A Very Claremont Christmas 2004 (Conservative scholars recommend their favorite books)

The Claremont Institute ^ | December 15, 2004

[Stoat]

A Very Claremont Christmas 2004

Christmas may come once a year, but a good book can be enjoyed all season long. We've invited some of our friends to recommend a few...

John C. Eastman
Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law
Director, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence

 

• Bringing Justice to the People: A Story of the Freedom-Based Public Interest Law Movement, edited by Lee Edwards traces this vital movement, which has won key cases on school choice, religious liberty, and racial preferences.

   

• Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas, by Ken Foskett is a fair biography of our leading conservative Justice on the Supreme Court, and the man who may succeed William Rehnquist.

 

* * *

Scott W. Johnson
Senior Vice President, TCF National Bank in Minneapolis
"The Big Trunk," Powerline Blog
 

I want to hear American singing! Unlike Walt Whitman, however, I need some help. These books have deepened my understanding of American popular music and enhanced my pleasure in listening to it. They are both pleasing in themselves and instructive in their field. Who could ask for anything more?

When Mark Steyn's British publisher commissioned a book on the history of musicals, I doubt that Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now is precisely what it had in mind. This eccentric book slices and dices the elements of Broadway musicals, recapitulating them with Steyn's characteristic learning and humor. Steyn observes in passing that "to recite the titles of the American song catalogue is to celebrate the American language," and then gives more than twenty examples—one of many cheers that Steyn sends up in the book. But his catcalls are also among the book's highlights.

In Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists, Professor Philip Furia brings his formidable skills as a literary critic to bear on the artistry of the American songbook's foremost lyricists. Professor Furia wears his learning lightly, but he deploys it to great effect. The book culminates in a vivid account of Johnny Mercer's composition of the words to "Midnight Sun" in 1955 while driving between Newport Beach and Hollywood listening to the original instrumental jazz version on his car radio.

Will Friedwald has written good books about and in collaboration with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. In Stardust Melodies: A Biography of America's 12 Most Popular Songs, Friedwald tells the story of the composition of songs including "As Time Goes By" and "Lush Life." Friedwald also digs into the recording history of each song, exploring the interpretations that successive artists have brought to their performance of the songs. One of Friedwald's criteria for selecting the songs is the existence of a multiplicity of interpretations, thus ruling out, for example, "Over the Rainbow." Friedwald's approach yields many surprises and pays big dividends.

Peter Guralnick may be the best writer ever to devote himself to American popular music. He has a gift for writing profiles and narrative as well as unfailing good taste in music. In his two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, he joins a scholar's mania for detail and accuracy to a fan's enthusiasm. The result is definitive. But Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, is my favorite of his books. In it Guralnick tells the history of soul music, taking a kind of sidelong glance at the civil rights era in America. The history is deeply affecting; Guralnick helps us not only to hear America singing, but to hear what it means. This book has echoed in my mind long after I first read it fifteen years ago.

 

* * *

Ken Masugi
Director, Center for Local Government
 

 

• In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, by Michelle Malkin. With the publication of this book, it no longer suffices to beg the question in national security arguments by asserting that such-and-such a policy would be like the internment of Japanese Americans. See here for more thoughts.

   

• From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, by Bernard Lewis. A diverse collection of essays from the master of Middle East studies. Helpful in my recent trip to Turkey.

   

• The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence, by Jeremy Rabkin. It's us against the world, and the world should be grateful.

   

• Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, by Allen C. Guelzo. A superb exposition of the principled statesmanship behind this prosaic document that changed America. See Peter Schramm's review in the Spring 2004 Claremont Review of Books.

   

• Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain, by Steven Greenhut. At last a book on how local government has become the most tyrannical element of the American polity. See my review in Local Liberty.

   

• Roman Catholic Political Philosophy, by James V. Schall, S.J. A masterful teacher and scholar reflects on the unity of reason and revelation. See my "review" of the book.

   

• Prester John, by John Buchan. Read this 1908 tale of South Africa together with Greenmantle (1916) for insight into the current Middle Eastern war by the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps. And finally, the model of all Westerns: Xenophon's Anabasis.

 

* * *

Daniel C. Palm
Associate Professor of Political Science, Azusa Pacific University
Project Coordinator, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership

 

• The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm , by Joseph Loconte. With this excellent collection of Christian writers from the 1930s and '40s, Joseph Loconte reminds us of a time when prominent Christian intellectuals—including Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr—were still assessing Hitler, Nazism, and debating a Christian response. Their lively discussion as offered here makes for fascinating reading, with obvious implications for our present contest with Baathists and radical Islam.

   

• The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Three cheers and a salute to Dover Press for keeping in print this classic and historically important book—first published in 1890—in a solid yet very affordable paperback edition. Mahan's influential work might be heavy going for some on your list, but this is must reading for the serious student of military history or American foreign affairs. Ditto for Dover's reprinting of a substantial collection of the strategist's writings, Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan.

   

• Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language, edited by Jack Lynch. Until the happy day that a publisher once again offers the complete text of this milestone dictionary that was contemporary to the American founding, we must make do with this nicely produced abridgement. A fine gift this would be for a student of history and politics, or anyone who simply appreciates English.

   

• The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare: 38 Fully Dramatized Plays. Professor Harry V. Jaffa brought to his students' attention the great value in listening to, rather than watching, a quality rendition of a Shakespeare play. This 98-CD collection (sold only as a complete set) brings us the whole of Shakespeare's dramatic works, unabridged, in a world-class production. At something less than $400 from online retailers it looks to this reviewer like a steal—38 unabridged plays, over 400 classically trained actors, a $3 million production. The perfect gift to consider for your local university or public library.

