Anthropology 10 Archaeology 13

Architecture 15
Art and Design 18 Autobiography and Memoirs 22
Biography 25
Children's Books 31 Diaries and Letters 36 Drama 41
Economics 47
Feminism 49
Fiction 51
Crime Fiction and Thrillers 51
Novels 54
Science Fiction 66 Short Stories 67 Film 71
Food and Drink 74
Geography and the Environment 77
History 79
American History 79 Ancient History 82
Asian, African and Middle Eastern History 84 British History 87
European History 90 Latin American History 92
World History 93 Home and Garden 94 Humour 96
Literary Criticism 99
Mathematics. Science and Technology 102 Media 107
Medicine and Psychiatry 109
Music 111
Mythology 114
Natural History 117
Occult and Paranormal 121
Philosophy 123
Poetry 127
Politics 133
Psychology 136
Reference 138
Religion 142
Sex and Love 145 Sociology 147
Travel and Exploration 150
Index 155

Introduction
The intention of this book is to furnish an -imaginary library" of some three thousand volumes in which a reasonably literate
person can hope to find both instruction and inspiration, art and amusement. It was Andre Malraux who first coined the term
"muse'e imaginaire" to describe the choice of the world's art which a man might make to furnish his own private museum.
Modern printing, Malraux proceeded to argue, has actually made such a collection a practical possibility. Masterpieces which
men of the eighteenth century and before had to travel to see are now within the reach of all who can afford a postcard or a
newspaper supplement. Mechanical reproduction has removed art from the hands of the few and made it accessible to all.
Printing has done the same for books: the paperback is scarcely more expensive than the fine art print.
Our problem is no longer one of access; it is more likely to be one of choice. How are we to choose among the thousands of
available titles? To enter a library is immediately to be seized by a kind of panic; one risks starving among such plenty. The
confession that one does not know what to read next, or where to begin in an unfamiliar subject, is shameful in a society in
which nobody wishes to be a beginner and where naivete is likely to earn the scorn accorded to all newcomers. This book seeks
to be a kind of reader's ticket to that immense library which man (dedicated or venal, brilliant or dogged, wise or witty) has put
together ever since he first began to leave a written record of his experiences and his opinions.
Our first notion was to supply lists of unadorned titles in each of the standard library categories. But to give no information
about the books proposed would be to leave the reader in the bemused condition of a guest at a crowded party to whom the host
has nothing more to say than "You know everybody here, of course". So we decided that it was essential to give a brief account
of each recommended book, however laughable or superficial an authority might find it. We have tried to be as specific as
possible in the information conveyed, in order to avoid the kind of Shorter Notice which once said of Ezra Pound's Cantos that
some were good and some were bad.
The method we adopted, in order to make our cull, was to ask our collaborators (for whose generosity and learning we cannot
say enough) to make lists in the categories in which they were expert. (The categories began as standard Dewey headings, but
gradually shifted and changed to accommodate a wider range both of interests and of books. They are now perhaps arbitrary,
but, we hope, comfortably commodious.) We limited our collaborators to a given number of books, though we recognized that
this limitation, like giving only so many visas to a huge concourse of worthy people, was bound to lead to unhappy exclusions.
Many good things found no place in our narrow lifeboat. In particular, we have excluded technical books accessible only to
specialists: a necessary restriction, reflecting the inevitable distinction between a menu and a list of all available forms of
nutriment. We then circulated the lists among friends and those who were willing to lend us their time, so that no single person
was, in the end, exclusively responsible in any given department. (The editorial decision was, however, final.
Acknowledgements our collaborators deserve; the blame is ours.) Mavericks and texts of perhaps marginal value thus
scrambled their way aboard, sometimes at the expense of worthy work which more blandly covered similar ground. It is,
therefore, no scandal not to find your favourite (or your own) book in these pages: we are not judging, though we have been
obliged to choose.
This is in short, an imaginary library, not the imaginary library.

