Great Books of the Western World

tannica publishing company) who proposed selecting the

greatest books of the Western canon, and that Hutchins
and Adler produce unabridged editions for publication,
by Encyclopdia Britannica. Yet, Hutchins was wary of
such a business endeavour, fearing that the books would
be sold as a product, thereby devaluing them as cultural
artefacts; nevertheless, he agreed to the business deal, and
was paid $60,000 for the project.
After deciding what subjects and authors to include, and
how to present the materials, the project was begun, with
a budget of $2,000,000. On April 15, 1952, the Great
Books of the Western World were presented at a publication party in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York
City. In his speech, Hutchins said, This is more than a
set of books, and more than a liberal education. Great
Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are
the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the
West. This is its meaning for mankind. The rst two sets
of books were given to Elizabeth II, Queen of the U.K.,
and to Harry S. Truman, the incumbent U.S. President.

The Great Books (second edition)

Great Books of the Western World is a series of books

originally published in the United States in 1952, by
Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc., to present the Great
Books in a 54-volume set.
The original editors had three criteria for including a book
in the series: the book must be relevant to contemporary
matters, and not only important in its historical context;
it must be rewarding to re-read; and it must be a part of
the great conversation about the great ideas, relevant to
at least 25 of the 102 great ideas identied by the editors.
The books were not chosen on the basis of ethnic and
cultural inclusiveness, historical inuence, or the editors
agreement with the views expressed by the authors.[1]

The initial sales of the book sets were poor, with only
1,863 sets sold in 1952, and less than one-tenth of that
number of book sets were sold in 1953. A nancial
debacle loomed until Encyclopdia Britannica altered
the sales strategy, and sold the book set through experienced door-to-door encyclopdia-salesmen, as Hutchins
had feared; but, through that method, 50,000 sets were
sold in 1961. In 1963 the editors published Gateway to
the Great Books, a ten-volume set of readings meant to introduce the authors and the subjects of the Great Books.
Each year, from 1961 to 1998, the editors published The
Great Ideas Today, an annual updating about the applicability of the Great Books to contemporary life.[2][3] The
Internet and the E-book reader have made available some
of the Great Books of the Western World in an on-line
format.[4]

Initial sales were poor, so the sales strategy switched to a

door-to-door operation which was much more successful.
A second edition was published in 1990 in 60 volumes.
Some translations were updated, some works were removed, and there were signicant additions from the 20th
century.

History

On March 9, 1976 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission

entered an opinion and order enjoining Encyclopedia BriThe project for the Great Books of the Western World be- tannica, Inc. from using: a) deceptive advertising pracgan at the University of Chicago, where the president, tices in recruiting sales agents and obtaining sales leads,
in the door-to-door preRobert Hutchins, collaborated with Mortimer Adler to and b) deceptive sales practices
[5]
sentations
of
its
sales
agents.
develop a course generally aimed at businesspeople
for the purpose of lling the gaps in their liberal education; to render the reader as an intellectually rounded
man or woman familiar with the Great Books of the Western canon, and knowledgeable of the great ideas devel- 2 Volumes
oped in the course of three millennia. An original student
of the project was William Benton (later a U.S. senator, Originally published in 54 volumes, The Great Books
and then chief executive ocer of the Encyclopdia Bri- of the Western World covers categories including
1

VOLUMES

ction, history, poetry, natural science, mathematics, Volume 5

philosophy, drama, politics, religion, economics, and
ethics. Hutchins wrote the rst volume, titled The Great
Aeschylus (translated into English verse by G.M.
Conversation, as an introduction and discourse on liberal
Cookson)
education. Adler sponsored the next two volumes, The
The Suppliant Maidens
Great Ideas: A Syntopicon", as a way of emphasizing the
unity of the set and, by extension, of Western thought in
The Persians
general. A team of indexers spent months compiling ref Seven Against Thebes
erences to such topics as Mans freedom in relation to
Prometheus Bound
the will of God and The denial of void or vacuum in
favor of a plenum". They grouped the topics into 102
The Oresteia
chapters, for which Adler wrote 102 introductions. Four
Agamemnon
colors identify each volume by subject areaImaginative
Choephoroe
Literature, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, His The Eumenides
tory and Social Science, and Philosophy and Theology.
The volumes contained the following works:
Sophocles (translated into English prose by Sir
Richard C. Jebb)
Volume 1
The Great Conversation
Volume 2
Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art,
Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance,
Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom
and Convention, Denition, Democracy, Desire,
Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion,
Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate,
Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit,
Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea,
Immortality, Induction, Innity, Judgment, Justice,
Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life
and Death, Logic, and Love
Volume 3
Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter,
Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination,
Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity
and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many,
Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure
and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy,
Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity,
Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution,
Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign
and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State,
Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny,
Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and
Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World
Volume 4
Homer (rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler)
The Iliad
The Odyssey