 

* * *

Bruce C. Sanborn
President, Upland & Marsh
Chairman, Claremont Institute Board of Directors

 

Richard Hannay's courage is intelligent and positively delightful. John Buchan entangles Hannay in a foreign scheme to undo Britain, and Buchan's novel is even better than Alfred Hitchcock's movie of it. Read Thirty-Nine Steps, and doubtless you will be moved to send the Claremont Institute a year-end contribution out of gratitude for the recommendation and to help in Claremont's intelligent and delightful fight to keep America from being undone.

Did I say fight? Some years ago Dr. Larry P. Arnn went from being president of the Claremont Institute to being president of Hillsdale College. He and Hillsdale are pitted against the contemporary notions of education the federal government and the bureaucracies of the Progressive administrative state try to impose on schools. Arnn wrote Learning & Liberty describing the clash. (Call the Hillsdale Press at 800-437-2268 to order a copy.) With noble simplicity, the book starts with America's founding thoughts on education and the measures America's founders took to promote decent schools in the territories and states, for instance under the Northwest Ordinance. Doubtless, gratitude will move you to send a contribution to Hillsdale—good, but remember: Claremont first.

Yale professor Donald Kagan's one volume Peloponnesian War is a direct, clear read, with helpful maps. (Kagan also has a more scholarly four volume account). Unlike Oliver Stone's Alexander, Kagan's work complements the ancient texts. Kagan helps satisfy a reader's desire to see what Athens, Sparta, and their generals, statesmen, and allies were up to, and what the huge motion of war is all about. Doubtless, you don't need me to tell you to avoid Oliver Stone's movie but did you know Stone has his narrator say Alexander was killed by his generals? It appears they were sick and tired of being dragged all over the world to help Stone's Alexander satisfy his gay and multicultural urges and get away from his mother and her Freudian fetish for snakes. If the generals didn't really kill Stone's Alexander, I believe the audience would have.

From Martin Gilbert's multi-volume biography of Winston Churchill, I found out the great statesman loved C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower books and the movies made from them. A&E has a new Hornblower production out. "My family loved the series, and in the case of my daughters, it didn't hurt that the actor playing Hornblower is so good looking," a friend told me. While making his way up the ranks of the British Navy, Horatio battles Napoleon. Each of Horatio's adventures includes a moral perfect for those who would be good sailors, citizens, and statesmen. No wonder Churchill liked Horatio. The A&E series is out in a DVD boxed set. Of course, I know movies are not books but I declare Hornblower in any form makes a terrific Christmas gift.

 

* * *

Thomas G. West
Professor of Politics, University of Dallas.
Senior Fellow, the Claremont Institute

 

In my line of work, we tend to read more old books than new. This will explain why 4 of my 5 recommendations were published before 1750.

 

• Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes (in the Hackett edition, which is the most readable), especially Part I. Prompted by my recent revisionist reading of Locke, I gave Hobbes a second chance and learned to my surprise that he is much more sensible than my Straussian training had prepared me for. Hobbes's unique achievements include his brilliant analysis of the problematic nature of happiness; the obstacles thereto; the special problems of pervasive human ignorance and of the useful yet often self-destructive concern for honor; and the inevitable tension between the need for "power" (the means to happiness) and the desirability of peace for the successful pursuit of happiness. In sum: Hobbes is much more oriented toward life, happiness, and pleasure, and much less preoccupied with death and privation, than he is often said to be.

   

• The Spirit of the Laws, by Montesquieu. This is a strange book, and it is very long. But it contains a most important lesson, for his time and ours. Montesquieu's most urgent concern seems to have been to warn his French countrymen that representative democracy, so powerfully celebrated in the widely admired Locke, was not for everyone. Montesquieu saw that the best hope for France, in the foreseeable future, was a reinvigorated but much limited monarchy. The French failed to heed his advice, with disastrous consequences. Montesquieu ought to be required reading for American politicians who dream of bringing democracy to the Middle East in the near future. I recommend listening to it on tape or Ipod while commuting, if you don't happen to have a spare week or two to lavish on it. (I received a tape of it for Christmas last year.)

   

• Don Quixote, by Cervantes. (Get the tape.) It starts out like "Dumb and Dumber," but after a while you realize that it is wonderful. It is a critique, in the spirit of the classics and of Locke, of the despotic temptation inherent in Christian politics, as well as a critique of the dangers of romantic love. The book implicitly recommends a more sober and even utilitarian approach to love, a more republican approach to politics, and a more law-based (instead of love-based) understanding of Christian duty. In one of the first scenes in the novel, Don Quixote demands that someone he meets at random affirm that Dulcinea (a lowly peasant whom the Don adores) is the most beautiful woman in the world. The man asks to see her picture first, so he can judge based on his own observation, but Don Quixote paraphrases the Bible: Faith in things unseen is more worthy. When the man refuses, the Don assaults him and would have killed him if he, Don Quixote, had not been beaten up first. Here are the roots of what Machiavelli called "pious cruelty," presented comically. The Don was very much to the taste of the American founders. John Adams used to carry a copy wherever he went when he was young. Don Quixote was Locke's favorite novel. His assessment: "There is another use of reading, which is for diversion, and delight. Such are poetical writings, especially dramatic, if they be free from profaneness, obscenity, and what corrupts good manners; for such pitch should not be handled. Of all the books of fiction, I know none that equals Cervantes's History of Don Quixote in usefulness, pleasantry, and a constant decorum; and indeed no writings can be pleasant which have not nature at the bottom, and are not drawn after her copy."

   

• Eros and Empire: Politics and Christianity in Don Quixote, by Henry Higuera. This book is very helpful in making sense of what is going on beneath the surface of Don Quixote. Higuera's very clever and insightful suggestions about the hidden meaning of the various stories is both convincing and entertaining—a rare combination in a scholarly book. I do wonder if Higuera overstates Cervantes's opposition to modern political philosophy and to Christianity. I would prefer to say that Cervantes points to the kind of sober politics advocated by the most thoughtful moderns, and also to the kind of moderate, non-bloody Christianity that became the consensus version of American Protestantism.

   

• The Religion of Protestants: A Safe Way to Salvation, by William Chillingworth. Those tempted to convert to Catholicism because of the supposed superiority of the Catholic theological tradition would do well to read Chillingworth's once famous classic. Judging by its printing history, The Religion of Protestants was a steady best-seller for over 200 years. The book is set up as a dialogue with a Catholic critic of Protestantism. In each chapter of the book, the Catholic critique is printed first; then Chillingworth follows with a powerful point-by-point refutation. All the major topics of the Catholic/Protestant debate, now mostly known only in superficial slogans, are covered. Chillingworth was raised an Anglican. He converted to Catholicism and studied for four years at the Catholic university of Douai in France. In spite of this study, or perhaps because of it, he converted back to the Church of England, in which he became a priest.

[Stoat]

If Freepers would like to add their own book recommendations (and the reasons why they recommend) to this thread, please feel free to do so :-)

[Jay777]

Here's a good book...The Holy Bible

[Stoat]

Thanks :-) I think that they're assuming that the Bible is already in everyone's collection.

[eleni121]

Thanks for this list...it will provide a nucleus for putting a list together for the library (where I teach) to purchase.

These books will nicely counterbalance the myriads of left wing extremist, gender bending, conservative bashing, pro homosexuality tomes that are proliferating all over the shelves in our colleges today.

[Stoat]

Readers may also be interested in this list, published by NR several years ago:

NR's List of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century

THE 100 BEST NON-FICTION
BOOKS OF THE CENTURY

Earlier this year, Random House announced that it would release a list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century. The publisher had enjoyed success (and controversy) with its 100 best novels; now it would do this. Here at National Review, we decided to get a jump on them by forming our own panel and offering our own list. Under the leadership of our reporter John J. Miller, we have done so. We have used a methodology that approaches the scientific. But-certainly beyond, say, the first 40 books-the fact of the books' presence on the list is far more important than their rankings. We offer a comment from a panelist after many of the books; but the panel overall, not the individual quoted, is responsible for the ranking. So, here is our list, for your enjoyment, mortification, and stimulation.

 

 

THE PANEL:

Richard Brookhiser, NR senior editor
David Brooks, senior editor of The Weekly Standard
Christopher Caldwell, senior writer at The Weekly Standard
Robert Conquest, historian
David Gelernter, writer and computer scientist
George Gilder, writer
Mary Ann Glendon, professor at Harvard Law School
Jeffrey Hart, NR senior editor
Mark Helprin, novelist
Arthur Herman, author of The Idea of Decline in Western History
John Keegan, military historian
Michael Kelly, editor of National Journal
Florence King, author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
Michael Lind, journalist and novelist
John Lukacs, historian
Adam Meyerson, vice president at the Heritage Foundation
Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things
John O'Sullivan, NR editor-at-large
Richard Pipes, historian
Abigail Thernstrom, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
Stephan Thernstrom, historian
James Q. Wilson, author of The Moral Sense.

 

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If you would like to purchase one of these classic books, simply click on the title and you'll be taken to Amazon.com.

 

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THE LIST:

1. The Second World War, Winston S. Churchill
Brookhiser: "The big story of the century, told by its major hero."

• Vol. 1, The Gathering Storm
• Vol. 2, Their Finest Hour
• Vol. 3, The Grand Alliance
• Vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate
• Vol. 5, Closing the Ring
• Vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy

2. The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Neuhaus: "Marked the absolute final turning point beyond which nobody could deny the evil of the Evil Empire."

3. Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
Herman: "Orwell's masterpiece-far superior to Animal Farm and 1984. No education in the meaning of the 20th century is complete without it."

4. The Road to Serfdom, F. A. von Hayek
Helprin: "Shatters the myth that the totalitarianisms 'of the Left' and 'of the Right' stem from differing impulses."

5. Collected Essays, George Orwell
King: "Every conservative's favorite liberal and every liberal's favorite conservative. This book has no enemies."

6. The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper
Herman: "The best work on political philosophy in the 20th century. Exposes totalitarianism's roots in Plato, Hegel, and Marx."

7. The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis
Brookhiser: "How modern philosophies drain meaning and the sacred from our lives."

8. Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset
Gilder: "Prophesied the 20th century's debauchery of democracy and science, the barbarism of the specialist, and the inevitable fatuity of public opinion. Explained the genius of capitalist elites."

9. The Constitution of Liberty, F. A. von Hayek
O'Sullivan: "A great re-statement for this century of classical liberalism by its greatest modern exponent."

10. Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman
 

11. Modern Times, Paul Johnson
Herman: "Huge impact outside the academy, dreaded and ignored inside it."

12. Rationalism in Politics, Michael Oakeshott
Herman: "Oakeshott is the 20th century's Edmund Burke."

13. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter
Caldwell: "Locus classicus for the observation that democratic capitalism undermines itself through its very success."

14. Economy and Society, Max Weber
Lind: "Weber made permanent contributions to the understanding of society with his discussions of comparative religion, bureaucracy, charisma, and the distinctions among status, class, and party."

15. The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
Caldwell: "Through Nazism and Stalinism, looks at almost every pernicious trend in the last century's politics with stunning subtlety."

16. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West
Kelly: "For its writing, not for its historical accuracy."

17. Sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson
Lind: "Darwin put humanity in its proper place in the animal kingdom. Wilson put human society there, too."

18. Centissimus Annus, Pope John Paul II
 

19. The Pursuit of the Millennium, Norman Cohn
Neuhaus: "The authoritative refutation of utopianism of the left, right, and points undetermined."

20. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Helprin: "An innocent's account of the greatest evil imaginable. The most powerful book of the century. Others may not agree. No matter, I cast my lot with this child."
Caldwell: "If one didn't know her fate, one might read it as the reflections of any girl. That one does know her fate makes this as close to a holy book as the century produced."

21. The Great Terror, Robert Conquest
Herman: "Documented for the first time the real record of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. A genuine monument of historical research and reconstruction, a true epic of evil."

22. Chronicles of Wasted Time, Malcolm Muggeridge
Gilder: "The best autobiography, Christian confession, and historic meditation of the century."

23. Relativity, Albert Einstein
Lind: "The most important physicist since Newton."

24. Witness, Whittaker Chambers
Caldwell: "Confession, history, potboiler-by a man who writes like the literary giant we would know him as, had not Communism got him first."

25. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn
 

26. Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
Neuhaus: "The most influential book of the most influential Christian apologist of the century."

27. The Quest for Community, Robert Nisbet
 

28. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.
Helprin: "The infinite riches of the world, presented with elegance, confidence, and economy."

29. Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell
 

30. The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton
Lukacs: "A great carillonade of Christian verities."

31. Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
O'Sullivan: "How to look at the Christian tradition with fresh eyes."

32. The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling
Hart: "The popular form of liberalism tends to simplify and caricature when it attempts moral aspiration-that is, it tends to 'Stalinism.'"

33. The Double Helix, James D. Watson
Herman: "Deeply hated by feminists because Watson dares to suggest that the male-female distinction originated in nature, in the DNA code itself."

34. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard Phillips Feynman
Gelernter: "Outside of art (or maybe not), physics is mankind's most beautiful achievement; these three volumes are probably the most beautiful ever written about physics."

35. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, Tom Wolfe
O'Sullivan: "Wolfe is our Juvenal."

36. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Albert Camus
 

37. The Unheavenly City, Edward C. Banfield
Neuhaus: "The volume that began the debunking of New Deal socialism and its public-policy consequences."

38. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
 

39. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
 

40. The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama
 

41. Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker
 

42. The Age of Reform, Richard Hofstadter
Herman: "The single best book on American history in this century, bar none."

43. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes
Hart: "Influential in suggesting that the business cycle can be modified by government investment and manipulation of tax rates."

44. God & Man at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr.
Gilder: "Still correct and prophetic. It defines the conservative revolt against socialism and atheism on campus and in the culture, and reconciles the alleged conflict between capitalist and religious conservatives."

45. Selected Essays, T. S. Eliot
Hart: "Shaped the literary taste of the mid-century."

46. Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver
 

47. The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs
 

48. The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
 

49. Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell
 

50. An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal
 

• An American Dilemma, Vol. 1
• An American Dilemma, Vol. 2

 

51. Three Case Histories, Sigmund Freud
Gelernter: "Beyond question Freud is history's most important philosopher of the mind, and he ranks alongside Eliot as the century's greatest literary critic. Modern intellectual life (left, right, and in-between) would be unthinkable without him."

52. The Struggle for Europe, Chester Wilmot
 

53. Main Currents in American Thought, Vernon Louis Parrington
King: "An immensely readable history of ideas and men. (Skip the fragmentary third volume-he died before finishing it.)"

54. The Waning of the Middle Ages, Johann Huzinga
Lukacs: "Probably the finest historian who lived in this century. "

55. Systematic Theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg
Neuhaus: "The best summary and reflection on Christianity's encounter with the Enlightenment project."

• Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
• Systematic Theology, Vol. 2
• Systematic Theology, Vol. 3

56. The Campaign of the Marne, Sewell Tyng
Keegan: "A forgotten American's masterly account of the First World War in the West."

57. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hart: "A terse summation of the analytic method of the analytic school in philosophy, and a heroic leap beyond it."

58. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard Lonergan
Glendon: "The Thomas Aquinas of the 20th century."

59. Being and Time, Martin Heidegger
Hart: "A seminal thinker, notwithstanding his disgraceful error of equating National Socialism with the experience of 'Being.'"

60. Disraeli, Robert Blake
Keegan: "Political biography as it should be written."

61. Democracy and Leadership, Irving Babbitt
King: "A conservative literary critic describes what happens when humanitarianism over takes humanism."

62. The Elements of Style, William Strunk & E. B. White
A. Thernstrom: "If only every writer would remember just one of Strunk & White's wonderful injunctions: 'Omit needless words.' Omit needless words."

63. The Machiavellians, James Burnham
O'Sullivan: "Burnham is the greatest political analyst of our century and this is his best book."

64. Reflections of a Russian Statesman, Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev
King: "The 'culture war' as seen by the tutor to the last two czars. A Russian Pat Buchanan."

65. The Hedgehog and the Fox, Isaiah Berlin
 

66. Roll, Jordan, Roll, Eugene D. Genovese
Neuhaus: "The best account of American slavery and the moral and cultural forces that undid it."

67. The ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound
Brookhiser: "An epitome of the aging aesthetic movement that will be forever known as modernism."

68. The Second World War, John Keegan
Hart: "A masterly history in a single volume."

69. The Making of Homeric Verse, Milman Parry
Lind: "Genuine discoveries in literary study are rare. Parry's discovery of the oral formulaic basis of the Homeric epics, the founding texts of Western literature, was one of them."

70. The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling, Angus Wilson
Keegan: "A life of a great author told through the transmutation of his experience into fictional form."

71. Scrutiny, F. R. Leavis
Hart: "Enormously important in education, especially in England. Leavis understood what one kind of 'living English' is."

72. The Edge of the Sword, Charles de Gaulle
Brookhiser: "A lesser figure than Churchill, but more philosophical (and hence, more problematic)."

73. R. E. Lee, Douglas Southall Freeman
Conquest: "The finest work on the Civil War."

74. Bureaucracy, Ludwig von Mises
 

75. The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
Neuhaus: "A classic conversion story of a modern urban sophisticate."

76. Balzac, Stefan Zweig
King: "On the joys of working one's self to death. The chapter 'Black Coffee' is a masterpiece of imaginative reconstruction."

77. The Good Society, Walter Lippmann
Gilder: "Written during the Great Depression. A corruscating defense of the morality of capitalism."

78. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Lind: "For all the excesses of the environmental movement, the realization that human technology can permanently damage the earth's environment marked a great advance in civilization. Carson's book, more than any other, publicized this message."

79. The Christian Tradition, Jaroslav Pelikan
Neuhaus: "The century's most comprehensive account of Christian teaching from the second century on."

80. Strange Defeat, Marc Bloch
Herman: "A great historian's personal account of the fall of France in 1940."

81. Looking Back, Norman Douglas
Conquest: "Fascinating memoirs of a remarkable writer."

82. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams
 

83. Poetry and the Age, Randall Jarrell
Caldwell: "The book for showing how 20th- century poets think, what their poetry does, and why it matters."

84. Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougemont
Brookhiser: "What has become of eros over the last seven centuries."

85. The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk
 

86. Wealth and Poverty, George Gilder
 

87. Battle Cry of Freedom, James M. McPherson
 

88. Henry James, Leon Edel
King: "All the James you want without having to read him."

89. Essays of E. B. White, E. B. White
Gelernter: "White is the apotheosis of the American liberal now spurned and detested by the Left (and the cultural mainstream). His mesmerized devotion to the objects of his affection-his family, the female sex, his farm, the English language, Manhattan, the sea, America, Maine, and freedom, in descending order-is movingly absolute."

90. Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
 

91. The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe
 

92. Darwin's Black Box, Michael J. Behe
Gilder: "Overthrows Darwin at the end of the 20th century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning."

93. The Civil War, Shelby Foote
 

94. The Way the World Works, Jude Wanniski
Gilder: "The best book on economics. Shows fatuity of still-dominant demand-side model, with its silly preoccupation with accounting trivia, like the federal budget and trade balance and savings rates, in an economy with $40 trillion or so in assets that rise and fall weekly by trillions."

95. To the Finland Station, Edmund Wilson
Herman: "The best single book on Karl Marx and Marx's place in modern history."

96. Civilisation, Kenneth Clark
 

97. The Russian Revolution, Richard Pipes
 

98. The Idea of History, R. G. Collingwood
 

99. The Last Lion, William Manchester
 

• Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill: Vol. 1 Visions of Glory, 1874-1932
• Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill: Vol. 2 Alone, 1932-1940

100. The Starr Report, Kenneth W. Starr
Hart: "A study in human depravity."

[Jay777]

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

[Stoat]

Thanks for this list...it will provide a nucleus for putting a list together for the library (where I teach) to purchase.

These books will nicely counterbalance the myriads of left wing extremist, gender bending, conservative bashing, pro homosexuality tomes that are proliferating all over the shelves in our colleges today.

You're quite welcome, and I'm glad that you've found it to be helpful  :-)  You also may be interested in this list from National Review (Posted above in this thread as well)

NR's List of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century

[Jay777]

Non Religious books...my favorites...

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

http://www.tor.com/jordan/

If you like Tolken you will love Jordan

[Stoat]

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Thanks very much Jay  :-)

What makes this book particularly special for you?

[GVnana]

Bookmarking this one!

[Stoat]

If you like Tolken you will love Jordan

Thanks very much Jay...I read the LOTR series five times as a child, and enjoyed the movies (until one of the actors started slamming the USA in interviews  LOL)

I will look into Jordan's works, thank you  :-)

[Stoat]

Bookmarking this one!

Glad to hear it!  You may also wish to consider coming back in a couple of days after Freepers have had a chance to add their favorites to it and print out the entire thread....a great thing to keep in the car and bring into bookstores when you're Christmas shopping  :-)

[WarPaint]

Excellent post. Thanks.

[2ndreconmarine]

What a fantastic thread. I am bookmarking it for my future reference. My contributions:

"The Feynman Lectures on Physics" - Richard Feynman
"Surely You're Joking Mr. Fenynman"
"QED"

These books by Richard Feynman are wonderful. He is breezy and easy to understand. The Lectures are probably only readable by someone already educated as a physicicst. QED is incredible, he explains Quantum ElectroDynamics for the layman!!! His biography is great. Bill Clinton names his biography "My Life" or something. BFD. Richard Feynman names his biography: "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman." Guess which one is readable and funny.

"Starship Troopers" Robert Heinlein
"Ender's Game" Orson Scott Card
Two great, easy to read SciFi novels. Also great military books. Both are assigned at the Military academies.

"The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe Report" - Timothy Ferris
"A Brief History of Time" - Stephen Hawking
Two of the best books on modern cosmology written. Both for laymen. They will absolutely blow your mind.

"How to Talk to a Liberal" -- Ann Coulter
Meticulously researched, fastidiously argued, and gut-breaking funny.

"Free to Choose" - Milton and Rose Friedman
A book about freedom written by one of my heroes. Simple, well-written, explanation of the basis of free-market economics and freedom in general.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" - C. S. Lewis.
They say this is a childrens series. I read it to my kids. It is way more.

"East of Eden" - John Steinbeck
The most accurate portrayal of evil I have ever read. Reminds me of liberals. Read this and see if you don't agree.

And my all time favorite:
"The Right Stuff" - Tom Wolfe
Read the book, ignore the movie. The movie was about what the astronauts were doing. The book is about what they were thinking. This is the best description of what it is to be the male of the species I have ever found.

[Stoat]

Excellent post. Thanks.

You're quite welcome, and I'm delighted to learn that you've found it to be worthwhile!

Please feel free to contribute your own favorites as well  :-)

[Happygal]

Thanks for this.

I'm into musicals, and am a member of a Light Opera Society.

I just bought Steyn's book on amazon on this reccomendation! Cheers! :-)

It's my Christmas gift to ME!

