I’ve always considered it to be a major educational and developmental deficit to have never read the great books. I’ve tried to make up for lost time by reading a few here and there for this project, but I know I’m missing something by not knowing the canon.
I recently listened to a podcast episode where Tommy Collison shared his goal of reading through The Great Books over the next four years. I got inspired.
I’ve replicated his list below and now I’m considering going through it. I’d intersperse the great books into my yearly reading lists with a goal of getting through all 196 books below by the year 2030.
| # | Book | Author |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Iliad | Homer |
| 2 | Odyssey | Homer |
| 3 | Agamemnon | Asechylus |
| 4 | Prometheus Bound | Asechylus |
| 5 | Oedipus at Colonius | Sophocles |
| 6 | Oedipus Rex | Sophocles |
| 7 | Antigone | Sophocles |
| 8 | Metamorphoses | Ovid |
| 9 | History of the Peloponnesian War | Thucydides |
| 10 | Theogony | Hesiod |
| 11 | Works and Days | Hesiod |
| 12 | Clouds | Aristophanes |
| 13 | Lysistrata | Aristophanes |
| 14 | Bacchae | Euripides |
| 15 | Meno | Plato |
| 16 | Gorgias | Plato |
| 17 | The Republic | Plato |
| 18 | The Last Days of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apoloy, Crito, Phaedo) | Plato |
| 19 | Elements | Euclid |
| 20 | On the Nature of Things | Lucretius |
| 21 | Lycurgus | Plutarch |
| 22 | Solon | Plutarch |
| 23 | Arithmetic | Nicomachus |
| 24 | Elements of Chemistry | Lavoisier |
| 25 | Motion of the Heart and Blood | Harvey |
| 26 | Enchiridion | Epictetus |
| 27 | Letters from a Stoic | Seneca |
| 28 | Meditations | Marcus Aurelius |
| 29 | Analects | Confucius |
| 30 | The Book of Chuang Tzu | Chuang Tzu |
| 31 | The Bhagavad-Gita in the Mahabharata | |
| 32 | Basic Writings of Mo Tzu | Mo Tzu |
| 33 | Hsun Tzu | Mo Tzu |
| 34 | Han Fei Tzu | Mo Tzu |
| 35 | The Way of Lao Tzu | Lao Tzu |
| 36 | The Bible | |
| 37 | Symposium | Plato |
| 38 | Parmenides | Plato |
| 39 | Theaetetus | Plato |
| 40 | Sophists | Plato |
| 41 | Timaeus | Plato |
| 42 | Phaedrus | Plato |
| 43 | Nicomachean Ethics | Aristotle |
| 44 | Eudemian Ethics | Aristotle |
| 45 | Rhetoric | Aristotle |
| 46 | Conics | Apollonius |
| 47 | Aeneid | Virgil |
| 48 | Caesar | Plutarch |
| 49 | Cato the Younger | Plutarch |
| 50 | Discourses | Epictetus |
| 51 | Manual | Epictetus |
| 52 | Annuals | Tacitus |
| 53 | Almagest | Ptolemy |
| 54 | Confessions | Augustine |
| 55 | Proslogium | S. Anselm |
| 56 | Summa Theologica | Thomas Aquinas |
| 57 | Summa Contra Gentiles | Thomas Aquinas |
| 58 | Divine Comedy | Dante |
| 59 | Mass | Des Prez |
| 60 | Life of Johnson | Boswell |
| 61 | The Prince | Machiavelli |
| 62 | Discourses | Machiavelli |
| 63 | On the Revolution of the Spheres | Copernicus |
| 64 | The Freedom of a Christian | Martin Luther |
| 65 | Preface to Romans | Martin Luther |
| 66 | Concerning Governmental Authority | Martin Luther |
| 67 | The Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants | Martin Luther |
| 68 | Friendly Admonition to Peace Concerning the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants | Martin Luther |
| 69 | Gargantua and Pantagruel | Rabelais |
| 70 | Missa Papae Marcelli | Palestrina |
| 71 | Essays (Of Custom, and That We Should Not Easily Change a Law Received; Of Pedantry; Of the Education of Children; That It Is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity; Of Cannibals; That the Relish of Good and Evil Depends in a Great Measure upon the Opinion We Have of Them; Upon Some Verses of Virgil) | Montaigne |
| 72 | Introduction on the Analytical Art | Viete |
| 73 | Novum Organum | Francis Bacon |
| 74 | Richard II | William Shakespeare |
| 75 | Henry IV | William Shakespeare |
| 76 | Henry V | William Shakespeare |
| 77 | The Tempest | William Shakespeare |
| 78 | As You Like It | William Shakespeare |
| 79 | Hamlet | William Shakespeare |
| 80 | Othello | William Shakespeare |
| 81 | Macbeth | William Shakespeare |
| 82 | King Lear | William Shakespeare |
| 83 | Coriolanus | William Shakespeare |
| 84 | Sonnets | William Shakespeare |
| 85 | Antony and Cleopatra | William Shakespeare |
| 86 | The Winter’s Tale | William Shakespeare |
| 87 | Much Ado About Nothing | William Shakespeare |
| 88 | Twelfth Night | William Shakespeare |
| 89 | The Merchant of Venice | William Shakespeare |
| 90 | The Rigveda | |
| 91 | Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift |
| 92 | A Modest Proposal | Jonathan Swift |
| 93 | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| 94 | Middlemarch | George Eliot |
| 95 | Canterbury Tales | Chaucer |
| 96 | Autobiography | Mill |
| 97 | Don Quixote | Cervantes |
| 98 | Leviathan | Hobbes |
| 99 | Two New Sciences | Galileo |
| 100 | Meditations | Descartes |
| 101 | Rules for the Direction of the Mind | Descartes |
| 102 | Paradise Lost | Milton |
| 103 | Maxims | La Rochefoucauld |
| 104 | Fables | La Fontaine |
| 105 | Pensées (Numbers 72, 82-83, 100, 128, 131, 139, 142-143, 171, 194- 195, 219, 229, 233-234, 242, 273, 277, 282, 289, 298, 303, 320, 323, 325, 330-331, 374, 385, 392, 395-397, 409, 412-413, 416, 418, 425, 430, 434-435, 463, 491, 525- 531, 538, 543, 547, 553, 556, 564, 571, 586, 598, 607-610, 613, 619-620, 631, 640, 644, 673, 675, 684, 692-693, 737, 760, 768, 792-793) | Pascal |
| 106 | Treatise on Light | Huygens |
| 107 | On the Movement of Bodies by Impact | Huygens |
| 108 | Theological-Political Treatise | Spinoza |
| 109 | Second Treatise on Government | Locke |
| 110 | Phaedra | Racine |
| 111 | Principia Mathematica | Newton |
| 112 | Epitome IV | Kepler |
| 113 | Monadology | Leibniz |
| 114 | Discourse on Metaphysics | Leibniz |
| 115 | Essay on Dynamics | Leibniz |
| 116 | Philosophical Essays | Leibniz |
| 117 | Principles of Nature and Grace | Leibniz |
| 118 | Autobiography | Frederick Douglass |
| 119 | Treatise on Human Nature | David Hume |
| 120 | Enquiry | David Hume |
| 121 | Dialogues on Natural Religion | David Hume |
| 122 | Essays | David Hume |
| 123 | The Social Contract | Rousseau |
| 124 | On the Origin of Inequality | Rousseau |
| 125 | Confessions | Rousseau |
| 126 | The Misanthrope | Molière |
| 127 | The Wealth of Nations | Adam Smith |
| 128 | Critique of Pure Reason | Kant |
| 129 | Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals | Kant |
| 130 | Don Giovanni | Mozart |
| 131 | Essays | Francis Bacon |
| 132 | Civil and Moral | Francis Bacon |
| 133 | Essays on the Theory of Numbers | Dedekind |
| 134 | Kumārasaṃbhava: in The Origin of the Young God | Kālidāsa |
| 135 | Discourses on the Noble Quest | |
| 136 | Discourse to Kālāmas | |
| 137 | The Greater Discourse on Cause, Early Buddhist Discourses | |
| 138 | The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti | Vimalakīrti Sūtra |
| 139 | The Tale of the Heike | |
| 140 | The Difference Between Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism | Kūkai |
| 141 | Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence | Kūkai |
| 142 | The Meanings of Sound, Word, and Reality | Kūkai |
| 143 | The Pillow Book | Shōnagon |
| 144 | Articles of Confederation | |
| 145 | Declaration of Independence | |
| 146 | Constitution of the United States | |
| 147 | Supreme Court Opinions | |
| 148 | Candide | Voltaire |
| 149 | The Federalist Papers | Hamilton, Jay, Madison |
| 150 | Origin of Species | Charles Darwin |
| 151 | Phenomenology of Mind | Hegel |
| 152 | Logic | Hegel |
| 153 | Theory of Parallels | Lobachevsky |
| 154 | Democracy in America | De Tocqueville |
| 155 | Philosophical Fragments | Kierkegaard |
| 156 | Fear and Trembling | Kierkegaard |
| 157 | Tristan and Isolde | Wagner |
| 158 | Capital | Karl Marx |
| 159 | Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844 | Karl Marx |
| 160 | The German Ideology | Karl Marx |
| 161 | Brothers Karamazov | Dostoyevsky |
| 162 | War and Peace | Tolstoy |
| 163 | Anna Karenina | Tolstoy |
| 164 | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain |
| 165 | Selected Stories | Flannery O’Connor |
| 166 | Psychology | William James |
| 167 | Briefer Course | William James |
| 168 | Birth of Tragedy | Nietzsche |
| 169 | Thus Spake Zarathustra | Nietzsche |
| 170 | Beyond Good and Evil | Nietzsche |
| 171 | General Introduction to Psychoanalysis | Freud |
| 172 | The Interpretation of Dreams | Freud |
| 173 | Civilization and its Discontents | Freud |
| 174 | Mass Pyschology and Other Writings | Freud |
| 175 | Poems | Valery |
| 176 | Selected Writings | Booker T. Washington |
| 177 | The Souls of Black Folk | Du Bois |
| 178 | What Is Philosophy? | Heidegger |
| 179 | The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory | Heisenberg |
| 180 | Selected Papers | Einstein |
| 181 | The Electron | Millikan |
| 182 | David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
| 183 | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens |
| 184 | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens |
| 185 | Heart of Darkness | Conrad |
| 186 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner |
| 187 | The Bear | William Faulkner |
| 188 | Go Down, Moses | William Faulkner |
| 189 | Benito Cereno | Herman Melville |
| 190 | Moby Dick | Herman Melville |
| 191 | “The Gītagovinda” in Love Song of the Dark Lord | Jayadeva |
| 192 | The Book of Laughter and Forgetting | Kundera |
| 193 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Kundera |
| 194 | American Pastoral | Roth |
| 195 | Sabbath’s Theater | Roth |
| 196 | North and South | Gaskell |
