Greater Books

*Lubbock* *Baldwin* *Eliot* *Powys* *Durant* *Invitation* *Classics* *Hundred* *France* *Downs* *Rexroth* *Zulli* *Read* *List* *Ward* *Magill* *Oriental* *Adler* *Good* *Learning* *Bloom* *Fadiman* *Foundation* *Kanigel* *SeymourSmith* *Trinity* *Utne* *Campbell* *Norway* *Dirda* *Great* *Guardian* *O'Hear* *Zane* *GlobeMail* *Smart* *Taylor* *Telegraph* *Van Doren* *Harvard* *Reynolds* *World* *Deposit* *Newman* *Graphic* *Recommended* *Educated*

Will Durant, One Hundred Best Books for an Education [1933]

166 entries: 101 monographical, 65 otherwise

Unranked—arranged topically

Will Durant's 'List of One Hundred Best Books for an Education: The Road to Freedom' was originally included as part of an article for the American Magazine, Dec. 1929, entitled 'One Hundred Best Books'. Apparently, the next year, the American Library Association published the article as a monograph of some sort (a "broadside" according to one reference book). It was either revised for that version or for its inclusion in Durant's 1933 collection of essays, Adventures in Genius, the essay now entitled 'One Hundred Best Books for an Education', the list itself bearing the inscription, 'The Road to Freedom: Being One Hundred Best Books for an Education'. That version added Diogenes Laërtius's Lives of the Philosophers and removed Sidney Bradshaw Fay's Origins of the World War, which, having been published in 1929, perhaps had been a rash choice on Durant's part. Yet another version, found in Have You Read 100 Great Books? (the list) includes Diogenes, but excludes Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Yet—yet!—another version, included in Durant's The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, a posthumous collection of essays that came out in 2002, includes both works. So was the '46 omission of Pickwick an error? As with the Lubbock and Rexroth lists, we make the last version made available during the author's life as our final version of the list, so that Fay is excluded, Pickwick remains.

  1. John Arthur Thomson

  2. The Outline of Science
    1922—English

  3. Logan Clendening
    The Human Body
    1927; revised 1930, 1937, and 1945—English

    • John Harvey Kellogg

  4. New Dietetics: A Guide to Scientific Feeding in Health and Disease [excerpted]
    pp. 1-531, 975-1011; complete work published 1927—English

  5. William James

  6. The Principles of Psychology
    1890—English

  7. H G Wells

  8. The Outline of History
    originally published serially 1919-20; revised by the author through 1937 edition; later revisions made by Raymond Postgate and G P Wells—English

  9. William Graham Sumner

  10. Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
    1907—English

  11. James George Frazer

  12. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
    originally entitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, published in two volumes, 1890; expanded and retitled 1900 to three volumes; expanded 1906-15 to 12 volumes; supplemental volume added for 1937 edition; distinct abridged versions, 1922, 1959, and 1994; Durant specifies the 1922 abridged edition—English

  13. James Harvey Robinson

  14. The Ordeal of Civilization
    1926—English

  15. James Henry Breasted
    The Conquest of Civilization
    1926—English

    --
    • The Wisdom of the Chinese: Their Philosophy in Sayings and Proverbs

    1920; edited by Brian Brown; selections from (Confucius) Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean, Great Learning; (Mencius) The Real Man; (Lao Tzu) Tao-teh-king, Wu-wei, Precepts and Sayings; Chuang Tzu; Yang Chu; Kang-hsi's Sacred Edict; Kuan-yi-wu; Yu Tse; Tse-chan; plus sections entitled The Poetry of the Chinese, Proverbs and Maxims, and Moral Maxims—Chinese

    --
    • The Book of Genesis

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Exodus

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Ruth

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Esther

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Job

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Psalms

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Proverbs

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Ecclesiastes

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Song of Songs

    Song of Solomon; Canticles
    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek


    --
    • The Book of Isaiah

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Amos

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Book of Micah

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Gospel According to Matthew

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Gospel According to Mark

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Gospel According to Luke

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • The Gospel According to John

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Acts of the Apostles

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to the Romans

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • First Epistle to the Corinthians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Second Epistle to the Corinthians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to the Galatians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to the Ephesians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to the Philippians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to the Colossians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • First Epistle to the Thessalonians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • First Epistle to Timothy

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Second Epistle to Timothy

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to Titus

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    --
    • Epistle to Philemon

    part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

    • Élie Faure

  16. Histoire de l'Art [excerpted]
    vol. I, chs. 1-8; vol. II, chs. 1-9; vol. III, chs. 4-6; vol. IV, chs. 1-8; complete work published in five volumes, 1919-21—French

  17. Henry Smith Williams

  18. A History of Science
    published in ten volumes, 1904-10—English

  19. J B Bury

  20. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great
    1900—English

  21. Herodotus

  22. Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek


  23. Thucydides

  24. History of the Peloponnesian War
    early Fifth Century B C—Greek

  25. Plutarch

  26. Bìoi Paràllēloi
    Parallel Lives; Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
    First Century—Greek


  27. Gilbert Murray
    A History of Ancient Greek Literature
    1897—English

    Homer
    • Iliad [excerpted]

    unspecified selections; ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

    • Odýsseia [excerpted]

  28. The Odyssey
    unspecified selections; ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek


  29. Aeschylus

  30. Promētheus Desmōtēs
    Prometheus Bound
    disputed authorship; Fifth Century B C—Greek


    Sophocles
  31. Oidipous Tyrannos

  32. Oedipus Rex; Oedipus the King
    ca. 429 B C—Greek


  33. Antigone
    ca. 441 B C—Greek

    • Euripides

  34. Plays
    late Fifth Century B C—Greek

  35. Diogenes Laërtius
    Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
    Third Century—Greek

    Plato
    • Dialogues

  36. early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  37. Apologia Socratis

  38. The Apology
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek


  39. Phaedo
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

    • Politeia [excerpted]

  40. The Republic
    sections 327-32, 336-77, 384-85, 392-426, 433-35, 481-3, 512-20, 572-95; early Fourth Century B C—Greek


    Aristotle
  41. Ethika Nikomacheia

  42. Nicomachean Ethics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek


  43. Politik

  44. Politics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek


  45. Titus Lucretius Carus
    De Rerum Natura
    On the Nature of Things
    First Century B C—Latin


    • Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

  46. Aeneid [excerpted]
    unspecified selections; First Century B C—Latin

  47. Marcus Aurelius

  48. Ta Eis Heauton
    Meditations
    written 161-80—Greek


  49. Edward Gibbon

  50. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
    originally published in six volumes: first, 1776; second-third, 1781; fourth-sixth, 1788—English

  51. Omar Khayyam

  52. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
    ca. Eleventh-Twelfth centuries; compiled by Edward FitzGerald in five editions, 1859, 1868, 1872, 1879, and 1889—Persian

  53. George Moore

  54. Héloïse and Abélard
    1921—English

  55. Dante

  56. La Divina Commedia
    The Divine Comedy
    originally entitled La Commedia; written ca. 1308-21—Italian


  57. Hippolyte Taine
    Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise
    1863; revised 1866—French

    • Geoffrey Chaucer

  58. Canterbury Tales [excerpted]
    unspecified selections; 1478—English

  59. Henry Adams

  60. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
    1913—English

  61. Cecil Gray

  62. The History of Music
    1928—English

  63. John Addington Symonds

  64. Renaissance in Italy
    originally published in seven volumes, 1875-86—English

  65. Benvenuto Cellini

  66. Vita di Benvenuto di Maestro Giovanni Cellini Fiorentino, Scritta, per Lui Medesimo, in Firenze
    Autobiography
    written 1558-62—Italian


  67. Giorgio Vasari
    Le Vite de' Più Eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, e Architettori da Cimabue Insino a' Tempi Nostri
    The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; The Lives of the Artists
    1550; expanded 1568—Italian


    • Harald Høffding

  68. Den Nyere Filosofis Historie [excerpted]
    A History of Modern Philosophy
    sections on Bruno, Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and Leibnitz; complete work published in two volumes, 1894 and 1895—English


  69. Niccolò Machiavelli

  70. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian


  71. Preserved Smith
    The Age of the Reformation
    1920—English

    • Émile Faguet

  72. Histoire de la Littérature Française [excerpted]
    A Literary History of France
    sections on the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth centuries; complete work published 1900—French


  73. François Rabelais

  74. La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel
    originally published in five volumes: Les Horribles et Épouvantables Faits et Prouesses du Très Renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, Fils du Grand Géant Gargantua, 1532; La Vie Très Horrifique du Grand Gargantua, Père de Pantagruel, 1534; Le Tiers Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1546; Le Quart Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1552; Le Cinquiesme et Dernier Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1564—French

  75. Michel de Montaigne

  76. Les Essais
    Essays
    originally published in three volumes: 1580, 1588, and 1595—French


  77. Miguel de Cervantes
    El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
    Don Quixote
    originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615—Spanish


    William Shakespeare
    • Plays

  78. late Sixteenth-early Seventeenth centuries—English

  79. Hamlet

  80. 1602—English

  81. King Lear

  82. 1606—English

  83. Macbeth

  84. ca. 1607—English

  85. Othello

  86. ca. 1604—English

  87. Romeo and Juliet

  88. ca. 1591-97—English

  89. Julius Caesar

  90. 1599—English

  91. The First Part of Henry IV

  92. 1597—English

  93. The Second Part of Henry IV

  94. 1600—English

  95. The Merchant of Venice

  96. ca. 1596-98—English

  97. As You Like It

  98. 1603—English

  99. A Midsummer Night's Dream

  100. ca. 1595-1600—English

  101. Timon of Athens

  102. written ca. 1607—English

  103. The Tempest

  104. 1611—English

  105. François de la Rochefoucauld
    Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales
    originally anonymously published 1665—French

    • Molière

  106. Plays
    Seventeenth Century—French

  107. Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur

  108. 1664—French

  109. L'Avare ou L'École du Mensonge

  110. The Miser
    1668—French


  111. Le Misanthrope ou l'Atrabilaire Amoureux

  112. The Misanthrope
    1666—French


  113. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

  114. 1670—French

  115. Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre

  116. 1660—French

  117. Francis Bacon
    Essays: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed
    1597; expanded 1612; expanded and retitled Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, 1625—English

    John Milton
    • 'Lycidas'

    originally published in Justa Edouardo King Naufrago, 1638; revised for inclusion in Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, 1645—English

    • 'L'Allegro'

    originally published in Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, 1645—English

    • 'Il Penseroso'

    originally published in Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, 1645—English

    • Sonnets

  118. Seventeenth Century—English

  119. Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England
    1644—English

    • Paradise Lost [excerpted]

  120. unspecified selections; complete work published 1667; revised 1674—English

  121. Thomas Hobbes

  122. Leviathan or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
    1651—English

    Baruch Spinoza
  123. Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata

  124. Ethics
    1677—Latin


  125. Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
    1677—Latin

    • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

    Portraits of the Eighteenth Century
    1905; English translations of excerpts from Causeries du Lundi, Portraits de Femmes, and Portraits Littéraires—French

    • Voltaire

  126. Selected works
    Eighteenth Century—French

  127. Candide, ou L'Optimisme

  128. 1759—French

  129. Zadig

  130. 1747—French

  131. Traité sur la Tolérance
    1763—French

    • 'Histoire'

  132. part of the eighth volume of Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, 1765—French

  133. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  134. Les Confessions
    1782—French

  135. Hippolyte Taine

  136. Les Origines de la France Contemporaine
    originally published in five volumes: L'Ancien Régime, 1875; La Révolution: I - L'Anarchie, 1878; La Révolution: II - La Conquête Jacobin, 1881; La Révolution: III - Le Gouvernement Révolutionnaire, 1883; La Régime Moderne: I - Napoleon, 1890; La Régime Moderne: II, 1893—French

  137. Thomas Carlyle

  138. The French Revolution
    1837; revised 1857—English

  139. James Boswell

  140. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
    1791—English

  141. Henry Fielding

  142. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
    1749—English

  143. Laurence Sterne

  144. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    originally published in nine volumes, 1759-67—English

