Western Civ - 10 Most Influential Books

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Shakespeare - take your pick

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell

1984 - George Orwell

Animal Farm

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Euclid's The Elements.

Newton's Principia

I think this list would have to include some by Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine, considering the influence of the Christian religion. By St. Augustine, probably the Confessions, which some claim to be the first autobiography, or City of God. By Aquinas, the Summa Theologiae.

Also, got to go with Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, and Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

Twilight.

Definitely Origin of Species.

Maybe Camus would fit in there somewhere?

Plato and Tom Paine might need to be respetned

averagerunerrr wrote:

Twilight.

You sicken me.

this Q depends how you calculate "influence"--not such an easy thing to do.

1. Newton's Principia (written in Latin)

2. Plato's Republic.

3. King James Bible.

4. Shakespeare's first Folio(1623)--(first compilation of all the plays)

5. either John Locke's Two Treatises of Government

or Adam Smith Wealth of Nations.

Aside from the obvious Bible:

Paradise Lost-John Milton (Perhaps the most important on this list)

Hamlet-William Shakespeare (I'll disagree with the guy above who said just pick one because not all of Shakespeare's plays are amazing simply because they are his [e.g. some of the comedies])

The Canterbury Tales- Geoffrey Chaucer

Beowulf-Unknown

The Divine Comedy-Dante Alighieri

Confessions-Augustine

I am an English lit scholar, so you can tell where my expertise revolves around, but I would say that those are pretty essential.

Thank you everyone. These are pretty much the ones I had at least thought of. I am a high school junior and attend a very rural school where class offerings are pretty thin. We have no English classes that even mention Greek lit, for example. I guess I'm just hoping to educate myself some before college.

I have tried to read some Dante and Milton and just don't have the background to understand the classical and biblical allusions. If someone has any hints, I'd appreciate it. Are there good annotated editions or study guides?

I'd love to try and read Newton and Euclid but again I'm afraid I would get lost in them. I'm going to try, though.

I was curious about the Robinson Crusoe suggestion. I would not have thought of that book but really don't know much about it except some Disney animation.

I wouldn't include Camus. Existentialism is not particularly important when looking at Western Civilisation as a whole. (If you did want something modern and French, then Sartre and De Beauvoir are probably more important than Camus.)

I think Machiavelli's "The Prince" might be a good one.

you don't actually have to read Newton in the original--

if you take a good physics class you will get the basic ideas behind Newton; and then you can connect the fact that Newtonian physics was basically the MAIN view as to how the world worked until Einstein came along early 20th c.

Suggest you read as many Shakespeare plays as you can and as much of the King James Bible as you can put away---esp. if your first language is English---these are the 2 most important books in English.

Oh, and the best major work to make sure you read in TRANSLATION (assuming you don't know the Greek--"it's greek to me") is the Iliad

After you read Iliad go see the movie Troy again--its a good movie, but it leaves alot out

Books suck I'd rather go for a run than spend my time reading. With that said, Origin of Species > bible. Leopold's Sand County Almanac has got some merit to it. Also, pretty much most of the books on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States

especially the ones that get BibleThumpers panties in a wad.

i'd just like to point out that the Bible doesn't have to be read from the viewpoint of any belief system--you can read it simply for its literary merits

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Plato's Republic

Aristotle's Poetics

Something Arthurian, such as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

The Canterbury Tales

King Lear

Lyrical Ballads

Madame Bovary

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn