Great Books

History of the Peloponnesian War

January 8, 1971

History of the Peloponnesian War

January 8, 1971

He wrote it to be useful forever. Two and a half thousand years later, nobody in a foreign ministry has managed to prove him wrong.

Histories

January 7, 1971

Histories

January 7, 1971

The first history book ever written, and still the most entertaining. The man who invented the discipline was also its greatest gossip.

Analects

January 6, 1971

Analects

January 6, 1971

Five hundred fragments of a teacher who never wrote a book, and twenty-five centuries of people arguing about what he meant.

Works and Days

January 5, 1971

Works and Days

January 5, 1971

Advice from a farmer to a brother who was not going to take it, written around 700 BC. The first poem in Europe about ordinary people and the work they...

Theogony

January 4, 1971

Theogony

January 4, 1971

Where the Greek gods come from. One poem, written around 700 BC, put the whole family in order, and Western art has been drawing on that settlement ever since.

The Odyssey

January 3, 1971

The Odyssey

January 3, 1971

A man a long way from home, and a poem that has never stopped asking what home is worth. It is also the most purely enjoyable book in the Western...