The question from that is whether something that has become the mainstream standard can still be considered subversive. I agree with the historical perspective on it, but now it's the number one selling book in the world.

How about we look at this another way: can we think of books that were unintentionally subversive, in that they somehow corroded the tradional way of seeing things?

I'm thinking of things like--oh, just off the top of my head--the early Sears Roebuck catalog, which in effect helped to destroy the old general store in American life.

Anyone here have a few ideas along that line?

And it had them "ladies pages".

Stone, that is an interesting point. Another example are the newsreels of American civil rights protests which were shown to the Soviet population in order to demonstrate how horrible life in America really was. What the viewers saw, however, was that the protesters and victims of racial discrimination had better clothing and better shoes than were available in the CCCP . . . .

critter, I would say that the Bible is still subversive. It still subversively undermines the materialistic here and now . . . and in communist countries like China (where there are now more Christians than there are Communist Party Members) it is seriously subversive . . . not to mention countries in which sharia law is the law of the land.

Woland

Well, I agree with Woland about the Bible, and have to add The Communist Manifesto as an obvious choice for world changer.

Unintentional is a lot harder, especially if we're looking for a book that affected more than literature itself. I'd go for Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton or Origin of Species but I don't know how unintentional the effects were. I think both authors probably knew that they were about to cause a stir.