive that blows open tensions with his adopted son, played by Montgomery Clift. ‘Red River’ was adapted by director Howard Hawks and screenwriters Borden Chase and Charles Schnee from Borden Chase’s story ‘Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail,’ here painting an epic canvas via the American Midwest about how relationships between men are destroyed by a good woman, and each other.

But beyond the morally complex antihero played by Wayne, Clift is a standout in his breakout screen performance — and in a movie that feels like a precursor to ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ Clift’s character Matt Garth forms an instantly intense friendship with another gunslinging cattler, the wonderfully named Cherry Valance (John Ireland). One of the movie’s great scenes finds the two men doing a kind of ‘I’ll show you yours if you show you mine’ with their guns. Make of that what you will.

Along the way, the wagoners rescue a train of gamblers and dance hall girls from a Native attack, including Joanne Dru as Tess Millay, who’s immediately drawn to Matt. He at first couldn’t be less interested, though the movie trots off toward an eventual happy union for them both. Still, ‘Red River’ remains a rare early example of a bittersweet tenderness shared between two frontiersmen, and one that could easily be interpreted as queer by now. Clift’s sexuality had not yet become the subject of tabloid scrutiny that it would, but Hawks knew what he was doing while casting him in this elegiac Western about the erosion of tradition. No wonder Peter Bogdonavich excerpted it for ‘The Last Picture Show,’ as the final movie that play’s for that film’s wayward characters in a shuttering movie theater. The two films feel like bookends for a dying new frontier. —RL

21. ‘The Big Country’ (dir. William Wyler, 1958)

A domestic drama that plays out in epic, gun-totin’, fist-throwin’ fashion, ‘The Big Country’ serves as an allegory for America’s historical struggle to ‘love thy neighbor’ and how our inability to do so may ultimately lead to our demise. It also serves as a fish-out-of-water rom-com for its main character Jim McKay (Gregory Peck), a sea captain of high regard brought out to Texas at the request of his would-be bride (Carroll Baker) to meet her father and get to know the ranch life, but who ends up falling for a down-to-earth teacher (Jean Simmons) who just so happens to control one of the area’s few water sources. The irony is that Mckay comes to find the West not so different from the sea. Riding a horse is a bit like riding a wave. On land, like on water, you can still use the stars and a compass to guide your way.  

And yet the rules of this vast and unruly terrain seem governed by a winner-take-all attitude that McKay can’t abide. He thinks he can play peace-keeper between the two warring ranch families that populate small corners spread hundreds of miles apart: His bride’s upper-crust brand, the Terrills, and a ruffian clan with a little more dirt under their fingernails, the Hannasseys, led by an imposing Burl Ives, who won an Oscar for his role. But eventually, McKay comes to find that out in the big country, you can only take care of yourself. Captured in beautiful Technicolor by William Wyler and shot on location, this Western has a little bit of everything, but stays true to the ethos of its main genre by not pulling any of its punches. —HR 

20. ‘The Wind’ (dir. Victor Sjöström, 1928)

Directed by the great Swedish filmmaker, actor, and chronicler of human suffering Victor Sjöström, and adapted for the screen by Frances Marion, ‘The Wind’ is one of the most psychologically terrifying depictions of the harsh weather and crippling loneliness of the American West. The film stars the incomparable Lillian Gish as a fragile young woman named Letty who travels from Virginia to Texas to live with her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle). When his wife Cora (Dorothy Cumming) forces her to leave their ranch in a fit of jealousy, she must choose between being the mistress of a lecherous neighbor (Montagu Love) or marrying a kind man (Lars Hanson) whom she does not love. Although the film ends on a happy note, much to the chagrin of its star and director, who preferred the ending of Dorothy Scarborough’s original novel in which Letty finally succumbs to her prairie madness and wanders off into a windstorm to die, the film remains one of the silent era’s greatest artistic achievements. —MG

19. ‘High Noon’ (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1952)

The genius of ‘High Noon’ is that it can be enjoyed on two levels. The first is a quintessential tale of good versus evil, a showdown between a band of unruly crooks and Gary Cooper’s moralistic deputy fighting alone to save his town and his bride (Grace Kelly, so beautiful she looks like a Disney princess even playing a modest Quaker). Fred Zinnemann’s movie certainly has the chops to pass as just pure entertainment, so immaculately is it paced and structured to thrill.

The second level is more interesting, as one of the earliest revisionist Westerns to challenge the black-and-white worldview of the genre. Cooper’s Will Kane might think he’s doing the right thing, but the town around him doesn’t necessarily agree, turning away from helping him out of fear, out of bitterness, out of a belief that they would be better off without him. Carl Foreman’s script richly develops one of the Western’s most memorable settings, populating Hadleyville with an array of characters both pathetic (Lloyd Bridges’ sniveling Harvey Pell) and sympathetic (Katy Jurado’s hard-luck Helen Ramirez), and imbuing a deep sense of history and pain lurking underneath the seemingly sunny desert civilization. When Kane rides off into the sunset at the film’s conclusion, it’s not with the triumph we expect from a cowboy hero but with the anger of a man unsure if those he saved were worth the effort. —WC 

18. ‘Unforgiven’ (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992)

‘It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got, and everything he’s ever gonna have.’

