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Robert Kanigel, Vintage Reading: From Plato to Bradbury: A Personal Tour of Some of the World's Best Books [1998]

80 entries: 74 monographical, 6 otherwise

Unranked—arranged topically

Kanigel's book, published in 1998 by Bancroft Press, is divided into thematic sections. These are as follows: 'On Everyone's List of Literary Classics' (nos. 1-12); 'Books on Many a List for Burning: Heretics, Subversives, Demagogues' (Dorothy Parker-no. 18); 'Books That Shaped the Western World' (nos. 19-27); 'Making Hard Work Easy: The Great Popularizers' (nos. 28-36); 'Not Robinson Crusoe, Not Brave New World: Lesser Known Classics' (nos. 37-43); 'Lighter Fare: Good Reads, Best Sellers (nos. 44-51); '"But I Know What I Like": On Aesthetics and Style' (nos. 52-56); 'One-of-a-Kinds' (nos. 57-65); 'The Realm of the Spirit' (nos. 66-74)

  1. Thomas Wolfe

  2. Look Homeward, Angel
    1929—English

  3. Henry James

  4. 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

  5. William Faulkner

  6. As I Lay Dying
    1930—English

  7. Emily Brontë

  8. Wuthering Heights
    originally published 1847 under the pseudonym, Ellis Bell; revised 1850—English

  9. Rudyard Kipling

  10. Kim
    originally published serially Dec. 1900-Oct. 1901 in McClure's and Jan. 1901-Oct. 1901 in Cassell's—English

  11. Lewis Carroll

  12. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    1865—English

  13. Lawrence Durrell

  14. Justine
    1957—English

  15. Charles Dickens

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

  17. Jane Austen

  18. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  19. E M Forster

  20. A Passage to India
    1924—English

  21. Willa Cather

  22. My Ántonia
    1918—English

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

    • Dorothy Parker

  24. Here Lies: The Collected Stories
    1939; stories originally published in the New Yorker and other periodicals, and previously collected in Laments for the Living, 1930, and After Such Pleasures..., 1933—English

  25. Niccolò Machiavelli

  26. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian


  27. Ambrose Bierce

  28. The Devil's Dictionary
    published in part serially in the News Letter, the Argonaut, the Wasp, and the Examiner; published in its entirety in two parts: 1906, entitled The Cynic's Word Book; and 1911, entitled The Devil's Dictionary, as part of volume 7 of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce; expanded 1967—English

  29. Adolf Hitler

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

  31. Émile Zola

  32. Nana
    originally published serially 1879-80 in La Voltaire—French

  33. John Reed

  34. Ten Days That Shook the World
    1919—English

  35. Richard Wright

  36. Native Son
    1940—English

  37. Michel de Montaigne
    Les Essais
    Essays
    originally published in three volumes: 1580, 1588, and 1595—French


    • Plato

  38. Dialogues
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  39. Adam Smith

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

  41. Thomas Robert Malthus

  42. An Essay on the Principle of Population
    originally anonymously published 1798; revised and published under the author's name, 1803—English

  43. Edward Gibbon

  44. 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

  45. Charles Darwin

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

  47. Herodotus
    Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek


    • Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; James Madison

  48. The Federalist Papers
    originally published 1787-1788 in the Independent Journal, the New-York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser—English

  49. Cornelius Tacitus

  50. Annales
    written First Century—Latin

  51. Thucydides

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

  53. Alexis de Tocqueville

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


  55. Frederick Lewis Allen

  56. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s
    1931—English

  57. Paul de Kruif
    Microbe Hunters
    1926—English

    • Marcus Tullius Cicero

  58. Selected works
    First Century B C—Latin

  59. Margaret Mead

  60. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization
    1928—English

  61. Henry Beston

  62. The Outermost House
    1928—English

  63. Francis F Beirne

  64. The Amiable Baltimoreans
    1951—English

  65. Aaron Copland

  66. What to Listen for in Music
    1939; edited lectures—English

  67. C W Ceram

  68. Götter, Gräber und Gelehrte
    Gods, Graves, and Scholars
    1949—German


  69. Hans Selye

  70. The Stress of Life
    1956—English

  71. Edith Hamilton

  72. The Greek Way
    1930—English

  73. Daniel Defoe

  74. A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials, of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public and Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665
    originally anonymously published 1722—English

