Books to read

[Phil Indablanc]

Anything by Carl Hiassen. Almost all of his stuff is great and very humorous. I would recommend trying to read them in order of publication as they use some recurrent characters.

[BillsFan Trapped in Pats Land]

Anything by Carl Hiassen. Almost all of his stuff is great and very humorous. I would recommend trying to read them in order of publication as they use some recurrent characters.

I left him out. His books are funny and interesting, with serious bite.

[Phil Indablanc]

I left him out. His books are funny and interesting, with serious bite.

 

What's your favorite? I think mine is Sick Puppy but probably because it was the first of his that I read and not used to the ironic wit of his stories.

[Pete]

If you like short stories, the Vonnegut collection Welcome To The Monkey House, already mentioned above, is great.

 

Also, if you like Vonnegut, you should check out George Saunders. Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation are both excellent collections.

 

 

A couple more favorites...

 

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver (compiles all his best stories)

 

When The Nines Roll Over by David Benioff (a really great recent collection)

There is a girl I know who wants to get into reading and asked me to lend her some good books. I lent her:

 

Carvers "Where I am Calling From". My favorite short story in there is Cathedral.

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Im-Calling-Sel...s/dp/0679722319

 

I also lent her Dale Carnegie How To Make Friends and Influence them. Common sense, but everyone should read this book. It is how you should treat people.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Infl...1423&sr=1-1

 

I lent her Bill Bryson "Neither Here Nor There"- which is all about backpacking Europe, which she did.

http://www.amazon.com/Neither-Here-nor-The...1459&sr=1-1

 

And I lent her "How The Cadillac Got It's Shark Fins" by Jack Mungo

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cadillac-Got-Its...544&sr=1-10

 

That is a great read. Once you start reading it, it is hard to put down. I lent my original copy to a friend, who's wife read it, lent to her friend, who read it and past on to her friend, and so on. Well everyone loved it and I never got it back. It is now out of print- but I found a copy

[John from Riverside]

A book I read for class last semester that I liked was called "Blindness"

 

I highly recommend.

[CosmicBills]

My professor in school gave me this list of books to read to "truly be educated". In 20+ years he's only had one former student complete it. I'm working my way through it though.

 

Western Classics Reading List

 

Part I = Philosophy, Religion, Science, Politics and Society

 

Part II = Imaginative Literature

 

Ancient World, Part I.

 

The Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ruth, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, The Acts, The Romans, Corinthians I and II, Revelation.

 

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts & Pictures (2 vols. ed. by James B. Prichard).

The Presocratics (ed. by Philip Wheelwright).

Plato: Apology; Crito; Phaedo; Lysis; Euthyphro; Gorgias; Protagoras; Meno; Symposium; Republic; Theaetetus; Timaeus; Laws.

Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle (ed. by Renford Bambrough).

Herodotus, The Persian Wars.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (use M.I. Finley, The Portable Greek Historians for Herodotus and Thucydides).

Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle (ed. by Jason L. Saunders).

Plutarch, Lives of The Noble Greeks and Romans.

Suetonius, The 12 Caesars.

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations.

The Portable Roman Reader (ed. by Basil Davenport).

 

Part II.

 

Bulfinch’s Mythology.

Homer, The Iliad; The Odyessy.

Hesiod, Theogony.

Aeschylus

Euripides FOR THESE FOUR USE GRENE and LATTIMORE,

Sophocles The Complete Greek Tragedy

Aristophanes

Virgil, The Aeneid.

Petronius, The Satirican.

The Portable Roman Reader (see above)

 

Medieval World, Part I.

 

Selections from Medieval Philosophers (2 vols., ed. by Richard McKeon).

Philosophy in the Middle Ages (ed. by Arthur Hyman and James Walsh; use to complement McKeon).

St. Benedict, Rule for Monks.

The Koran

 

 

Part II.

 

Beowolf.

Song of Roland.

Dante, Divine Comedy (above all, Inferno).

Boccaccio, The Decameron.

Langland, Piers the Plowman.

