100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century

HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, compiled a list of the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th Century. The list, which boasts titles from over fifty different publishers, contains many books that will be familiar to collectors and dealers, including items quite valuable in their early editions. The list is arranged in alphabetical order by author and includes a special top 10 section of the most frequently nominated (nominations came from a wide variety of spiritual writers, editors, and scholars) and most important titles.

Black Elk Speaks

Black Elk

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Letters and Papers from Prison

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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I and Thou

Martin Buber

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Orthodoxy

G.K. Chesterton

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The Four Quartets

T.S. Eliot

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The Sabbath

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Shunryu Suzuki

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The Phenomenon of Man

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The Story of a Soul

St. Therese of Lisieux

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Waiting for God

Simone Weil

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• Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams
• In the Heart of the Seas, S.Y. Agnon
• Alcoholics Anonymous, Anonymous
• The Gospel of Thomas, Anonymous
• The Glory of the Lord, Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Saving the Appearances, Owen Barfield
• The Epistle to the Romans, Karl Barth
• Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos
• The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Tales of the Hasidim, Martin Buber

• The Plague, Albert Camus
• Spiritual Letters, John Chapman
• Mount Analogue, Rene Daumal
• The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
• The Way of All the Earth, John S. Dunne
• The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley
• The Myth of Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade
• Christianity and Culture, T.S. Eliot
• Silence, Shusako Endo

• The Pillar and the Ground of Truth, Pavel Florensky
• A Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
• Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi
• The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
• The Golden String, Bede Griffiths
• The Lord, Romano Guardini
• The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Rene Guenon
• Meetings with Remarkable Men, G.I. Gurdjieff
• Peace Is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hahn

• Markings, Dag Hammarskjold
• God in Search of Man, Abraham Joshua Heschel
• Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
• Collected Poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins
• The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley
• My Guru and His Disciple, Christopher Isherwood
• The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
• Journal of a Soul, Pope John XXIII
• Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II
• Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung

• The Trial, Franz Kafka
• A Testament of Devotion, Thomas Kelly
• The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
• I Have A Dream, Martin Luther King Jr.
• Enthusiasm, Ronald Knox
• Think on These Things, Krishnamurti
• The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Jean Leclercq
• The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
• Mere Christianity , C.S. Lewis
• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran

• The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharashi, Ramana Maharashi
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
• Journals, Raissa Maritain
• The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
• New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton
• The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
• Something Beautiful for God, Malcolm Muggeridge
• Meditations and Devotions, John Henry Newman
• Christ and Culture, Richard H. Niebuhr
• The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr

• Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
• The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto
• In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky
• The Road Less Traveled , M. Scott Peck
• Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
• The Gospel of Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna
• Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Paul Reps
• Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke
• The Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig

• The Candle of Vision, George William Russell
• Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Anne-Marie Schimmel
• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem
• A Guide for the Perplexed, E.F. Schumacher
• The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Fritjof Schuon
• Collected Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer
• The World's Religions, Huston Smith
• The Thirtee-Petalled Rose, Adin Steinsaltz
• Essays in Zen Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki
• Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore

• A Simple Path, Mother Teresa
• The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Meditations on the Tarot, Valentin Tomberg
• Centuries, Thomas Traherne
• Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa
• Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• Collected Poems, William Butler Yeats
• Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda