The Great Books Reader

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

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Book, 29 Books

"In this volume you will be guided by esteemed professors and writers who have selected excerpts from the most important books in Western Civilization. A brief essay illuminates each excerpt and puts the work in context. Take your education to the next level by letting some of the best thinkers of today walk you through the most influential books in history."

This list was originally published in 2011 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
1528 The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius 524 Roman Latin
653 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
654 The Praise of Folly Erasmus 1511 Dutch Latin
3497 Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin 1536 French Latin
1284 The Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser 1590 British English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
3226 Much Ado about Nothing William Shakespeare 1600 British English
1030 Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes 1641 French Latin
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
1327 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
952 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
1018 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton 1687 British Latin
8579 John Wesley's Sermons Albert C. Outler 1991 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
1539 On the Genealogy of Morality Friedrich Nietzsche 1887 German German
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English