At its best, the Western genre is the closest thing that America has to Shakespearean tragedy. The vast American West provides a canvas for writers to sink their teeth into the ugliest questions of life and death, good and evil, revenge and repentance, and love and solitude. Philosophizing cowboys have uttered many of the most poetic lines in the American film canon, but few pierce the soul more deeply and concisely than this timeless remark by Clint Eastwood’s Bill Munny during his final job as a bounty hunter. It’s a fitting summary of not just the movie’s unrelenting moral inquiry, but also Eastwood’s own journey within the Western genre. Nearly half a century into a film career that’s still going strong 30 years later, Eastwood had seen the genre from every possible angle, from the sanitized patriotism of 1950s television to the wordless violence of Spaghetti Westerns and everything in between. A movie like ‘Unforgiven’ could only have been made by a man with so much of his own experience to reckon with.

Eastwood’s farewell to the genre (his 2021 film ‘Cry Macho’ may have been another epilogue to his Western career, but there’s no denying that ‘Unforgiven’ is his true swan song) marries the epic cinematography of John Ford’s masterpieces with the harshness of Leone’s best works. Eastwood might have spent much of the 1970s and 80s distancing himself from Westerns, but ‘Unforgiven’ was the final reminder that no genre will ever be a better vehicle for his distinct voice. —CZ

17. ‘The Great Silence’ (dir. Sergio Corbucci, 1968)

When the average person closes their eyes and pictures the American West, most will default to images of arid deserts, red rock formations, and vast plains filled with cattle. But it’s important to remember that the West wasn’t just a diorama that captured a few picturesque moments: it was a living region with all of the harshness and beauty that the four seasons provide.

The entire Atlantic Ocean separated Sergio Corbucci from America when he filmed his spaghetti Westerns, but ‘The Great Silence’ proves that he understood Western weather as well as any American filmmaker. The Italian film takes place during a brutal Utah blizzard, following a wordless gunman who seeks to protect a group of criminals from a band of mercenaries who will stop at nothing to collect the bounties on their heads. The bitter cold and copious amounts of snow provide a backdrop that’s every bit as trying as the hottest day in Death Valley, and Corbucci uses it as a canvas to portray a level of bleakness and brutality seldom seen in Westerns before the 1960s. Jean-Louis Trintignant’s black-hatted antihero was a revelation, firing a semi-automatic weapon instead of a six shooter and refusing to utter even the few choice badass words that were considered a necessary baseline for strong-and-silent tough guys. More conflicted, violent, and vulnerable than the characters Western fans were used to seeing, he was a bold step forward in a genre that was still struggling to accept moral nuance.

The film’s winter setting and Ennio Morricone score made ‘The Great Silence’ an obvious inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ but Corbucci’s film stands on its own as perhaps the most iconic spaghetti western directed by someone not named Sergio Leone. —CZ

16. ‘The Searchers’ (dir. John Ford, 1956)

John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ is one of the last classic Westerns, when the West was still romantic, the view was vast and beautiful, and we knew who the good guys and bad guys were. But it’s remained enduring because Ford makes us wrestle with the vicious racism of John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Wayne plays a man willing to shoot out the eyes of a dead and buried Comanche to make his spirit wander purgatory for eternity. He’ll slay a herd of buffalo to keep the Comanche from eating that winter, and he’ll spend years aiming to kill his own niece now that she’s been living among them. It’s a phenomenal performance by Wayne, spiteful and sarcastic as he’s ever been but also as magnetic; he’s at his finest as he whips the sheath off his rifle with style and intensity. But the ravishing Technicolor and majesty on display is at odds with Ethan’s hate, and the tension that builds of what he’ll do when he finds young Debbie keeps us going. The film’s famous final shot, of Wayne boxed within a door frame, seems like a farewell to this era of filmmaking, a realization that there’s no place in this peaceful world for the lone gunman like him. —BW

15. ‘Winchester ’73’ (dir. Anthony Mann, 1950)

‘Winchester ‘73’ starts as a classic meet-cute — between Man and Gun. James Stewart’s Lin McAdam wins the fastest, most killingest gun in the West in a shootout in Dodge City, surely as The Founders intended. But alas! He loses the gun, and to his no-good brother of all people, whom he then must chase across the landscape to retrieve what’s rightfully his. This is, it must be said, kind of a silly hook for a movie — or it would be, in less adept hands, because director Anthony Mann doesn’t mostly follow Stewart around; he mostly follows the gun. ‘Winchester ’73’ bops from owner to owner and story to story like the angel of death itself. The suspense of how someone gains and loses the mighty repeating rifle, and if they’ll have to pay with their life, make each successive episode more intriguing. Every time we check back in with Stewart, too, his nerves become increasingly frayed, drawing him nearer to mania.     This is the joy of Stewart and Mann’s collaborations, really. You’re riveted to the spectacle of watching an ostensibly coolheaded, together person absolutely lose his fool mind. ‘Winchester ’73’ delights in amplifying the swirling currents of aggression and obsession throughout each leg of the journey. By the time we get to the final shootout between the brothers (don’t worry, the rifle finds its way back to them), their murderous rage far outstrips the motivation provided by the plot. A staging of the Cain and Abel story couldn’t ask for a harsher backdrop than the one Mann finds here — the jagged, barren rocks are a tortured landscape of the mind made visual. The famous sequence is staged and edited with razor precision. “Winchester ’73” is not only one of the most structurally interesting Westerns ever made, it’s one of the best ones, too. —SS 