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales.

Malory, LeMorte D’Arthur.

 

Early Modern Period (ca. 15th-18th Centuries)

 

Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man.

The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (ed. by Ernst Cassirer, et al.).

Machiavelli, The Prince; The Discourses.

Castiglione, The Courtier (abridged).

Cellini, Autobiography.

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly.

More, Utopia.

Montaigne, Complete Essays (ed. by Donald M. Frome).

Thomas A. Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

Luther, Three Treatises (“An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility”; “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”; “The Freedom of a Christian”).

Calvin, On the Christian Faith (Library of Liberal Arts Selections, ed. by John T. McNeill).

Bacon, The Great Instauration; The New Organon; The New Atlantis.

Descartes, Meditations; Discourse on Method; Rules for the Direction of the Mind.

Hobbes, Leviathan.

Spinoza, Ethics.

Leibnitz, Monadology.

Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding; Second Treatise of Government; A Letter on Toleration.

Newton, Principia (Spinoza, Leibnitz and Newton can be sampled from From Descartes to Locke, ed. by T.V. Smith & Marjorie Grene).

Galileo, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo; Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems (both ed. by Stillman Drake).

Pascal, Pensees; The Essential Pascal (ed. by Robert Gleason).

Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (selections if possible).

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims.

Milton, Areopagitica.

Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (ed. by Richard H. Popkin).

Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Federalist Papers.

Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.

Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Montesquieu, Persian letters; Spirit of the Laws (ed. by David Wallace Carrithers).

 

Early Modern Period (continued)

 

Vico, The New Science (selections if possible).

Herder, Ideas Toward a Philosophy of History (selections if possible).

Voltaire, The Portable Voltaire (read it all).

Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream; Rameau’s Nephew.

La Mettrie, Man A Machine.

Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees.

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality; The Social Contract; The Confessions; Emile.

Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments.

Johnson, The Rambler.

Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Gay’s selection is OK).

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man.

Malthus, On Population (do some judicious skimming based on detailed table of contents).

The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology (ed. by Peter Gay; use this to complement the other 18th Century titles).

Fichte, The Vocation of Man.

German Idealist Philosophy, ed. by Rüdiger Bubner.

Lichtenberg, Maxims.

 

Part II.

 

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantegruel.

Shakespeare, Hamlet; King Lear; MacBeth; Othello; Julius Caesar (read all the plays if there’s time).

Cervantes, Don Quixote.

Milton, Paradise Lost.

Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus.

LaFontaine, Fables.

Moliere, The Bourgeois Gentleman.

Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.

Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.

Pope, Essay on Man.

Richardson, Pamela.

Fielding, Tom Jones.

Rousseau, The New Heloise.

Voltaire, Candide.

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

Lessing, Nathan the Wise.

 

 

The Nineteenth Century, Part I.

 

Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity.

Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind; Philosophy of History (use Hegel Selections, ed. by Jacob Loewenberg).

Goethe, Poetry and Truth.

Clausewitz, On War (Penguin Abridgement).

Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

Strauss, Life of Jesus (skim).

Comte, Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (ed. by Gertrud Lenzer).

Mazzini, The Duties of Man.

Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (use selection ed. by E. Graham Waring).

Proudhon, What is Property?

Marx, The Marx-Engel’s Reader (ed. by Richard Tucker).

Darwin, Origin of Species; Descent of Man (read the whole Norton edition, Darwin, ed. by Philip Appleman).

Mill, Autobiography; Utilitarianism; On Liberty; The Subjection of Women.

Renan, Life of Jesus (abridgement).

Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea.

Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground.

Tönnies, Community and Society.

Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning in History (ed. by H.P. Rickman).

Nietzsche, Use and Abuse of History; Beyond Good and Evil; Twilight of the Idols; Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method; Division of Labor in Society.

LeBon, The Crowd.

Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism.

Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.

 

Part II.

 

Novalis, Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings.

Schiller, William Tell.

Goethe, Faust.

Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Manzoni, The Betrothed.

Stendhal, Red and the Black.

Balzac, Peŕe Goriot; Eugénie Grandet.

Büchner, Danton’s Death; Woyzeck.

Dickens, Hard Times.

Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Sentimental Education.

Turgenev, Fathers and Sons.

Hugo, Les Misérables.

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov.

Hardy, Return of the Native.

Tolstoy, War and Peace; Anna Karenina.

Ibsen, A Doll’s House; The Ghosts.

Huysmans, Against the Grain.

Zola, Germinal.

Nineteenth Century. Part II (continued)

 

Maupassant, Selected Stories.

Hauptmann, Before Dawn; The Weavers.

Fontane, Effie Briest.

Strindberg, Miss Julie.

 

20th Century, Part I.

 

James, Varieties of Religious Experience.

Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis; Interpretation of Dreams; Moses and Monotheism; Future of an Illusion; Totem and Taboo; Civilization and Its Discontents.

Jung, The Portable Jung (ed. by Joseph Campbell; read it all).

Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

Adams, The Education of Henry Adams.

Bergson, Creative Evolution.

Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Essays in Sociology (Gerth & Mills edition).

Simmel, Selected Writings (ed. by D.N. Levine).

Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialism; Social Classes.

Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.

deSaussure, Course in General Linguistics.

Pareto, The Mind and Society.

Mosca, The Ruling Class.

Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia.

Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (abridged edition)

Michels, Political Parties.

Lenin, What is to be Done?; State and Revolution; Imperialism.

Sorel, Reflections on Violence.

Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.

Gramsci, Prison Notebooks.

Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism.

Husserl, Ideas.

Keynes, General Theory of Unemployment, Interest, and Money.

Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.

Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

Marcuse, One Dimensional Man.

Spengler, Decline of the West.

Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses.

Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals.

Toynbee, A Study of History (one volume ed.).

Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; Politics and the English Language.

Frazer, The Golden Bough (abridged).

Benedict, Patterns of Culture.

Piaget, The Moral Judgement of the Child.

Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind.

Cassirer, Essay on Man; The Myth of the State.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Heidegger, Being and Time.

 

20th Century. Part I (continued)

 

Four Existentialist Theologians (selections from Maritain, Berdyaev, Buber, and Tillich, ed. by Will Herberg).

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (ed. by Walter Kaufman).

Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison.

Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man.

Marcel, Philosophy of Existence.

Bultmann, Existence and Faith.

Tillich, The Courage to Be.

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being.

Russell, What I Believe.

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.

Merleau-Ponty, The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty (ed. by Alden L. Fisher).

Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man.

deBeauvoir, The Second Sex.

Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy.

Camus, The Rebel.

Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.

Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge; The Foucault Reader (ed. by Paul Rabinow).

Barthes, A Barthes Reader (ed. by Susan Sontag).

Rawls, Theory of Justice.

Ellul, The Betrayal of the West.

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

 

Part II.

 

Gide, The Immoralist.

Conrad, The Heart of Darkness.

Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard.

Shaw, Man and Superman.

Mann, Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (Vintage Books); The Magic Mountain; Doctor Faustus.

Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.

Eliot, The Waste Land; The Hollow Men.

Woolf, To the Lighthouse.

Lawrence, Sons and Lovers; Women in Love.

Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

Joyce, Ulysses.

Capek, R.U.R.

Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Forster, A Passage to India.

Kafka, The Trial; The Castle; The Metamorphosis.

Hesse, Steppenwolf; The Glass Bead Game.

Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Musil, The Man Without Qualities.

Huxley, Brave New World.

Malraux, Man’s Fate.

Silone, Bread and Wine.

Koestler, Darkness at Noon.

20th Century. Part II (continued)

 

Camus, The Stranger.

Sartre, No Exit.

Hochhuth, The Deputy.

Beckett, Waiting for Godot.

Osborne, Look Back in Anger.

 

Note: Before each section, read a Western Civ. Text for the period. Mortimer Chambers, et al., The Western Experience is good enough. For the modern era use R.R. Palmer, A History of Modern World (6th ed.). For science, use Anthony M. Alioto, A History of Western Science. The best history of philosophy by far is Wilhelm Windelband’s A History Philosophy (goes up to end of 19th century).

