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Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had [2016]

177 entries: 147 monographical, 30 otherwise

Unranked—arranged topically

The revised and expanded second edition of this book includes annotated reading lists at the end of each of the six chapters of its second part, Reading: Jumping into the Great Conversation. Those six chapters correspond to six genre distinctions: novel; autobiography and memoir; history and politics; drama; poetry; and science. Bauer recommends particular editions and translations of each work; these are not included (unlike in the case of the Bloom and "Smart" lists) because, comparatively, a larger number of versions are noted; that is, for most entries, multiple editions are suggested among which the reader can take his pick. This editorial decision, not to make note of the various editions of works, only encounters difficulties when we come to the poetry section, where we see many non-monographical, indeterminate selections. Bauer includes, for all of these, lists of poems that her reader should "be sure to read"; unfortunately, these lists come after her recommendations of particular collected editions of the poet's work similar to the recommendations of certain editions of the novels, etc., listed in the other sections. Moreover, some of the monographical works in the poetry section, such as The Canterbury Tales, also have certain portions listed in the "be sure to read" category. In other words, if we were to include the individual poems that Bauer has highlighted, to be consistent we also need to create separate entries for these excerpts of monographical works—and make note of the various editions noted for each entry in the entire list. If the "be sure to read" poems had been listed above the volumes of collected works, we would only have to do the former. Either way, for the time being, we take the simpler approach. If the Greater Books project comes to entail documenting the contents of every anthology named by all of our listmakers, and other elaborations of the entries in the submaster list, we could justify going back to include at least the individuals poems that Bauer notes.

  1. Miguel de Cervantes

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


  3. John Bunyan

  4. The Pilgrim's Progress From This World to That Which Is to Come
    1678—English

  5. Jonathan Swift

  6. 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


  7. Jane Austen

  8. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  9. Charles Dickens

  10. Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress
    originally published under the pseudonym, Boz, serially Feb. 1837-April 1839 in Bentley's Miscellany—English

  11. Charlotte Brontë

  12. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
    originally published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell, 1847—English

  13. Nathaniel Hawthorne

  14. The Scarlet Letter
    1850—English

  15. Herman Melville

  16. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  17. Harriet Beecher Stowe

  18. Uncle Tom's Cabin
    1852—English

  19. Gustave Flaubert

  20. Madame Bovary
    originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  21. Fyodor Dostoevsky

  22. Prestuplénie i Nakazániye
    Crime and Punishment
    originally published serially Jan.-Dec. 1866 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian


  23. Leo Tolstoy

  24. Anna Karenina
    published in part serially 1873-7 in Rússkij Véstnik; in its entirety, 1877—Russian

  25. Thomas Hardy

  26. The Return of the Native
    originally published serially Jan.-Dec. 1878 in Belgravia, the Magazine of Fashion and Amusement—English

  27. Henry James

  28. The Portrait of a Lady
    originally published serially Oct. 1880-Nov. 1881 in Macmillan's and Nov. 1880-Dec. 1881 in the Atlantic Monthly—English

  29. Mark Twain

  30. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    1884—English

  31. Stephen Crane

  32. The Red Badge of Courage
    published in part serially Dec. 1894 in the Philadelphia Press; in its entirety, 1895—English

  33. Joseph Conrad

  34. Heart of Darkness
    originally published serially Feb.-Apr. 1899 in Blackwood's—English

  35. Edith Wharton

  36. The House of Mirth
    1905—English

  37. F Scott Fitzgerald

  38. The Great Gatsby
    1925—English

  39. Virginia Woolf

  40. Mrs. Dalloway
    published in part, Jul. 1923, as 'Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street', in the Dial; in its entirety, 1925—English

