Otherwise an obvious candidate is:
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (_the_ preeminant work of political philosophy in the 20th century, but not exactly fun for the intellectual hoi poloi. It's unashamedly liberal, although right wingers find it communistical and Rawls is open to market socialism.)
If we can have foreign language works, also very difficult, but clearly the greatest work of Marxist philosophy of the 29th century is:
Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness
More in the vein of the books suggested, I'd nominate:
Leon Trotsky, The Russian Revolution (a literary masterwork as well as a very solid piece of history).
Not exactly on that level, but at least as good as several of the books listed is my favorite book of popular law, and of the best books I have ever read on race relations:
Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
Though while we are thinking of American race relations, maybe we should put in:
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, and
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.
Our list ought not be all white guys. Speaking of which we, where are the girls?
-jks
In a message dated Fri, 21 Jan 2000 12:42:34 AM Eastern Standard Time, "Peter K." <peterk at enteract.com> writes:
.
> Here's a link for their "Top 100 (and a few more) Non-fiction works of the
> 20th Century."
> http://www.counterpunch.org/top100nf.html
>
> I'd be interested to hear comments about the list from the learned (and
> quirky) amongst you. I'm proud to say I have
> Edward Abbey's Fool's Progress
> Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: the degradation of work in the
> Twentieth Century
> William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity
> Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the
> Palestinians
> Christopher Hill,The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the
> English revolution
> Andrew Kopkind, The Thirty Years' War: dispatches and diversions
> of a radical journalist 1965-1994
> Peter Linebaugh,The London Hanged: crime and civil society in the Eighteenth
> Century
> Edward Said, Orientalism
> EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
>
> and have read a few
>
> Peter Kilander - not above a little chest-thumping