  75. Aldous Huxley

  76. The Doors of Perception
    1954—English

  77. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  78. Die Wahlverwandtschaften
    Elective Affinities
    1809—German


  79. George Orwell

  80. Homage to Catalonia
    1938—English

  81. Sigmund Freud

  82. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur
    Civilization and Its Discontents
    1930—German


  83. Sinclair Lewis

  84. Arrowsmith
    1925—English

  85. Mark Twain

  86. Roughing It
    1872—English

  87. Arthur Conan Doyle

  88. A Study in Scarlet
    originally published 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual—English

  89. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  90. The Song of Hiawatha
    1855—English

  91. Abraham Cahan

  92. The Rise of David Levinsky
    1917—English

  93. Joseph Hergesheimer

  94. Java Head
    1918—English

  95. R Austin Freeman

  96. Mr. Pottermack's Oversight
    1930—English

  97. John Hersey

  98. A Bell for Adano
    1944—English

  99. Ray Bradbury

  100. The Martian Chronicles
    1950; stories originally published in varied periodicals: Planet Stories, Maclean's, the Arkham Sampler, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Imagination, Weird Tales, Other Worlds, Super Science Stories, Charm, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; expanded U K edition, entitled Silver Locusts, published 1951; expanded 1974; revised 1997—English

  101. Laura Z Hobson

  102. Gentleman's Agreement
    1947—English

  103. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  104. De Architectura
    Ten Books on Architecture
    written ca. 15 B C—Latin


  105. Giorgio Vasari

  106. 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
    1550; expanded 1568—Italian


  107. John Ruskin

  108. The Seven Lamps of Architecture
    1849—English

  109. Kenneth Clark

  110. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
    1956; edited 1953 lectures—English

  111. William Strunk, Jr.

  112. The Elements of Style
    1919; revised 1935, as The Elements and Practice of Composition; revised and expanded 1959 by E B White—English

  113. Virginia Woolf

  114. A Room of One's Own
    1929—English

  115. H L Mencken

  116. The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States
    1919—English

  117. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  118. Le Petit Prince
    1943—French

  119. Henry Adams

  120. The Education of Henry Adams
    1918—English

  121. Edwin S Abbott

  122. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
    originally published under the pseudonym, A Square, 1884—English

  123. Zora Neale Hurston

  124. Their Eyes Were Watching God
    1937—English

  125. G H Hardy

  126. A Mathematician's Apology
    1940—English

  127. Isadora Duncan

  128. My Life
    1928—English

  129. Thomas S Kuhn

  130. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    1962—English

    --
  131. Sha Naqba Imuru

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


  133. Augustine of Hippo

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


  135. Gustav Meyrink

  136. Der Golem
    originally published serially 1913-14 in Die Weissen Blätter—German

  137. W Somerset Maugham

  138. The Razor's Edge
    1944—English

  139. Thomas Merton

  140. The Seven Storey Mountain
    1948—English

  141. John Gunther
    Death Be Not Proud
    1949—English

    --
    • Ecclesiastes

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

  143. James Hilton
    Lost Horizon
    1933—English

    • Vyasa

  144. Bhagavad Gita
    part of the Mahabharata; ca. Ninth Century B C-Fourth Century—Sanskrit

  145. Elie Wiesel

  146. Un di Velt Hot Geshvign
    1954; abridged French translation, entitled La Nuit, published 1958; alternate abridged version, in English, entitled Night, published 1960—Yiddish

  147. William James

  148. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902
    1902; edited lectures—English