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*

Huntington Cairns, Allen Tate, and Mark Van Doren, Invitation to Learning [1941]; The New Invitation to Learning [1944]

59 entries: 49 monographical, 10 otherwise

Unranked—arranged topically

Invitation to Learning [1941] and The New Invitation to Learning [1944] consist of transcripts of episodes of the radio program, Invitation to Learning, which featured Huntington Cairns, Allen Tate, and Mark Van Doren discussing works of literature. Apparently the show continued on well past 1944, but only these two books offer lists that fit the criteria of this project. Two later books were confined to narrower subjects: Invitation to Learning: English and American Novels [1966] and The Invitation to Learning Reader on War and Peace [1960], both edited by George D. Crothers. Apparently at least the Novels book also featured transcripts. For at least a couple years in the early Fifties, Invitation to Learning was a periodical as well, again corresponding to the radio program; I do not know if it also simply featured transcripts.

  1. Aristotle

    2. Politik
    Politics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek

  2. Niccolò Machiavelli

    3. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian

  3. Plato

    4. Symposium
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  4. Aristotle

    5. Ethika Nikomacheia
    Nicomachean Ethics
    Fourth Century B C—Greek

  5. Michel de Montaigne

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

  6. Blaise Pascal

    7. Pensées
    Thoughts
    1669—French

  7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    8. Les Confessions
    1782—French

  8. John Stuart Mill

    9. Autobiography
    1873—English

  9. Henry Adams

    10. The Education of Henry Adams
    1918—English

  10. Daniel Defoe

    11. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
    1722—English

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

    • Marcel Proust

    12. Du Côté de Chez Swann
    Swann's Way
    1913; first of seven volumes of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu; complete work originally published in seven volumes, two of which originally published as two books each, 1913-27—French

  12. Aeschylus

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

  13. William Shakespeare

    14. Antony and Cleopatra
    ca. 1606-08—English

  14. Aristotle

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

  15. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

    16. Laokoon Oder Über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie
    Laocoon: or, The Limits of Poetry and Painting
    1766—German

  16. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
    originally published in two volumes, 1817—English

    • Matthew Arnold

    17. Essays in Criticism
    previously published but uncollected in book form; originally published in two volumes: First Series, 1865; Second Series, 1888—English

  17. Titus Lucretius Carus

    18. De Rerum Natura
    On the Nature of Things
    First Century B C—Latin

  18. Dante

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

  19. John Milton
    Paradise Lost
    1667; revised 1674—English

    --
    • The Book of Job

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

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

    • Leonardo da Vinci

    21. Notebooks
    late Fifteenth-early Sixteenth centuries—Italian

  21. Cornelius Tacitus

    22. Historiae
    written ca. 100-10—Latin

  22. Edward Gibbon

    23. 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

  23. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
    Vorlesungen Über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichtem
    Lectures on the Philosophy of History
    1837; edited 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831 lectures—German

    --
    • The Book of Psalms

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

  24. Aeschylus
    Oresteia
    The House of Atreus
    458 B C—Greek

    • Horace

    25. Poems
    First Century B C—Latin

  25. William Shakespeare

    26. Hamlet
    1602—English

  26. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    27. 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

  27. Henrik Ibsen

    28. Vildanden
    The Wild Duck
    1885—Norwegian

  28. René Descartes

    29. Discours de la Méthode Pour Bien Conduire sa Raison, et Chercher la Vérité dans les Sciences
    Discourse on the Method
    1637—French

  29. Baruch Spinoza

    30. Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata
    Ethics
    1677—Latin

  30. Friedrich Nietzsche
    Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel Einer Philosophie der Zukunft
    Beyond Good and Evil
    1886—German

    • Aesop

    31. Fables
    ca. late Seventh-early Sixth centuries B C—Greek

  31. Jean de la Fontaine

    32. Fables
    originally published in 12 volumes: first-sixth, 1668; seventh-eleventh, 1678; twelfth, 1694—French

  32. François Rabelais

    33. 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

  33. Miguel de Cervantes

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

  34. Voltaire

    35. Candide, ou L'Optimisme
    1759—French

  35. Henry Fielding

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

  36. Lewis Carroll

    37. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    1865—English

  37. Henry James

    38. The Turn of the Screw
    originally published in The Two Magics, with a second novella, Covering End, 1898—English

  38. Arthur Conan Doyle

    39. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    stories originally published serially Jul. 1891-Jun. 1892 in the Strand—English

  39. Herodotus

    40. Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek

  40. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (Lord Chesterfield)

    41. Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
    1774—English

  41. James Boswell
    The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
    1791—English

    • John James Audubon

    42. Delineations of American Scenery and Character
    fifty-nine essays originally published in the first-third volumes of Ornithological Biography, 1831-39—English

  42. William Hickling Prescott

    43. The History of the Conquest of Mexico
    1843—English

  43. Ulysses S Grant
    Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant
    1885—English

    • Demosthenes

    Speeches
    Fourth Century B C—English

    • Abraham Lincoln

    44. Speeches
    Nineteenth Century—English

  44. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

    45. De l'Esprit des Lois
    The Spirit of Laws
    originally anonymously published 1748—French

  45. Edmund Burke

    46. Reflections on the Revolution in France
    1790—English

  46. Thomas Paine

    47. The Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
    originally published in two volumes, 1791 and 1792—English

  47. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

  48. Thomas Robert Malthus

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

  49. Edward Bellamy

    50. Looking Backward, 2000-1887
    1888—English