Review of 12 Books That Changed The World by Melvyn Bragg

Who could resist a title like that? Not me! Before I provide you with the list of 12 books I am going to quote from page 321, as it could easily serve as an introduction to this splendid book.

‘One of the people I spoke to when I was thinking about this book’ Bragg writes, ‘was my friend the novelist Howard Jacobson. He was dismayed that the list held no novelists.’
“I’m a novelist, you’re a novelist, we love novels, novels changed my life and novels changed your life, good novels change lives every day, a list without a novel? Without one, not one, novel?”

‘I defended the list I had drawn up. I said that I wanted books that I could prove had changed, rootedly, the lives of people all over the land – people on trains, people at airports, people in clubs and pubs, women who were still campaigning for equality and enjoying the long-awaited acknowledgement of their right to orgasm, men who week in week out played, watched, celebrated and discussed a game so beautifully and simply constructed it remains a masterpiece of socio-leisure architecture, those who hold religious truths to be self-evident and those whose conscious and unconscious lives have been readjusted by the revelations from the Galapagos Islands, the industrialists and financiers who ride and lubricate international capitalism calling on the market and free trade as its two parents, those whose lives are devoted to seeking freedoms which were given such a lead in the abolition of the slave trade, those who go to the moon, put on the light, send a fax, vote in a democratic country, fight for their rights, those whose daily lives and the reach of whose minds and ambitions have been transformed by books which set off a shot that rang around the world.’

Having read the book and the arguments that Bragg uses for including each of his choices, I wholeheartedly agree and I learnt something about the reach and extent of each of his choices which I didn’t know before.

The twelve books are as follows:
1. Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton, simply the world’s greatest natural philosopher and thinker.
“Nature, and nature’s Laws lay hid in night:
God said: ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.”

2. Married Love by Marie Stopes. ‘In my own marriage, I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity.’ It was and it is. Sexual and reproductive health information and services is provided to 4.3 million people across the world through the MSI Global Partnership.

3. Magna Carta by Members of the English Ruling Classes. This is the bedrock of British and American democracy which guarantees our freedom from tyranny.

4. The Rule Book of Association Football by a Group of Former English Public School Men. The so-called beautiful game which is now played worldwide, a cultural phenomenon.

5. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The book that caused uproar among fundamental Christians. “In great detail, Darwin laid out evidence for evolution as an undeniable process, with natural selection as its driving force. In doing so the book demolished beliefs in the fixity of the species and seriously challenged, and some claim wholly undermined, views and convictions about both the nature of men and the presence of God in the natural world.” It’s a point of view. Darwin may have some credence in his observations of the natural world, but extrapolating it to the human race does not have to follow, in my opinion. How or when God created man is open to interpretation, I am willing to concede, but not God’s Creatorship, which is a matter of faith.

6. On the Abolition of the Slave Trade by William Wilberforce. Cited as ‘one of the turning circumstances in the history of the world.’ William Wilberforce delivered this paper to the British House of Commons in May 1789. He began: “When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am about to bring before the House a subject in which the interests not just of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world and of posterity are involved... it is impossible for me not o feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacy to such a task... the end of which is the total abolition of the slave trade.” Four hours later he emerged as a man of heroic moral stature, a man whose words would move the world. He died just three days after the Slave Trade was abolished in Britain in 1807.

7. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. The first great feminist thesis. She had a “firm conviction that the neglected education of my fellow creatures (i.e.women) is the grand source of the misery I deplore.” A seminal work that advocated equality for women.

8. Experimental Researches in Electricity by Michael Farraday. We owe everything that runs on electricity to Farraday. The list would be endless.

9. Patent Specification for Arkwright’s Spinning Machine by Richard Arkwright. The entrepreneurial genius behind the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Britain as the wealthiest nation in the world through its manufacture of textiles.

10. The King James Bible by William Tyndale and Fifty-Four Scholars appointed by the King. The influence of Tyndale on the English language is enormous. It is estimated that 80% of the words in the King James Bible came from him. The formative effect on generations of great writers is extensive. The moral power of the King James Version of the Bible in particular is embraced by America and its leaders. This book has been the greatest influence in my life.

11. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. The advocate of Free Trade which has done more to increase the wealth of the world than any other economic doctrine. It is the basis for capitalism.

12. The First Folio by William Shakespeare. After the Bible, Shakespeare has provided inspiration and enjoyment to millions of English-speaking people around the world. I quote him constantly. Of course, he has been translated into more than fifty languages, also. Literary imagination unsurpassed by any writer, including Dickens, psychological penetration greater even than Freud, his influence on Western culture has been and continues to be far-reaching and comprehensive.