The Britannica Great Book Reading List (1952)
First Year
1. Plato:
Apology
Crito
2. Aristophanes:
Clouds
Lysistrata
3. Plato:
Republic (Books I – II)
4. Aristotle
Ethics (Book I)
5. Aristotle
Politics (Book I)
6. Plutarch: The live of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Lycurgus
Numa Pompilius
Lycurgus and Numa Compared
Alexander
Caesar
7. New Testament:
The Gospel According to St. Mathew
The Acts of the Apostles
8. St. Augustine
Confessions (Book I-VIII)
9. Machiavelli
The Prince
10. Rabelais
Gargantua and Pantagruel (Book I – II)
11. Montaigne: Essays
Of Custom, and that We Should Not Easily Change a Law
Received
Of Pedantry
Of Education of Children
That It Is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity
Of Cannibals
That Relish of Good and Evil Depends in a Great Measure Upon the Opinion We
Have of Them
Upon Some Versus of Virgil
12. Shakespeare
Hamlet
13. Locke
Concerning Civil Government (Second Essay)
14. Rousseau
The Social Contract (Book I – II)
15. Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 15 – 16)
16. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, The
Federalist (Numbers 1-10, 15, 31, 41, 51, 68-71)
17. Smith
The Wealth of Nations (Introduction – Book I, Chapter 9)
18. Marx-Engels
Manifesto of the Communist Party
