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Simon Winchester's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Simon Winchester recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Simon Winchester's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

1

Journey to the Center of the Earth (Extraordinary Voyages, #3)

Jules Verne

4.0
The intrepid Professor Liedenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earth's very core. In his quest to penetrate the planet's primordial secrets, the geologist--together with his quaking nephew Axel and their devoted guide, Hans--discovers an astonishing subterranean menagerie of prehistoric proportions. Verne's ima
Roxana Bitoleanu portraitSimon Winchester portraitTullis Onstott portrait Recommended by Roxana Bitoleanu, Simon Winchester, and Tullis Onstott.
Simon Winchester portrait
Simon Winchester

A fantastic piece of science fiction – it’s basically about explorers who want to know what’s inside the earth. [source]

Roxana Bitoleanu portrait
Roxana Bitoleanu

If I have to choose only one non-business book I would pick Jules Verne's "A journey to the center of the earth", as a symbolic journey to the unknown, deep down, just like our personal search for meaning, for our inner driver. [source]

Tullis Onstott portrait
Tullis Onstott

The book has just enough science that it seems real. [source]

2

The Last Days of Pompeii

Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

3.8
The decadence of Roman society and the dramatic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Mary Beard portraitSimon Winchester portrait Recommended by Mary Beard and Simon Winchester.
Simon Winchester portrait
Simon Winchester

It didn’t teach us much about the science of volcanoes but it taught us the aphorism that man lives on this planet subject to geological consent which can be withdrawn at any time. [source]

Mary Beard portrait
Mary Beard

This book was phenomenally successful in the 19th century. When these books touch a generation there’s a reason for it. [source]

The Crater book cover3

The Crater

James Fenimore Cooper

3.7
The Crater is a political fable, set on a fictional Pacific island colony and expressing Cooper's opinions of the directions American democracy took in his later life in particularly direct fashion.
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
4

The Violins of Saint-Jacques

Patrick Leigh Fermor

4.0
On an Aegean island one summer, an English traveller meets an enigmatic elderly Frenchwoman. He is captivated by a painting she owns of a busy Caribbean port overlooked by a volcano and, in time, she shares the story of her youth there in the early twentieth century. Set in the tropical luxury of the island of Saint-Jacques, hers is a tale of romantic intrigue and decadence amongst the descendents
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
5

The Twenty-One Balloons

William Pene du Bois

4.3
Professor William Waterman Sherman intends to fly across the Pacific Ocean. But through a twist of fate, he lands on the secret island of Krakatoa where he discovers a world of unimaginable wealth, eccentric inhabitants, and incredible balloon inventions. Winner of the 1948 Newbery Medal, this classic fantasy-adventure is a joy for all ages.
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
6

O Pioneers! (Great Plains Trilogy, #1)

Willa Cather

4.0
O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier—and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanove
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
Stoner book cover7

Stoner

John Williams, John McGahern

4.4
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family e
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
Crossing to Safety book cover8

Crossing to Safety

Wallace Stegner

4.3
Two couples meet during the Depression years in Madison, Wisconsin, and become devoted friends despite vast differences in upbringing and social status.
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
9

Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson, Irving Howe

4.0
A modern American classic, Winesburg, Ohio mixed Sherwood Anderson's memories of his boyhood in Clyde, Ohio, and his observations in turn-of-the-century Chicago, where he wrote advertising copy. It was a book that, for its time, broke all conventions. Its introduction and twenty-one loosely connected stories defied the genteel tradition that omitted anything sexual, harsh, or abberant from print.
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.
10

Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser, Donald Pizer

4.3
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.'

The tale of Carrie Meeber's rise to stardom in the theatre and George Hurstwood's slow decline captures the twin poles of exuberance and exhaustion in modern city life as never before. The premier e
Simon Winchester portrait Recommended by Simon Winchester.