Partial List of Contents

Reviews of the following books appear in the indicated chapters. To read the review, click on the chapter title in the left-hand column on this page and then scroll down to the book you want.


Chapter 1: "Literary and Artistic Criticism"

Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
Joseph Epstein, Plausible Prejudices
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary
George Orwell, Dickens, Dali, and Others
Walter Pater, Studies in The History of The Renaissance
A.L. Rowse, Prefaces to Shakespeare’s Plays

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Chapter 2: "Political and Social Criticism"

Irving Babbitt, Literature and the American College
William Bennett, The Devaluing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children
Walter Berns, Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution In France
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls Of Black Folk
Robert H. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy
Paul Johnson, Intellectuals
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind
Michael Montaigne, Essays
Malcolm Muggeridge, Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society
George Orwell, The Lion and The Unicorn
Neil Postman, Technopoly
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History
Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies

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Chapter 3: "Shakespeare"

Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World; How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”

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Chapter 4: "Gems & Oddities"

Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Robert Heinlein, Stranger In a Strange Land
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law
Harry Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom
Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum
Sandra Day O’Connor, The Majesty of the Law; Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Plato, Symposium
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings
Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

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Chapter 5: "Biography"

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Ernle Bradford, Paul The Traveler
Ernle Bradford, Hannibal
Ernle Bradford, Julius Caesar: The Pursuit of Power
Anthony Bridge, Suleiman The Magnificent
Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: The Rediscovery of George Washington
Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission
Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times
Joseph Conrad, Mirror of the Sea
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass
Richard Ellman, James Joyce
U.S. Grant, Memoirs of U.S. Grant
Alvin Kernan, In Plato’s Cave
Georges LeFebvre, Napoleon
Basil Liddell-Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, Statesman

Hellen Keller, Autobiography
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography of John Stuart Mill
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
Mary Renault, The Nature of Alexander
Ian Skidmore, Owain Glyndwr
Alan Villiers, Captain James Cook
A.N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

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Chapter 6: "Science"

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

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Chapter 7: "History"

Noel Barber, Lords of the Golden Horn
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience
Julius Caesar, Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars
Julius Caesar, The Civil War, 50-48 B.C.
Winston S. Churchill, The American Civil War
Winston Churchill, Heroes of History
Winston Churchill, The World Crisis
Thomas B. Costain, The Conquering Family
Thomas B. Costain, The Magnificent Century
Thomas B. Costain, The Three Edwards
Thomas B. Costain, The Last Plantagenets
Thomas B. Costain, The White and the Gold
Sanche DeGramont, Strong Brown God
Charles L. Dufour, The Mexican War
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers
Ronald C. Finucane, Soldiers of the Faith
Eric Foner, Reconstruction
Bil Gilbert, God Gave Us This Country
John Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses
Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars
Michael Grant, The Rise Of The Greeks
Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks
Edith Hamilton, The Roman Way
Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812
David Howarth, The Greek Adventure
David Howarth, Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch
David Howarth, Waterloo: The Day of Battle
Hammond Innes, The Conquistadores
Paul Johnson, A History of the American People
Paul Johnson, Modern Times
Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity
Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern
John Keegan, History of Warfare
A.J. Langguth, Patriots
A.J. Langguth, A Noise of War
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
John Lucaks, The End of the 20th Century And the End of the Modern Age
Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile
Alan Moorehead, Darwin and the Beagle
Alan Moorehead, Cooper's Creek
Tim Newark, The Barbarians
Freya Stark, Rome on the Euphrates
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
Cornelius Tacitus, The Anals of Tacitus
Cornelius Tacitus, The Histories

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

H.G. Wells, The Outline of History

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Chapter 8: "Fiction"

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot
Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, Youth: A Narrative
Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Steven Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy
Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
John DosPassos, USA Trilogy
Feodor Dostoevski, House of the Dead
Feodor Dostoevski, The Idiot
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Daphne duMaurier, Rebecca
Lawrence Durrell, Alexandria Quartet
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot, Middlemarch
George Eliot, Adam Bede
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
E.M. Forster, A Passage To India
E.M. Forster, A Room With A View
E.M. Forster, Howards End
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman
Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads
Johannes Wolfgang Goethe, Faust
William Golding, The Lord of the Flies
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield
Robert Graves, The Siege Of Troy
Robert Graves, Greek Gods and Heros
Robert Graves, The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene, Our Man In Havana
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy, Under The Greenwood Tree
William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham

Homer, The Iliad
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris
John Irving, The World According to Garp
Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle
Henry James, The Aspern Papers
Henry James, The Portrait Of A Lady

Henry James, The Golden Bowl
James Joyce, Ulysses
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
Murasaki, Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
V.S. Naipaul, Half A Life
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain
Walker Percy, Lancelot
Walker Percy, Love In the Ruins
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?
Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Stendhal, (Marie-Henri Beyle), The Red and the Black

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Anthony Trollope, The Warden
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Vergil, The Aeneid
Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton, House of Mirth
Edith Wharton, The Custom of The Country
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

Richard Wright, Native Son

Richard Wright,Native Son

Chapter 9: "Travel"

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Norman Douglas, Siren Land

Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra