Brian Eno Creates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civilization

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Artist and music pro­duc­er Bri­an Eno wrote one of my very favorite books: A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, which takes the form of his per­son­al diary of the year 1995 with essay­is­tic chap­ters (the “swollen appen­dices”) on top­ics like “edge cul­ture,” gen­er­a­tive music, new ways of , pre­ten­sion, CD-ROMs (a rel­e­vant top­ic back then), and pay­ment struc­tures for record­ing artists (a rel­e­vant top­ic again today). It also includes a fair bit of Eno’s cor­re­spon­dence with Stew­art Brand, once edi­tor of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log and now pres­i­dent of the Long Now Foun­da­tion, “a coun­ter­point to today’s accel­er­at­ing cul­ture” meant to “help make long-term think­ing more com­mon” and “cre­ative­ly fos­ter respon­si­bil­i­ty in the frame­work of the next 10,000 years.”

It so hap­pens that Eno now sits on the Long Now Foundation’s board and has had a hand in some of its projects. Nat­u­ral­ly, he con­tributed sug­gest­ed read­ing mate­r­i­al to the foun­da­tion’s Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion, a col­lec­tion of books human­i­ty could use to rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, should it need rebuild­ing. Eno’s full list, which spans his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, design, nature, and lit­er­a­ture, runs as fol­lows:

• See­ing Like a State by James C Scott
• The Mind in the Cave: Con­scious­ness and the Ori­gins of Art by David Lewis-Williams
• Crowds and Pow­er by Elias Canet­ti
• The Wheels of Com­merce by Fer­nand Braudel
• Keep­ing Togeth­er in Time by William McNeill
• Danc­ing in the Streets by Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich
• Roll Jor­dan Roll by Eugene Gen­ovese
• A Pat­tern Lan­guage by Christo­pher Alexan­der et al
• The Face of Bat­tle by John Kee­gan
• A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects by  Neil Mac­Gre­gor
• Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty by Richard Rorty
• The Note­books by Leonar­do da Vin­ci
• The Con­fi­dence Trap by David Runci­man
• The Dis­cov­er­ers by Daniel Boorstein
• Moth­er Nature: A His­to­ry of Moth­ers, Infants, and Nat­ur­al Selec­tion by Sarah Hrdy
• War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy
• The Cam­bridge World His­to­ry of Food (2‑Volume Set) by Ken­neth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
• The Illus­trat­ed Flo­ra of Britain and North­ern Europe by Mar­jorie Blamey & Christo­pher Grey Wil­son
• Print­ing and the Mind of Man by John Carter & Per­cy Muir
• Peter the Great: His Life and World by Richard Massie

If you’d like to know more books that have shaped Eno’s think­ing, do pick up a copy of A Year with Swollen Appen­dices. Like all the best diarists, Eno makes plen­ty of ref­er­ences to his day-to-day read­ing mate­r­i­al, and at the very end — beyond the last swollen appen­dix — he includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy (below), on which you’ll find more from Christo­pher Alexan­der, a reap­pear­ance of Rorty’s Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty, and even Stew­ard Brand’s own How Build­ings Learn (on a tele­vi­sion ver­sion of which the two would col­lab­o­rate). You can find other writ­ers and thinker­s’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion here.

• Best Ideas: A Com­pendi­um of Social Inno­va­tion edit­ed by Nicholas Albery
• A Fore­shad­ow­ing of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Art: The Col­or and Geom­e­try of Very Ear­ly Turk­ish Car­pets by Christo­pher Alexan­der
• Bridge Over the Dri­na by Ivo Andric
• Jihad vs. McWorld by Ben­jamin Bar­ber
• The Art­ful Uni­verse by John Bar­row
• Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer
• Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• The Cre­ators by Daniel Boorstin
• Lay My Bur­den Down: A Folk His­to­ry of Slav­ery edit­ed by B.A. Botkin
• How Build­ings Learn by Stew­art Brand
• Civ­i­liza­tion and Cap­i­tal­ism by Fer­nand Braudel
• The Trans­for­ma­tion of War by Mar­tin van Crev­eld
• The Trans­fig­u­ra­tion of the Com­mon­place by Arthur Dan­to
• Riv­er Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins
• Dar­win’s Dan­ger­ous Idea by Daniel Den­nett
• Defence Pol­i­cy Mak­ing edit­ed by G.M. Dil­lon
• Women En Large: Image of Fat Nudes by Lau­rie Toby Edi­son and Deb­bie Notkin
• Bird­song by Sebas­t­ian Faulks
• Trust by Fran­cis Fukuya­ma
• Edge City by Joel Gar­reau
• Ecce Homo by George Grosz
• Beyond Cul­ture by Edward T. Hall
• Man­ag­ing the Com­mons by Gar­rett Hardin and John Baden
• The Mid­dle Ages by Friedrich Herr
• Going Bugs by James Hill­man
• Cul­ture of Com­plaint by Robert Hugh­es
• The Wan­ing of the Mid­dle Ages by Johann Huizin­ga
• The State We’re In by Will Hut­ton
• Out of Con­trol: The Rise of Neo-Bio­log­i­cal Civ­i­liza­tion by Kevin Kel­ly
• Wild Blue Yon­der by Nick Krotz
• Fetish Girls by Eric Kroll
• The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampe­dusa
• Arti­fi­cial Life by Steven Levy
• Plan­e­tary Over­load by A.J. McMichael
• Being Dig­i­tal by Nicholas Negro­ponte
• Erot­i­ca Uni­ver­salis by Gilles Neret
• Liv­ing With­out a Goal by Jay Ogilvy
• Bil­ly the Kid by Michael Ondaat­je
• Evo­lu­tion of Con­scious­ness by Robert E. Orn­stein
• Art and Pornog­ra­phy and Man’s Rage for Chaos by Morse Peck­ham
• Works and Texts by Tom Phillips
• The Lan­guage Instinct by Stephen Pinker
• In Search of a Bet­ter World by Karl Pop­per
• Pris­on­er’s Dilem­ma by William Pound­stone
• Post­cards by Annie Proulx
• Con­se­quences of Prag­ma­tism and Con­tin­gency, Irony, and Sol­i­dar­i­ty by Richard Rorty
• The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
• Eng­land’s Dream­ing by Jon Sav­age
• Lords of the Rim by Ster­ling Sea­grave
• Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain
• I am That: Con­ver­sa­tions with Sri Nis­ara­ga­dat­ta Maharaj
• Face of the Gods and Flash of the Spir­it by Robert Far­ris Thomp­son
• Ocean of Sound by David Toop
• The Sev­en Cul­tures of Cap­i­tal­ism by Charles Ham­p­den Turn­er
• Black Lamb and Grey Fal­con by Rebec­ca West
• Art and Anar­chy by Edgar Wind

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.