WORLD Magazine's "Western Culture's Top 50 Books"

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While our list overlaps in part the typical "Great Books" canon, many such lists are drawn up as a secular humanist scripture. This list is different in that these books are not only great but good. Though not all of the books are explicitly religious or even by Christian writers, they show the direct or indirect influence of the Bible or at least a worldview that sees the world as a product of design rather than anarchic material forces. Only one book per author (or in one case, a collection of authors) is listed, though it would be beneficial also to read other books by many of these authors. First comes the top five must-read classics of all time. Then, 45 more, sorted by their time period. From http://www.worldmag.com/articles/7446

  1. 1.
    Holy Bible, King James Version
    by Anonymous

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  2. 2.
    Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics)
    by John Milton

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  3. 3.
    King Lear (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)
    by William Shakespeare

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  4. 4.
    The Pilgrim's Progress (Deluxe Christian Classics)
    by John Bunyan

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  5. 5.
    The Temple: The Poetry of George Herbert (Christian Classic)
    by George Herbert

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  6. 6.
    The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    by Homer

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  7. 7.
    Gorgias (Penguin Classics)
    by Plato

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  8. 9.
    The Aeneid: Virgil
    by Virgil

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  9. 10.
    Sayings of the Fathers: Pirke Aboth/Gift Edition
    by Joseph H. Hertz

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  10. 11.
    The Confessions of Saint Augustine
    by St. Augustine of Hippo

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  11. 13.
    The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

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  12. 16.
    Dr. Faustus (Modern Library)
    by Thomas Mann

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  13. 17.
    The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics)
    by Edmund Spenser

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  14. 18.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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  15. 19.

  16. 21.
    Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
    by John Donne

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  17. 22.
    Pensees (Penguin Classics)
    by Blaise Pascal

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  18. 23.
    Two Treatises of Government
    by John Locke

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  19. 24.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

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  20. 25.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

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  21. 27.
    The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)
    by ADAM SMITH

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  22. 28.
    The Federalist Papers (Penguin Classics)
    by Alexander Hamilton

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  23. 30.
    Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  24. 31.
    Lyrical Ballads: William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge
    by R. L. Brett

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  25. 32.
    Democracy in America
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

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  26. 33.
    ?
    Economic Harmonies
    by Frederic Bastiat

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  27. 34.
    David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

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  28. 35.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Modern Library Classics)
    by Herman Melville

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  29. 36.
    Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics)
    by WALT WHITMAN

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  30. 38.
    Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  31. 39.
    Master and Man and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  32. 40.
    ?
    T. S. Eliot, the Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950
    by T. S. Eliot

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  33. 41.
    ?
    The Bear
    by WIlliam Faulkner

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  34. 42.
    The Violent Bear It Away: A Novel
    by Flannery O'Connor

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  35. 43.
    The Lord of the Rings (Collector's Edition)
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  36. 44.

  37. 45.
    The Chronicles of Narnia Boxed Set
    by C.S. Lewis

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  38. 46.
    Survival In Auschwitz
    by Primo Levi

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  39. 47.
    Witness
    by Whittaker Chambers

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  40. 48.
    The Cypresses Believe in God: Spain on the Eve of Civil War
    by Jose Maria Gironella

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  41. 49.
    The Civil War: A Narrative (3 Vol. Set)
    by Shelby Foote

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  42. 50.
    The Second Coming: A Novel
    by Walker Percy

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Created by kris10s on Apr 05, 2006.
 

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