Marginal Revolution: The best books under 100 pages

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The best books under 100 pages

What are they? A loyal MR reader wants to know. Comments, of course, are open.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 3, 2007 at 12:53 PM in Books | Permalink

Comments

any Lovecraft novella

Posted by: Patrick Rice at Apr 3, 2007 12:57:54 PM

Candide

Posted by: mph at Apr 3, 2007 1:00:58 PM

Candide's under 100? Borges or Cortazar short stories

Posted by: Brad at Apr 3, 2007 1:03:06 PM

Animal Farm

Posted by: JDA at Apr 3, 2007 1:03:34 PM

Heart of Darkness

Posted by: tucker at Apr 3, 2007 1:04:35 PM

Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician

Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 1:09:07 PM

Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Siddharta; Heart of Darkness

non-fiction: Herman's Vulgar Latin (trans. R. Wright) (for real)

Posted by: Mihailoff at Apr 3, 2007 1:09:30 PM

Anthem, Ayn Rand

Posted by: Bob McWhirter at Apr 3, 2007 1:11:54 PM

death of ivan illich

Posted by: Andrew at Apr 3, 2007 1:16:07 PM

Transparent Things, Nabokov

Posted by: Stephen at Apr 3, 2007 1:19:02 PM

War and Peace. In the new Microscopic Print edition.

Posted by: Peter at Apr 3, 2007 1:23:50 PM

Things Fall Apart, Achebe

Posted by: Cyrus at Apr 3, 2007 1:25:09 PM

Grounding on the Metaphysics of Morals -Kant

Second Treatise on Government -Locke (though you should read the first half of Hobbes's Leviathan first)

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (slightly over the limit)

Book of Job

Posted by: Benquo at Apr 3, 2007 1:26:11 PM

My favorites include:

Carl Sandburg's HONEY & SALT, Donald Hall's KICKING THE LEAVES. Also: THE DHAMMAPADA and, just a bit beyond 100 pages, Martin Buber's I AND THOU

Posted by: DPrychitko at Apr 3, 2007 1:27:07 PM

Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, hands down.

Posted by: HGChr at Apr 3, 2007 1:31:23 PM

My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber

Posted by: Scoop at Apr 3, 2007 1:31:48 PM

The Old Man and the Sea

Posted by: false_cause at Apr 3, 2007 1:35:45 PM

Slightly over 100 pages but...Black Dogs by Ian McEwan

Posted by: Niall at Apr 3, 2007 1:36:05 PM

CDB! by William Steig

Posted by: j.a.s.o.n at Apr 3, 2007 1:42:19 PM

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
or
The Blue Lotus by Hergé

Posted by: authe at Apr 3, 2007 1:44:36 PM

Flatland, by Abbott.

Posted by: KipEsquire at Apr 3, 2007 1:44:44 PM

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Jesus' Son, Dennis Johnson
Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal

Posted by: r at Apr 3, 2007 1:46:11 PM

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Posted by: j.a.s.o.n at Apr 3, 2007 1:46:44 PM

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (Solzhenitsyn) is, I think, under 100 pages in some editions.

Posted by: Paul or the Giant Rabbit at Apr 3, 2007 1:48:39 PM

Flatland by Abbot
Silk, by Alessandro Baricco,
The Little Prince
Siddharta

Posted by: Cyrano at Apr 3, 2007 1:50:24 PM

I think Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman is under 100.

Posted by: cljo at Apr 3, 2007 1:51:09 PM

The Little Prince.

Short stories don't count; it has to be a book.

Posted by: Scott Scheule at Apr 3, 2007 1:56:21 PM

How To Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis (It comes in at 142 pages, but the pages are small and the font is a large, old-school, well-spaced font and there are several illustrations.)

Posted by: j.a.s.o.n at Apr 3, 2007 1:56:26 PM

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean (slightly over 100 pages)

Posted by: James McNiece at Apr 3, 2007 1:56:59 PM

Marie, pushkin, 68 pages

The prophet, Khalil Gibran

Posted by: Jz at Apr 3, 2007 1:58:01 PM

The Prince, also, The Little Prince

Posted by: Cedric Morrison at Apr 3, 2007 1:59:08 PM

G.H. Hardy: A Mathematician's Apology (less than 100 pages if you don't count the introduction by C.P Snow in the Cambridge University Press edition).