14. ‘Ride the High Country’ (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1962)

An early film from ‘Wild Bunch’ director Sam Peckinpah, ‘Ride the High Country’ is a hidden gem with an abundance of grit around the edges. Genre veterans Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea are wonderfully weary as the amoral heroes of the story, aging lawmen traveling across California to deliver a shipment of gold to the bank. With Ron Starr’s brash young Heck and Mariette Hartley’s rebellious Elsa by their side, they embark on a journey that doubles as a last hurrah, even if they don’t say it. Peckinpah’s film often feels like a bridge between the classic Westerns of old and the darker, more realistic Westerns that would follow, telling its straightforward story with a heavy spoonful of cynicism. Peckinpah doesn’t shy away from showcasing the flaws of his heroes or the harsh realities of the frontier, including the constant threat of sexual violence that Elsa faces even from the men who are supposed to protect her. That makes McCrea’s performance as a man trying to do the right thing all the more moving, a needed ray of hope in an otherwise exquisitely unforgiving landscape. —WC  

13. ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966)

Indisputably one of the greatest and most iconic of all Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ is so influential — and such an immaculate slab of pure cinema — that watching it for the first time feels like a spell of déjà vu, and watching it for the 50th time feels like a sublime discovery. That strange, uniquely filmic sort of vertigo befits a stand-alone saga that was made as the third chapter of a trilogy even though it takes place before the other two; a revisionist masterpiece that pushed an exhausted genre forward by returning it to its most basic elements. Viscerally timeless long before people knew it was immortal, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ is rooted in a mesmerizing duel between the immediacy of close-up violence and the ultra-wide sweep of mythic storytelling, a dynamic that’s reflected by the symphonic rhythms of its editing and the funereal ecstasy of Ennio Morricone’s score alike. 

It starts with Leone’s most basic plot, which is then stretched across his most epic canvas, as the desperate search for a buried cache of Confederate gold amid the mass death of the Civil War becomes a microcosm for the banality of violence, and therefore a satire of the Western genre on the whole. Its nameless hero is the simplest and most classic of Western archetypes, only more so, as Eastwood elevates the whole ‘terse gunslinger’ mystique to such cartoonish heights that it becomes impossible to separate truth from legend). His antagonists are a pair of adjectives who Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef infuse with such dimensional scumminess that you’d need an entire dictionary to describe them. The Mexican stand-offs between these characters mess with time in a way that only the movies ever could, as split-second draws are stretched far beyond the logic that limits most art. It’s the language of a film that has always belonged to then, now, and forever; an epic that remains utterly inimitable even as its impact continues to bleed deeper and deeper into the fabric of storytelling itself. —DE

12. ‘Rio Bravo’ (dir. Howard Hawks, 1959)

No filmmaker better embodied the early 20th century archetype of a studio system journeyman better than Howard Hawks. Switching between genres at a whiplash-inducing pace, Hawks found a way to make Hollywood classics out of just about every script he was given and imbued them with his signature concerns and personal style. A case could be made that he directed some of the best screwball comedies (‘Bringing Up Baby’ and ‘His Girl Friday’), film noir (‘The Big Sleep’), musicals (‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’), and gangster movies (‘Scarface’) of all time — and that’s before you even get to his greatest contribution to the Western genre, ‘Rio Bravo.’

The film, which stars John Wayne as a small town sheriff who enlists the help of a young gunfighter (Ricky Nelson) and a local drunk (Dean Martin) to aid him in detaining a dangerous but politically powerful criminal until a U.S. Marshall arrives to pick him up, could be classified as one of Hollywood’s first hangout movies. Much of the first two acts contain minimal action, but the time flies by due to Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett’s witty script and Hawks’ confidence in the chemistry between the three leading men. And while the film’s glorious concluding battle more than makes up for lost time, it’s easy to see how ‘Rio Bravo’ paved the way for modern auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, who gleefully satirized the banality of evil with their juxtaposition of casual dialogue and grotesque violence.

You can tell how Hawks’ background directing other genres prepared him to mine so much entertainment out of such a minimalistic script — ‘Rio Bravo’ pretty much gives you exactly what you’d expect a Western directed by the man who made ‘His Girl Friday.’ It’s a culmination of decades spent making films about the folly of human life in its many forms, which is why it still feels like one of the most gleefully human Westerns ever made. —CZ

11. ‘The Great Train Robbery’ (dir. Edwin S. Porter, 1903)

At just 12 minutes long, Edwin S. Porter’s one-reel wonder ‘The Great Train Robbery’ is a foundational cinematic text. Inspired by the more complex films being made abroad by the Brighton School in England and George Méliès in France, Porter tapped into the mythology of the American West — and the growing popularity of train-related entertainment — to craft his own thrilling, thoroughly American adventure. Likely taking its name from Scott Marble’s popular stage melodrama ‘The Great Train Robbery’ (1896) and riffing on recent sensational events like the 1900 robbery of a Union Pacific Railroad train by Butch Cassidy and his gang, the film follows outlaws who rob a train while it’s stopped at a station, flee into the mountains, and then succumb to a posse of armed locals. The film’s indelible final image, in which an outlaw fires his gun directly at the camera, has been referenced countless times throughout the course of film and television history. —MG

10. ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (dir. John Ford, 1962)

John Ford was never shy about interrogating the genre that he helped to invent; few other filmmakers so earned the right, and even fewer so fearlessly embraced that right as a prerogative. And yet none of Ford’s movies questioned the foundational myths of American Westerns — and of the American West itself — more directly than ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,’ a sprawling but stagelike negotiation between frontier justice and the rule of law set in the heart of a country that has always struggled to believe the story it tells about itself. 

A morally ambiguous fable shot in austere black-and-white (in stark contrast to the Technicolor sweep of films like ‘The Searchers’), ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ flips the Western formula on its head. The mysterious stranger who blows into town isn’t a gunslinging John Wayne (iconic as a trigger-happy farmer), but rather a bookish James Stewart, who hopes to prepare the area for potential statehood. He’s robbed and left for dead by Lee Marvin before he even gets to Shinbone. 

Of course, it will take more than that to stop Ransom Stoddard — a future senator in a land of “dudes” and “pilgrims” — from trying to civilize this lawless slice of the American wild, an effort that ultimately compels him to strike an ambivalent compromise between fact and fiction, constitutional ideals and the reality of living with them. In that light, ‘Print the legend’ could be seen as the Western’s most pyrrhic victory since the end of ‘Seven Samurai.’ Ransom’s supposed heroism catapults him to great political success, but only by educating him on the contradiction in terms between truth, justice, and the American way. To this day, few movies have better articulated how this country works, and even fewer have better articulated how it doesn’t. —DE

9. ‘The Shooting’ (dir. Monte Hellman, 1967)

‘Easy Rider’ put Jack Nicholson on the map, but three years earlier he produced and co-starred in Monte Hellman’s ‘The Shooting,’ an early example of the ‘acid Western’ that brought the ‘60s counterculture to horseback. Warren Oates plays Willet Gashade, a former bounty hunter tasked to escort a mystery woman with money to burn. She makes them veer off course and pursue an unspecified target, and soon the mystery turns into a hostage situation when Jack shows up and bluntly threatens to ‘blow your face off.’ Hellman’s West is desolate, empty, and surreal, and the score of plodding, baritone piano is a world away from the operatic sweep of Ennio Morricone’s work. ‘The Shooting’ is about the chase, not the why or who, though it has a gripping and abrupt finale that provides just an ounce of closure. —BW

8. ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1972)

‘Hawk. Goin’ for the Musselshell. Take me a week’s ridin’, and he’ll be there in… hell, he’s there already.’     Exhibit A for why Sydney Pollack needs to be regarded far more favorably than the Oscar-bait-peddling director he’s sometimes labeled, ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ is the most poetic of all Westerns. If the West was a place to start anew, to begin life again, to become someone else, it hasn’t always offered up a new cinematic grammar to convey that potential for rebirth: ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ does. Edward Anhalt and John Milius’s spare script, uniquely sad and introspective, was inspired by the poetry of Carl Sandburg as well as 19th-century vernacular.      Jeremiah, an Army veteran who leaves civilization behind to become a Mountain Man in the wilds of Utah, speaks little throughout the movie; the characters he meets along the way talk far more. This is a movie about doing, about gestures, about everything that acting entails beyond dialogue. It’s why a GIF of star Robert Redford, all grizzled and bearded, his legendary handsomeness hidden, giving a nod of approval, became a Twitter meme. But this movie about a deeply antisocial individual is so much more than social media fodder.      It’s about how our lives are made up in the edit we create for ourselves in our own heads, and the tenuous webs of affection we weren’t even seeking that give it all meaning: There’s a point in the middle where Johnson, an obvious PTSD sufferer, has created a newfound family with an Indigenous woman and a mute child. None can speak the same language, as it were, but all can ultimately understand each other perfectly. When the worst happens, and he loses his family, Redford achieves the most refined acting of his career: Staring into the fire he’s set to consume their one-time home, the slightest of smiles crossing his lips as the memory of them sustains him, even as he needs to find a new, more violent source of meaning.     It’s the quiet of ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ that sticks with you. It’s a movie that allows you to look within yourself as you’re watching it, just the way so many Western characters are ultimately in search of themselves. As for Jeremiah… some folks say, he’s up there still. —CB 

7. ‘Stagecoach’ (dir. John Ford, 1939)

The Western genre is too vast and varied to be distilled down to a single film — or at least, it would be, if ‘Stagecoach’ didn’t exist. The earliest classic Western of the sound era from John Ford, featuring genre icon John Wayne in his breakthrough role, ‘Stagecoach’ practically birthed the golden age of the Western, and turned the five square miles of Monument Valley into the definitive landscape of the American West. Like many genre-defining works, ‘Stagecoach’ is an exceedingly simple story, following a motley group of passengers on a Stagecoach headed to New Mexico. While there are colorful personalities — from a snobbish Southern belle to a timid liquor salesman (the unforgettable Donald Meek, who’s looked after quite closely by Thomas Mitchell’s character) — the standout is Wayne’s Ringo Kid, a bad boy with a heart of gold whose simple masculinity charms the edgy, troubled prostitute Dallas (Claire Trevor), and the audience as well. Even in this early Western, you see sly subversion of the black-and-white morality people often ascribe to the genre, with the outlaw and the lady of ill repute as the heroes, and a focus on fraying tensions between people representing different areas of society. Still, it’s the action, which remains so visceral and exciting today, that proves the main attraction. ‘Stagecoach’ isn’t necessarily timeless — it’s marred, like so many Westerns, by stereotypical and one-dimensional portrayals of Native Americans as one-note antagonists — but the thrilling eight-minute climactic salt flat chase will live on in the DNA of action and adventure movies for decades more to come. —WC 

6. ‘Ride Lonesome’ (dir. Budd Boetticher, 1959)

All Westerns are on some level about the application of violence. The films of Budd Boetticher, however, are uniquely attuned to the cost of violence, the memory of it, the way it affects the very landscape. None of his Ranown cycle Westerns with star Randolph Scott are over 80 minutes, but ‘Ride Lonesome’ most perfectly distills his essential concerns: Scott plays bounty hunter Ben Brigade, a hired killer, the kind of profession you don’t see in John Ford movies, certainly not as your lead character. Brigade seems singularly minded to bring an outlaw named Billy John (James Best) to justice, but curiously, takes an overly roundabout way to escort the captured gunslinger back to town where the hangman’s noose awaits him. That’s because Brigade is really trying to draw out Billy’s brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef), who killed Brigade’s wife years ago. Frank hanged her from a dead old tree, its gnarled branches like the most warped crucifix you’ve ever seen. Brigade stages it so that his final showdown with Frank takes place by that very same tree. The thing about violence, too, is how quickly people can forget about it. When Frank admits he actually had forgotten he killed Brigade’s wife, Brigade has a very true-to-life reply: ‘A man can do that.’     The elements to this story are incredibly simple, but Boetticher directs it all with the highest emotional impact. Look at the way he uses the frame throughout ‘Ride Lonesome’ — at all times there’s a world lurking beyond the edges of the screen. At one moment, Scott stiffens in his saddle, clearly seeing something off-camera that we don’t, as he’s riding. The camera keeps pace with him until we see a Mescalero war party finally enter the frame in the far distance, his riding companion Pernell Roberts oblivious. Most other directors even then would have added a couple more shots to telegraph what’s happening with the edit. But Boetticher has the intelligence and skill to convey a huge lesson about movies and about life in this one continuous shot instead: You’re only aware of that which you can see, and the world continues far beyond your field of vision. —CB  

5. ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller’ (dir. Robert Altman, 1971)

Robert Altman was a director of such strong vision and style that no matter what genre he tackled, it would be twisted into a completely new form. From comedies like ‘M*A*S*H’ to detective stories like ‘The Long Goodbye,’ his films eschew conventions in favor of a vibe and a tone that can only be described as Altmanesque. Perhaps his most radical genre experiement, ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’ throws out the adventure and the action of the Western in favor of a moody, psychological character study, zooming in on two of the most fascinating characters in Western history.  

As played by Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, the mysterious gambler and British madame of the title are richly shaded characters, petty and fueled by vices, with a romantic connection that never fully dethaws into true love. They can’t, really, when the snowy world of Presbyterian Church, Washington is so harsh and unforgiving, a place where you need to scrap by to get ahead. Altman and his cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond shoot this landscape with a dreamy, evocative lens, but Altman always roots the film in the reality of life in the west, where citizens are just tools and obstacles for the corporations controlling their way of life. Its ending may be the bleakest in all of the genre’s history, a reminder that, for all that the genre loves to make its cowboys and mavericks and individualistic men bigger than life, in real life these men would typically just be forgotten. —WC 

4. ‘For a Few Dollars More’ (dir. Sergio Leone, 1965)

Italian artists have obsessed over the American West at least since Giacomo Puccini premiered his opera ‘La fanciulla del West’ (‘The Girl of the West’), about Gold Rush miners, Wells Fargo agents, and bandits in 1910. Somehow the great composer saw in the Western — then a form that already existed in early movies such as ‘The Great Train Robbery,’ actual circus-like live shows, and novels like Owen Wister’s ‘The Virginian’ — a canvas on which to let loose a flood of emotion.     Fifty-five years later, Sergio Leone picked up the mantle and repaid the debt to opera in his second Spaghetti Western, a film where music takes on an unusual power to slow down and speed up time and turns the emotions latent in the Western into something truly explosive. ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ was a promising sketch, but ‘For a Few Dollars More’ reinvents the form altogether. Watch the gunfight in the church where Gian Maria Volante’s loathsome bandido El Indio forces a man, whose family he has just killed, to duel him by firing the moment that his watch chime stops ringing. In that moment, it’s not about the duel itself, it’s not about the outcome, it’s not about who lives or who dies… it’s not about what happens. It’s about how it happens. The waiting. The pauses between moments of significance are the most significant moments of all. Ennio Morricone’s chime theme guitar-strum-crescendos into an organ fugue as Leone cuts among closeups of all the faces of El Indio’s men. El Indio and his soon-to-be victim stare so deeply into each other you’d think they could see each others’ souls. When the violence itself comes, it’s an afterthought. Instead, you’re thinking how Morricone can do with a movie score what Michelangelo could do with ceilings. The way great composers could stretch out a singular moment to aria-length grandeur is the way Leone literally changed the experience of time itself here.     There’s nothing like this in the Western before ‘For a Few Dollars More.’ Puccini made a Western opera. Leone made the first truly operatic Western. —CB 

