On the following pages appears a list of books that it would be worth your while to read. We mean the phrase “worth your while” quite seriously. Although not all of the books listed are “great” in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them. All of these books are over most people’s heads—sufficiently so, at any rate, to force most readers to stretch their minds to understand and appreciate them. And that, of course, is the kind of book you should seek out if you want to improve your reading skills, and at the same time discover the best that has been thought and said in our literary tradition.
Some of the books are great in the special sense of the term that we employed in the last chapter. On returning to them, you will always find something new, often many things. They are endlessly re-readable. Another way to say this is that some of the books—we will not say exactly how many, nor will we try to identify them, since to some extent this is an individual judgment—are over the heads of all readers, no matter how skillful. As we observed in the last chapter, these are the works that everyone should make a special effort to seek out. They are the truly great books; they are the books that anyone should choose to take with him to his own desert island.
The list is long, and it may seem a little overwhelming. We urge you not to allow yourself to be abashed by it. In the first place, you are likely to recognize the names of most of the authors. There is nothing here that is so recondite as to be esoteric. More important, we want to remind you that it is wise to begin with those books that interest you most, for whatever reason. As we have pointed out several times, the primary aim is to read well, not widely. You should not be disappointed if you read no more than a handful of the books in a year. The list is not something to be gotten through in any amount of time. It is not a challenge that you can meet only by finishing every item on it. Instead, it is an invitation that you can accept graciously by beginning wherever you feel at home.
The authors are listed chronologically, according to the known or supposed date of their birth. When several works of an author are listed, these too are arranged chronologically, where that is possible. Scholars do not always agree about the first publication of a book, but this need not concern you. The point to remember is that the list as a whole moves forward through time. That does not necessarily mean that you should read it chronologically, of course. You might even start with the end of the list and read backward to Homer and the Old Testament.
We have not listed all the works of every author. We have usually cited only the more important titles, selecting them, in the case of expository books, to show the diversity of an author’s contribution to different fields of learning. In some instances, we have listed an author’s works and specified, in brackets, those titles that are especially important or useful.
In drawing up a list of this kind, the greatest difficulty always arises with respect to the relatively contemporary items. The closer an author is to our own time, the harder it is to exercise a detached judgment about him. It is all very well to say that time will tell, but we may not want to wait. Thus, with regard to the more recent writers and books, there is much room for differences of opinion, and we would not claim for the later items on our list the degree of authority that we can claim for the earlier ones.
There may be differences of opinion about some of the earlier items too, and we may be charged with being prejudiced against some authors that we have not listed at all. We are willing to admit that this may be true, in some cases. This is our list, and it may differ in some respects from lists drawn up by others. But it will not differ very significantly if everyone concurs seriously in the aim of making up a reading program that is worth spending a lifetime on. Ultimately, of course, you should make up your own list, and then go to work on it. It is wise, however, to read a fair number of the books that have been unanimously acclaimed before you branch off on your own. This list is a place to begin.
We want to mention one omission that may strike some readers as unfortunate. The list contains only Western authors and books; there are no Chinese, Japanese, or Indian works. There are several reasons for this. One is that we are not particularly knowledgeable outside of the Western literary tradition, and our recommendations would carry little weight. Another is that there is in the East no single tradition, as there is in the West, and we would have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works—more accessible to them—of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.
One other omission requires comment. The list, being one of books, includes the names of few persons known primarily as lyric poets. Some of the writers on the list wrote lyric poems, of course, but they are best known for other, longer works. This fact is not to be taken as reflecting a prejudice on our part against lyric poetry. But we would recommend starting with a good anthology of poetry rather than with the collected works of a single author. Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury and The Oxford Book of English Verse are excellent places to start. These older anthologies should be supplemented by more modern ones—for example, Selden Rodman’s One Hundred Modern Poems, a collection widely available in paperback that extends the notion of a lyric poem in interesting ways. Since reading lyric poetry requires special skill, we would also recommend any of several available handbooks on the subject—for example, Mark Van Doren’s Introduction to Poetry, an anthology that also contains short discussions of how to read many famous lyrics.
We have listed the books by author and title, but we have not attempted to indicate a publisher or a particular edition. Almost every work on the list is available in some form, and many are available in several editions, both paperback and hard cover. However, we have indicated which authors and titles are included in two sets that we ourselves have edited. Titles included in Great Books of the Western World are identified by a single asterisk; authors represented in Gateway to the Great Books are identified by a double asterisk.
1. Homer (9th century B.C.?)
* Iliad
* Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c. 525–456 B.C.)
* Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c. 495–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.)
* History (of the Persian Wars)
6. Euripides (c. 485–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.)
* History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates (c. 460–377? B.C.)
* Medical writings
9. Aristophanes (c. 448–380 B.C.)
* Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
* Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. ** Epicurus (c. 341–270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
* Elements (of Geometry)
14. Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C.)
* On Conic Sections
16. ** Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c. 95–55 B.C.)
* On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70–19 B.C.)