Posted by: Chris Edmond at Apr 3, 2007 2:05:18 PM

Personal favorites:
-Einstein's Dreams (144 pages, but it's physically small) by Alan Lightman
-Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
-A Universal History of Iniquity (122 pages, just a bit over) by Jorge Luis Borges
-Any of the books from Penguin's Epics series (e.g., Epic of Gilgamesh)

Posted by: Jeffrey at Apr 3, 2007 2:07:46 PM

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba comes in at 96 pages. Amazing read.

Posted by: ori at Apr 3, 2007 2:09:31 PM

Arrow's Limits of Organization
Debreu's Theory of Value

Posted by: obsessed economist at Apr 3, 2007 2:16:46 PM

If A river Runs Through It is under 100 pages, that must mean its quicker to read the book than watch the movie.

Heart of Darkness really shouldn't count because although its like 90 pages long, it certainly reads like at least 300 pages. Conrad is nearly inscrutable. All those giant sentences where the meaning of the subject decays long before the predicate arrives...

IIRC, Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger is under 100, and it's quite wicked.

Posted by: bk at Apr 3, 2007 2:17:35 PM

Off the top of my head: The Communist Manifesto; Mauss's The Gift; The Prince; Albert Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests (just over, but only barely); Strayer's The Medieval Origins of the Modern State; and Ernest Gellner's Postmodernism, Reason and Religion.

Posted by: Kieran at Apr 3, 2007 2:21:48 PM

the stranger - albert camus

Posted by: meta4man at Apr 3, 2007 2:35:19 PM

Bridge of San Luis Rey

Posted by: Bevan Houston at Apr 3, 2007 2:38:50 PM

Notes from the Underground

Posted by: MS at Apr 3, 2007 2:45:45 PM

Also a bit longer than 100 pages,

But "The Law" and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."

Posted by: Rex Pjesky at Apr 3, 2007 2:51:56 PM

Voltaire's "Candide."

Posted by: Econometron at Apr 3, 2007 2:56:59 PM

Harry Frankfurt, "The Importance of What We Care About." Contains his famous and indispensable essay, "On Bullshit."

Posted by: Rob at Apr 3, 2007 3:03:14 PM

Mill, [i]On Liberty[/i].

I second Kant's [i]Groundwork[/i] and the Hume suggestions.

Posted by: J. at Apr 3, 2007 3:14:35 PM

a lot of repeats, people should read each others comments (or were those votes?)

Its 160 (small) pages, but I nominate Contradictions and Dilemmas by Kornai

Also, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Mises which comes as a book even though I guess its really a paper.

Slightly longer of course are Road to Serfdom and this collection of brilliant (under 100 page) essays.

Posted by: liberty at Apr 3, 2007 3:29:09 PM

The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway

Posted by: Caravaggio at Apr 3, 2007 3:55:46 PM

A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean (slightly over 100 pages)

Beat me to it. My second candidate was going to be another novella in a collection -- "Morpho Eugenia" in A.S. Byatt's Angels & Insects. But that turns out to be closer to 200 pages...rats.

Posted by: Slocum at Apr 3, 2007 3:58:00 PM

"Goodbye Columbus" surely deserves a place on any such list. I also really liked Ian Deary's "Intelligence: a Very Short Introduction." Ivan Ilych, Red Badge and Death in Venice of course.

Posted by: Dan Akst at Apr 3, 2007 4:01:27 PM

Ah, here we go, if you exclude the "biological notes" at the end, Valentino Braitenberg's Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology comes in under 100 pages.

Posted by: Slocum at Apr 3, 2007 4:02:56 PM

Whoever said Notes from Underground is right. Whoever said Anthem is a crazy man - an objectivist friend made me read it, and I wanted to vomit.

Posted by: Minipundit at Apr 3, 2007 4:04:59 PM

Economical Writing, by Deirdre N. McCloskey

Posted by: Daniel Klein at Apr 3, 2007 4:31:51 PM

The collections probably total more than 100 pages each (only barely) but I'd say any story by Amy Hempel.

Posted by: B at Apr 3, 2007 4:41:32 PM

Almost anything from the Wooden Books series. The book Q.E.D. is a particularly nice example.

Posted by: Macneil at Apr 3, 2007 5:10:01 PM

The Law -- Bastiat

Posted by: cmyers at Apr 3, 2007 5:14:21 PM

'Night' by Elie Weisel is 106 pages, I believe, and is the best short book not already on the list.

Posted by: Douglas Paulsen at Apr 3, 2007 5:47:21 PM

I second: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Siddhartha, and The Stranger.