It can, and should, be supplemented by further reading and broader research. (We have indicated, wherever possible, books
with informative bibliographies: often these will provide an ancillary or alternative list, the part thus standing for the whole.) If
first publication leads to a sort of informed common pursuit whereby new volumes are proposed for future editions, something
more interesting, more exciting, may well be on the way. As for how The List of Books can best be read, we propose no
prescription. One may browse; one may plough. We have made the index a straightforward author index, trying to imagine who
a frustrated reader might be looking for, rather than merely supplying a dutiful rehash of earlier material, in alphabetical and
inverted order, Purists, For the satisfaction of. (For those who relish indexes, the wittiest we know is in C. D. Broad's Five
Types of Ethical Theory.)
"They said it couldn't be done—and it couldn't" is a joke at least as old as George Jean Nathan. The last man who knew
everything died at the end of the eighteenth century: he will never be replaced. The Tower of Babel is an example that should
be enough to deter anyone who seeks to make a self-importantly impertinent edifice of human intelligence—but there is no
evidence that the suburbs of Babel, with their rows of modest bungalows whose occupants are too timid to attempt a second
floor, are man's happiest environment. In fact, the collation of these lists has been enough to pull down most people's vanity,
and certainly ours; for the more one looks at what is available in an unfamiliar field, the more urgent the desire one feels to
abandon the affectations of the editor and assume the modesty of the student. We hope to revise The List of Books every
second year, and we shall be vigilant for new titles to add to it. The next edition will carry a section devoted to important
additions, in each category, and we welcome (though we cannot promise always to acknowledge) suggestions—perhaps in the
form of short reviews—for additions to these imaginary shelves.
F.R.; K.M.; London, 1980
Acknowledgements
The Editors and the Publishers would like to thank the following people without whose witty, wise and erudite contributions
(ranging from suggestions and advice to complete reviews) this book would never have reached its present form.
Valerie Alderson; Brian Aldiss; John Alexander; Roger Baker; Georgina Battiscombe; Robert Benewick; Ruth Binney;
Nikolaus Boulting; William Boyd; Michael Broadbent; Henry Brougham; R. Allen Brown; Sandy Carr; Jeremy Catto; John
Clark; W. Owen Cole; Leo Cooper; Jane Cousins; Nona Coxhead; Sarah Culshaw; Marcus Cunliffe; D. C. Earl; G. R. Elton;
Barry Fantoni; Antony Flew; Anthony Fothergill; Christopher Hale; Ragnhild Hatton; Tim Heald; Roger Hearn; Christopher
Hill: Christopher Hird; Richard Hollis; Richard Holmes; Antony Hopkins; Philip Howard; Joel Hurstfield; Tom Hutchinson;
Angela Jeffs; Emrys Jones; H. R. F. Keating; Brian Klug; Alan Knight; Eric Laithwaite; Peter Levi; Sir Bernard Lovell; John
Lynch; Rosemary McLeish; Valerie McLeish; Sir Philip Magnus; Stephen Mennell; Peggy Miller; Patrick Moore; Michael
Morris; Raymond Mortimer; John Nicholson; Robert Nye; John Paterson; Stewart Perowne; David Robinson; John Robinson;
Sheila Rowbotham; Martin Sherwood; Maurice Shock; Paul Sidey; Tony Smith; Vernon Sproxton; John Stevenson; Brian
Street; Jonathan Sumption; John Russell Taylor; Ion Trewin; J. C. Trewin; Lord Vaizey; Gwynne Vevers; Jonathan Walters;
Colin Wilson
Books of the decade, 1970 — 80
These lists cream the crop: one was compiled by the editors. the other by our American colleagues. By and large they represent
some of the best, the most influential or most significant books published in each of our categories since 1970. Where books
appear in both lists. we have left them there: duplication is an indication of one kind of specialness, at least.

British choice
Attenborough, D.: Life on Earth (1979)
Berger. J.: Ways of Seeing (1972)
Berryman, J.: Selected Poems (1972)
Boston Women's Collective: Our Bodies, Ourselves (1972)
Brown, D.: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1972)
Clarke, R. and Hindley, G.: The Challenge of the Primitives (1975)
Davidson, A.: Mediterranean Seafood (1972)
Gerbi, A.: The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900 (1973)
Greer, G.: The Female Eunuch (1970)
Halberstam, D.: The Best and the Brightest(1972)
Harvey, J.: The Master Builders: Architecture in the Middle Ages (1971)
Hill, C.: The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972)
Hindley, G. (ed): The Larousse Encyclopaedia of Music (1971)
Johnson, H.: The World Atlas of Wine (1971)
Koestler, A.: The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971)
Ladurie, E. le Roy: Montaillou (1975)
Lovell, B.: In the Centre of Immensities (1979)
Mendelssohn, K.: Science and Western Domination (1976)
Morison, S.: The Great Explorers (1978)
Papanek. V.: Design for the Real World (1971)
Schumacher, E.: Small Is Beautiful (1973)
Sendak, M.: Where the Wild Things Are (1970)
Skinner. B. F.: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
Solzhenitsyn, A.: The Gulag Archipelago (1974)
Steadman. R.: America (1974)
Thome, C.: Allies of a Kind (1978)
Ward, B.: The Home of Man (1976)
Wilson, C.: The Occult (1971)
Woodward, B. and Bernstein, C.: All the President's Men (1974)