[KD in CA]

My professor in school gave me this list of books to read to "truly be educated". In 20+ years he's only had one former student complete it. I'm working my way through it though.

 

Western Classics Reading List

 

 

Holy crap, that is indeed a reading list for life.

[In space no one can hear]

Pete you listed a reading list to help one be "truly educated"

 

it reminded me of this poem:

 

 

WHO IS EDUCATED?

 

 

 

 

 

A professor in Chicago is reported to have given the following test to his pupils. He told them they were not really educated unless they could say Yes to the following questions:

 

 

 

 

 

Has your education given you sympathy with all good causes and made you espouse them?

 

 

Has it made you public-spirited?

 

 

Has it made you a brother to the weak?

 

 

Have you learned how to make friends and keep them?

 

 

Do you know what it is to be a friend to yourself?

 

Can you look at an honest man or pure woman straight in the eye?

 

 

Do you see anything to love in a little child?

 

 

Will a lonely dog follow you down the street?

 

 

Can you be high-minded and happy in the meaner drudgeries of life?

 

 

Do you think washing dishes and hoeing corn just as compatible with high thinking as piano playing and golf?

 

 

Are you good for anything to yourself?

 

 

Can you be happy alone?

 

 

Can you look out in the world and see anything but dollars and cents?

 

 

Can you look into a mud puddle by the wayside and see anything in the puddle but mud?

 

 

Can you look into the sky at night and see beyond the stars?

 

 

Can your soul claim a relationship with the Creator?

[BillsFan Trapped in Pats Land]

What's your favorite? I think mine is Sick Puppy but probably because it was the first of his that I read and not used to the ironic wit of his stories.

Skinny Dip. There was one about a former rock star (blanking on the name) that was wickedly funny.

[CosmicBills]

 

Holy crap, that is indeed a reading list for life.

Yeah ... maybe I didn't make that clear. It's definitely not supposed to be a summer reading list.

 

The story behind it was apparently a student of his came up to him the week before graduation and told him something along the lines of, "I know I'm about to graduate from a great school, but I don't really feel like I've learned anything. What would you recommend for me to continue my education?"

 

So the professor thought about it for some time and compiled this list. He never expected the guy to read it ... but he did. Took him near 10 years, but he did it.

 

A couple other students through the years have asked for the list, and I did when I graduated. I'm moving slow (will take me longer than 10 years to finish it for sure) but steady.

 

The best part is the note at the end: "PS: Read a !@#$ing text book BEFORE each section." Holy (not Brussels) Cow!

[Andrew in CA]

No Ricoeur? Useless. In all seriousness, that's extensive (probably goes without saying....).

[CosmicBills]

I just always thought it was a cool list ... so I figured why not share it with TSW? And yes, it's crazy extensive and very one sided as it's only Western European material.

[KD in CA]

Yeah ... maybe I didn't make that clear. It's definitely not supposed to be a summer reading list.

 

The story behind it was apparently a student of his came up to him the week before graduation and told him something along the lines of, "I know I'm about to graduate from a great school, but I don't really feel like I've learned anything. What would you recommend for me to continue my education?"

 

So the professor thought about it for some time and compiled this list. He never expected the guy to read it ... but he did. Took him near 10 years, but he did it.

 

A couple other students through the years have asked for the list, and I did when I graduated. I'm moving slow (will take me longer than 10 years to finish it for sure) but steady.

That would be a neat accomplishment. I've read at most 10 of those, most during college. The only way I could ever put a dent in that list is by retiring early. Like tomorrow.

 

But I did read Capote's In Cold Blood on vacation last month. It might not be War and Peace, but it was pretty good.

 

 

The best part is the note at the end: "PS: Read a !@#$ing text book BEFORE each section." Holy (not Brussels) Cow!

I noticed that too. Kinda like "educate your sorry ass a little before you attempt to educate yourself with these books."

