Great Books of the Western World

Great Books of the Western World is a series of books

originally published in the United States in 1952, by
Encyclopædia 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
identified by the editors. The books were not chosen on The Great Books (second edition)
the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness, historical
influence, or the editors' agreement with the views
expressed by the authors.[1]

A second edition was published in 1990 in 60 volumes. Some translations were updated, some works were
removed, and there were significant additions from the 20th century.

Contents
History
Volumes
Second edition
Criticisms and responses
See also
References
External links

History
The project for the Great Books of the Western World began at the University of Chicago, where the president,
Robert Hutchins, collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course—generally aimed at businesspeople—
for the purpose of filling 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
developed in the course of three millennia. An original student of the project was William Benton (later a U.S.
senator, and then chief executive officer of the Encyclopædia Britannica publishing company) who proposed
selecting the greatest books of the Western canon, and that Hutchins and Adler produce unabridged editions
for publication, by Encyclopædia Britannica. Hutchins was at first wary of the idea, fearing that commodifying
the books would devalue them as cultural artefacts; nevertheless, he agreed to the business deal and was paid
$60,000 for his work on 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
first two sets of books were given to Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, and to Harry S. Truman, the
incumbent U.S. President.

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 financial debacle loomed until Encyclopædia Britannica altered the
sales strategy, and sold the book set through experienced door-to-door encyclopædia-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]

Volumes
Originally published in 54 volumes, The Great Books of the Western World covers categories including fiction,
history, poetry, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, drama, politics, religion, economics, and ethics.
Hutchins wrote the first volume, titled The Great Conversation, as an introduction and discourse on liberal
education. Adler sponsored the next two volumes, "The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon", as a way of emphasizing
the unity of the set and, by extension, of Western thought in general. A team of indexers spent months
compiling references to such topics as "Man's freedom in relation to the will of God" and "The denial of void
or vacuum in favor of a plenum". They grouped the topics into 102 chapters, for which Adler wrote 102
introductions. Four colors identify each volume by subject area—Imaginative Literature, Mathematics and the
Natural Sciences, History and Social Science, and Philosophy and Theology. The volumes contained the
following works:

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, Definition, 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, Infinity, 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

Volume 5
Aeschylus (translated into English verse by G.M. Cookson)
The Suppliant Maidens
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
Prometheus Bound
The Oresteia
Agamemnon
Choephoroe
The Eumenides
Sophocles (translated into English prose by Sir Richard C. Jebb)
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
The Trojan Women
Ion
Helen
Andromache
Electra
Bacchantes
Hecuba
 Heracles Mad
The Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigenia in Tauris
Iphigenia in Aulis
Cyclops
Aristophanes (translated into English verse by Benjamin Bickley Rogers)
The Acharnians
The Knights
The Clouds
The Wasps
Peace
The Birds
The Frogs
Lysistrata
Thesmophoriazusae
Ecclesiazousae
Plutus

Volume 6
Herodotus
The History (translated by George Rawlinson)
Thucydides
History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Richard Crawley and revised by R.
Feetham)

Volume 7
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
Philebus
Laws
The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Volume 8
Aristotle
Categories
On Interpretation
Prior Analytics
Posterior Analytics
Topics
Sophistical Refutations
Physics
On the Heavens
On Generation and Corruption
Meteorology
Metaphysics
On the Soul
Minor biological works

Volume 9
Aristotle
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 Euclid's Elements
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 (translated into English verse by James Rhoades)
Eclogues
Georgics
 Aeneid

Volume 14
Plutarch
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (translated by John Dryden)

Volume 15
P. Cornelius Tacitus (translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
The Annals
The Histories

Volume 16
Ptolemy
Almagest, (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 (translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page)

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
Divine Comedy (Translated by Charles Eliot Norton)

Volume 22
Geoffrey Chaucer
Troilus and Criseyde
The Canterbury Tales

Volume 23
Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan

Volume 24
François 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 Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
A Midsummer Night's 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
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Troilus and Cressida
All's 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 Winter's 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
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
On the Circulation of Blood
On the Generation of Animals

Volume 29
Miguel de Cervantes
The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, (translated by John Ormsby)

Volume 30
Sir Francis Bacon
The Advancement of Learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis

Volume 31
René Descartes
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on the Method
Meditations on First Philosophy
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies
The Geometry
Benedict de Spinoza
Ethics

