SOURCE: "Modern Library Agrees to Pick 'Best' Better," in The New York Times, August 15, 1998, pp. B7, B8.

[In the following essay, Lewis reports plans to improve the selection and ranking methods of a proposed best nonfiction books list by the Modern Library.]

Faced with widespread criticism of the list it released last month of the 100 best English-language novels published in this century—most piercingly, in comments by two of the judges who helped compiled it—the Modern Library says it will significantly overhaul the way it picks its choice of the century's hundred best English-language nonfiction books' later this year.

In separate articles published this week, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the historian, and the novelist William Styron, who were among the l0 judges who drew up the list, distanced themselves from the final outcome as well as from the methods by which the books were chosen.

Writing in...