Here is the list of "Great Books" that I provide for my students. These are not all the great books ever written, nor are they all the books I have ever read, however I have read all of these; except for The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, and Walden. I have tried several times on both – but Don Quixote is too sad, and Walden is pompous and boring. Many of the books below have greatly affected the history of the world; others are here because they have affected me. I hope you enjoy them.
History through the Great Books
Reading List
(2150 BC) The Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer (800 BC) The Iliad, The Odyssey
Aeschylus (525 BC) Agamemnon, Eumenides
Sophocles (495 BC) Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Electra
Herodotus (484 BC) The History of the Persian War
Euripides (480 BC) Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women
Thucydides (460 BC) The Peloponnesian War
Plato (428 BC) Lysis, Symposium, Meno, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Alcibiades, The Republic; (There are many more.)
Aristotle (384 BC) Logic, Politics, Poetics, Rhetoric; (and much more)
Aristophanes (380 BC) The Clouds, The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs, Lysistrata
Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106 BC) On the Laws, The Republic
Julius Caesar (102 BC) Gallic Wars
Virgil (70 BC) The Aeneid
Livy (59BC) The Histories of Rome
Tacitus (55 BC) The Annals and the Histories
Plutarch (40 BC) Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans
Augustine (430 AD) The Confessions, The City of God
(750 BC) Beowulf
Dante Alighieri (1265 AD) The Divine Comedy
Desiderius Erasmus (1467 AD) The Praise of Folly
Thomas Malory (1469 AD) Le Morte D’Arthur
Nicolo Machiavelli (1469 AD) The Prince
History through the Great Books
Reading List
(2150 BC) The Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer (800 BC) The Iliad, The Odyssey
Aeschylus (525 BC) Agamemnon, Eumenides
Sophocles (495 BC) Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Electra
Herodotus (484 BC) The History of the Persian War
Euripides (480 BC) Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women
Thucydides (460 BC) The Peloponnesian War
Plato (428 BC) Lysis, Symposium, Meno, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Alcibiades, The Republic; (There are many more.)
Aristotle (384 BC) Logic, Politics, Poetics, Rhetoric; (and much more)
Aristophanes (380 BC) The Clouds, The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs, Lysistrata
Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106 BC) On the Laws, The Republic
Julius Caesar (102 BC) Gallic Wars
Virgil (70 BC) The Aeneid
Livy (59BC) The Histories of Rome
Tacitus (55 BC) The Annals and the Histories
Plutarch (40 BC) Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans
Augustine (430 AD) The Confessions, The City of God
(750 BC) Beowulf
Dante Alighieri (1265 AD) The Divine Comedy
Desiderius Erasmus (1467 AD) The Praise of Folly
Thomas Malory (1469 AD) Le Morte D’Arthur
Nicolo Machiavelli (1469 AD) The Prince
Nicolas Copernicus (1473 AD) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Miguel De Cervantes (1547 AD) The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
Galileo Galilei (1564 AD) Two New Sciences
William Shakespeare (1564 AD)
Comedies – The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing;
Tragedies – Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra ;
Histories – Henry the Fifth, Cymbeline
Thomas Hobbes (1588 AD) Leviathan
Frances Bacon (1551 AD) Essays
Johannes Kepler (1571 AD) The Harmonies of the World
John Milton (1608 AD) Paradise Lost
John Lock (1632) Two Treatises on Government
Jonathan Swift (1667 AD) Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal
Voltaire (1694 AD) Candide
Benjamin Franklin (1706 AD) The Autobiography
Henry Fielding (1707 AD) Tom Jones
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 AD) Confessions, The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right
Thomas Paine (1737 AD) Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason
Sir Walter Scott (1771 AD) Ivanhoe
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (1788 AD) The Federalist Papers
Nineteenth Century
J. M. Barrie - Peter Pan
Edward Bellamy – Looking Backward
Frank Bullen – The Cruse of the Cachalot
Frank Bullen – The Cruse of the Cachalot
Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Joseph Conrad – Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness
James Fennimore Cooper – The Last of the Mohicans
Charles Darwin – The Origin of the Species, The Decent of Man
Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield
Alexander Dumas – The Three Musketeers
George Eliot – Silas Marner
Nathanial Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, Twice Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables
Victor Hugo – Notre Dame de Paris, Les Miserables
Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Books I & II, Kim
Karl Marx – The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Herman Melville – Moby Dick, Billy Budd
Alexander Pushkin – Eugene Onegin
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
Robert Lewis Stevenson – The Black Arrow, Treasure Island
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Henry David Thoreau – Walden, Duty of Civil Disobedience
Mark Twain – Life on the Mississippi, Adventurers of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Short Stories – Eve’s Diary, Extract from Adam’s Diary, Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, The Mysterious Stranger, Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, The Awful German Language
Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace, Anna Kerenia
Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons
Oscar Wilde – The Complete Fairy Tales, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Twentieth Century
L. Frank Baum – The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, Rinkitink in Oz, The Lost Princes of Oz, The Tin Woodman of Oz, The Magic of Oz, Glinda of Oz
Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth
Lydia Chakovskaya – Sofia Petrovna
Bryce Courtenay - The Power of One
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Michael Ende – The Neverending Story
Albert Einstein – Relativity the Special and the General Theory
C. S. Forester – Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Hornblower During the Crisis, Hornblower and the Atrops, Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line, Flying Colors, Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
E. M. Forster – A Passage to India
Jean Giono – The Man Who Planted Trees
Fyodor Gladkav – Cement
William Golding – Lord of the Flies
Robert Graves – I Claudius, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, The White Goddess, King Jesus, The Greek Myths – Complete Edition
Arthur L. Guptill – Drawing and Sketching in Pencil
Robert Beverly Hale – Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters
Alex Haley – Roots
Edith Hamilton – The Greek Way
Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Frank Herbert – Dune
James Hilton – Goodbye Mr. Chips
John Knowles – A Separate Peace
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
C. S. Lewis – The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mere Christianity, The Screw Tape Letters
William Manchester – American Caesar
Norman McClean – A River Runs Through It
James Mortimer – Rumpole of the Bailey
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Michael Ende – The Neverending Story
Albert Einstein – Relativity the Special and the General Theory
C. S. Forester – Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Hornblower During the Crisis, Hornblower and the Atrops, Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line, Flying Colors, Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
E. M. Forster – A Passage to India
Jean Giono – The Man Who Planted Trees
Fyodor Gladkav – Cement
William Golding – Lord of the Flies
Robert Graves – I Claudius, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, The White Goddess, King Jesus, The Greek Myths – Complete Edition
Arthur L. Guptill – Drawing and Sketching in Pencil
Robert Beverly Hale – Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters
Alex Haley – Roots
Edith Hamilton – The Greek Way
Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Frank Herbert – Dune
James Hilton – Goodbye Mr. Chips
John Knowles – A Separate Peace
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
C. S. Lewis – The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mere Christianity, The Screw Tape Letters
William Manchester – American Caesar
Norman McClean – A River Runs Through It
James Mortimer – Rumpole of the Bailey
Richard Nixon – No More Vietnams
George Orwell – Animal Farm, 1984
Stephen Pressfield – Gates of Fire, The Virtues of War
George Orwell – Animal Farm, 1984
Stephen Pressfield – Gates of Fire, The Virtues of War
Mary Renault - The Last of the Wine, The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea
Earnest Thompson Seton – Wild Animals I Have Known, Two Little Savages, Rolf in the Woods. Trails of an Artiest Naturalist, Animal Heroes, The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians, BSA Handbook
Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, The Gulag Archipelago
Irving Stone – The Agony and the Ecstasy
J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
Eugene Zamiatin - We
Earnest Thompson Seton – Wild Animals I Have Known, Two Little Savages, Rolf in the Woods. Trails of an Artiest Naturalist, Animal Heroes, The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians, BSA Handbook
Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, The Gulag Archipelago
Irving Stone – The Agony and the Ecstasy
J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
Eugene Zamiatin - We
Hello Mr. ahem Lysis (almost gave your name away!) It is I, one of your history students! This is just so great how you have a blog and take the time, computer intellects to share what you know with everyone who is willing to listen/read. I really like your book list since I know they are worth reading now that you recommended them. Most of them you have recommended to read for a book report and I really enjoyed your brief summaries... they got me excited (and made me laugh plenty) to read them ALL. Thank you for your great dedication in sharing your thoughts, ideas, knowledge and skills with us at LHS and with the Boy Scout Community... and of course anywhere! Hope to see you around in your Boy Scout uniform this summer and in your cardigans when school starts again!
ReplyDeleteps. Your Blogs SURE sound exactly as you would in school... except without the facial expressions and there's not as many jokes!
Thank you for reading, and for being a student. No students, no teachers you know.
ReplyDeleteLysis,
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad that I am familiar with many of the books posted on this list, but I can't help but notice the exclusion of works by J. Steinbeck and W. Faulkner on the 20th century list. I understand it's your personal list, and I'm not condemning it, I'm merely curious that they were nowhere to be found. I read East of Eden during the free time I had my first summer working at your camp, and I am of course familiar with Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Absalom! Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury. Were these books you've read but felt didn't capture the spirit of your list, or do you believe they're overrated, or was there some other rationale? I'm merely curious.