Posted by: Brooke at Apr 3, 2007 5:47:23 PM

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Perhaps it does not count but is the only work that can rival Notes of the underground( the first phycological novel): Warden No 6 Chekov.
The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Marlowe´s Faust
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
The art of war Sun Tzu and
Manual Oracle and Art of Prudence by Gracian.The two books that complete the cicle with The Prince.
Maxims by La Rochefoucauld

My vote for the best Hemingway: the old man and the sea.

Billy Budd by Herman Melville
The Dickensonian-kafkian Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
And alomost every work by Shakespeare but for Marc Anthony and Cleopatra is under 100 pages

Posted by: jcm at Apr 3, 2007 6:21:56 PM

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

Posted by: Bob at Apr 3, 2007 6:28:20 PM

"The Dead" by James Joyce, even though it is not technically its own book.

Posted by: wph at Apr 3, 2007 6:32:39 PM

The Tao te Ching.

Posted by: Grant Gould at Apr 3, 2007 7:05:45 PM

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba comes in at 96 pages. Amazing read.

Seconded. I only picked Things Fall Apart because more non-Africanists have heard of it. The list of really good African short novels lengthens easily.

Posted by: Cyrus at Apr 3, 2007 7:11:28 PM

Cyrus, why pick books people have heard of? The whole point I should think is to recommend something that people won't already have thought of by themselves!

Posted by: liberty at Apr 3, 2007 7:46:03 PM

miss lonelyhearts by nathaniel west!

Posted by: kaelen at Apr 3, 2007 7:55:00 PM

Liberty:

We are just deciding what's the best.

For me, The Old Man and the Sea gets my vote.

Posted by: Hollywood_Freaks at Apr 3, 2007 7:55:09 PM

The Seventh Man, by Graham Greene

Posted by: david at Apr 3, 2007 8:25:25 PM

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Remembering by Wendell Berry

Posted by: Jacob at Apr 3, 2007 8:28:11 PM

A modest Proposal -- Swift

Posted by: James Weikamp at Apr 3, 2007 9:09:43 PM

Vote´s Motive by Gordon ullock

Posted by: john at Apr 3, 2007 9:33:29 PM

1. The Prince

2. The Communist Manifesto

3. On Bullshit

Posted by: Alejandro Hope at Apr 3, 2007 9:53:23 PM

84, Charing cross road of Helene Hanff

R L Stevenson -- A child's garden of verses

And, Amitav Ghosh's Dancing in Cambodia, At large in Burma is just about there (114 pages).

Finally, if you can double the number of pages, Kanthapura of Raja Rao and Swami and Friends of of R K Narayan

Posted by: Guru at Apr 3, 2007 10:02:15 PM

Tears of my Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Posted by: somthng_tookish at Apr 3, 2007 10:04:21 PM

The 3rd grader in me says The Twits

Posted by: econ at Apr 3, 2007 10:42:14 PM

Metamorphosis- Kafka
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- Stevenson
Transparent Things- Nabokov
Jealousy- Robbe-Grillot
The Invisible Man- HG Wells
The Time Traveller- HG Wells
The Mezannine- Baker
any Shakespeare play

Posted by: John Goes at Apr 3, 2007 11:59:48 PM

"Short stories don't count; it has to be a book."

What if a short story was printed as a book? For instance, I've never seen a Borges story in a book separate from his other work. But I've spent more time thinking about the 'Lottery at Babylon' and the 'Garden of Forking Paths' than I have most novels.

Franny (of Franny & Zooey) is pretty phenomenonal.

Posted by: Steven at Apr 4, 2007 1:08:15 AM

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Posted by: Ramki at Apr 4, 2007 1:13:08 AM

Of Molecules and Men - Francis Crick

My copy is 99 pages, some editions may be more or less. Its a brilliant summary and introduction to molecular genetics (Crick is a co-discoverer of DNA). Possibly the first in a long tradition of anti-vitalist popular science.

Posted by: George Dickeson at Apr 4, 2007 2:14:30 AM

In Praise of Shadows - Tanizaki

Posted by: Douglas at Apr 4, 2007 4:02:51 AM

Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf. I admit it's an essay but it gets published on its own in book form.

Posted by: oharep at Apr 4, 2007 5:42:52 AM

Moskva-Petushki by Venedikt Yerofeyev. The greatest novel about alcohol ever written. At least in the original Russian it clocks in under 100 pages, but the English translations seem to be around 130.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov can be found sometimes as a stand-alone book.

