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
Volume | Contents | Year Published |
---|---|---|
1 | The Great Conversation | 1952 |
2 | Syntopicon I | 1952 |
3 | Syntopicon II | 1952 |
4 | Homer | c. 8th century BCE |
5 | Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes | 5th century BCE |
6 | Herodotus: The History Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War | |
7 | Plato: Charmides, Lysis, Laches… (Many dialogues) | |
8 | Aristotle: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics… (Logical and scientific works) | |
9 | Aristotle: History of Animals, Parts of Animals… (More scientific and philosophical works) | |
10 | Hippocrates: Works (Including The Hippocratic Oath) Galen: On the Natural Faculties | |
11 | Euclid: 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 | |
12 | Lucretius: On the Nature of Things Epictetus: The Discourses Marcus Aurelius: The Meditations | |
13 | Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid | |
14 | Plutarch: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans | |
15 | Tacitus: The Annals, The Histories | |
16 | Ptolemy: Almagest Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres Johannes Kepler: Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, The Harmonies of the World | |
17 | Plotinus: The Six Enneads | |
18 | Augustine of Hippo: The Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine | |
19 | Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica (Part 1) | |
20 | Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica (Parts 2 & 3) | |
21 | Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy | |
22 | Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales | |
23 | Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan | |
24 | François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (Books 1-4) | |
25 | Michel Eyquem de Montaigne: Essays | |
26 | William Shakespeare: (Various plays, including Henry VI parts 1-3, Richard III, Comedy of Errors…) | |
27 | William Shakespeare: (More plays, including Twelfth Night, Hamlet…) | |
28 | William 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… | |
29 | Miguel de Cervantes: The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha | |
30 | Sir Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, New Atlantis | |
31 | René Descartes: Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on the1 Method… Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics | |
32 | John Milton: English Minor Poems, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes… | |
33 | Blaise Pascal: The Provincial Letters, Pensées, Scientific and mathematical essays | |
34 | Sir Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics Christiaan Huygens: Treatise on Light | |
35 | John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration, Concerning Civil Government… George Berkeley: The Principles of Human Knowledge David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | |
36 | Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | |
37 | Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | |
38 | Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: _The Spirit of the Laws_2 Jean Jacques Rousseau: A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality… | |
39 | Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations | |
40 | Edward Gibbon: _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_3 (Part 1) | |
41 | Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2) | |
42 | Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals… | |
43 | American State Papers (Declaration of Independence, etc.) Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay: The Federalist John Stuart Mill: On Liberty… | |
44 | James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. | |
45 | Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Elements of Chemistry Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier: Analytical Theory of Heat Michael Faraday: Experimental Researches in Electricity | |
46 | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History | |
47 | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust | |
48 | Herman Melville: Moby Dick; or, The Whale | |
49 | Charles Darwin: _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, The Descent of Man…_4 | |
50 | Karl Marx: Capital Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party | |
51 | Count Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace | |
52 | Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov | |
53 | William James: The Principles of Psychology | |
54 | Sigmund Freud: _The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis…_5 (Many works on psychoanalysis) |
Reading Plans
- My Plans
- https://westerntradition.wordpress.com/great-books-project/
- These reading plans are not chronological though. I’m yet to find one. My reading speed will take more than 10 years to finish.
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Great Conversation - 10 year reading list
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The links below from other sites are same as the “Great Conversation list” but have links to reviews/notes/videos on select books)
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https://fredrikvladimircoulter.com/the-great-books-of-the-western-world/ten-year-reading-plan/
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https://westerntradition.wordpress.com/great-books-project/ (This says the Great Conversation - 10 year list (The link above) will not take you through the entire series. It is more of a “highlights” list.)