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This list is based upon great-books reading lists in the USA and UK.
It is in no way complete; it only offers suggestions for further reading.
An Intelligent and Cultured Person’s Reading List
N.B. "Great-Books Programs" were largely a liberal creation designed to counteract the proletariat direction of higher education. The more traditional approach, which the great-books programs replaced and which will appeal to serious students, is a classical education.
Languages:
Latin: Any truly educated person will know Latin and will continue to read Latin throughout his life. Studies show that at least two years of Latin not only augments one's English vocabulary by 20,000 words, but also provides one with a meticulous understanding of English grammar. Latin not only prepares one for a career in law, science, medicine, business or humanities, but will also enrich one’s life by allowing him to read the Western Classics. (School-boy texts.)
English: After one has learned Latin, it is advisable that one read Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), and Fowler’s King’s English (Oxford Press). Also the Second Edition (not the Third) of Fowler’s Modern English Usage is quite indispensable.
Additional Languages: After Latin, one should learn at least one other Western language, preferably French, German, Italian, Anglo Saxon, Gaelic, Old Norse, and/or Classical Greek. If a student is to study only two foreign languages, Latin and German would be best, as these two languages most influenced English. (In order to maintain a high-brow benchmark, we strongly advise against Spanish.)
History:
Greece & Rome :
Herodotus: Histories
Thucydides:The Peloponnesian War
A History of Greece, by J.B. Bury & Russell Meiggs
Livy: History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita)
Caesar:The Gallic War
Tacitus: The Annals
Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D.M. Low
A History of Rome, by M. Cary & H.H. Scullard
Roman Imperialism, by Frank Tenney
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges: Ancient City
Europe:
Tacitus: Germania
Jordanes: History of the Goths
Gregory of Tours: History of the Franks
Gesta Danorum
A History of Europe, H.A.L. Fisher (Oxford, 1939).
Oswald Spengler: Decline of the West
UK:
Bede: History of the English People
Godefridus Monmouth: Historia Britonum
David Hume: History of England
Frank Stenton: Anglo-Saxon England
Chadwick: Origin of the English Nation
United States:
M.E. Bradford: Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution
Russell Kirk: John Randolph of Roanoke, Roots of American Order
Thomas DiLorenzo: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
Bible:
Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John
Literature
Greece:
Homer: Iliad and Odyssey
Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days
Aeschylus: Oresteia.
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
Euripides: Bacchae
Aristophanes: Clouds
Rome:
Plautus: Pseudolus
Catullus: Poems
Cicero: Orations Against Catiline, Philippics
Vergil: Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics
Horace: Odes; Satires, Book I
Ovid: Art of Love (Ars Amatoria).
Juvenile: Satires
Petronius: Satyricon
Old Norse / Germanic Mythology:
Voluspa
Poetic Edda
Prose Edda
Saga of the Volsungs
Nibelungelied
Heimskringla
Saga of Thidrek of Berne
Jakob Grimm: Germanic Mythology
Celtic Mythology:
Labor Gabala Erenn
Cath Maige Tuired
Story of the Tuatha De Danaan
Ulster Cycle
Fenian Cycle
Maginogion
England:
Beowulf
"Battle of Maldon"
Deor
Battle of Finnsburgh
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Fitzstephen, William: Caedes in Ecclesia (Thomas Becket)
Malory: Morte D’Athur
Sir Thomas More: Utopia, Epigrammata
Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear, Henry IV, et al.
Donne: Poetry
Milton: Paradise Lost, Latin Poems
Pope: Essay on Man, (Horatian) Satires, Translations of Homer
Poetry: Tennyson, Coleridge, Yeats
Rudyard Kipling: "The Children's Song," "A Song of White Men," "The Stranger," and "Song of the Fifth River."