3. ‘My Darling Clementine’ (dir. John Ford, 1946)

John Ford made 14 sound-era westerns, eight of which starred John Wayne. But seven years after the seminal ‘Stagecoach’ made a star out of Wayne, Ford starred Henry Fonda in top form as charismatic Tombstone Sheriff Wyatt Earp, patiently tipping a porch chair with his long legs as he waits to spring into action. Kurosawa and Miyazaki are among the directors who deem this Monument Valley Western Ford’s best. In ‘About John Ford,’ Lindsay Anderson wrote: ‘if ‘Stagecoach’ was very good prose, ‘My Darling Clementine’ was poetry.’

Shot in elegant high-contrast black-and-white by Joseph McDonald, Ford uses a well-known Western myth to explore the tensions between wilderness and civilization: the events leading up to the shootout at the O.K. Corral, when the Earp brothers and an ailing Doc Holiday (Victor Mature) finally confront the cattle-stealing Clantons, led by Old Man Clanton (a terrifying Walter Brennan). While Ford fictionalized much of this movie, he had heard about the actual gunfight back in his silent western days from Earp himself, and shot the scene as accurately as he could.

The end result is the perfect balance of character study and landscape, myth and truth, romance and action. —AT

2. ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968)

When Sergio Leone’s epic Western was released in the U.S. in the summer of 1969 to little impact, suggesting that decades later it would rank with or even higher than its competitions that stellar season (‘The Wild Bunch,’ ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ ‘True Grit’) would seem as farcical as predicting in 1956 that ‘The Searchers’ would, by the 1970s, be seen by many as the greatest Western.

Burdened not just by stellar alternatives but also having to follow up three sleeper hits in the Man with No Name trilogy with a film not featuring Clint Eastwood (his Western that year was ‘Paint Your Wagon’), ‘Once’ lived up to the implication in its title of a story that encompasses a greatest hits of the genre.

And it delivers. The building of railroads, brutal fights over water rights, land speculation, revenge — all classic Western themes — are present, but overlapping and somehow congealing into a coherent whole. The writers apart from Leone included Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, with the former helping infuse it with Marxist shadings about the exploitation of workers and the evil tycoons who face little resistance.

But it parts from tradition in other ways. Its nominal lead character is female (a recently widowed homesteader, played by Claudia Cardinale), its lead villain Henry Fonda easily overcomes a lifetime of playing heroes, and Charles Bronson (in a role Eastwood turned down) a commanding presence with his harmonica playing substituting for dialogue much of the time.

A European production (though with some location work in Monument Valley as a link to the great American Westerns before it), it was a huge hit on the continent while it struggled in the U.S. It started to gain cult status, then grow in acclaim domestically after the 1984 restoration to its initial 165 minute length.

Major credit for its impact goes to Tonino Delli Colli’s sweeping Techniscope anamorphic cinematography realizing Leone’s vision. But above all, it is Ennio Morricone’s score, arguably the greatest among his many brilliant offerings, that clinches immortality for ‘Once Upon a Time in the West.’ —TB

1. ‘Johnny Guitar’ (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1954)

The Western can be a lot of things — idealistic or gritty, traditional or modern, sturdy or stylized. But more than anything, the genre is male. From the minute John Wayne sauntered onto camera in ‘Stagecoach,’ Westerns have been inextricably linked with a strain of classical white masculinity — mostly glorifying it, sometimes critiquing it, but always centering it. So maybe that’s why cinema’s most surprising, unique, unforgettable Western is one that throws out all of that baggage and gives the audience something completely new, something that’s never been done before — or, really, since.  

‘Johnny Guitar’ opens like many classic Westerns do, with a barrel-chested cowboy riding into a remote desert town as his cheery theme song plays. It’s when our cowboy (Sterling Hayden) arrives at his destination — a remote, wind-swept Arizona saloon — that the qualities that make Nicholas Ray’s lurid Technicolor drama so distinct reveal themselves. More precisely, it’s when Joan Crawford appears on camera. As Vienna, the hardened proprietor of the establishment, she gives a performance unlike any other — sneering and mannered, with a simmering rage and lust that you can see in her eyes and hear in the way she spits out her lines like they’re daggers. The minute this singular woman, dressed in rather butch slacks and a dress shirt, arrives, it’s very clear that the title character only matters in relation to her. Hayden gives a heartfelt performance, but in ‘Johnny Guitar,’ the cowboy isn’t the star.  