The Oedipus Cycle

Oedipus the King
Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone
Ajax
Electra
The Trachiniae
Philoctetes
Euripides (translated into English prose by Edward
P. Coleridge)
Rhesus
Medea
Hippolytus
Alcestis
Heracleidae
The Suppliants
Trojan Women
Ion
Helen
Andromache
Electra
Bacchantes
Hecuba
Heracles Mad
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigeneia in Tauris
Iphigeneia at Aulis
Cyclops
Aristophanes (translated into English verse by
Benjamin Bickley Rogers)

3
The Acharnians

Philebus
Laws

The Knights
The Clouds
The Wasps
Peace
The Birds
The Frogs
Lysistrata
Thesmophoriazusae
Ecclesiazousae
Plutus

The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Volume 8
Aristotle
Categories
On Interpretation
Prior Analytics
Posterior Analytics
Topics
Sophistical Refutations

Volume 6

Physics

Herodotus
The History (translated by George Rawlinson)
Thucydides
History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Richard Crawley and revised by R.
Feetham)

On the Heavens
On Generation and Corruption
Meteorology
Metaphysics
On the Soul
Minor biological works
Volume 9

Volume 7

Aristotle

Plato
The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin
Jowett)

Charmides
Lysis
Laches
Protagoras
Euthydemus
Cratylus
Phaedrus
Ion
Symposium
Meno
Euthyphro
Apology
Crito
Phaedo
Gorgias
The Republic
Timaeus
Critias
Parmenides
Theaetetus
Sophist
Statesman

History of Animals
Parts of Animals
On the Motion of Animals
On the Gait of Animals
On the Generation of Animals
Nicomachean Ethics
Politics
The Athenian Constitution
Rhetoric
Poetics
Volume 10
Hippocrates
Works
Galen
On the Natural Faculties
Volume 11
Euclid
The Thirteen Books of Euclids Elements

2
Archimedes
On the Sphere and Cylinder
Measurement of a Circle
On Conoids and Spheroids
On Spirals
On the Equilibrium of Planes
The Sand Reckoner
The Quadrature of the Parabola
On Floating Bodies
Book of Lemmas
The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
Apollonius of Perga
On Conic Sections
Nicomachus of Gerasa
Introduction to Arithmetic

Volume 12
Lucretius
On the Nature of Things (translated by H.A.J.
Munro)
Epictetus
The Discourses (translated by George Long)
Marcus Aurelius
The Meditations (translated by George Long)
Volume 13
Virgil
Eclogues
Georgics
Aeneid
Volume 14
Plutarch
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Volume 15
P. Cornelius Tacitus (translated by Alfred John
Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
The Annals
The Histories

VOLUMES

Volume 16
Ptolemy
Almagest, part 1 (translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro)
Nicolaus Copernicus
On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
Johannes Kepler (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV
V)
The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
Volume 17
Plotinus
The Six Enneads
Volume 18
Augustine of Hippo
The Confessions
The City of God
On Christian Doctrine
Volume 19
Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part, translated by the
Fathers of the English Dominican Province
and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
Volume 20
Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica (Selections from second
and third parts and supplement, translated by
the Fathers of the English Dominican Province
and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
Volume 21
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy (Translated by Charles
Eliot Norton)
Volume 22

5
Georey Chaucer

William Shakespeare

Troilus and Criseyde

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will

The Canterbury Tales

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Volume 23
Niccol Machiavelli
The Prince
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan
Volume 24
Franois Rabelais
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Volume 25
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Essays
Volume 26
William Shakespeare
The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Tragedy of Richard the Third
The Comedy of Errors
Titus Andronicus
The Taming of the Shrew

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Troilus and Cressida
Alls Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Othello, the Moor of Venice
King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Timon of Athens
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Cymbeline
The Winters Tale
The Tempest
The Famous History of the Life of King Henry
the Eighth
Sonnets
Volume 28
William Gilbert
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
Galileo Galilei
Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
William Harvey

