Excerpt from Vintage Reading : From Plato to Bradbury by Robert Kanigel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Table of Contents

Introduction

ONE : On Everyone's List of Literary Classics
Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
Kim Rudyard Kipling
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Justine
Lawrence Durrell
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
A Passage to India E.M. Forster
My Antonia
Willa Cather
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert


TWO : On Many a List for Burning Heretics,
Subversives, Demagogues, Stories
Dorothy Parker
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce
Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler
Nana Emile Zola
Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed
Native Son Richard Wright


THREE : Books That Shaped the Western World
Essays
Montaigne
Dialogues Plato
The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith
An Essay on the Principle of Population
Thomas Malthus
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
The Histories Herodotus
The Federalist Papers Hamilton
Madison Jay
The Annals of Imperial Rome Tacitus
The Peloponnesian War Thucydides
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville


FOUR : Making Hard Work Easy The Great Popularizers
Only Yesterday
Frederick Lewis Allen
Microbe Hunters
Paul de Kruif
Selected Works
Cicero
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
The Outermost House Henry Beston
The Amiable Baltimoreans Francis F. Beirne
What to Listen for in Music
Aaron Copland
Gods, Graves, and Scholars
C.W. Ceram
The Stress of Life Hans Selye
The Greek Way Edith Hamilton


FIVE : Not Robinson Crusoe, Not Brave New World
Lesser Known Classics
A Journal of the Plague Year
Daniel Defoe
The Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley
Elective Affinities
John Wolfgang von Goethe
Homage to Catalonia George Orwell
Civilization and Its Discontents Sigmund Freud
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis
Roughing It
Mark Twain


SIX : Lighter Fare Good Reads, Best Sellers
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Song of Hiawatha
H.W. Longfellow
The Rise of David Levinsky
Abraham Cahan
Java Head Joseph Hergesheimer
Mr. Pottermack's Oversight R. Austin Freeman
A Bell for Adano John Hersey
The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury
Gentleman's Agreement
Laura Z. Hobson


SEVEN : "But I Know What I Like" On Aesthetics and Style
The Ten Books of Architecture
Vitruvius
The Lives of the Most Eminent
Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors
Giorgio Vasari
The Seven Lamps of Architecture John Ruskin
The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
Kenneth Clark
The Elements of Style Strunk and White


EIGHT : One-of-a-Kinds
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf
The American Language
H.L. Mencken
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint Exupery
The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams
Flatland Edwin A. Abbott
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neal Hurston
A Mathematician's Apology Godfrey H. Hardy
My Life
Isadora Duncan
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn


NINE : The Realm of the Spirit Holy and Human
Gilgamesh Babylonian epic
Confessions Saint Augustine
The Golem
Gustav Meyrink
The Razor's Edge
W. Somerset Maugham
The Seven Storey Mountain
Thomas Merton
Death Be Not Proud John Gunther
Ecclesiastes Old Testament
Lost Horizon James Hilton