Editing How to Read a Book (section)

==Reading list (1972 edition)==
{{See also|Great Books of the Western World}}
Appendix A in the 1972 edition provided the following recommended reading list:
# [[Homer]] – ''[[Iliad]]'', ''[[Odyssey]]''
# The [[Old Testament]]
# [[Aeschylus]] – Tragedies
# [[Sophocles]] – Tragedies
# [[Herodotus]] – ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]''
# [[Euripides]] – Tragedies
# [[Thucydides]] – ''[[History of the Peloponnesian War]]''
# [[Hippocrates]] – Medical Writings
# [[Aristophanes]] – Comedies
# [[Plato]] – Dialogues
# [[Aristotle]] – Works
# [[Epicurus]] – ''Letter to Herodotus''; ''Letter to Menoecus''
# [[Euclid]] – ''[[Euclid's Elements|Elements]]''
# [[Archimedes]] – Works
# [[Apollonius of Perga]] – ''[[Apollonius of Perga#Conics|Conic Sections]]''
# [[Cicero]] – Works
# [[Lucretius]] – ''[[On the Nature of Things]]''
# [[Virgil]] – Works
# [[Horace]] – Works
# [[Livy]] – ''[[Ab Urbe Condita Libri|History of Rome]]''
# [[Ovid]] – Works
# [[Plutarch]] – ''[[Parallel Lives]]''; ''[[Moralia]]''
# [[Tacitus]] – ''[[Histories (Tacitus)|Histories]]''; ''[[Annals (Tacitus)|Annals]]''; ''[[Agricola (book)|Agricola]]''; ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]''
# [[Nicomachus of Gerasa]] – ''[[Introduction to Arithmetic]]''
# [[Epictetus]] – ''[[Discourses of Epictetus|Discourses]]''; ''[[Enchiridion of Epictetus|Encheiridion]]''
# [[Ptolemy]] – ''[[Almagest]]''
# [[Lucian]] – Works
# [[Marcus Aurelius]] – ''[[Meditations]]''
# [[Galen]] – ''On the Natural Faculties''
# The [[New Testament]]
# [[Plotinus]] – ''[[Enneads|The Enneads]]''
# [[Augustine of Hippo|St. Augustine]] – "On the Teachers"; ''[[Confessions (St. Augustine)|Confessions]]''; ''[[City of God (book)|City of God]]''; ''[[On Christian Doctrine]]''
# ''[[The Song of Roland]]''
# The ''[[Nibelungenlied]]''
# [[Njáls saga|''The Saga of Burnt Njál'']]
# [[St. Thomas Aquinas]] – ''[[Summa Theologica]]''
# [[Dante Alighieri]] – ''[[The Divine Comedy]]''; ''[[La Vita Nuova|The New Life]]''; ''[[De Monarchia|On Monarchy]]''
# [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] – ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]''; ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''
# [[Leonardo da Vinci]] – Notebooks
# [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] – ''[[The Prince]]''; ''[[Discourses on Livy|Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy]]''
# [[Desiderius Erasmus]] – ''[[In Praise of Folly|The Praise of Folly]]''
# [[Nicolaus Copernicus]] – ''[[On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres]]''
# [[Thomas More]] – ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]''
# [[Martin Luther]] – Table Talk; Three Treatises
# [[François Rabelais]] – ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel]]''
# [[John Calvin]] – ''[[Institutes of the Christian Religion]]''
# [[Michel de Montaigne]] – ''[[Essays (Montaigne)|Essays]]''
# [[William Gilbert (astronomer)|William Gilbert]] – ''[[De Magnete|On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies]]''
# [[Miguel de Cervantes]] – ''[[Don Quixote]]''
# [[Edmund Spenser]] – ''[[Prothalamion]]''; ''[[The Faerie Queene]]''
# [[Francis Bacon]] – ''[[Essays (Francis Bacon)|Essays]]''; ''Advancement of Learning''; ''[[Novum Organum]]'', ''[[New Atlantis]]''
# [[William Shakespeare]] – ''[[Complete Works of Shakespeare|Poetry and Plays]]''
# [[Galileo Galilei]] – ''[[Sidereus Nuncius|Starry Messenger]]''; ''[[Two New Sciences|Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences]]''
# [[Johannes Kepler]] – ''[[Epitome of Copernican Astronomy]]''; ''[[Harmonices