Neither is he the villain, really, although there is an obligatory bandit in Scott Brady’s Dancin’ Kid. No, the real foil to Vienna’s uncouth kindness is the curdled and bitter Emma Small (a wild-eyed Mercedes McCambridge), a conservative reactionary who hates Vienna for reasons both personal and pathetic. The rivalry between these two women is delectably charged and fascinatingly psychological, one that’s long been interpreted through a queer lens. Regardless, their conflict is a conflict unlike that in almost any Western, one that positions the community itself as the villain witch-hunting those who live on their own terms rather than the restrictions placed upon them (it’s not a coincidence that the film was made during the peak of McCarthyism and anti-Communism sentiment in Hollywood). If the Western has fallen out of fashion and been dismissed as conservative and regressive, ‘Johnny Guitar’ shows how that conservatism is in no way inherent to the genre’s core.  

At the time of its release, ‘Johnny Guitar’ did well at the box office, but American critics didn’t know what to make of it; the common sentiment was that it was ‘kitschy.’ It found better reception in Europe, where future directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut praised it. Maybe it’s telling that it was international viewers who truly understood Ray’s vision, which sits so far outside of the American Western mythos that the USA has created. It’s the Western as a fairy tale, almost, an extravagant and poetic and terrifying melodrama coursing with lust, desire, hate, and despair. The film isn’t a particularly big production, setting most of its action in Vienna’s cavernous saloon. And yet it feels gigantic, a movie so distinct, imaginative, and affecting that it achieves epic status. Other Westerns may be more action-packed or gritty, but no Western cuts so deeply and singularly as ‘Johnny Guitar.’ —WC 

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10 Trippiest Sci-Fi Books Of All Time

11 most anticipated thriller books coming out the rest of 2024, 10 underrated sci-fi books that should be on everyone's radar.

• Sci-fi books with a unique premise or that follow up existing series are the most highly anticipated for July 2024.
• Speculative thrillers that utilize sc-fi tropes have garnered a lot of interest in July 2024.
• There's always excitement for the release of a creat space opera or traditional science fiction novella.

July 2024 will be a great month for sci-fi , with several highly anticipated books arriving on bookstore shelves. From space operas to speculative thrillers, the coming month means a great many options for those looking for something new to read during the summer. Of course, there are also a few long-awaited sequels to established book series on the way, which means July is when readers can finally dive back into these beloved sci-fi worlds.

The science fiction genre has existed for centuries, with Mary Shelley's 1818 title Frankenstein often credited as the very first. These days, dozens of new sci-fi novels are released monthly, most of which will only gain slight traction with audiences. However, some develop significant hype before they even release, whether because of a unique new idea or the cliffhanger ending of a previous installment. In July 2024, there are a handful of sci-fi novels whose release book fans are buzzing about .

While many sci-fi books bend the bounds of reality, these 10 sci-fi novels are truly trippy, making their world-bending plots all the more memorable.

10 The Failures By Benjamin Liar

July 2, 2024.

The Failures is Benjamin Liar's first published novel, but it's already making quite an impact. Set in a mechanical world created by a host of gods that long ago abandoned their creation, the story follows a group of heroes on their second attempt to repair their home after a previous failure. The novel is the first in a promised trilogy, establishing a complex world and lore that readers can expect to be fully immersed in.

It's the worldbuilding that seems to have captured preliminary readers of The Failures . Liar's story has been called " genre-bending, " with a unique approach to sci-fi/fantasy that makes this trilogy unlike anything readers have seen before . So long as The Failures holds up to the hype following its release, there will most certainly be a new, complex sci-fi world for readers to call home.

9 The Icarus Changeling By Timothy Zahn

The Icarus Changeling is the third book in Timothy Zahn's The Icarus Saga , which includes The Icarus Hunt (1999), The Icarus Plot (2022), The Icarus Twin (2023), and The Icarus Job (2024), with two more books expected after the July 2024 installment. The Icarus Job has an impressive 4.44 out of 5 stars on GoodReads , and this overall approval has naturally increased the anticipation for The Icarus Changeling .

Though part of a larger series, The Icarus Changeling holds up well on its own , making it the perfect introduction to the sci-fi world Zahn first established in 1999. This installment revolves around the agents of the secret Icarus Group and follows Gregory Roarke, who must hunt down a mysterious teleportation portal before the rival Patth gets there first. However, a variety of murders make this mission far more complicated.

8 Made For You By Jenna Satterthwaite

Another debut novel from a promising writer, Made For You, is a highly unique sci-fi thriller that has everyone talking leading up to its July 2, 2024 release. The story follows Julia, a synthetic human cast to compete on " The Proposal ," a The Bachelor -type reality show . Julia seemingly gets her happily ever after, but when her husband goes missing, she is suddenly at the center of a murder investigation.

Made For You has been billed as a fast-paced thriller combining the guilty pleasure of reality competition with the most delicious science fiction tropes. Full of twists and turns, it also contains something of a whodunit, giving readers the opportunity to make their own guesses about who killed Julia's husband. Then, of course, there is the obligatory question of what a synthetic human is really capable of feeling.

There are plenty of exciting thriller books coming out during the remainder of 2024, and the most highly anticipated have fun and twisty premises.

7 The State Of Paradise By Laura Van Den Berg

July 9, 2024.

The State of Paradise connects our world and recent history with the world of science fiction, tricking readers into thinking they know what's happening before sending their expectations hurtling. Described as a " heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida's underbelly ," there's no question why van den Berg's novel is one of the most highly anticipated within the genre for 2024 .

The story picks up in the years following a global pandemic, during which a free and addictive virtual reality device, MIND's EYE, was distributed to citizens.

The title of The State of Paradise refers, in part, to the Florida setting, where the summer heat accentuates the mind-bending twists and turns of reality. The story picks up in the years following a global pandemic, during which a free and addictive virtual reality device, MIND's EYE, was distributed to citizens. As the Florida weather becomes increasingly unbearable, people begin to go missing, leaving the ghostwriting protagonist to grapple with the mystery and questions about reality.

6 All This & More By Peng Shepherd

Peng Shepherd wowed critics with The Book of M and The Cartographers , and readers are now looking ahead in anticipation of the July 9th release of This & More . Totted as " inventive ," " mind-bending ," and " extra-eccentric ," the story follows a divorcee single mom who believes she missed her chance at a worthwhile life. However, this changes when she is selected to star in All This and More , a TV show that gives contestants the very real opportunity to change their past decisions to create a whole new life.

Of course, this doesn't work out to be the fairytale All This & More 's protagonist hopes, and the quantum technology that makes her new life possible begins to feel a little off. The unique thing about Shepherd's newest novel is that it puts readers in the driver's seat, allowing them to make the big decisions about the protagonist's new reality in the most unsettling ways.

5 This Great Hemisphere By Mateo Askaripour

New York Times bestselling author Mateo Askaripour takes on social issues in his books, including Black Buck , which addresses racism in corporate America with humor. Now, 2024's The Great Hemisphere takes on similar parallels through mystery and sci-fi. The speculative novel follows Sweetmint, a young woman born as an Invisible in a world split into hemispheres following an environmental crisis.

The divided world of The Great Hemisphere allows for a thought-provoking but jarringly fast-paced story as Sweetmint is pulled into a dangerous mystery. Her brother, whom she believed was dead, turns out to not only be alive but the primary suspect in a murder. As Askaripour's novel follows her through this chaos, the author explores the ways that society's concept of reality can be manipulated.

Sci-fi books like Dune or 1984 have remained memorable and highly praised for years, but there are some novels that don't get enough attention.

4 The Family Experiment By John Marrs

Set in the same universe as his previous novels, The One and The Marriage Act , John Marrs' The Family Experiment explores a future in which overpopulation takes the UK toward its breaking point. It becomes impractical for families to have real babies, so a company creates Virtual Children, digital babies that grow through to adulthood and must be accessed through the metaverse and a VR headset.

Marrs' speculative novel sees the company that created Virtual Children roll out a reality TV competition called The Substitute. In this competition, ten couples raise ten babies up to 18 in a condensed nine months, all for the chance to either keep the virtual baby or take home enough money to start a family of their own. The Family Experiment is an offputting concept, somewhat dark and twisted , that explores the desperate desire for parenthood and the lengths couples will go to satisfy it.

3 Descent By Marko Kloos

July 16, 2024.

Marko Kloos The Palladium Wars series includes Aftershock (2019), Ballistic (2020), Citadel (2021), and the upcoming Descent (2024), which will continue the story that is classic sci-fi through and through. The series is set in a galaxy on the brink of war and follows the efforts of those who would go to any lengths to secure peace. Descent sees all this tension brought to a head.

There are space pirates, plenty of battles, terrorists, and, of course, a great deal of political intrigue.

Kloos' 2024 novel follows various protagonists across the galaxy, among the most notable being Aden Jensen, who lost a decade of his life as a prisoner of war. If he hopes to secure long-lasting freedom, he must return to his home planet and act as a spy against the nationalist uprising there. There are space pirates, plenty of battles, terrorists, and, of course, a great deal of political intrigue.

2 Gravity Lost By L.M. Sagas

July 23, 2024.

L.M. Sagas' Gravity Lost is the sequel to Cascade Failure (2024), which introduced the ragtag crew of the Ambit. Protagonist Jal winds up an accidental member of the AI-run spaceship's crew, stuck between the universe's primary two powers, the Trust and the Union. The Ambit's crew is akin to Guardians of the Galaxy , with just as much explosive action and space-family dysfunction.

Gravity Lost sees Jal and her pals participate in a jailbreak , freeing a prisoner that they themselves had helped put away. However, with the Union and Trust both determined to get their hands on him, it's imperative that certain dirty secrets be extracted first. This installment of Sagas' series will see the characters confronted with their own uncomfortable truths, and it might just tear them apart.

1 Navigational Entanglements By Aliette de Bodard

July 30, 2024.

This novella, by Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard, combines the features of a grand space opera with those of a Xiancia drama. The story jumps between two primary characters, Việt Nhi and Hạc Cúc, members of two Navigator clans who must work together after an imperial envoy is found dead from clan poison.

Toted as an adult queer sci-fi , there's a lot to look forward to with Navigational Entanglements . It's a short and sweet story with a great deal of action and a decent amount of worldbuilding for its length. Việt Nhi and Hạc Cúc working out their differences is sure to be the highlight, with a " found family " dynamic that is often highly enjoyable in a great sci-fi book.