Great Books

The Histories

January 20, 1971

The Histories

January 20, 1971

A Greek deported to Rome as a hostage set out to explain how one city took the known world in fifty-three years. He wrote the book that constitutional design has...

Elements

January 19, 1971

Elements

January 19, 1971

Twenty-three centuries as the standard textbook of the Western world. Still the clearest demonstration ever made of what it means to prove something.

Rhetoric

January 18, 1971

Rhetoric

January 18, 1971

A manual for doing the thing Plato thought was contemptible, written by Plato's best student, and it never once apologises.

Politics

January 17, 1971

Politics

January 17, 1971

The man who collected a hundred and fifty-eight constitutions and then asked why they fail. Two thousand three hundred years later, his answers are still the ones in use.

Nicomachean Ethics

January 16, 1971

Nicomachean Ethics

January 16, 1971

The most practical book of philosophy ever written, by a man who thought the question of how to live had an answer and could be worked out.

Cyropaedia

January 15, 1971

Cyropaedia

January 15, 1971

The oldest book about leadership, and still one of the most useful. Machiavelli mined it, Scipio carried it, Jefferson owned two copies. Almost nobody reads it now.