Mundi|Concerning the Harmonies of the World]]''
# [[William Harvey]] – ''[[On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals]]''; ''On the Circulation of the Blood''; ''On the Generation of Animals''
# [[Thomas Hobbes]] – ''[[Leviathan (Hobbes book)|Leviathan]]''
# [[René Descartes]] – ''[[Rules for the Direction of the Mind]]''; ''[[Discourse on the Method]]''; ''[[La Géométrie|Geometry]]''; ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]''
# [[John Milton]] – Works
# [[Molière]] – Comedies
# [[Blaise Pascal]] – ''[[Provincial Letters|The Provincial Letters]]''; ''[[Pensees]]''; Scientific Treatises
# [[Christiaan Huygens]] – ''[[Treatise on Light]]''
# [[Benedict de Spinoza]] – ''[[Ethics (Spinoza)|Ethics]]''
# [[John Locke]] – ''[[A Letter Concerning Toleration|Letter Concerning Toleration]]''; ''[[Two Treatises of Government|Of Civil Government]]''; ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding|Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]''; ''[[Some Thoughts Concerning Education|Thoughts Concerning Education]]''
# [[Jean Baptiste Racine]] – Tragedies
# [[Isaac Newton]] – ''[[Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]]''; ''[[Opticks|Optics]]''
# [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] – ''[[Discourse on Metaphysics (book)|Discourse on Metaphysics]]''; ''[[New Essays on Human Understanding|New Essays Concerning Human Understanding]]''; ''[[Monadologie|Monadology]]''
# [[Daniel Defoe]] – ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]''
# [[Jonathan Swift]] – ''[[A Tale of a Tub]]''; ''[[A Journal to Stella|Journal to Stella]]''; ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]''; ''[[A Modest Proposal]]''
# [[William Congreve]] – ''[[The Way of the World]]''
# [[George Berkeley]] – ''[[A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge|Principles of Human Knowledge]]''
# [[Alexander Pope]] – ''[[An Essay on Criticism|Essay on Criticism]]''; ''[[The Rape of the Lock|Rape of the Lock]]''; ''[[An Essay on Man|Essay on Man]]''
# [[Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu]] – ''[[Persian Letters]]''; ''[[The Spirit of the Laws|Spirit of Laws]]''
# [[Voltaire]] – ''[[Letters on the English]]''; ''[[Candide]]''; ''[[Philosophical Dictionary]]''; ''[[Micromegas]]''
# [[Henry Fielding]] – ''[[Joseph Andrews]]''; ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]''
# [[Samuel Johnson]] – ''[[The Vanity of Human Wishes]]''; ''[[Johnson's Dictionary|Dictionary]]''; ''[[Rasselas]]''; ''[[The Lives of the Poets]]''
# [[David Hume]] – ''[[A Traste of Human Nature|Treatise on Human Nature]]''; ''Essays Moral and Political''; ''[[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]''
# [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] – ''[[Discourse on Inequality|On the Origin of Inequality]]''; On the Political Economy; ''Emile – or, On Education'', ''[[The Social Contract]]''
# [[Laurence Sterne]] – ''[[Tristram Shandy]]''; ''[[A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy]]''
# [[Adam Smith]] – ''[[The Theory of Moral Sentiments]]''; ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]''
# [[Immanuel Kant]] – ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]''; ''[[Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals|Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals]]''; ''[[Critique of Practical Reason]]''; ''The Science of Right''; ''[[Critique of Judgment]]''; ''[[Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch|Perpetual Peace]]''
# [[Edward Gibbon]] – ''[[The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]''; [[Memoirs of My Life and Writings|Autobiography]]