  41. Franz Kafka

  42. Der Prozess
    The Trial
    1925—German


  43. Richard Wright

  44. Native Son
    1940—English

  45. Albert Camus

  46. L'Étranger
    The Stranger
    1942—French


  47. George Orwell

  48. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    1949—English

  49. Ralph Ellison

  50. Invisible Man
    1952—English

  51. Saul Bellow

  52. Seize the Day
    1956—English

  53. Gabriel García Márquez

  54. Cien Anõs de Soledad
    One Hundred Years of Solitude
    1967—Spanish


  55. Italo Calvino

  56. Se una Notte d'Inverno un Viaggiatore
    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
    1979—Italian


  57. Toni Morrison

  58. Song of Solomon
    1977—English

  59. Don DeLillo

  60. White Noise
    1985—English

  61. A S Byatt

  62. Possession
    1990—English

  63. Cormac McCarthy

  64. The Road
    2006—English

  65. Augustine of Hippo

  66. Confessionum Libri Tredecim
    The Confessions of St. Augustine
    written 397-98—Latin


  67. Margery Kempe

  68. The Book of Margery Kempe
    written ca. 1430-8—English

  69. Michel de Montaigne

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


  71. Teresa of Ávila

  72. La Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús
    1588—Spanish

  73. René Descartes

  74. Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in Qua Dei Existentia et Animae Immortalitas Demonstratur
    Meditations on First Philosophy
    1641; French version, Meéeditations Metaphysiques, 1647—Latin


  75. John Bunyan

  76. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: or, A Brief and Faithful Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ, to his Poor Servant John Bunyan
    1666—English

  77. Mary Rowlandson

  78. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
    1682—English

  79. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  80. Les Confessions
    1782—French

  81. Benjamin Franklin

  82. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
    French translation published 1791 as Mémoires de la Vie Privée de Benjamin Franklin; first-third parts of the original English published 1818 as volume one of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin; original English published in its entirety, 1868—English

  83. Frederick Douglass

  84. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
    1845—English

  85. Henry David Thoreau

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

  87. Harriet Ann Jacobs

  88. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
    published in part serially in the New-York Tribune; in its entirety, 1861—English

  89. Booker T Washington

  90. Up From Slavery
    originally published serially 1900 in the Outlook—English

  91. Friedrich Nietzsche

  92. Ecce Homo: Wie Man Wird, Was Man Ist
    1908—German

  93. Adolf Hitler

  94. Mein Kampf
    originally published in two volumes, 1925 and 1926—German

  95. Mohandas K Gandhi

  96. The Story of My Experiments With the Truth
    originally published serially 1925-9 in Navijan—Gujarati

  97. Gertrude Stein

  98. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas
    published in part in the Atlantic Monthly; in its entirety, 1933—English

  99. Thomas Merton

  100. The Seven Storey Mountain
    1948—English

  101. C S Lewis

  102. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
    1955—English

  103. Alex Haley and Malcolm X

  104. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
    1965—English

  105. Maya Angelou

  106. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    1969—English

  107. May Sarton

  108. Journal of a Solitude
    1973—English

  109. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  110. Arhipelag GULAG
    The Gulag Archipelago
    1974-8—Russian


  111. Charles Colson

  112. Born Again
    1976—English

  113. Richard Rodriguez

  114. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
    1982—English

  115. Jill Conway

  116. The Road From Coorain
    1989—English

  117. Elie Wiesel

  118. Tous les Fleuves Vont à la Mer
    All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, Vol. I, 1928–1969
    1994—French


  119. Herodotus

  120. Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek


  121. Thucydides

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

  123. Plato

  124. Politeia
    The Republic
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek


  125. Plutarch

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


  127. Augustine of Hippo

  128. De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos
    City of God
    426—Latin


  129. Bede

  130. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
    written ca. 731—Latin

  131. Niccolò Machiavelli

  132. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian


  133. Thomas More
    Libellus Uere Aureus, nec Minus Salutaris Quam Festivus, de Optimo rei Publicae Statu Deque Nova Insula Utopia
    Utopia
    1516—Latin


    • John Locke

    Second Treatise [second part of Two Treatises of Government: In the Former, the False Principles, and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and His Followers, Are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter Is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government]
    complete work originally anonymously published 1689—English

    • David Hume

  134. The History of England [excerpted]
    fifth volume; complete work originally published in six volumes: fifth, 1754; sixth, 1756; third-fourth, 1759; first-second, 1761—English

  135. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  136. Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique
    The Social Contract
    1762—French