[ajflutie]

Catch 22 - Heller

Stranger from a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love - Heinlein

The Once and Future King - TH White

The Stand - King

Enders Game - Card

Shibumi - Trevanian

Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

Travels with Charley and Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck

 

[Tcali]

My mom used to read the Excorcist to me before bedtime.

lol

[Tcali]

Anything by Philip Roth, simply the best American novelist of the last several decades. Everyman is very good, as is Exit Ghost. But you can't go wrong with any of his earlier work either.

 

If you like mysteries on the grittier side: Joseph Wambaugh, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, elmore Leonard and James Ellroy are all excelent.

Dont forget Buffalo's own Lawrence Block....and James Lee Burke---maybe the best writer in America today.

 

Lehane is a gifted writer--and is/was at a very young age.

[DC Tom]

Catch 22 - Heller

Stranger from a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love - Heinlein

The Once and Future King - TH White

The Stand - King

Enders Game - Card

Shibumi - Trevanian

Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

Travels with Charley and Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck

 

 

If you're going to bring Heinlein in to the discussion, you have to mention The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers, as well.

[Tcali]

My professor in school gave me this list of books to read to "truly be educated". In 20+ years he's only had one former student complete it. I'm working my way through it though.

 

Western Classics Reading List

 

Part I = Philosophy, Religion, Science, Politics and Society

 

Part II = Imaginative Literature

 

Ancient World, Part I.

 

The Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ruth, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, The Acts, The Romans, Corinthians I and II, Revelation.

 

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts & Pictures (2 vols. ed. by James B. Prichard).

The Presocratics (ed. by Philip Wheelwright).

Plato: Apology; Crito; Phaedo; Lysis; Euthyphro; Gorgias; Protagoras; Meno; Symposium; Republic; Theaetetus; Timaeus; Laws.

Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle (ed. by Renford Bambrough).

Herodotus, The Persian Wars.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (use M.I. Finley, The Portable Greek Historians for Herodotus and Thucydides).

Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle (ed. by Jason L. Saunders).

Plutarch, Lives of The Noble Greeks and Romans.

Suetonius, The 12 Caesars.

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations.

The Portable Roman Reader (ed. by Basil Davenport).

 

Part II.

 

Bulfinch’s Mythology.

Homer, The Iliad; The Odyessy.

Hesiod, Theogony.

Aeschylus

Euripides FOR THESE FOUR USE GRENE and LATTIMORE,

Sophocles The Complete Greek Tragedy

Aristophanes

Virgil, The Aeneid.

Petronius, The Satirican.

The Portable Roman Reader (see above)

 

Medieval World, Part I.

 

Selections from Medieval Philosophers (2 vols., ed. by Richard McKeon).

Philosophy in the Middle Ages (ed. by Arthur Hyman and James Walsh; use to complement McKeon).

St. Benedict, Rule for Monks.

The Koran

 

 

Part II.

 

Beowolf.

Song of Roland.

Dante, Divine Comedy (above all, Inferno).

Boccaccio, The Decameron.

Langland, Piers the Plowman.

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales.

Malory, LeMorte D’Arthur.

 

Early Modern Period (ca. 15th-18th Centuries)

 

Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man.

The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (ed. by Ernst Cassirer, et al.).

Machiavelli, The Prince; The Discourses.

Castiglione, The Courtier (abridged).

Cellini, Autobiography.

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly.

More, Utopia.

Montaigne, Complete Essays (ed. by Donald M. Frome).

Thomas A. Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

Luther, Three Treatises (“An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility”; “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”; “The Freedom of a Christian”).

Calvin, On the Christian Faith (Library of Liberal Arts Selections, ed. by John T. McNeill).

Bacon, The Great Instauration; The New Organon; The New Atlantis.

Descartes, Meditations; Discourse on Method; Rules for the Direction of the Mind.

Hobbes, Leviathan.

Spinoza, Ethics.

Leibnitz, Monadology.

Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding; Second Treatise of Government; A Letter on Toleration.

Newton, Principia (Spinoza, Leibnitz and Newton can be sampled from From Descartes to Locke, ed. by T.V. Smith & Marjorie Grene).

Galileo, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo; Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems (both ed. by Stillman Drake).

Pascal, Pensees; The Essential Pascal (ed. by Robert Gleason).

Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (selections if possible).

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims.

Milton, Areopagitica.

Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (ed. by Richard H. Popkin).

Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Federalist Papers.

Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.

Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Montesquieu, Persian letters; Spirit of the Laws (ed. by David Wallace Carrithers).

 

Early Modern Period (continued)

 

Vico, The New Science (selections if possible).

Herder, Ideas Toward a Philosophy of History (selections if possible).

Voltaire, The Portable Voltaire (read it all).

Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream; Rameau’s Nephew.

La Mettrie, Man A Machine.

Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees.

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality; The Social Contract; The Confessions; Emile.

Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments.

Johnson, The Rambler.

Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Gay’s selection is OK).

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man.

Malthus, On Population (do some judicious skimming based on detailed table of contents).

The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology (ed. by Peter Gay; use this to complement the other 18th Century titles).

Fichte, The Vocation of Man.

German Idealist Philosophy, ed. by Rüdiger Bubner.

Lichtenberg, Maxims.

 

Part II.

 

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantegruel.

Shakespeare, Hamlet; King Lear; MacBeth; Othello; Julius Caesar (read all the plays if there’s time).

Cervantes, Don Quixote.

Milton, Paradise Lost.

Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus.

LaFontaine, Fables.

Moliere, The Bourgeois Gentleman.

Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.

Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.

Pope, Essay on Man.

Richardson, Pamela.

Fielding, Tom Jones.

Rousseau, The New Heloise.

Voltaire, Candide.

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

Lessing, Nathan the Wise.

 

 

The Nineteenth Century, Part I.

 

Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity.

Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind; Philosophy of History (use Hegel Selections, ed. by Jacob Loewenberg).

Goethe, Poetry and Truth.

Clausewitz, On War (Penguin Abridgement).

Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

Strauss, Life of Jesus (skim).

Comte, Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (ed. by Gertrud Lenzer).

Mazzini, The Duties of Man.

Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (use selection ed. by E. Graham Waring).

Proudhon, What is Property?

Marx, The Marx-Engel’s Reader (ed. by Richard Tucker).

Darwin, Origin of Species; Descent of Man (read the whole Norton edition, Darwin, ed. by Philip Appleman).

Mill, Autobiography; Utilitarianism; On Liberty; The Subjection of Women.

Renan, Life of Jesus (abridgement).

Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea.

Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground.

Tönnies, Community and Society.

Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning in History (ed. by H.P. Rickman).

Nietzsche, Use and Abuse of History; Beyond Good and Evil; Twilight of the Idols; Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method; Division of Labor in Society.

LeBon, The Crowd.

Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism.

Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.

 

Part II.

 

Novalis, Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings.

Schiller, William Tell.

Goethe, Faust.

Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Manzoni, The Betrothed.

Stendhal, Red and the Black.

Balzac, Peŕe Goriot; Eugénie Grandet.

Büchner, Danton’s Death; Woyzeck.

Dickens, Hard Times.

Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Sentimental Education.

Turgenev, Fathers and Sons.

Hugo, Les Misérables.

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov.

Hardy, Return of the Native.

Tolstoy, War and Peace; Anna Karenina.

Ibsen, A Doll’s House; The Ghosts.

Huysmans, Against the Grain.

Zola, Germinal.

Nineteenth Century. Part II (continued)

 

Maupassant, Selected Stories.

Hauptmann, Before Dawn; The Weavers.

Fontane, Effie Briest.

Strindberg, Miss Julie.

 

20th Century, Part I.

 

James, Varieties of Religious Experience.

Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis; Interpretation of Dreams; Moses and Monotheism; Future of an Illusion; Totem and Taboo; Civilization and Its Discontents.