# [[James Boswell]] – Journal; ''[[Life of Samuel Johnson]]'', Ll.D.
# [[Antoine Laurent Lavoisier]] – ''[[Traité Élémentaire de Chimie]]'' (Elements of Chemistry)
# [[Alexander Hamilton]], [[John Jay]], and [[James Madison]] – ''[[Federalist Papers]]''
# [[Jeremy Bentham]] – [[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]; Theory of Fictions
# [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]] – ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]''; ''[[Dichtung und Wahrheit|Poetry and Truth]]''
# [[Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier]] – Analytical Theory of Heat
# [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] – ''[[The Phenomenology of Spirit|Phenomenology of Spirit]]''; ''[[Elements of the Philosophy of Right|Philosophy of Right]]''; ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]''
# [[William Wordsworth]] – Poems
# [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] – Poems; ''[[Biographia Literaria]]''
# [[Jane Austen]] – ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]''; ''[[Emma (novel)|Emma]]''
# [[Carl von Clausewitz]] – ''[[On War]]''
# [[Stendhal]] – ''[[Le rouge et le noir|The Red and the Black]]''; ''[[The Charterhouse of Parma]]''; On Love
# [[George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron|Lord Byron]] – ''[[Don Juan]]''
# [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] – Studies in Pessimism
# [[Michael Faraday]] – [[The Chemical History of a Candle]]; Experimental Researches in Electricity
# [[Charles Lyell]] – ''[[Principles of Geology]]''
# [[Auguste Comte]] – The Positive Philosophy
# [[Honoré de Balzac]] – ''[[Père Goriot]]; [[Eugenie Grandet]]''
# [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
# [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] – ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]''
# [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] – ''[[Democracy in America]]''
# [[John Stuart Mill]] – ''[[A System of Logic]]''; ''[[On Liberty]]''; ''[[Considerations on Representative Government|Representative Government]]''; ''[[Utilitarianism (book)|Utilitarianism]]''; ''[[The Subjection of Women]]''; Autobiography
# [[Charles Darwin]] – ''[[The Origin of Species]]''; ''[[The Descent of Man]]''; ''[[The Autobiography of Charles Darwin|Autobiography]]''
# [[Charles Dickens]] – ''[[Pickwick Papers]]''; ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]''; ''[[Hard Times (novel)|Hard Times]]''
# [[Claude Bernard]] – ''Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine''
# [[Henry David Thoreau]] – ''[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]''; ''[[Walden]]''
# [[Karl Marx]] – ''[[Das Kapital|Capital]]''; ''[[Communist Manifesto]]''
# [[George Eliot]] – ''[[Adam Bede]]''; ''[[Middlemarch]]''
# [[Herman Melville]] – ''[[Moby-Dick]]''; ''[[Billy Budd]]''
# [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] – ''[[Crime and Punishment]]''; ''[[The Idiot (novel)|The Idiot]]''; ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]''
# [[Gustave Flaubert]] – ''[[Madame Bovary]]''; [[Three Tales (Flaubert)|Three Stories]]
# [[Henrik Ibsen]] – Plays
# [[Leo Tolstoy]] – ''[[War and Peace]]''; ''[[Anna Karenina]]''; ''[[What is Art?]]''; [[Twenty-Three Tales]]
# [[Mark Twain]] – ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''; ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]''
# [[William James]] – ''[[The Principles of Psychology]]''; ''[[The Varieties of Religious Experience]]''; ''Pragmatism''; ''[[Essays in Radical Empiricism]]''
# [[Henry James]] – ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]''; ''[[The Ambassadors]]''
# [[Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]] – ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]''; ''[[Beyond Good and Evil]]''; ''[[On the Genealogy of Morality|The Genealogy of Morals]]''; ''[[The Will to Power (manuscript)|The Will to Power]]''
# [[Jules Henri Poincaré]] – ''[[Science and Hypothesis]]''; ''Science and Method''
# [[Sigmund Freud]] – ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]''; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; ''[[Civilization and Its Discontents]]''; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
# [[George Bernard Shaw]] – Plays and Prefaces
# [[Max Planck]] – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
# [[Henri Bergson]] – ''[[Time and Free Will]]''; ''[[Matter and Memory]]''; ''[[Creative Evolution (book)|Creative Evolution]]''; ''The Two Sources of Morality and Religion''
# [[John Dewey]] – ''[[How We Think]]''; ''[[Democracy and Education]]''; ''Experience and Nature''; ''Logic: the Theory of Inquiry''
# [[Alfred North Whitehead]] – ''An Introduction to Mathematics''; ''Science and the Modern World''; ''The Aims of Education and Other Essays''; ''Adventures of Ideas''
# [[George Santayana]] – ''[[The Life of Reason]]''; ''[[Skepticism and Animal Faith]]''; Persons and Places
# [[Vladimir Lenin]] – ''[[State and Revolution|The State and Revolution]]''
# [[Marcel Proust]] – ''[[Remembrance of Things Past]]''
# [[Bertrand Russell]] – ''[[The Problems of Philosophy]]''; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
# [[Thomas Mann]] – ''[[The Magic Mountain]]''; ''[[Joseph and His Brothers]]''
# [[Albert Einstein]] – [[The Meaning of Relativity]]; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; ''[[The Evolution of Physics]]''
# [[James Joyce]] – 'The Dead' in ''[[Dubliners]]''; [[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]; ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''
# [[Jacques Maritain]] – ''[[Art and Scholasticism]]''; ''[[The Degrees of Knowledge]]''; ''The Rights of Man and Natural Law''; ''True Humanism''
# [[Franz Kafka]] – ''[[The Trial]]''; ''[[The Castle (novel)|The Castle]]''
# [[Arnold J. Toynbee]] – ''[[A Study of History]]''; ''Civilization on Trial''
# [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] – ''[[Nausea (novel)|Nausea]]''; ''[[No Exit]]''; ''[[Being and Nothingness]]''
# [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] – ''[[The First Circle]]''; ''[[The Cancer Ward]]''