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

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

    • John Harvey Kellogg

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

  3. William James

    4. The Principles of Psychology
    1890—English

  4. H G Wells

    5. 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

  5. William Graham Sumner

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

  6. James George Frazer

    7. 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

  7. James Harvey Robinson

    8. The Ordeal of Civilization
    1926—English

  8. 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

    9. 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

  9. Henry Smith Williams

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

  10. J B Bury

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

  11. Herodotus

    12. Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek

  12. Thucydides

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

  13. Plutarch

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

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

    Homer
    • Iliad [excerpted]

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

    • Odýsseia [excerpted]

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

  15. Aeschylus

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

    Sophocles
  16. Oidipous Tyrannos

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

  17. Antigone
    ca. 441 B C—Greek

    • Euripides

    18. Plays
    late Fifth Century B C—Greek

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

    Plato
    • Dialogues

    19. early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  19. Apologia Socratis

    20. The Apology
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  20. Phaedo
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

    • Politeia [excerpted]

    21. 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
  21. Ethika Nikomacheia

    22. Nicomachean Ethics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek

  22. Politik

    23. Politics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek

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

    • Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

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

  24. Marcus Aurelius

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

  25. Edward Gibbon

    26. 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

  26. Omar Khayyam

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

  27. George Moore

    28. Héloïse and Abélard
    1921—English

  28. Dante

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

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

    • Geoffrey Chaucer

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

  30. Henry Adams

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

  31. Cecil Gray

    32. The History of Music
    1928—English

  32. John Addington Symonds

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

  33. Benvenuto Cellini

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

  34. 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

    35. 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

  35. Niccolò Machiavelli

    36. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian

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

    • Émile Faguet

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

  37. François Rabelais

    38. 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

  38. Michel de Montaigne

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

  39. 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

    40. late Sixteenth-early Seventeenth centuries—English

  40. Hamlet

    41. 1602—English

  41. King Lear

    42. 1606—English

  42. Macbeth

    43. ca. 1607—English

  43. Othello

    44. ca. 1604—English

  44. Romeo and Juliet

    45. ca. 1591-97—English

  45. Julius Caesar

    46. 1599—English

  46. The First Part of Henry IV

    47. 1597—English

  47. The Second Part of Henry IV

    48. 1600—English

  48. The Merchant of Venice

    49. ca. 1596-98—English

  49. As You Like It

    50. 1603—English

  50. A Midsummer Night's Dream

    51. ca. 1595-1600—English

  51. Timon of Athens

    52. written ca. 1607—English

  52. The Tempest

    53. 1611—English

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

    • Molière

    54. Plays
    Seventeenth Century—French

  54. Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur

    55. 1664—French

  55. L'Avare ou L'École du Mensonge

    56. The Miser
    1668—French

  56. Le Misanthrope ou l'Atrabilaire Amoureux

    57. The Misanthrope
    1666—French

  57. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

    58. 1670—French

  58. Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre

    59. 1660—French

  59. 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

    60. Seventeenth Century—English

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

    • Paradise Lost [excerpted]

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

  61. Thomas Hobbes

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

    Baruch Spinoza
  62. Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata

    63. Ethics
    1677—Latin

  63. 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

    64. Selected works
    Eighteenth Century—French

  64. Candide, ou L'Optimisme

    65. 1759—French

  65. Zadig

    66. 1747—French

  66. Traité sur la Tolérance
    1763—French

    • 'Histoire'

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

  67. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    68. Les Confessions
    1782—French

  68. Hippolyte Taine

    69. 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

  69. Thomas Carlyle

    70. The French Revolution
    1837; revised 1857—English

  70. James Boswell

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

  71. Henry Fielding

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

  72. Laurence Sterne

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

  73. Jonathan Swift

    74. 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

  74. David Hume

    75. 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

  75. Mary Wollstonecraft

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

  76. Adam Smith

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

  77. Emil Ludwig

    78. Napoleon
    1925—German

  78. Georg Brandes

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

  79. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    80. 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

  80. 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

    81. Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—English

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

    • Gustave Flaubert

    82. Selected works
    Nineteenth Century—French

  82. Madame Bovary

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

    84. 1862—French

  84. Victor Hugo

    85. Les Misérables
    1862—French

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

    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    86. Poems
    Nineteenth Century—English

  86. Charles Dickens

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

  87. William Makepeace Thackeray

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

  88. Ivan Turgenev

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

  89. Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

  90. Leo Tolstoy

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

  91. Henrik Ibsen

    92. Peer Gynt
    1867—Norwegian

  92. Charles Darwin

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

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

    • Arnold Schopenhauer

    94. Selected works
    Nineteenth Century—German

  94. Friedrich Nietzsche

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

  95. 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

    96. Essays
    Nineteenth Century—English

  96. Henry David Thoreau

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

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

    Abraham Lincoln
    • Speeches

    Nineteenth Century—English

    • Correspondence

    98. Nineteenth Century—English

  98. 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

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

  99. Henry Adams

    100. The Education of Henry Adams
    1918—English

  100. Henri Bergson

    101. L'Evolution Créatrice
    1907—French

  101. Oswald Spengler

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