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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

  2. Henry James

    3. 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

  3. William Faulkner

    4. As I Lay Dying
    1930—English

  4. Emily Brontë

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

  5. Rudyard Kipling

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

  6. Lewis Carroll

    7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    1865—English

  7. Lawrence Durrell

    8. Justine
    1957—English

  8. Charles Dickens

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

  9. Jane Austen

    10. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  10. E M Forster

    11. A Passage to India
    1924—English

  11. Willa Cather

    12. My Ántonia
    1918—English

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

    • Dorothy Parker

    13. 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

  13. Niccolò Machiavelli

    14. Il Principe
    The Prince
    1532—Italian

  14. Ambrose Bierce

    15. 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

  15. Adolf Hitler

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

  16. Émile Zola

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

  17. John Reed

    18. Ten Days That Shook the World
    1919—English

  18. Richard Wright

    19. Native Son
    1940—English

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

    • Plato

    20. Dialogues
    early Fourth Century B C—Greek

  20. Adam Smith

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

  21. Thomas Robert Malthus

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

  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. Charles Darwin

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

  24. Herodotus
    Historiē
    History
    Fifth Century B C—Greek

    • Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; James Madison

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

  25. Cornelius Tacitus

    26. Annales
    written First Century—Latin

  26. Thucydides

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

  27. Alexis de Tocqueville

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

  28. Frederick Lewis Allen

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

  29. Paul de Kruif
    Microbe Hunters
    1926—English

    • Marcus Tullius Cicero

    30. Selected works
    First Century B C—Latin

  30. Margaret Mead

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

  31. Henry Beston

    32. The Outermost House
    1928—English

  32. Francis F Beirne

    33. The Amiable Baltimoreans
    1951—English

  33. Aaron Copland

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

  34. C W Ceram

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

  35. Hans Selye

    36. The Stress of Life
    1956—English

  36. Edith Hamilton

    37. The Greek Way
    1930—English

  37. Daniel Defoe

    38. 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

  38. Aldous Huxley

    39. The Doors of Perception
    1954—English

  39. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    40. Die Wahlverwandtschaften
    Elective Affinities
    1809—German

  40. George Orwell

    41. Homage to Catalonia
    1938—English

  41. Sigmund Freud

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

  42. Sinclair Lewis

    43. Arrowsmith
    1925—English

  43. Mark Twain

    44. Roughing It
    1872—English

  44. Arthur Conan Doyle

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

  45. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    46. The Song of Hiawatha
    1855—English

  46. Abraham Cahan

    47. The Rise of David Levinsky
    1917—English

  47. Joseph Hergesheimer

    48. Java Head
    1918—English

  48. R Austin Freeman

    49. Mr. Pottermack's Oversight
    1930—English

  49. John Hersey

    50. A Bell for Adano
    1944—English

  50. Ray Bradbury

    51. 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

  51. Laura Z Hobson

    52. Gentleman's Agreement
    1947—English

  52. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

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

  53. Giorgio Vasari

    54. 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

  54. John Ruskin

    55. The Seven Lamps of Architecture
    1849—English

  55. Kenneth Clark

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

  56. William Strunk, Jr.

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

  57. Virginia Woolf

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

  58. H L Mencken

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

  59. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

    60. Le Petit Prince
    1943—French

  60. Henry Adams

    61. The Education of Henry Adams
    1918—English

  61. Edwin S Abbott

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

  62. Zora Neale Hurston

    63. Their Eyes Were Watching God
    1937—English

  63. G H Hardy

    64. A Mathematician's Apology
    1940—English

  64. Isadora Duncan

    65. My Life
    1928—English

  65. Thomas S Kuhn

    66. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    1962—English

    --
  66. Sha Naqba Imuru

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

  67. Augustine of Hippo

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

  68. Gustav Meyrink

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

  69. W Somerset Maugham

    70. The Razor's Edge
    1944—English

  70. Thomas Merton

    71. The Seven Storey Mountain
    1948—English

  71. John Gunther
    Death Be Not Proud
    1949—English

    --
    • Ecclesiastes

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

  72. James Hilton
    Lost Horizon
    1933—English

    • Vyasa

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

  73. Elie Wiesel

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

  74. William James

    75. 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