* Works
19. Horace (65–8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
History of Rome
21. Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. ** Plutarch (c. 45–120)
* Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Moralia
23. ** Tacitus (c. 55–117)
* Histories
* Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
* Introduction to Arithmetic
25. ** Epictetus (c. 60–120)
* Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c. 100–178; fl. 127–151)
* Almagest
27. ** Lucian (c. 120–c. 190)
Works
(esp. The Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121–180)
* Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130–200)
* On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205–270)
* The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354–430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, * Confessions, * The City of God, * Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century)
(The Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend.)
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
* Summa Theologica
37. ** Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, * The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400)
Works
esp. * Troilus and Criseyde, * Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
* The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536)
The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
* On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Sir Thomas More (c. 1478–1535)
Utopia
44. Martin Luther (1483–1546)
Three Treatises
Table-Talk
45. François Rabelais (c. 1495–1553)
* Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin (1509–1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
* Essays
48. William Gilbert (1540–1603)
* On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)
* Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599)
Prothalamion
The Faerie Queene
51. ** Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Essays
* Advancement of Learning
* Novum Organum
* New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
* Works
53. ** Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
The Starry Messenger
* Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
* Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
* Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey (1578–1657)
* On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
* On the Circulation of the Blood
* On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
* The Leviathan
57. René Descartes (1596–1650)
* Rules for the Direction of the Mind
* Discourse on Method
* Geometry
* Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton (1608–1674)
Works
(esp. * the minor poems, * Areopagitica, * Paradise Lost, * Samson Agonistes)
Comedies
(esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe)
60. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
* The Provincial Letters
* Pensées
* Scientific treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695)
* Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677)
* Ethics
63. John Locke (1632–1704)
* Letter Concerning Toleration
* “Of Civil Government” (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government)
* Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699)
Tragedies
(esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
65. Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
* Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
* Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)
Discourse on Metaphysics
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
Monadology
67. ** Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)
Robinson Crusoe
68. ** Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
A Tale of a Tub
Journal to Stella
* Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve (1670–1729)
The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley (1685–1753)
* Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Essay on Criticism
Rape of the Lock
Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)
Persian Letters
* Spirit of Laws
73. ** Voltaire (1694–1778)
Letters on the English
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
Joseph Andrews
* Tom Jones
75. ** Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dictionary
Rasselas
The Lives of the Poets
(esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
76. ** David Hume (1711–1776)
Treatise of Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political
* An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. ** Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
* On the Origin of Inequality
* On Political Economy
Emile
* The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
* Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith (1723–1790)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
* Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
80. ** Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
* Critique of Pure Reason
* Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
* Critique of Practical Reason
* The Science of Right
* Critique of Judgment
Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
* The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Autobiography
82. James Boswell (1740–1795)
Journal
(esp. London Journal)
* Life of Samuel Johnson Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)
* Elements of Chemistry
84. John Jay (1745–1829), James Madison (1751–1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
* Federalist Papers
(together with the * Articles of Confederation, the * Constitution of the United States, and the * Declaration of Independence)
85. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
* Faust
Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)
* Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit
* Philosophy of Right
* Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Poems
(esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Poems
(esp. “Kubla Khan,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
92. ** Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
On War
93. Stendhal (1783–1842)
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love
94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Don Juan
95. ** Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Studies in Pessimism
96. ** Michael Faraday (1791–1867)
Chemical History of a Candle
* Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. ** Charles Lyell (1797–1875)
Principles of Geology
The Positive Philosophy
99. ** Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)
Père Goriot
Eugénie Grandet
100. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Representative Men
Essays
Journal
101. ** Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
The Scarlet Letter
102. ** Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
Democracy in America
103. ** John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
A System of Logic
* On Liberty
* Representative Government
* Utilitarianism
The Subjection of Women
Autobiography
104. ** Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
* The Origin of Species
* The Descent of Man
Autobiography
105. ** Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Works
(esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)
106. ** Claude Bernard (1813–1878)
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. ** Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
108. Karl Marx (1818–1883)
* Capital
(together with the * Communist Manifesto)
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
110. ** Herman Melville (1819–1891)
* Moby-Dick
Billy Budd
111. ** Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
* The Brothers Karamazov
112. ** Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
113. ** Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
Plays
(esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck)
114. ** Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
* War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What Is Art?
Twenty-three Tales
115. ** Mark Twain (1835–1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger
116. ** William James (1842–1910)
* The Principles of Psychology
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragmatism
Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. ** Henry James (1843–1916)
The American
The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
Science and Hypothesis
Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
* The Interpretation of Dreams
* Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
* Civilization and Its Discontents
* New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. ** George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
Plays (and Prefaces)
(esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
122. ** Max Planck (1858–1947)
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
Where Is Science Going?
Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. ** John Dewey (1859–1952)
How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
125. ** Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
126. ** George Santayana (1863–1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Persons and Places
127. Nikolai Lenin (1870–1924)
The State and Revolution
128. Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
Remembrance of Things Past
129. ** Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
130. ** Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
131. ** Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
The Meaning of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)
132. ** James Joyce (1882–1941)
“The Dead” in Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
133. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
Art and Scholasticism
The Degrees of Knowledge
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
True Humanism
134. Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
The Trial
The Castle
135. Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975)
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
136. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)
The First Circle