How to Read a Book
by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
For more on Adler's ideas about the Great Books,
see his essay, "Why
Read the Great Books"
- Homer (9th Century B.C.?)
Iliad
Odyssey
- The Old Testament
- Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)
Tragedies
- Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
- Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.)
History
- Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
- Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.)
History of the Peloponnesian War
- Hippocrates (c.460-377? B.C.)
Medical Writings
- Aristophanes (c.448-380 B.C.)
Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
- Plato (c.427-347 B.C.)
Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo,
Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras,
Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics,
On the Soul, The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics,
Rhetoric, Poetics)
- Epicurus (c.341-270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
- Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
Elements
- Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.)
Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating
Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
- Apollonius of Perga (fl.c.240 B.C.)
Conic Sections
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
- Lucretius (c.95-55 B.C.)
On the Nature of Things
- Virgil (70-19 B.C.)
Works
- Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
- Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
History of Rome
- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
- Plutarch (c.45-120)
Parallel Lives
Moralia
- Tacitus (c.55-117)
Histories
Annals
Agricola
Germania
- Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
Introduction to Arithmetic
- Epictetus (c.60-120)
Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
- Ptolemy (c.100-170; fl. 127-151)
Almagest
- Lucian (c.120-c.190)
Works
(esp. The True Way to Write History, The True
History, The Sale of Creeds)
- Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
Meditations
- Galen (c. 130-200)
On the Natural Faculties
- The New Testament
- Plotinus (205-270)
The Enneads
- St. Augustine (354-430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, Confessions, City of
God, On Christian Doctrine)
- The Song of Roland (12th century?)
- The Nibelungenlied (13th century?)
(Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the
same legend)
- The Saga of Burnt Njal
- St. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
Summa Theologica
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, The Divine
Comedy)
- Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400)
Works
(esp. Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales)
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Notebooks
- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
- Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469-1536)
The Praise of Folly
- Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
- Sir Thomas More (c.1478-1535)
Utopia
- Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Table Talk
Three Treatises
- François Rabelais (c.1495-1553)
Gargantua and Pantagruel
- John Calvin (1509-1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
Essays
- William Gilbert (1540-1603)
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Don Quixote
- Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599)
Prothalamion
The Faërie Queene
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Essays
Advancement of Learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Works
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
The Starry Messenger
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
Concerning the Harmonies of the World
- 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
- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
The Leviathan
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on the Method
Geometry
Meditations on First Philosophy
- John Milton (1608-1674)
Works
(esp. the minor poems, Areopagitica, Paradise Lost,
Samson Agonistes)
- Molière (1622-1673)
Comedies
(esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The
Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself)
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The Provincial Letters
Pensees
Scientific Treatises
- Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)
Treatise on Light
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)
Ethics
- John Locke (1632-1704)
Letter Concerning Toleration
"Of Civil Government" (second treatise in Two Treatises on
Government)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Thoughts Concerning Education
- Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Tragedies
(esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
- Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Optics
- Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
Discourse on Metaphysics
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
Monadology
- Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Robinson Crusoe
- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
A Tale of a Tub
Journal to Stella
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest Proposal
- William Congreve (1670-1729)
The Way of the World
- George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Principles of Human Knowledge
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Essay on Criticism
Rape of the Lock
Essay on Man
- Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Persian Letters
Spirit of Laws
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
Letters on the English
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Joseph Andrews
Tom Jones
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dictionary
Rasselas
The Lives of the Poets (esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
- David Hume (1711-1776)
Treatise on Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778)
On the Origin of Inequality
On the Political Economy
Emile
The Social Contract
- Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
- Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
- 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
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Autobiography
- James Boswell (1740-1795)
Journal (esp. London Journal)
Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D
- Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
Elements of Chemistry
- 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)
- Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Theory of Fictions
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Faust
Poetry and Truth
- Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830)
Analytical Theory of Heat
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit
Philosophy of Right
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
- William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Poems
(esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The
Prelude)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Poems
(esp. "Kubla Khan," Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Biographia Literaria
- Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
- Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
On War
- Stendhal (1783-1842)
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love
- George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Don Juan
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Studies in Pessimism
- Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Chemical History of a Candle
Experimental Researches in Electricity
- Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
Principles of Geology
- Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
The Positive Philosophy
- Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
Père Goriot
Eugénie Grandet
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Representative Men
Essays
Journal
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Democracy in America
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
A System of Logic
On Liberty
Representative Government
Utilitarianism
The Subjection of Women
Autobiography
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
The Origin of Species
The Descent of Man
Autobiography
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Works
(esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield,
Hard Times)
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Capital
(together with the Communist Manifesto)
- George Eliot (1819-1880)
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
- Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Moby Dick
Billy Budd
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Plays
(esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House,
The Wild Duck)
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What is Art?
Twenty-Three Tales
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger
- William James (1842-1910)
The Principles of Psychology
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragamatism
Essays in Radical Empiricism
- Henry James (1843-1916)
The American
The Ambassadors
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
- Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)
Science and Hypothesis
Science and Method
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Civilization and Its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Plays (and Prefaces)
(esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara,
Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
- Max Planck (1858-1947)
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
Where Is Science Going?
Scientific Autobiography
- Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
- John Dewey (1859-1952)
How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Persons and Places
- Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924)
The State and Revolution
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Remembrance of Things Past
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
- Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The Meaning of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)
- James Joyce (1882-1941)
"The Dead" in Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
- Jacques Maritain (1882- )
Art and Scholasticism
The Degrees of Knowledge
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
True Humanism
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
The Trial
The Castle
- Arnold Toynbee (1889- )
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
- Jean Paul Sartre (1905- )
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918- )
The First Circle
The Cancer Ward
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