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals

Loves Labours Lost

On the Circulation of Blood

Romeo and Juliet

On the Generation of Animals

The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

A Midsummer Nights Dream
The Life and Death of King John
The Merchant of Venice
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Much Ado About Nothing
The Life of King Henry the Fifth
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Volume 27

Volume 29
Miguel de Cervantes
The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
Volume 30
Sir Francis Bacon
The Advancement of Learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis

Volume 31
Ren Descartes
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on the Method
Meditations on First Philosophy
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies

VOLUMES

Volume 36
Jonathan Swift
Gullivers Travels
Laurence Sterne
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman

The Geometry
Benedict de Spinoza
Ethics
Volume 32
John Milton
English Minor Poems
Paradise Lost
Samson Agonistes
Areopagitica

Volume 37
Henry Fielding
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Volume 38
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
The Spirit of the Laws
Jean Jacques Rousseau
A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Volume 33
Blaise Pascal
The Provincial Letters
Penses
Scientic and mathematical essays
Volume 34
Sir Isaac Newton
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Optics
Christian Huygens
Treatise on Light
Volume 35
John Locke
A Letter Concerning Toleration
Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
George Berkeley
The Principles of Human Knowledge
David Hume
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

A Discourse on Political Economy

The Social Contract
Volume 39
Adam Smith
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations
Volume 40
Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(Part 1)
Volume 41
Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(Part 2)
Volume 42
Immanuel Kant
Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals
Critique of Practical Reason

7
Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals

Faust

Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Con- Volume 48
science
Herman Melville
General Introduction to the Metaphysic of
Morals
Moby Dick; or, The Whale
The Science of Right
The Critique of Judgement
Volume 43
American State Papers
Declaration of Independence
Articles of Confederation

Volume 49
Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation
to Sex

The Constitution of the United States of

Volume 50
America
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
The Federalist
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
Considerations on Representative Government
Utilitarianism
Volume 44
James Boswell
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Volume 45
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Elements of Chemistry
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
Analytical Theory of Heat

Karl Marx
Capital
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Volume 51
Count Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Volume 52
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Volume 53
William James
The Principles of Psychology

Michael Faraday
Experimental Researches in Electricity
Volume 46
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Philosophy of Right
The Philosophy of History
Volume 47
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Volume 54
Sigmund Freud
The Origin and Development of PsychoAnalysis
Selected Papers on Hysteria
The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
Observations on Wild Psycho-Analysis
The Interpretation of Dreams

3
On Narcissism

Don Juan

Instincts and Their Vicissitudes

The Miser

Repression

The Would-Be Gentleman

The Unconscious

The Imaginary Invalid

A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis

Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
The Ego and the Id
Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety

Jean Racine
Brnice
Phdre
Volume 34

Thoughts for the Times on War and Death

Civilization and Its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

Voltaire
Candide
Denis Diderot

Second edition

Rameaus Nephew

In 1990 a second edition of Great Books of the Western Volume 43

World was published, with updated translations and six
more volumes of material covering the 20th century, an
Sren Kierkegaard
era of which the rst edition was nearly devoid. A number of pre-20th century books were also added, and four
Fear and Trembling
were dropped: Apollonius On Conic Sections, Laurence
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sternes Tristram Shandy, Henry Fieldings Tom Jones,
and Joseph Fouriers Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler
Beyond Good and Evil
later expressed regret about dropping On Conic Sections
and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the
addition of Voltaires Candide, and said that the Syntopi- Volume 44
con should have included references to the Koran. He
Alexis de Tocqueville
addressed criticisms that the set was too heavily Western
European and did not adequately represent women and
Democracy in America
minority authors.[6]
The pre-20th century books added (volume numbering is Volume 45
not strictly compatible with the rst edition due to rearrangement of some books):
Honor de Balzac
Volume 20
Cousin Bette
John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)
Volume 23
Erasmus
The Praise of Folly
Volume 31
Molire
The School for Wives
The Critique of the School for Wives
Tartue

Volume 46
Jane Austen
Emma
George Eliot
Middlemarch
Volume 47
Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit
Volume 48

SECOND EDITION

9
Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn
Volume 52

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

Arthur Eddington
The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr

Henrik Ibsen
A Dolls House

Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature

(selections)

The Wild Duck

Discussion with Einstein on Epistemology

Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
The six volumes of 20th century material consisted of the
following:
Volume 55
William James
Pragmatism
Henri Bergson
"An Introduction to Metaphysics"
John Dewey

G. H. Hardy
A Mathematicians Apology
Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrdinger
What Is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Genetics and the Origin of Species
C. H. Waddington
The Nature of Life