Volume 32
John Milton
English Minor Poems
Paradise Lost
Samson Agonistes
Areopagitica

Volume 33
Blaise Pascal
The Provincial Letters
Pensées
Scientific 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

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

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
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
Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals
Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on
Conscience
General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
The Science of Right
The Critique of Judgement

Volume 43
American State Papers
Declaration of Independence
Articles of Confederation
The Constitution of the United States of 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
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
Faust

Volume 48
Herman Melville
Moby Dick; or, The Whale

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

Volume 50
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

Volume 54
Sigmund Freud
The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
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
On Narcissism
Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
Repression
The Unconscious
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
Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
Civilization and Its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

Second edition
The second edition of Great Books of the Western World, 1990, saw an increase from 54 to 60 volumes, with
updated translations. The six new volumes concerned the 20th century, an era of which the first edition's sole
representative was Freud. Some of the other volumes were re-arranged, with even more pre-20th century
material added but with four texts deleted: Apollonius' On Conic Sections, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy,
Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Joseph Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler later expressed regret
about dropping On Conic Sections and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the addition of
Voltaire's Candide, and said that the Syntopicon should have included references to the Koran. He addressed
criticisms that the set was too heavily Western European and did not adequately represent women and minority
authors.[5] Four women authors were included, where previously there were none.[6]

The added pre-20th century texts appear in these volumes (some of the accompanying content of these
volumes differs from the first edition volume of that number):

Volume 20
John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)

Volume 23
Erasmus
The Praise of Folly

Volume 31
Molière
The School for Wives
The Critique of the School for Wives
Tartuffe
Don Juan
The Miser
The Would-Be Gentleman
The Imaginary Invalid
Jean Racine
Bérénice
Phèdre

Volume 34
Voltaire
Candide
Denis Diderot
Rameau's Nephew
Volume 43
Søren Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil

Volume 44
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America

Volume 45
Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Bette

Volume 46
Jane Austen
Emma
George Eliot
Middlemarch

Volume 47
Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit

Volume 48
Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn

Volume 52
Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House
The Wild Duck
Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
The contents of the six volumes of added 20th-century material:

Volume 55
William James
Pragmatism
Henri Bergson
"An Introduction to Metaphysics"
John Dewey
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 Poincaré
Science and Hypothesis
Max Planck
Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Alfred North Whitehead
An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Arthur Eddington
The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr
Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections)
Discussion with Einstein on Epistemology
G. H. Hardy
A Mathematician's Apology
 Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrödinger
What Is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Genetics and the Origin of Species
C. H. Waddington
The Nature of Life

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 Lévi-Strauss
Structural Anthropology (selections)

Volume 59
Henry James
The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov
 Uncle Vanya
Luigi Pirandello
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past: "Swann in Love"
Willa Cather
A Lost Lady
Thomas Mann
Death in Venice
James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Volume 60
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
D. H. Lawrence
The Prussian Officer
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
Mother Courage and Her Children
Ernest Hemingway
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell
Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Criticisms and responses

Authors

The choice of authors has come under attack, with some dismissing the project as a celebration of European
males, ignoring contributions of women and non-European authors.[7][8] The criticism swelled in tandem with
the feminist and civil rights movements.[9] Similarly, in his Europe: A History, Norman Davies criticizes the
compilation for overrepresenting selected parts of the western world, especially Britain and the U.S., while
ignoring the other, particularly Central and Eastern Europe. According to his calculation, in 151 authors
included in both editions, there are 49 English or American authors, 27 Frenchmen, 20 Germans, 15 ancient
Greeks, 9 ancient Romans, 4 Russians, 4 Scandinavians, 3 Spaniards, 3 Italians, 3 Irishmen, 3 Scots, and 3
Eastern Europeans. Prejudices and preferences, he concludes, are self-evident.

In response, such criticisms have been derided as ad hominem and biased in themselves. The counter-
argument 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]

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]

Difficulty

The scientific and mathematical selections came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average
reader, especially with the absence of any sort of critical apparatus. The second edition did drop two scientific
works, by Apollonius and Fourier, in part because of their perceived difficulty 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 first 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]

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. Encyclopædia Britannica's 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]
Response to criticisms

The editors responded that the set contains wide-ranging debates representing many viewpoints on significant
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
Educational perennialism
Western canon
Great books
Harvard Classics
Liberal arts

