BVBook Verdict

If you liked

Books like The Story of Art

Loved The Story of Art by Ernst Gombrich? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from art & photography, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.

10 books · ranked

  1. 1

    Ways of Seeing

    John Berger · 1972 · Art & Photography

    How we look at images, and who benefits; a short, radical book that changed art criticism.

  2. 2

    On Photography

    Susan Sontag · 1977 · Art & Photography

    What taking and viewing photographs does to us; a brilliant, much-quoted set of essays.

  3. 3

    Understanding Comics

    Scott McCloud · 1993 · Art & Photography

    How comics work as a medium, told in comics form; ingenious and widely admired.

  4. 4

    The Fire Next Time

    James Baldwin · 1963 · Essays

    Two searing essays on race, faith and America; as urgent now as when they were written.

  5. 5

    Slouching Towards Bethlehem

    Joan Didion · 1968 · Essays

    Sharp, cool essays on 1960s America; the book that set the standard for the personal essay.

  6. 6

    The Human Condition

    Hannah Arendt · 1958 · Essays

    A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, The Human condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern hum

  7. 7

    Between man and man

    Martin Buber · 1947 · Essays

    Scholar, theologian and philosopher, Martin Buber is one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. He believed that the deepest reality of human life lies in the relationship between one b

  8. 8

    The Road to Serfdom

    Friedrich A. von Hayek · 1944 · Essays

    A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century.

  9. 9

    A Grief Observed

    C. S. Lewis · 1961 · Essays

    Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moment," A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the mid

  10. 10

    Historias de cronopios y de famas

    Julio Cortázar · 1962 · Essays

    "The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions a

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