Experience and Education

Alfred North Whitehead
Science and the Modern World
Bertrand Russell
The Problems of Philosophy
Martin Heidegger
What Is Metaphysics?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations
Karl Barth
The Word of God and the Word of Man
Volume 56
Henri Poincar
Science and Hypothesis
Max Planck
Scientic Autobiography and Other Papers
Alfred North Whitehead
An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein

Volume 57
Thorstein Veblen
The Theory of the Leisure Class
R. H. Tawney
The Acquisitive Society
John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money
Volume 58
Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough (selections)
Max Weber
Essays in Sociology (selections)
Johan Huizinga
The Autumn of the Middle Ages
Claude Lvi-Strauss
Structural Anthropology (selections)
Volume 59

10

4 CRITICISMS AND RESPONSES

Henry James
The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov

Mother Courage and Her Children

Ernest Hemingway
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell
Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot

Uncle Vanya
Luigi Pirandello
Six Characters in Search of an Author

4 Criticisms and responses

4.1 Authors

Marcel Proust

The choice of authors has come under attack, with some

"Swann in dismissing the project as a celebration of dead European males, ignoring contributions of women and nonEuropean authors.[7][8] The criticism swelled in tandem
Willa Cather
with the feminist and civil rights movements.[9] Similarly,
in his Europe: A History, Norman Davies criticizes
A Lost Lady
the compilation for overrepresenting selected parts of the
Thomas Mann
western world, especially Britain and the U.S., while ignoring the other, particularly Central and Eastern Europe.
Death in Venice
According to his calculation, in 151 authors included in
both editions, there are 49 English or American authors,
James Joyce
27 Frenchmen, 20 Germans, 15 ancient Greeks, 9 ancient
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Romans, 6 Russians, 4 Scandinavians, 3 Spaniards, 3 Italians, 3 Irishmen, 3 Scots, and 3 Eastern Europeans. Prejudices and preferences, he concludes, are self-evident.
Volume 60
Remembrance of Things Past:
Love"

Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
D. H. Lawrence
The Prussian Ocer
T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land
Eugene O'Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily
Bertolt Brecht

In response, such criticisms have been derided as ad

hominem and biased in themselves. The counterargument maintains that such criticisms discount the importance of books solely because of generic, imprecise
and possibly irrelevant characteristics of the books authors, rather than because of the content of the books
themselves.[10]

4.2 Works
Others thought that while the selected authors were worthy, too much emphasis was placed on the complete
works of a single author rather than a wider selection
of authors and representative works (for instance, all of
Shakespeare's plays are included). The second edition of
the set already contained 130 authors and 517 individual
works. The editors point out that the guides to additional
reading for each topic in the Syntopicon refer the interested reader to many more authors.[11]

4.3 Diculty
The scientic and mathematical selections came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average

11
reader, especially with the absence of any sort of critical apparatus. The second edition did drop two scientic
works, by Apollonius and Fourier, in part because of their
perceived diculty for the average reader. Nevertheless,
the editors steadfastly maintain that average readers are
capable of understanding far more than the critics deem
possible. Robert Hutchins stated this view in the introduction to the rst edition:
Because the great bulk of mankind have never
had the chance to get a liberal education, it cannot be proved that they can get it. Neither can
it be proved that they cannot. The statement
of the ideal, however, is of value in indicating
the direction that education should take.[12]

4.4

Rationale

Since the great majority of the works were still in print,

one critic noted that the company could have saved two
million dollars and simply written a list. Encyclopdia
Britannicas aggressive promotion produced solid sales.
Dense formatting also did not help readability.[13]
The second edition selected translations that were generally considered an improvement, though the cramped
typography remained. Through reading plans and the
Syntopicon, the editors have attempted to guide readers
through the set.[14]

4.5

Response to criticisms

The editors responded that the set contains wide-ranging

debates representing many viewpoints on signicant issues, not a monolithic school of thought. Mortimer Adler
argued in the introduction to the second edition:
Presenting a wide variety and divergence of
views or opinions, among which there is likely
to be some truth but also much more error, the
Syntopicon [and by extension the larger set itself] invites readers to think for themselves and
make up their own minds on every topic under
consideration.[15]

See also
John Erskine
Charles W. Eliot
Robert Maynard Hutchins
Mortimer J. Adler
Educational perennialism