  145. Jonathan Swift

  146. Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships
    Gulliver's Travels
    1726; revised 1735—English


  147. David Hume

  148. A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects
    first-seccond volumes, 1739; third volume, 1740—English

  149. Mary Wollstonecraft

  150. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
    1792—English

  151. Adam Smith

  152. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
    1776; revised through third edition, 1784—English

  153. Emil Ludwig

  154. Napoleon
    1925—German

  155. Georg Brandes

  156. Hovedstrømninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur
    Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature
    published in six volumes, 1872-90—Danish


  157. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  158. Faust
    originally published in two volumes: first, Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil, published in part, 1790; in its entirey, 1808; revised 1829; second, Faust. Der Tragödie Zweiter Teil, 1832—German

  159. Johann Peter Eckermann
    Gespräche mit Goethe
    originally published in three volumes: first and second, 1836; third, 1848—German

    • Heinrich Heine

    Poems
    Nineteenth Century—German

    • John Keats

    Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—English

    • Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—English

    • Lord Byron

  160. Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—English

  161. Honoré de Balzac
    Le Père Goriot
    Father Goriot
    originally published serially Dec. 1834-Feb. 1835 in Revue de Paris—French


    • Gustave Flaubert

  162. Selected works
    Nineteenth Century—French

  163. Madame Bovary

  164. originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French
  165. Salammbô

  166. 1862—French

  167. Victor Hugo

  168. Les Misérables
    1862—French

  169. Anatole France
    L'Île des Pingouins
    1908—French

    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  170. Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

  171. Charles Dickens

  172. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
    The Pickwick Papers
    originally published serially Apr. 1836-Nov. 1837 under the pseudonym, Boz—English


  173. William Makepeace Thackeray

  174. Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero
    originally published serially Jan. 1847-Jul. 1848—English

  175. Ivan Turgenev

  176. Otcy i Deti
    Fathers and Children; Fathers and Sons
    originally published Feb. 1862 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian


  177. Fyodor Dostoevsky

  178. Brat'â Karamazovy
    The Brothers Karamazov
    originally published serially 1880 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian


  179. Leo Tolstoy

  180. Voyna i Mir"
    War and Peace
    originally entitled 1805, published in part, 1865 and 1867; retitled and published in its entirety, 1869—Russian


  181. Henrik Ibsen

  182. Peer Gynt
    1867—Norwegian

  183. Charles Darwin

  184. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
    1871—English

  185. Henry Thomas Buckle
    Introduction to the History of Civilization in England
    1857—English

    • Arnold Schopenhauer

  186. Selected works
    Nineteenth Century—German

  187. Friedrich Nietzsche

  188. Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen
    Thus Spake Zarathustra
    originally published in four volumes, 1883-5—German


  189. Charles and Mary Beard
    The Rise of American Civilization
    1927—English

    Edgar Allan Poe
    • Poems

    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Stories

    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Ralph Waldo Emerson

  190. Essays
    Nineteenth Century—English

  191. Henry David Thoreau

  192. Walden; or, Life in the Woods
    1854—English

  193. Walt Whitman
    Leaves of Grass
    1855; expanded and revised through ninth edition, 1892—English

    Abraham Lincoln
    • Speeches

    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Correspondence

  194. Nineteenth Century—English

  195. Romain Rolland
    Jean Christophe
    published in ten volumes: L'Aube, 1904; Le Matin, 1904; L'Adolescent, 1904; La Révolte, 1905; La Foir sur la Place, 1908; Antoinette, 1908; Dans la Maison, 1908; Les Amies, 1910; Le Buisson Ardent, 1911; La Nouvelle Journée, 1912—French

    • Havelock Ellis

  196. Studies in the Psychology of Sex [excerpted]
    first-third and sixth volumes; complete work published in seven volumes, 1897-1928—English

  197. Henry Adams

  198. The Education of Henry Adams
    1918—English

  199. Henri Bergson

  200. L'Evolution Créatrice
    1907—French

  201. Oswald Spengler

  202. Der Untergang des Abendlandes
    The Decline of the West
    published in two volumes, 1918 and 1923; first volume revised 1922—German