I got to know about this book series when I read How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. I didn’t pay much attention to actually reading the book series until a few years later when RV told me that he loved Adler’s book and purchased the book set.

I got my copy of the books from a listing on Craigslist. The seller was a doctor who had purchased the books from a library sale many years ago and had even read some of the classics in Latin when he was younger.


Newsletter - A Bibliophile’s Odyssey: Reading The Great Books


Internet Archive has pdf/text/epub versions to download. Link.


List of Books

Ref: http://www.greaterbooks.com/adler.html

VolumeContentsYear Published
1The Great Conversation1952
2Syntopicon I1952
3Syntopicon II1952
4Homerc. 8th century BCE
5Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes5th century BCE
6Herodotus: The History
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
7Plato: Charmides, Lysis, Laches… (Many dialogues)
8Aristotle: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics… (Logical and scientific works)
9Aristotle: History of Animals, Parts of Animals… (More scientific and philosophical works)
10Hippocrates: Works (Including The Hippocratic Oath)
Galen: On the Natural Faculties
11Euclid: The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements
Archimedes: On the Sphere and Cylinder…
Apollonius of Perga: On Conic Sections
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic
12Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Epictetus: The Discourses
Marcus Aurelius: The Meditations
13Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid
14Plutarch: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
15Tacitus: The Annals, The Histories
16Ptolemy: Almagest
Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
Johannes Kepler: Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, The Harmonies of the World
17Plotinus: The Six Enneads
18Augustine of Hippo: The Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine
19Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica (Part 1)
20Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica (Parts 2 & 3)
21Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy
22Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales
23Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
24François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (Books 1-4)
25Michel Eyquem de Montaigne: Essays
26William Shakespeare: (Various plays, including Henry VI parts 1-3, Richard III, Comedy of Errors…)
27William Shakespeare: (More plays, including Twelfth Night, Hamlet…)
28William Gilbert: On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
Galileo Galilei: Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
William Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals…
29Miguel de Cervantes: The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
30Sir Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, New Atlantis
31René Descartes: Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on the1 Method…
Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics
32John Milton: English Minor Poems, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes…
33Blaise Pascal: The Provincial Letters, Pensées, Scientific and mathematical essays
34Sir Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics
Christiaan Huygens: Treatise on Light
35John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration, Concerning Civil Government…
George Berkeley: The Principles of Human Knowledge
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
36Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
37Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
38Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: _The Spirit of the Laws_2
Jean Jacques Rousseau: A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality…
39Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
40Edward Gibbon: _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_3 (Part 1)
41Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2)
42Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals…
43American State Papers (Declaration of Independence, etc.)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay: The Federalist
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty…
44James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
45Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Elements of Chemistry
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier: Analytical Theory of Heat
Michael Faraday: Experimental Researches in Electricity
46Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History
47Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust
48Herman Melville: Moby Dick; or, The Whale
49Charles Darwin: _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, The Descent of Man…_4
50Karl Marx: Capital
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party
51Count Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
52Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
53William James: The Principles of Psychology
54Sigmund Freud: _The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis…_5 (Many works on psychoanalysis)

Reading Plans