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 (Meridian)
    by Anonymous

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

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

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

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

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

  7. 7.
    Gorgias (Penguin Classics)
    by Plato

  8. 9.
    The Aeneid (Vintage Classics)
    by Virgil

  9. 10.

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

  11. 13.
    The Canterbury Tales
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

  12. 15.
    The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (Five Volumes)
    by Thomas Aquinas

  13. 16.
    Dr. Faustus (Modern Library)
    by Thomas Mann

  14. 17.
    The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics)
    by Edmund Spenser

  15. 18.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  16. 19.

  17. 21.
    Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
    by John Donne

  18. 22.
    Pensees (Penguin Classics)
    by Blaise Pascal

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

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

  21. 27.
    The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)
    by Adam Smith

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

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

  24. 32.
    Democracy in America
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

  25. 33.
    ?
    Economic Harmonies
    by Frederic Bastiat

  26. 34.
    David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  27. 35.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Modern Library Classics)
    by Herman Melville

  28. 36.
    Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

  29. 37.
    Innocents Abroad (Signet Classics)
    by Mark Twain

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

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

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

  33. 41.
    ?
    The Bear
    by WIlliam Faulkner

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

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

  36. 44.
    The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics)
    by Graham Greene

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

  38. 46.
    Survival In Auschwitz
    by Primo Levi

  39. 47.
    Witness
    by Whittaker Chambers

  40. 48.
    The Cypresses Believe in God
    by Jose Maria Gironella

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

  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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