Jung, The Portable Jung (ed. by Joseph Campbell; read it all).

Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

Adams, The Education of Henry Adams.

Bergson, Creative Evolution.

Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Essays in Sociology (Gerth & Mills edition).

Simmel, Selected Writings (ed. by D.N. Levine).

Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialism; Social Classes.

Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.

deSaussure, Course in General Linguistics.

Pareto, The Mind and Society.

Mosca, The Ruling Class.

Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia.

Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (abridged edition)

Michels, Political Parties.

Lenin, What is to be Done?; State and Revolution; Imperialism.

Sorel, Reflections on Violence.

Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.

Gramsci, Prison Notebooks.

Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism.

Husserl, Ideas.

Keynes, General Theory of Unemployment, Interest, and Money.

Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.

Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

Marcuse, One Dimensional Man.

Spengler, Decline of the West.

Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses.

Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals.

Toynbee, A Study of History (one volume ed.).

Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; Politics and the English Language.

Frazer, The Golden Bough (abridged).

Benedict, Patterns of Culture.

Piaget, The Moral Judgement of the Child.

Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind.

Cassirer, Essay on Man; The Myth of the State.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Heidegger, Being and Time.

 

20th Century. Part I (continued)

 

Four Existentialist Theologians (selections from Maritain, Berdyaev, Buber, and Tillich, ed. by Will Herberg).

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (ed. by Walter Kaufman).

Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison.

Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man.

Marcel, Philosophy of Existence.

Bultmann, Existence and Faith.

Tillich, The Courage to Be.

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being.

Russell, What I Believe.

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.

Merleau-Ponty, The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty (ed. by Alden L. Fisher).

Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man.

deBeauvoir, The Second Sex.

Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy.

Camus, The Rebel.

Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.

Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge; The Foucault Reader (ed. by Paul Rabinow).

Barthes, A Barthes Reader (ed. by Susan Sontag).

Rawls, Theory of Justice.

Ellul, The Betrayal of the West.

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

 

Part II.

 

Gide, The Immoralist.

Conrad, The Heart of Darkness.

Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard.

Shaw, Man and Superman.

Mann, Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (Vintage Books); The Magic Mountain; Doctor Faustus.

Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.

Eliot, The Waste Land; The Hollow Men.

Woolf, To the Lighthouse.

Lawrence, Sons and Lovers; Women in Love.

Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

Joyce, Ulysses.

Capek, R.U.R.

Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Forster, A Passage to India.

Kafka, The Trial; The Castle; The Metamorphosis.

Hesse, Steppenwolf; The Glass Bead Game.

Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Musil, The Man Without Qualities.

Huxley, Brave New World.

Malraux, Man’s Fate.

Silone, Bread and Wine.

Koestler, Darkness at Noon.

20th Century. Part II (continued)

 

Camus, The Stranger.

Sartre, No Exit.

Hochhuth, The Deputy.

Beckett, Waiting for Godot.

Osborne, Look Back in Anger.

 

Note: Before each section, read a Western Civ. Text for the period. Mortimer Chambers, et al., The Western Experience is good enough. For the modern era use R.R. Palmer, A History of Modern World (6th ed.). For science, use Anthony M. Alioto, A History of Western Science. The best history of philosophy by far is Wilhelm Windelband’s A History Philosophy (goes up to end of 19th century).

Ive read about 8 of those..lol And I read one book a week,. I would say that it would take about 2 years to read all those at 40 hrs of reading per week.

[Tcali]

Only if you are interested in old, stale political philosophy.

 

I'd recommend Thus Spoke Zarathustra over that.

I know I know--but the guy just learned to read. take that into consideration.

[BillsFan Trapped in Pats Land]

Dont forget Buffalo's own Lawrence Block....and James Lee Burke---maybe the best writer in America today.

 

Lehane is a gifted writer--and is/was at a very young age.

The only thing I ever got from Lawrence Block was an audio book, read by the author. A voice made for the printed word. I should read some of his stuff. Agree on James Lee Burke, although his AA preachy-ness can get annoying in the Robecheaux novels.