Note
I got to know about this book series when I read How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. 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.
References
- My Newsletter - A Bibliophile’s Odyssey: Reading The Great Books
- Internet Archive has pdf/text/epub versions to download. Link.
- My Static site with the list of books in the series - https://robinsonraju.blog/rr-static-sites/great-books/western-world/index.html
- My Static site with HTML summaries - https://robinsonraju.blog/rr-static-sites/great-books/book-summaries/index.html
List of Books
| Volume | Contents | Year Published |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Great Conversation | 1952 |
| 2 | Syntopicon I | 1952 |
| 3 | Syntopicon II | 1952 |
| 4 | Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey | 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.
-
Great Conversation - 10 year reading list
-
The links below from other sites are same as the “Great Conversation list” but have links to reviews/notes/videos on select books)
-
https://fredrikvladimircoulter.com/the-great-books-of-the-western-world/ten-year-reading-plan/
-
-
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.)