The Guardian has made a comprehensive and very useful list of 100 books that have shaped our modern world. Now this might sound unbearably dry to some of you (as it did to me) and there are few beach reads here but the way this list is divided into sub-lists ensures that there’s something for everyone. Have a browse and be inspired. Thank you The Guardian!

The Founding Works includes texts like Plato’s The Republic, Machiavelli’s The Prince and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

Manifestos and Tracts  The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, Little Red Book by Chairman Mao, Animal Farm by George Orwell and many more.

Politics in Plays and Fiction  My personal favourite list includes novels such as The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Feminist Texts The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf amongst others.

International Struggle Books such as Orientalism by Edward Said, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

The Politics of Britain The State We’re In by Will Hutton, In Defence of Politics by Bernard Crick, The State in Capitalist Society by Ralph Miliband and many more.

Black Consciousness Roots by Alex Haley, Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and more.

Public Lives: Biographies and Diaries Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore, Churchill by Roy Jenkins, Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro plus many more.

The Politics of Now For example, Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, All Out War by Tim Shipman.