Germany:
Nibelungelied
Goethe: Sufferings of Young Werther, The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, Faust
Friedrich Holderlin: Hyperion
France:
Song of Roland
Racine: Plays
La Fontaine: Fables
Moliere: Plays
Claudel, P.: Poetry
Mallarme: Herodiade; Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui...
Jean Raspail: Camp of the Saints
Italy:
Dante: Divine Comedy
Petrarch: Italian and Latin poems
Boccaccio: "Decameron," Latin poems, et al.
Spain:
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Holland:
Erasmus: The Praise of Folly, De Copia Verborum, De Ratione Studii
United States:
Early American Latin Verse: An Anthology, ed. Leo M. Kaiser
Relatio Itineris in Marilandiam, Andrew White
T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland and Prufrock
Aesthetics / Literary Criticism:
Aristotle: Poetics
Horace: Ars Poetica
Quintilian: The Orator’s Education
Isidore of Seville: Etymologiae
Burke: On the Sublime and Beautiful
Schiller: “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry”
Matthew Arnold: Culture & Anarchy
T. S. Eliot: “Tradition and Individual Talent” in The Sacred Wood
Political Philosophy:
Plutarch: Lives: Lycurgus and Solon
Plato:The Republic, The Laws
Aristotle: Politics, Nicomachean Ethics
Cicero: The Republic, The Laws, On Duties (De Officiis).
Thomas Aquinas: Treatise on Law
Machiavelli: The Prince
Hobbes: Leviathan
Filmer: Patriarcha
Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government
Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution
Joseph de Maistre: Considerations on France
Chateaubriand: Essai historique, politique et moral sur les revolutions anciennes et modernes; Genie du christianisme.
Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality; Beyond Good and Evil
F.H. Bradley: “My Station and Its Duties” in Ethical Studies
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
U.S. Constitution, Federalist Papers
Contemporary Conservative Thought:
Twelve Southerners: I'll Take My Stand
Russell Kirk: The Conservative Mind
Thomas Fleming: Politics of Human Nature; The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition
Sam Francis: Shots Fired, Essential Writings on Race
Paul Gottfried: Conservatism in America
Patrick J. Buchanan: State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America; Death of the West
Chilton Williamson Jr.: The Conservative Bookshelf
Tomislav Sunic: Against Democracy and Equality
Frank Salter: On Genetic Interests
Philosophy:
The Oxford History of Western Philosophy, ed. Anthony Kenny
Modern Philosophy: Introduction and Survey, Roger Scruton
Plato: Republic, Meno, Apology
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics
Cicero: On Duties (De Officiis), On the Ends of Good and Evil (De Finibus), On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum), Academics (Academica), Tusculan Disputations (Tusculanae Disputationes), Stoic Paradoxes (Paradoxa Stoicorum), The Republic (De Re Publica), The Laws (De Legibus)
Seneca: Moral Essays
Augustine: Confessiones
Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
Descartes: Meditationes De Prima Philosophia, Discours de la methode
Vico: The New Science
Berkeley: Treatise the Concerning Principles of Human Knowledge
Spinoza: Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demostrata
Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Treatise of Human Nature
Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Hegel: Philosophy of History
Science:
Plato: Timaeus
Aristotle: Physics, Heavens, Parts of Animals, On Plants
Euclid: Elements
Lucretius: De Rerum Natura
Pliny: Historia Naturalis
Galilei: Sidereus Nuntius
Bacon, R.: Opus Maius
Bacon, F.: Novum Organum
Kepler: Astronomia Nova
Newton: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Pierre L. van den Berghe: The Ethnic Phenomenon
Other:
A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, J.L.E. Dreyer
Frank Salter: On Genetic Interests
Anthropology & Sociology:
Emile Durkheim: Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Roger Pearson: Introduction to Anthroplogy
Economics:
Xenophon: Oeconomicus
Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class
Josef Pieper: Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Wilhelm Ropke: A Humane Economy
Modern Journals:
Quarterly Review (UK)
Book of the Week: Camp of the Saints
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