  137. Thomas Paine

  138. Common Sense; Addresed to the Inhabitants of America
    1776—English

  139. Edward Gibbon

  140. 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

  141. Mary Wollstonecraft

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

  143. Alexis de Tocqueville

  144. De la Démocratie en Amérique
    Democracy in America
    originally published in two volumes, 1835 and 1840—French


  145. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  146. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
    The Communist Manifesto
    1848—German


  147. Jacob Burckhardt

  148. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien
    The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy; 1860—German

  149. W E B Du Bois

  150. The Souls of Black Folk
    published in part serially in the Atlantic; in its entirety, 1903—English

  151. Max Weber

  152. Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus
    The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
    1905—German


  153. Lytton Strachey

  154. Queen Victoria
    1921—English

  155. George Orwell

  156. The Road to Wigan Pier
    1937—English

  157. Perry Miller

  158. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century
    1939—English

  159. John Kenneth Galbraith

  160. The Great Crash, 1929
    1955; revised 1961, 1972, 1988, 1997, and 2009—English

  161. Betty Friedan

  162. The Feminine Mystique
    1963—English

  163. Eugene Genovese

  164. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
    1974—English

  165. Barbara W Tuchman

  166. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
    1978—English

  167. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

  168. All the President's Men
    1974—English

  169. James M McPherson

  170. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
    1988; abridged version, 2003—English

  171. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

  172. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
    1990—English

  173. Francis Fukuyuma
    The End of History and the Last Man
    1992; based in part on 'The End of History?" published Summer 1989 in the National Interest—English

    • Aeschylus

  174. Agamemnon
    part of The Oresteia; 458 B C—Greek

  175. Sophocles

  176. Oidipous Tyrannos
    Oedipus Rex; Oedipus the King
    ca. 429 B C—Greek


  177. Euripides

  178. Mēdeia
    Medea
    431 B C—Greek


  179. Aristophanes

  180. Ornithes
    The Birds
    414 B C—Greek


  181. Aristotle

  182. Peri Poiêtikês
    De Poetica; Poetics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek


    --
  183. The Somonyng of Everyman

  184. late Fifteenth Century—English

  185. Christopher Marlowe

  186. The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
    1592—English

    William Shakespeare
  187. Richard III

  188. ca. 1592-7—English

  189. A Midsummer Night's Dream

  190. ca. 1595-1600—English

  191. Hamlet

  192. 1602—English

  193. Molière

  194. Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur
    1664—French

  195. William Congreve

  196. The Way of the World
    1700—English

  197. Oliver Goldsmith

  198. She Stoops to Conquer
    1773—English

  199. Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  200. School for Scandal
    1777—English

  201. Henrik Ibsen

  202. Et Dukkehjem
    A Doll's House
    1879—Norwegian


  203. Oscar Wilde

  204. The Importance of Being Earnest
    1895—English

  205. Anton Chekhov

  206. Višhnëvyj Sad
    The Cherry Orchard
    1904—Russian


  207. George Bernard Shaw

  208. Saint Joan
    1923—English

  209. T S Eliot

  210. Murder in the Cathedral
    1935—English

  211. Thornton Wilder

  212. Our Town
    1938—English

  213. Eugene O'Neill

  214. Long Day's Journey Into Night
    1956—English

  215. Jean-Paul Sartre

  216. Huis Clos
    No Exit
    1944—French


  217. Tennessee Williams

  218. A Streetcar Named Desire
    1947—English

  219. Arthur Miller

  220. Death of a Salesman
    1949—English

  221. Samuel Beckett

  222. En Attendant Godot
    Waiting for Godot
    1953—French


  223. Robert Bolt

  224. A Man for All Seasons
    television version, 1957; theatrical version, 1960—English

  225. Tom Stoppard

  226. Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead
    1966—English

  227. Peter Shaffer

  228. Equus
    1973—English

    --
  229. Sha Naqba Imuru

  230. The Epic of Gilgamesh; He Who Saw the Deep
    Eighteenth-Tenth centuries B C—Sumerian; Akkadian


    Homer
  231. Iliad

  232. ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  233. Odýsseia
    The Odyssey
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek


    • "Greek Lyricists"