References
1. "Selecting Works for the 1990 Edition of the Great Books of the Western World" (http://gutenber
g.edu/why-gutenberg/great-books/), Dr. Mortimer Adler
2. Milton Meyer (1993). "Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir" (http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4w
10061d/). University of California Press. Retrieved 2007-05-30. 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" (http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/020711/greatbooks.shtml). The University of Chicago
Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-05-30.
4. "Great Books of the Western World (eBooks @ University of Adelaide)" (http://ebooks.adelaide.
edu.au/l/literature/gbww/index.html). University of Adelaide. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
5. Venant, Elizabeth (3 December 1990). "A Curmudgeon Stands His Ground" (http://articles.latim
es.com/1990-12-03/news/vw-4402_1_great-books). The Los Angeles Times.
6. McDowell, Edwin (October 25, 1990). " 'Great Books' Takes In Moderns and Women" (https://w
ww.nytimes.com/1990/10/25/books/great-books-takes-in-moderns-and-women.html). The New
York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2019.
7. Sabrina Walters (2001-07-01). "Great Books won Adler fame, scorn" (http://www.encyclopedia.
com/doc/1P2-4603568.html). Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-07-01.
8. Peter Temes (2001-07-03). "Death of a Great Reader and Philosopher" (https://web.archive.org/
web/20071104012348/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20010703/ai_n1391776
0). Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/i
s_20010703/ai_n13917760) on 2007-11-04. Retrieved 2007-07-11.
9. Berlau, John (August 2001). "What Happened to the Great Ideas? – Mortimer J. Adler's Great
Books programs" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140313001039/http://www.greatbooksacadem
y.org/newsroom/what-happened-to-the-great-ideas-by-john-berlau/). Insight Magazine Insight
on the News. 17 (32): 16. Archived from the original (http://www.greatbooksacademy.org/newsr
oom/what-happened-to-the-great-ideas-by-john-berlau/) on 2014-03-13. Retrieved March 2014.
"Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates blasted the Great Books for showing 'profound
disrespect for the intellectual capacities of people of color—red, brown or yellow.'" Check date
values in: |accessdate= (help)
10. Mortimer Adler (September 1997). "Selecting works for the 1990 edition of Great Books of the
Western World" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070927192502/http://books.mirror.org/gb.sel19
90.html). Great Books Index. Archived from the original (http://books.mirror.org/gb.sel1990.html)
on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-05-29. "We did not base our selections on an author's
nationality, religion, politics, or field of study; nor on an author's race or gender. Great books
were not chosen to make up quotas of any kind; there was no "affirmative action" in the
process."
11. Mortimer J. Adler (1990). "Bibliography of Additional Readings" (https://archive.org/details/great
booksofwest00adle). The Syntopicon: II (https://archive.org/details/greatbooksofwest00adle/pa
ge/909). Great Books of the Western World, vol. 1–2 (2nd ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
pp. 909–996 (https://archive.org/details/greatbooksofwest00adle/page/909). ISBN 0-85229-
531-6.
12. Robert M. Hutchins (1952). "Chapter VI: Education for All". The Great Conversation (https://arch
ive.org/details/greatconversatio030336mbp). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 44 (https://archiv
e.org/details/greatconversatio030336mbp/page/n113).
13. Macdonald, Dwight. "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club" (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/
50s/macdonald-great-books.html). 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 (https://archive.org/details/greatbooksofwest0
0adle/page/33) (2nd ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. pp. 33–34 for discussion of new
translations, pp. 74–98 for reading plans and guides (https://archive.org/details/greatbooksofwe
st00adle/page/33). ISBN 0-85229-531-6.
15. Mortimer J. Adler (1990). "Section 1: The Great Books and the Great Ideas" (https://archive.org/
details/greatbooksofwest00adle). The Great Conversation (https://archive.org/details/greatbook
sofwest00adle/page/27) (2nd ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 27 (https://archive.org/detai
ls/greatbooksofwest00adle/page/27). ISBN 0-85229-531-6.

External links
Official Britannica web page for the Great Books (http://britannicashop.britannica.co.uk/epages/
Store.sf/Shops/Britannicashop/Products/ENC_BOOK_0123.html)
Center for the Study of the Great Ideas (http://www.thegreatideas.org/index.html) Mortimer Adler
web pages with extensive discussion of the Great Books
Greater Books (http://www.greaterbooks.com) – a site documenting lists of "great books,"
classics, canons, including the Great Books of the Western World

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This page was last edited on 22 June 2020, at 04:31 (UTC).

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