[Stoat]

WOW! Great list and comments, thank you!
HOOAH! :-)

[martin_fierro]

And in other Claremont-related news, Kerri Dunn, that flaky "professor/hate crime lecturer" who vandalized her own car in staging a "hate crime" was sentenced to a year in state prison today.

[Stoat]

Thanks for this.

I'm into musicals, and am a member of a Light Opera Society.

I just bought Steyn's book on amazon on this reccomendation! Cheers! :-)

It's my Christmas gift to ME!

WOW!  I'm delighted that you have found it to be so helpful!  Perhaps your associates at the L.O.S. might appreciate it if you were to email them the URL to this thread?

Perhaps some of them might want to join Free Republic as a result  :-)

 

[RhoTheta]

Reference Ping.

[TChris]

Bump

[Stoat]

The Britannica Store  (Great Books of the Western World)

Ten Year Reading Plan

Great Books of the Western World

First Edition, 1952

Ten Year Reading Plan

Following is a ten year reading plan provided in the Great Books of the Western World first edition library of 1952. The works are organized by the year that they appear in the reading plan. Works shown with hypertext links are available online. Another such list is maintained by Ken Roberts.

The great books index is a personal interest project and is not sponsored by the Encyclopedia Britannica corporation. I urge you to purchase this excellent set of books and patronize this company.

---

Year One

• Aristophanes - The Clouds
   
• Aristophanes - The Lysistrata
   
• Plato - Apology
   
• Plato - Crito
   
• Plato - The Republic
   
• Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
   
• Aristotle - Politics
   
• Plutarch - The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
   
  • Lycurgus
     
  • Numa Pompilius
     
  • Lycurgus and Numa Compared
     
  • Alexander
     
  • Caesar
     
• Saint Augustine - The Confessions
   
• Nicolo Machiavelli - The Prince
   
• Francois Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
   
• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - Essays
   
• William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
   
• John Locke - Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
   
• Jean Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right
   
• Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
   
• Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
   
• American State Papers - The Declaration of Independence
   
• American State Papers - Articles of Confederation
   
• American State Papers - The Constitution of the United States of America
   
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay - The Federalist
   
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - Manifesto of the Communist Party
   

Year Two

• The New Testament - Matthew, Acts
• Homer - The Iliad
   
• Aeschylus - Agamemnon
   
• Aeschylus - Eumenides
   
• Aeschylus - Choephoroe
   
• Sophocles - Oedipus the King
   
• Sophocles - Antigone
   
• Herodotus - The History
   
• Plato - Meno
   
• Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
   
• Aristotle - On Poetics
   
• Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
   
• Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
   
• Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - The Meditations
   
• Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan, or, Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil
   
• John Milton - Areopagitica
   
• Blaise Pascal - Pensees
   
• Blaise Pascal - Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle
   
• Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
   
• Jean Jacques Rousseau - A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
   
• Immanuel Kant - Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
   
• John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
   

Year Three

• Aeschylus - Prometheus Bound
   
• Herodotus - The History
   
• Thucydides - The History of the Peloponnesian War
   
• Plato - Statesman
   
• Aristotle - Politics
   
• Aristotle - On Interpretation
   
• Euclid - The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
   
• P. Cornelius Tacitus - The Annals
   
• Saint Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
   
• Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Cressida
   
• William Shakespeare - Macbeth
   
• John Milton - Paradise Lost
   
• John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   
• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier - Elements of Chemistry
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Science of Right
   
• John Stuart Mill - Representative Government
   
• Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
   
• Sigmund Freud - The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
   

Year Four

• Euripides - Medea
   
• Euripides - Hippolytus
   
• Euripides - The Trojan Women
   
• Euripides - The Bacchantes
   
• Plato - The Republic
   
• Plato - Theaetetus
   
• Aristotle - Physics
   
• Saint Augustine - The Confessions
   
• Galileo Galilei - Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
   
• Sir Francis Bacon - Novum Organum: Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man
   
• Rene Descartes - Discourse on the Method
   
• Sir Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
   
• John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   
• David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
   
• Herman Melville - Moby Dick; or, The Whale
   
• Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
   
• William James - The Principles of Psychology
   

Year Five

• Hippocrates - The Oath
   
• Hippocrates - On Ancient Medicine
   
• Hippocrates - On Airs, Waters, and Places
   
• Hippocrates - Of the Epidemics
   
• Hippocrates - The Law
   
• Hippocrates - On the Sacred Disease
   
• Plato - Phaedo
   
• Aristotle - Categories
   
• Aristotle - On the Soul
   
• Galen - On the Natural Faculties
   
• Plotinus - The Six Enneads
   
• Virgil - The Aeneid
   
• Ptolemy - The Almagest
   
• Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
   
• Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
   
• Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
   
• William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
   
• Miguel de Cervantes - The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
   
• Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
   
• George Berkeley - The Principles of Human Knowledge
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
   
• Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
   
• Count Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
   
• William James - The Principles of Psychology
   

Year Six

• The Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy
• Homer - The Odyssey
• Plato - Laws
   
• Aristotle - Metaphysics
   
• Plotinus - The Six Enneads
   
• P. Cornelius Tacitus - The Histories
   
• Saint Augustine - The City of God
   
• Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
   
• William Shakespeare - As You Like It
   
• William Shakespeare - The Comedy of Errors
   
• William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
   
• William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
   
• Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
   
• John Milton - Samson Agonistes
   
• Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters
   
• John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   
• Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason
   
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - The Philosophy of History
   
• Count Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
   

Year Seven

• The Old Testament - Job, Isaiah, Amos
• Plato - Symposium
   
• Plato - Philebus
   
• Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
   
• Archimedes - On the Equilibrium of Planes
   
• Archimedes - The Sand-Reckoner
   
• Archimedes - On Floating Bodies
   
• Archimedes - Measurement of a Circle
• Epictetus - The Discourses
   
• Plotinus - The Six Enneads
   
• Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
   
• Francois Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
   
• William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
   
• William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
   
• Galileo Galilei - Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
   
• Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
   
• Sir Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
   
• Sir Isaac Newton - Optics
   
• Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Practical Reason
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Judgement
   
• John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism
   

Year Eight

• Aristophanes - The Thesmophoriazusae
   
• Aristophanes - The Ecclesiazusae
   
• Aristophanes - The Plutus
   
• Plato - Gorgias
   
• Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
   
• Aristotle - Rhetoric
   
• Saint Augustine - On Christian Doctrine
   
• Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan, or, Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil
   
• William Shakespeare - Othello, the Moor of Venice
   
• William Shakespeare - King Lear
   
• Sir Francis Bacon - On the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane
   
• Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy
   
• Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
   
• John Locke - A Letter Concerning Toleration
   
• Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.
   