  234. Selected works
    unspecified selection; Sappho, Pindar, and Solon are noted—Greek

  235. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

  236. Carmina
    Odes
    originally published in four volumes: first-third, 23 B C; fourth, 13 B C—Latin


    --
  237. Beowulf
    ca. Eighth-Eleventh centuries—English

    • Dante

  238. Inferno
    part of La Divina Commedia; written ca. 1308-21—Italian

    --
  239. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  240. probably the same author as Pearl (the "Gawain poet" or "Pearl poet"); late Fourteenth Century—English

  241. Geoffrey Chaucer

  242. Canterbury Tales
    1478—English

  243. William Shakespeare
    Sonnets
    1609; two sonnets originally published in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599—English

    • John Donne

    Poems
    early Seventeenth Century—English

    --
    • The Book of Psalms

  244. part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

  245. John Milton

  246. Paradise Lost
    1667; revised 1674—English

  247. William Blake
    Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul
    published in part, 1789, as Songs of Innocence; in its entirety, 1794—English

    • William Wordsworth

    Poems
    late Eighteenth-early Nineteenth centuries—English

    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Poems
    late Eighteenth-early Nineteenth centuries—English

    • John Keats

    Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—English

    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  248. Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

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

    • Emily Dickinson

    Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Christina Rossetti

    Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

    • William Butler Yeats

    Poems
    late Nineteenth-early Twentieth centuries—English

    • Paul Laurence Dunbar

    Poems
    late Nineteenth-early Twentieth centuries—English

    • Robert Frost

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • Carl Sandburg

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • William Carlos Williams

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • Ezra Pound

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • T S Eliot

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • Langston Hughes

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • W H Auden

    Poems
    Twentieth Century—English

    • Hippocrates

  250. Hippocratic Corpus [excerpted]
    On Airs, Waters, and Places; late Fifth-early Fourth centuries B C—Greek

  251. Aristotle

  252. Physics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek

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


    • Nicolaus Copernicus

  254. 'Commentariolus'
    written ca. 1514—Latin

  255. Francis Bacon

  256. Novum Organum Scientiarium
    1620—English

  257. Galileo

  258. Dialogo Sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo
    Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
    1632—Italian


  259. Robert Hooke
    Micrographica: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses With Observations and Inquiries Thereupon
    1665—English

    • Isaac Newton

    Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica [excerpted]
    The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
    Rules; General Scholium; complete work published 1687; revised 1713 and 1726—Latin


    • Georges Cuvier

    'Discours Préliminaire'
    part of Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles de Quadrupèdes, 1812—French

    • Charles Lyell

  260. Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation [excerpted]
    first volume; complete work originally published in three volumes: 1830, 1832, and 1833—English

  261. Charles Darwin
    On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
    1859—English

    • Gregor Mendel

  262. 'Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden'
    'Experiments on Plant Hybrids'
    originally published 1866 in Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Vereins Brünn; edited 1865 lecture—German


  263. Alfred Wegener

  264. Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane
    The Origin of Continents and Oceans
    1915; revised 1920, 1922, and 1929—German


  265. Albert Einstein

  266. Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Gemeinverständlich
    Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition
    1917; revised through fourteenth edition, 1922—German


  267. Max Planck

  268. Die Entstehung und Bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie
    Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory: Being the Nobel Prize Address Delivered Before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, 2 June, 1920
    1922—German


  269. Julian Huxley

  270. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis
    1942—English

  271. Erwin Schrödinger

  272. What Is Life?
    1944; edited 1943 lectures—English

  273. Rachel Carson

  274. Silent Spring
    originally published Jun. 1962 in the New Yorker—English

  275. Desmond Morris

  276. The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
    1967—English

  277. James D Watson

  278. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of D N A
    1968—English

  279. Robert Dawkins

  280. The Selfish Gene
    1976—English

  281. Steven Weinberg

  282. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe
    1977; expanded 1993—English

  283. E O Wilson

  284. On Human Nature
    1978—English

  285. James Lovelock

  286. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
    1979—English

  287. Stephen Jay Gould

  288. The Mismeasure of Man
    1981—English

  289. James Gleick

  290. Chaos: Making a New Science
    1987—English

  291. Stephen Hawking

  292. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
    1988; expanded 1996; abridged and edited version co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow entitled A Briefer History of Time published 2005—English

  293. Walter Alvarez

  294. T Rex and the Crater of Doom
    1997—English