Candide

Voltaire's satire follows Candide, a sheltered young man raised in a baron's household, where his tutor Pangloss has schooled him in the optimistic creed that all is for the best. When his love for the baron's daughter is discovered, Candide is thrown out, and a fast run of catastrophes puts that optimism to the test. Through the picaresque plot Voltaire mocks religion, governments, armies and philosophers, and takes aim at Leibniz in particular. Real events, among them the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Seven Years' War, fed into the story. It was widely banned soon after publication on grounds of blasphemy and sedition.

Ryan Holiday read it on his wedding day and called it both fantastic and educational. SCPlanner co-founder Gilles Bernhard, a fan of utopian and dystopian fiction, named it as a book he values highly.