Recommended reading¶
Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren, “How to read a book” (archive.org link)
Mortimer and Van Doren mention with asterisks titles included in Great Books of the Western World (single asterisk) and Gateway to the Great Books (double asterisk).
Homer (9th Century B.C. ?) * Iliad * Odyssey
The Old Testament
Aeschylus (c. 525-456 B.C.) * Tragedies
Sophocles (c. 495-406 B.C.) * Tragedies
Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.) * History of the Persian Wars
Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.) * Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.) * History of the Peloponnesian War
Hippocrates (c. 460-377? B.C.) * Medical writings
Aristophanes
Plato
Aristotle
Epicurus
Reading list suggested by Jordan Peterson
Literature/Philosophy
Beyle, Marie-Henri (Stendhal): The Charterhouse of Parma
Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
Cary, Joyce: The Horse’s Mouth
Chandler, Raymond: The Big Sleep
Chandler, Raymond: The Long Goodbye
Dalyrmple, Theodore: Our Culture: What’s Left of It
Dalrymple, Theodore: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
Dostoevesky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment (g1)
Dostoevesky, Fyodor: Notes from Underground (g2)
Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov (g3)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Devils (g4)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot (g5)
Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
Graves, Robert: I, Claudius
Hammet, Dashiel: The Maltese Falcon
Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell To Arms
Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and the Sea
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
Huxley, Aldous: Island
Huxley, Aldous: Point Counterpoint
Kazantzakis, Nikos: The Fratricides
Kazantzakis, Nikos: Zorba the Greek
Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Kesey, Ken: Sometimes a Great Notion
Keyes, Daniel: Flowers for Algernon
Laurence, Margaret: The Stone Angel
Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil (g6)
Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morals
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Antichrist (g7)
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Gay Science
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Will to Power (g8)
Orwell, George: 1984
Orwell, George: Animal Farm
Orwell, George: Road to Wigan Pier
Pirsig, Robert: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Shem, Samuel: The House of God
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: Cancer Ward
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: The First Circle
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: The Gulag Archipelago: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3. (alternatively, all three volumes abridged into one)
Steinbeck, John: East of Eden
Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John: Of Men and Mice
Stendhal: The Red and the Black
Thompson, Hunter S: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina (g9)
Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace (g10)
Troyat, Henri: Tolstoy
Wolfe, Tom: The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry
Becker, Ernest: The Denial of Death
Ellenberger, Henri: The Discovery of the Unconscious
Eysenck, Hans: Genius
Frankl, Viktor: Man’s Search for Meaning
Freud, Sigmund: An Outline of Psychoanalysis (g11)
Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams (g12)
Jung, Carl: Aion
Jung, Carl: Answer to Job
Jung, Carl: Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
Jung, Carl: Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Jung, Carl: Mysterium Coniunctionis (Difficult; read the last half)
Jung, Carl: Psychology and Alchemy
Jung, Carl: Psychology: East and West
Jung, Carl: Psychology of Religion: East and West
Jung, Carl: Symbols of Transformation
Jung, Carl: The Symbolic Life
Jung, Carl: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
May, Rollo. Angel, Ernest & Ellenberger, Henri: Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology
Neumann, Erich: The Origins and History of Consciousness
Neumann, Erich: The Great Mother
Piaget, Jean: Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood
Piaget, Jean: The Moral Judgment of the Child
Rogers, Carl: A Way of Being
Rogers, Carl: On Becoming a Person
Neuroscience
Gibson, James J: An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Goldberg, Elkhonon: The New Executive Brain
Gray, Jeffrey and Neil McNaughton: The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
LeDoux, Joseph: The Emotional Brain
Panksepp, Jaak: Affective Neuroscience
Sacks, Oliver: The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
Sacks, Oliver: Awakenings
Sacks, Oliver: An Anthropologist on Mars
Swanson, Larry: Brain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan
Religion and Religious History
Burton Russell, Jeffrey: Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World
Eliade, Mircea: A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)
Eliade, Mircea: Myth and Reality
Eliade, Mircea: Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
Eliade, Mircea: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
Eliade, Mircea: The Forge and the Crucible
Eliade, Mircea: The Sacred and the Profane
Frye, Northrop: The Great Code
Frye, Northrop: Words with Power
Lewis, Bernard: The Crisis of Islam
Smith, Huston: (introductory): The World’s Religions
The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature
History/Systems Analysis
de Solla Price, Derek J: Little Science, Big Science
De Soto, Hernando: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
Gall, John: Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
Porter, Theodore M: The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900
Radzinsky, Edvard: Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives
Shirer, William L: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The State of the World: A 21st Century Update
Deaton, Angus: The Great Escape
Lomborg, Bjorn: How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place
Norberg, Johan: Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
Pinker, Steven: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Ridley, Matt: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Rosling, Hans: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Grinspoon, David: Earth in Human Hands
Peterson, Jordan B: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Peterson, Jordan B: Maps of Meaning