• Jean Jacques Rousseau - A Discourse on Political Economy
   
• Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
   
• James Boswell - The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
   
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust
   
• Karl Marx - Capital
   
• William James - The Principles of Psychology
   

Year Nine

• Thucydides - The History of the Peloponnesian War
   
• Plato - Sophist
   
• Aristotle - Politics
   
• Apollonius of Perga - On Conic Sections
   
• Saint Augustine - The City of God
   
• William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
   
• Rene Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind
   
• Rene Descartes - The Geometry
   
• Blaise Pascal - Account of the Great Experiment Concerning the Equilibrium of Fluids
   
• Blaise Pascal - On Geometrical Demonstration
   
• Henry Fielding - The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
   
• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu - The Spirit of Laws
   
• Michael Faraday - Experimental Researches in Electricity
   
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - The Philosophy of Right
   
• Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier - Analytical Theory of Heat
   
• Karl Marx - Capital
   
• Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
   

Year Ten

• The New Testament - Mark, Luke, John, Romans, I Cornthians
• Sophocles - Ajax
   
• Sophocles - Electra
   
• Plato - Timaeus
   
• Aristotle - On the Parts of Animals
   
• Aristotle - On the Generation of Animals
   
• Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
   
• Virgil - The Eclogues
   
• Virgil - The Georgics
   
• Saint Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
   
• Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales
   
• William Shakespeare - The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
   
• William Shakespeare - The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
   
• William Shakespeare - The Life of King Henry the Fifth
   
• William Shakespeare - The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
   
• William Harvey - On the Generation of Animals
   
• Miguel de Cervantes - The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
   
• Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Judgement
   
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust
   
• Charles Darwin - The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
   
• Karl Marx - Capital
   
• Sigmund Freud - A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
   
• William James - The Principles of Psychology

[Libertina]

Hey Stoat, you reader you! LOL Love Steyn! Thank you for the listings :) BUMP!

[Stoat]

Hey Stoat, you reader you! LOL Love Steyn! Thank you for the listings :) BUMP!

(((BLUSHING))))

You're quite welcome; I'm delighted that you find it helpful  :-)

[Libertina]

Stoat, I do believe your little guy has donned his festive, white winter coat! :)

[Stoat]

Stoat, I do believe your little guy has donned his festive, white winter coat! :)

From my rusty, dusty, but ever-so-trusty Encarta Reference Library:

"Ermine, name given to various species of weasel, particularly during the winter season, when the fur of individuals inhabiting colder latitudes is white. The name is applied especially to the stoat, which inhabits temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, North America, and Asia."

 

[Libertina]

Careful, my mom has a couple of stone martins around a coat collar... ;)

[185JHP]

BUMP

[Stoat]

From Thomas Sowell:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1303307/posts

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

THE MOON IS DOWN

-John Steinbeck

THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST

-Tom Wolfe

HETEROPHOBIA

-Daphne Patai

-THE CASTLE

-FRANZ KAFKA

Rhinoceros

-Eugene Ionesco

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

Any military history written by Keegan is worth reading, of course, but "The Second World War" is one of his better works.

Another great summary of that epic conflict is,

DELIVERED FROM EVIL:

The Saga of World War II.

It's billed as "The first one-volume history" of the Second World War, and is definitely worth checking out, if you have the opportunity.

[lainde]

Thanks for the NR list!

[capitan_refugio]

Make that "visiting" professor - she was not the staff - and she apparently has a "new assignment" in the "state" system!

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

NIXON: A Life

-Jonathan Aitken

EXTREME ISLAM

-Adam Parfey

Sir Walter Raleigh

-Raleigh Trevelyan

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/~sunkenciv/

[Pagey]

Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution research fellow, wrote a book a couple of years ago called, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism."

This book may well well force historians to revise the history of the Cold War.

[Pagey]

Wilhelm Reich wrote a brilliant book called "The Mass Psychology Of Fascism".

[Stoat]

Careful, my mom has a couple of stone martins around a coat collar... ;)

Note to self: remember to wear 'ferret disguise' when in the presence of Libertina's mom

[Stoat]

Thanks so much for your many great-looking contributions to the ongoing list here :-)

[Stoat]

Thanks for the NR list!

You're quite welcome!  I'm delighted to know that you've found it helpful.

[Stoat]

Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution research fellow, wrote a book a couple of years ago called, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism."

This book may well well force historians to revise the history of the Cold War.

It looks like a great one, thanks very much for adding to the list.  It's always a sure bet that it's a great book when the Leftists at Publisher's Weekly try to rip it apart, as they do in the review at the book's Amazon page (linked here).

Amazon.com Books Reagan's War The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism

 

Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution research fellow, wrote a book a couple of years ago called, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism."

This book may well well force historians to revise the history of the Cold War.

It looks like a great one, thanks very much for adding to the list.  It's always a sure bet that it's a great book when the Leftists at Publisher's Weekly try to rip it apart, as they do in the review at the book's Amazon page (linked here).

[Stoat]

Wilhelm Reich wrote a brilliant book called "The Mass Psychology Of Fascism".

Amazon.com Books The Mass Psychology of Fascism Third Edition

This looks wonderful also, thanks very much!  :-)

[dakine]

Thanks for the thread/posts...Love the ten year reading plan...

[Stoat]

Thanks for the thread/posts...Love the ten year reading plan...

You're quite welcome, and I'm delighted that you liked the reading plan so much!  I regret that I must make a confession....I'm still on the first year, but I also haven't applied myself to it as I really should....so many books, so little time! 

I am so very thankful to the editors of the Great Books series for providing this reading plan...in the 1950's, it probably provided a framework of sorts for many college curricula, but these days one can go through many years of English and Literature courses with few of these classics even being mentioned, much less taught.  I believe that only a very few extremely expensive private colleges are even offering literature courses stressing the Classics anymore, and I regret that I haven't attended such a school. Fortunately, the Great Books Reading Plan allows those of us who value the ancient knowledge to pursue a structured learning approach that has proven itself over time.  Although it lacks some helpful perspective (when studying Kant, as an example, I often wish that I had an instructor to help me along in my understanding) but it's certainly better to have the Reading Plan than to depend upon the majority of universities for a true classical education these days.

Since you liked the Ten Year reading plan so much, there are a few additional resources that may also be of interest.

Amazon.com Books The New Lifetime Reading Plan The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded

I've found this book particularly helpful, as the section on Ulysses (p. 251-253) may illustrate:

************************************************************************

"With Ulysses we at last meet a novel that seems impenetrable.  It is best to admit that this mountain cannot be scaled with a single leap.  Still, it is scalable; and from the top you are granted a view of incomparable richness.

    Here are five simple statements.  They will not help you to enjoy or understand Ulysses.  I list them merely to remove from your mind any notion that this book is a huge joke, or a huge obscenity, or the work of a demented genius, or the altar of a cult.  Here is what a large majority of intelligent critics and readers have come to believe about Ulysses since its publication in 1922.

    1.  It is probably the most completely organized, thought-out work of literature since The Divine Comedy.

    2.  It is the most influential novel (call it that for lack of a better term) published in our century.  The influence is indirect - through other writers.

    3.  It is one of the most original works of imagination in the language.  It broke not one trail, but hundreds.

    4.  There is some disagreement here, but the prevailing view is that it is not "decadent"  or "immoral" or "pessimistic."  Like the work of most of the supreme artists listed in the Plan, it proposes a vision of life as seen by a powerful mind that has risen above the partial, the sentimental, and the self-defensive.

    5.  Unlike its original, the Odyssey, it is not an open book.  It yields its secrets only to those willing to work, just as Beethoven's last quartets reveal new riches the longer they are studied.

These statements made, I have three suggestions for the reader:

    1.  Read Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  This is fairly straightforward, as compared with its greater sequel.  It will introduce you to Stephen Dedalus, who is Joyce, and to Joyce's Dublin, the scene of both novels.

    2.  In this one case, read a good commentary first.  The best short one, I think, is Edmund Wilson, the best long ones by Stuart Gilbert and Anthony Burgess.

    3.  Even then Ulysses will be tough going.  Don't try to understand every reference, broken phrase, shade of meaning, allusion to something still to come, or buried in pages you've already read.  Get what you can.  Then put the book aside and try it a year later.

    As you read it, try to keep in mind some of Joyce's purposes:

    1.  To trace, as completely as possible, the thoughts and doings of a number of Dubliners during the day and night of June 16, 1904.

    2.  To trace, virtually completely, the thoughts and doings of two of them: Stephen Dedalus, the now classic type of the modern intellectual, and his spiritual father the more or less average man, Leopold Bloom.

    3.  To give his book a form paralleling (not always obviously) the events and characters of the Odyssey of Homer.  Thus Stephen is Telemachus, Bloom Odysseus (Ulysses), Molly an unfaithful Penelope, Bella Cohen Circe.

    4.  To invent or develop whatever new techniques were needed for his monumental task.  These included, among dozens, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, parody, dream and nightmare sequences, puns, word coinages, unconventional punctuation or none at all, and so forth.  Ordinary novelists try to satisfy us with a selection from or summary of their characters' thoughts.  Joyce gives you the thoughts themselves, in all their streamy, dreamy, formless flow.

Even the attempt to read Ulysses can be a great adventure.  Good fortune to you.

    At this writing probably the best edition to use is the 1986 Vintage Books (Random House) paperback, described as "The corrected text edited by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior."  Perhaps even better is the edition by John Kidd (Norton, 1994)"

*****************************************************************************

Additionally, I would recommend:

Amazon.com Books Great Books  (David Denby - Great Books: My adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and other indestructible writers of the Western World)

Amazon.com Books The Western Canon The Books and School of the Ages

Good luck to you in your pursuit of the Reading Plan, and thank you for your kind words   :-)

 

[Feiny]

Here are my top 5 that I have read many times:

1. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

2. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

3. Common Sense, Thomas Paine

4. Think a Second Time, Dennis Prager

5. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

I know just what you mean!

It's hard to imagine that there are actually topflight Ivy League universities that don't require non-English majors to take courses in Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, academe-ever since the radicals seized power in the late 60s-has been subsumed by postmodern, faddish, socialist doctrine.

Therefore, there's little room left to teach the standard literary cannon of Western civilization.

[Pagey]

An "I just wanted to bookmark this thread" BUMP!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Same here.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

i scanned thru and didn't see this mentioned:

__________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Unholy Alliance

by David Horowitz
Hardcover - (September 2004) - $27.95

In this tour de force on the most important issue of our time, David Horowitz, confronts the paradox of how so many Americans, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, could turn against the War on Terror. He finds an answer in a political Left that shares a view of America as the ?Great Satan? with America?s radical Islamic enemies.