下面所列举的书单，都是值得你花时间一读的书。我们说“值得你花时间”是很认真的。虽然这些书并不全都是一般人所认为的那种“伟大”，但只要你肯花时间努力，你就能得到回馈。所有这些书都超越了大多数的水平一一超出许多。因而这些书会强迫大部分读者作心智上的成长，以了解并欣赏这样的书。当然，如果你想要增进自己的阅读技巧，这样的书就是你该找的书，同时你也会发现在我们文化传统中有过，哪些伟大的思想与说法。
就我们在上一章所谈的特殊意义而言有些书特别了不起。每次你重读，都会发现许多新的想法。这些书是可以一读再读，永不会厌倦的。换句话说，这些书一一我们不会正确地指出有多少这样的书，也不会指出是哪些书，因为这是由个人判断的一一超越过所有读者的水平，就算最有技巧的读者也不能超越这样的书。我们在上一章说过，这些作品就是每个人都该特别努力去研读的书。这些书是真正的伟大作品，任何一个人要去荒岛，都该带着这些书一起去。
这个书单很长，看起来有点难以消受。我们鼓励你不要因为这个书单而觉得为难。一开始，你可能会先要辨识大部分的作者是谁。这里面没什么是一般人难以了解，因而就该冷僻的道理。最重要的是，我们要提醒你，不论基于什么理由，最聪明的做法都是从你最感兴趣的书开始读。我们已经说过许多次，主要的目标是要读得好，而不是要读得广。如果一年当中你读不了几本书，其实不必觉得失望。书单上的书并不是要你在特定时间里读完的。这也不是非要读完所有的书才算完成的挑战。相反，这是一个你可以从容接受的邀请，只要你觉得很自在，任何时候都可以开始。
作者名单是按时间前后顺序排出来的，以他们确实或大约的出生时期为准。一位作者有很多本书时，也是尽可能按作品时间顺序排列的。学者们对每一本书的最早出版时间可能不见得有一致的看法，但这对你来说没什么影响。要记得的重点是：这个书单就像是一个时代的演进表，当然，你用不着依时间先后的顺序来读。你甚至可以从最近出版的一本书来读，再回溯到荷马及《旧约》。
我们并没有把每一位作者所有的书都列出来。通常我们都只挑选比较重要的作品，以论说性作品而言，我们挑选的根据是尽可能表现一位作者在不同学习领域里作了哪些贡献。在另外一些例子中，我们会列举一位作者的几部作品，然后把其中特别重要又有用的书用括号标示出来。
要拟这份书单，最困难的总是跟当代作品有关的部分。作者越接近我们的年代，越难作很公正的评断。时间能证明一切是句好话，但我们不想等那么久。因此对现代的作者或作品，我们预留了一些不同观点的空间，因此在我们书单比较后面部分的书，我们不敢说前面那些书公认的地位。对前面部分的书，可能也有人有些不同的观点，因为我们没有列人某些作品，可能会认为我们在挑选时有偏见。在某些例子中，我们承认自己是有些偏见。这是我们开的书单，自然会跟别人开的书单有点不同。不过如果任何人想要认真地研拟一份值得一生阅读的好书书单，以增进阅读能力的话，其间的差别应该不会太大才对。当然，最后你还是要自己拟出一份书单，然后全力以赴。无论如何，在你列出自己的书单之前，先看一份被一致公认为好书的书单，是很聪明的做法。这份书单是一个可以开始的地方。
我们还要提出一个疏漏之处，这可能会让一些不幸的读者觉得很受打击。这份书单只列出了西方的作品，不包括中国、日本或印度的作品。我们这么做有几个理由。其中一个是我们对西方传统文化以外的文化并不十分在行，我们建议的书单也不会有什么分量。另一个原因是东方并不像西方这样是单一的传统，我们必须要明白所有的东方文化传统之后，才能将这份书单拟好。而很少有学者能对所有的东方文化都有深刻的了解。第三，在你想要了解其他世界的文化之前，应该要先了解自己的文化。现代有许多人试着要读《易经》或《薄伽梵歌》(Bhagavad-Gita)，都觉得很困难，不只是因为这样的书本身就很难懂，也因为他们并没有先利用自己文化中比较容易理解的书——他们比较容易接近的书——把阅读技巧练习好。
还有另外一个疏忽之处要提提。虽然是一份书单，其中主要以抒情诗诗人为人熟知的作者却没几位。当然，书单中另外有些作者也写抒情诗，但他们较为人知的是一些较长的其他著作。这方面不该当作是我们对抒情诗有偏见。读诗，我们认为从一本好的合选集开始阅读，会比从某一位作者的个人选集开始要好得多。帕尔格雷夫(Palgrave)编辑的《英诗金库》(The Golden Treasury)及《牛津英诗选》(The Oxford Book of English Verse)是最好的入门书。这些老的诗选应该要有现代人做增补的工作——像塞尔登·罗德曼(Selden Rodman)的《现代诗一百首》(Qne Hundred Modern Poems )，这本书用很有趣的概念，广泛收集了当代随手可得的英诗。因为阅读抒情诗需要特殊的技巧，我们也介绍了其他相关的指导书籍——像马克·范多伦的《诗歌入门》(Introduction to Poetry)，是一本合选集，同时也包含了一些短论，谈到如何阅读许多有名的抒情诗。
我们依照作者及书名将书单列出来，却没有列出出版者及特殊的版本。书单上几乎所有的书都可以在书店中找到，有许多出了不同的版本，平装或精装都有。不过，如果哪位作者或哪本作品已经收录进我们自己所编辑的两套书，那就会特别标示出来。其中出现在《西方世界的经典名著》(Great Books of the Western World)中的，打一个星号；出现在《名著入门》(Gateway to the Great Books)中的，打两个星号。
1. Homer (9th century B.C.?)
* Iliad
* Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c. 525–456 B.C.)
* Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c. 495–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.)
History (of the Persian Wars)
6. Euripides (c. 485–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.)
History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates (c. 460–377? B.C.)
* Medical writings
9. Aristophanes (c. 448–380 B.C.)
* Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
* Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. ** Epicurus (c. 341–270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
Elements (of Geometry)
14. Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C.)
On Conic Sections
16. ** Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c. 95–55 B.C.)
On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70–19 B.C.)
* Works
19. Horace (65–8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
20. Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17)
History of Rome
21. Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. ** Plutarch (c. 45–120)
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Moralia
23. ** Tacitus (c. 55–117)
Histories
Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
Introduction to Arithmetic
25. ** Epictetus (c. 60–120)
Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c. 100–178; fl. 127–151)
Almagest
27. ** Lucian (c. 120–c. 190)
Works
(esp. The Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121–180)
Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130–200)
On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205–270)
The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354–430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, * Confessions, * The City of God, * Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century)
(The Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend.)
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
Summa Theologica
37. ** Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, * The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400)
Works
(esp. * Troilus and Criseyde, * Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536)
The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Sir Thomas More (c. 1478–1535)
Utopia
44. Martin Luther (1483–1546)
Three Treatises
Table-Talk
45. Francois Rabelais (c. 1495–1553)
Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin (1509–1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
Essays
48. William Gilbert (1540–1603)
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)
Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599)
Prothalamion
The Faerie Queene
51. ** Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Essays
Advancement of Learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
* Works
53. ** Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
The Starry Messenger
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey (1578–1657)
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
On the Circulation of the Blood
On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
The Leviathan
57. Rene Descartes (1596–1650)
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on Method
Geometry
Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton (1608–1674)
Works
(esp. * the minor poems, * Areopagitica, * Paradise Lost, * Samson Agonistes)
59. ** Moliere (1622–1673)
Comedies
(esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe)
60. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
The Provincial Letters
Pensees
* Scientific treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695)
Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677)
Ethics
63. John Locke (1632–1704)
Letter Concerning Toleration
* “Of Civil Government” (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699)
Tragedies
(esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
65. Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)
Discourse on Metaphysics
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
Monadology
67. ** Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)
Robinson Crusoe
68. ** Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
A Tale of a Tub
Journal to Stella
Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve (1670–1729)
The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley (1685–1753)
Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Essay on Criticism
Rape of the Lock
Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)
Persian Letters
Spirit of Laws
73. ** Voltaire (1694–1778)
Letters on the English
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
Joseph Andrews
Tom Jones
75. ** Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dictionary
Rasselas
The Lives of the Poets
(esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
76. ** David Hume (1711–1776)
Treatise of Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. ** Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
On the Origin of Inequality
On Political Economy
Emile
The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith (1723–1790)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
80. ** Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Practical Reason
The Science of Right
Critique of Judgment
Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Autobiography
82. James Boswell (1740–1795)
Journal
(esp. London Journal)
Life of Samuel Johnson Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)
Elements of Chemistry
84. John Jay (1745–1829), James Madison (1751–1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
Federalist Papers
(together with the * Articles of Confederation, the * Constitution of the United States, and the * Declaration of Independence)
85. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Faust
Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)
Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit
Philosophy of Right
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Poems
(esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Poems
(esp. “Kubla Khan,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
92. ** Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
On War
93. Stendhal (1783–1842)
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love
94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Don Juan
95. ** Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Studies in Pessimism
96. ** Michael Faraday (1791–1867)
Chemical History of a Candle
Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. ** Charles Lyell (1797–1875)
Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
The Positive Philosophy
99. ** Honore de Balzac (1799–1850)
Pere Goriot
Eugenie Grandet
100. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Representative Men
Essays
Journal
101. ** Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
The Scarlet Letter
102. ** Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
Democracy in America
103. ** John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
A System of Logic
On Liberty
Representative Government
Utilitarianism
The Subjection of Women
Autobiography
104. ** Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
The Origin of Species
The Descent of Man
Autobiography
105. ** Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Works
(esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)
106. ** Claude Bernard (1813–1878)
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. ** Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
108. Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Capital
(together with the * Communist Manifesto)
109. George Eliot (1819–1880)
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
110. ** Herman Melville (1819–1891)
Moby-Dick
Billy Budd
111. ** Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
112. ** Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
113. ** Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
Plays
(esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck)
114. ** Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What Is Art?
Twenty-three Tales
115. ** Mark Twain (1835–1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger
116. ** William James (1842–1910)
The Principles of Psychology
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragmatism
Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. ** Henry James (1843–1916)
The American
The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
Science and Hypothesis
Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Civilization and Its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. ** George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
Plays (and Prefaces)
(esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
122. ** Max Planck (1858–1947)
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
Where Is Science Going?
Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. ** John Dewey (1859–1952)
How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
125. ** Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
126. ** George Santayana (1863–1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Persons and Places
127. Nikolai Lenin (1870–1924)
The State and Revolution
128. Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
Remembrance of Things Past
129. ** Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
130. ** Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
131. ** Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
The Meaning of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)
132. ** James Joyce (1882–1941)
“The Dead” in Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
133. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
Art and Scholasticism
The Degrees of Knowledge
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
True Humanism
134. Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
The Trial
The Castle
135. Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975)
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
136. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)
The First Circle
Cancer Ward