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1. Common Sense by Thomas Paine

2. Works of Shakespeare

3. Works of Miguel de Cervantes

4. Dictionary/Thesaurus

5. Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body

6. An Almanac

7. World Atlas

8. A sample of devotionals from different religious not only the Bible

9. History of the Universe

10.A linguistics book on protolanguages

funny how alot of people are posting "the bible" as on of the top 10 books you would take with you. you would think that if "God" chose to destroy the world as we know it leaving only a few survivors we might become a little bit hostile towards the guy if he was to exist. From what I know of bible studies, after God flooded the earth killing loads people he made a promice (the rainbow) never to resort to such a punishment of mankind again. If these survivors were to read this they would see that God went against his promice. They would also see that one of the comandments is not to lie so the book would become a lie and also useless. Religion has cause many wars in the past so maybe put in that situation we could get rid of the argument and choose to forget to bring the bible with us....

In reply to #12:  I think it is more likely that WE will destory the earth, not God.  But people selecting the Bible does tell us a lot about where people are.

1.  The Bible (Saul Bellows calls it "The Greatest Work of Literature ever")

2.  An encyclopedia of art

3.  The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

4.  The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos

5. Anthology of best loved English and American Poems

6.  Les Miserables by Victoro Hugo

7. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

8.  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

10.  Encyclopedia of operas.

Personally, here is what I deem the most culturally important texts:

1. The collected works of Mark Twain

2. The complete works of William Shakespeare

3. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

4. The Declaration of Independence

5. A complete medical reference book

6. All Quiet on the Western Front

7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

8. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

9. The collected works of Walt Whitman

10. Jubilee by Margaret Walker

I believe that this question is inspired by H.G Wells, The Time Machine. The Inventor travels back to the future to help the Eloi rebuild civilization and brings with him three books, but which ones? The reader is left to ponder that very question. Anyone responding to these post's should take the question seriously and make sure you have your (10 or 3) chosen books in your library, because you never know...

My three books would be:

1) Current Atlas

2) Condensed Encyclopedia (good ones usually include the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution)

3) Frank Herbert's Dune

Thanks for the question