Western canon
Great Books
Harvard Classics
Liberal arts

6 References
[1] Selecting Works for the 1990 Edition of the Great Books
of the Western World, Dr. Mortimer Adler
[2] Milton Meyer (1993). "Robert Maynard Hutchins: A
Memoir". University of California Press. Retrieved 200705-30. This biography of Robert M. Hutchins contains an
extensive discussion of the Great Books project.
[3] Carrie Golus (2002-07-11). Special Collections tells the
story of a cornerstone of American education. The University of Chicago Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-05-30.
[4] Great Books of the Western World (eBooks @ University
of Adelaide)". University of Adelaide. Retrieved 7 June
2012.
[5] In the Matter of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. et al.,
pp.421-541 (PDF).
[6] Venant, Elizabeth (3 December 1990). A Curmudgeon
Stands His Ground. The Los Angeles Times.
[7] Sabrina Walters (2001-07-01). Great Books won Adler
fame, scorn. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-07-01.
[8] Peter Temes (2001-07-03). Death of a Great Reader
and Philosopher. Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the
original on 2007-11-04. Retrieved 2007-07-11.
[9] John Berlau (August 2001). What Happened to the Great
Ideas? Mortimer J. Adlers Great Books programs.
Insight Magazine Insight on the News 17 (32): 16. Retrieved March 2014. Harvard Universitys Henry Louis
Gates blasted the Great Books for showing 'profound disrespect for the intellectual capacities of people of color
red, brown or yellow.'
[10] Mortimer Adler (September 1997). Selecting works for
the 1990 edition of Great Books of the Western World.
Great Books Index. Retrieved 2007-05-29. We did not
base our selections on an authors nationality, religion,
politics, or eld of study; nor on an authors race or gender. Great books were not chosen to make up quotas of
any kind; there was no armative action in the process.
[11] Mortimer J. Adler (1990). Bibliography of Additional
Readings. The Syntopicon: II. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 1-2 (2nd ed.). Encyclopdia Britannica,
Inc. pp. 909996. ISBN 0-85229-531-6.
[12] Robert M. Hutchins (1952). Chapter VI: Education for
All. The Great Conversation. Encyclopdia Britannica,
Inc. p. 44.

12

[13] Dwight Macdonald.

The Book-of-the-Millennium
Club. 29 November 1952 with later appendix. The New
Yorker. Retrieved 2007-05-29. I also wonder how many
of the over 100,000 customers who have by now caved in
under the pressure of Mr. Harden and his banner-bearing
colleagues are doing much browsing in these upland pastures?
[14] Mortimer J. Adler (1990). The Great Conversation (2nd
ed.). Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. pp. 3334 for discussion of new translations, pp.7498 for reading plans and
guides. ISBN 0-85229-531-6.
[15] Mortimer J. Adler (1990). Section 1: The Great Books
and the Great Ideas. The Great Conversation (2nd ed.).
Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. p. 27. ISBN 0-85229-5316.

External links
Ocial Britannica web page for the Great Books
Center for the Study of the Great Ideas Mortimer
Adler web pages with extensive discussion of the
Great Books
Greater Books - a site documenting lists of great
books, classics, canons, including the Great Books
of the Western World

EXTERNAL LINKS

13

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1

Text

Great Books of the Western World Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World?oldid=709772925 Contributors: M~enwiki, Heron, Hotlorp, DavidWBrooks, Adam Bishop, Stone, Mjklin, Hyacinth, Fibonacci, Goethean, Altenmann, Psychonaut, Mirv, Intangir, Dina, Ancheta Wis, Netoholic, DO'Neil, Kpalion, Proslaes, Gzornenplatz, Alan Nicoll, R. end, Antandrus,
Lesgles, Rdsmith4, Mysidia, Mozzerati, Sam Hocevar, MakeRocketGoNow, DMG413, Ham II, WikiEros, Rich Farmbrough, Vsmith,
Livajo, Zenohockey, Liberatus, Susvolans, Wareh, Chris Kern, Olivier Mengu, Carbon Caryatid, Fuzlogic, N2lect2el, Alvis, Mel Etitis,
RHaworth, Timo Laine, Carcharoth, Robert K S, Marudubshinki, Jshadias, Casey Abell, Koavf, NatusRoma, JonathanAquino, Baojia,
Afterwriting, JanSuchy, Ground Zero, JdforresterBot, Czar, Cmadler, Gareth E. Kegg, Chobot, EamonnPKeane, RussBot, TimNelson,
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8.2

Images

File:Great_Books.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Great_Books.jpg License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

8.3

Content license

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