Posted by: vanya at Apr 4, 2007 8:17:09 AM

Fermi's Thermodynamics if you've had university physics.
La Rochefoucauld's Maxims are wonderful.
Auden's "Caliban to the Audience" is undeservedly obscure.
"Mathematics and Logic" by Kac and Ulam

Posted by: lw at Apr 4, 2007 12:21:09 PM

What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel. An extremely gentle introduction to philosophy.

Posted by: Justin at Apr 4, 2007 4:44:27 PM

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

Posted by: Dan Sage at Apr 4, 2007 5:37:52 PM

"A Sorrow Beyond Dreams" by Peter Handke

"SkrewJack" by Hunter Thompson

"Tool" by Peter Sotos

Posted by: Chip Smith at Apr 4, 2007 6:29:45 PM

"Amants, Heureux Amants" by Valery Larbaud

My paperback of "The Crything of Lot 49" has 189 pages, though the text on them in small

"Animal Farm" for sure

"Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino

"The Bear" by William Faulkner (can it be a book within a book?)

Posted by: tmcgee at Apr 4, 2007 6:56:25 PM

The Hero and the Blues, Albert Murray

Liberalism, John Gray

Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky

The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley

Heaven and Hell, Huxley

Intellectuals and Socialism, Hayek

Posted by: phil at Apr 4, 2007 7:04:55 PM

Not sure of the page counts but two that come to mind are "Of Mice and Men" and "The Time Machine"

Posted by: Shane Milburn at Apr 4, 2007 9:34:52 PM

Evolution of Cooperation, Axelrod

Posted by: Josh at Apr 5, 2007 1:02:23 AM

Crying of Lot 49 isn't even any good.

Heart of Darkness.

Posted by: Brian Hadd at Apr 5, 2007 4:31:10 PM

Omar Khayyam's _Rubaiyat_, if that counts as a book (and if the _Tao Te Ching_ does, it certainly must). Musashi's _Book of Five Rings_, for pretty much the same reasons as Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_. Anything by Hume or Mill that clocks in at under 100.

Ian Deary wrote a good short introduction to the study of human intelligence called, well, _Intelligence_. _Godel's Proof_ by Nagel & Newman is a classic, and whoever suggested Fermi's _Thermodynamics_ has my respect. Finally, and possibly best: _What is Calculus About?_ by W. W. Sawyer, which is the best little intro to calc anyone could ask for.

Posted by: Matt McIntosh at Apr 5, 2007 8:14:16 PM

Oh, can't believe I forgot _The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality_ by Mises and Peter Medawar's _Advice to a Young Scientist_.

Posted by: Matt McIntosh at Apr 5, 2007 8:23:03 PM

It is VERY hard to find, but Travesty by John Hawkes is awesome (and about 132 pages).

entire book is a first person perspective of a guy in a car with his best friend and his daughter and how he is justifying to himself that he plans on crashing the car as an act of art.

Posted by: CleverlyStated at Apr 5, 2007 10:28:25 PM

The Unstrung Harp

Ecce Homo

Flatland

Encomium Moriae

Bouvard et Pecuchet?

The Memoirs of Scriblerus

and:

The Phenomenology of the Spirit.

Posted by: Conrad H. Roth at Apr 6, 2007 12:35:41 AM

Since the "Evolution of Cooperation" was already taken, might I suggest "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankel?

Posted by: Cato at Apr 6, 2007 2:34:57 PM

Funny. My copy of The Evolution of Cooperation has 241 enumerated pages. I don't think it makes a 100-page book list, even at the 90 pct confidence level.

Most of the mentioned books won't make it under the page limit. But in spirit, at least, I'd go with Animal Farm

Posted by: brianS at Apr 6, 2007 7:34:39 PM

If you enjoy adventure and a cultural study on Africa via a wilderness education organization, In Mind / In Country is a good choice

Posted by: gmiller at Apr 6, 2007 11:10:22 PM

1)Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach

Not sure if it exceeds the 100 page cap, but I remember it being a very quick read and leaving me with a profound understanding of the importance of others' belief systems.

2)Declaration of Indpendence and Constitution of the United States, 58 pages in paperback

I think everyone should have a copy of this and revisit it often. :)

Posted by: Policy Watcher at Apr 7, 2007 3:39:41 AM

Any Borges' writing.

Posted by: Alain at Apr 9, 2007 6:13:14 PM

"Fup" by Jim Dodge

Posted by: Forrest O. at Apr 17, 2007 9:26:31 AM

Animal Farm or The Little Prince.

Posted by: Caleb at Aug 9, 2007 4:15:33 PM

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