American choice
Bellow, S.: Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970)
Bettelheim, B.: The Uses of Enchantment(1977)
Boorstin, D. J.: The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973)
Boston Women's Collective: Our Bodies, Ourselves (1972)
Brand, S.: The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1975)
Brown, D.: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971)
Clavell, J.: Shogun (1975)
Collier, P. and Horowitz, D.: The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976)
Comfort, A.: The Joy of Sex(1972)
Cooke. A.: Alistair Cooke's America (1973)
FitzGerald. F.: Fire in the Lake (1972)
Halberstam, D.: The Best and the Brightest (1972)
Haley, A.: Roots (1976)
Hardwick, E.: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature (1974)
Hellman, L.: Pentimento (1973)
Herr, M.: Dispatches (1977)
Howe, I.: World of Our Fathers(1976)
Jong, E.: Fear of Flying(1973)
Kluger, R.: Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education (1976)
Lash, J. P.: Eleanor and Franklin (1972)
McCullough, D.: The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal,1870-1914 (1977)
Marquez, G. G.: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970)
Milford, N.: Zelda: A Biography (1970) Morgan, M.: The Total Woman (1973)
Pirsig, R. M.: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Singer, I. B.: Enemies: A Love Story (1972)
Skinner. B. F.: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)
Terkel, S.: Working (1974)
Thomas, L.: The Lives of a Cell (1974)
Toffler, A.: Future Shock (1971)
Updike, J.: Rabbit Redux (1971)
Vidal, G.: Burr A Novel (1973)
Vonnegut, K.: Slaughterhouse Five (1973)
Ward, B.: The Home of Man (1976)
Wolfe, T.: Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970)
Woodward, B. and Bernstein, C.: All the President's Men (1974); The Final Days (1976)
Wouk, H.: The Winds of War(1971)

Editors' choice
Each editor was asked, independently, which twenty-five books he would pack for a desert island holiday. This list is the
combined result. Several books were common choices; apart from them, each editor was surprised by several of the books on
the other's list.
Aeschylus: The Oresteia
Albee, Edward: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Attenborough, David: Life on Earth
Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae
Austen, Jane: Emma
Berlioz, Hector: Memoirs
Burke, Kenneth: A Grammar of Motives
Byron: Letters and Journals
Cavafy, Constantine: Collected Poems
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Donne, John: Poems
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
Durrell, Gerald: My Family and Other Animals
Durrell, Lawrence: Reflections on a Marine Venus
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Eliot, T. S.: Four Quartets
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox: Parade's End
Frazer. Sir James: The Golden Bough
Gibbon, Edward: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Heller, Joseph: Catch 22
Hockney, David: Hackney
Homer: The Odyssey
Innes, Michael: Operation Pax
Jarrell, Randall: Pictures from an Institution
Jonson, Ben: The Alchemist
Kafka, Franz: The Trial
McCabe, J. and Kilgore, A.: Laurel and Hardy
McCarthy, Mary: The Groves of Academe
Montaigne, Michel de: Essays
Nabokov, Vladimir: Pale Fire
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Orwell, George: Collected Essays
Pascal, Blaise: Pensees
Proust, Marcel: Remembrance of Things Past
Rabelais, Francois: Gargantua and Pantagruel
Renoir, Jean: Renoir, My Father
Runciman, Steven: A History of the Crusades
Shakespeare, William: Collected Works
Singer, Isaac Bashevis: A Crown of Feathers
Stendhal: The Charterhouse of Panna
Thesiger, W.: The Marsh Arabs
Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War
Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
Villon, Francois: Poems
White, E. W.: Stravinsky
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Philosophical Investigations
Getting to grips with the twentieth century

If books reflect historical, sociological and cultural growth, the ones recommended here may, we hope, help to account for or
explain some of the directions human existence has taken in our century. Some of these books are dated, many are infuriating
or partial; all are landmarks.
Acheson, D.: Present at the Creation (1967)
Anderson, P.: Considerations on Western Marxism (1976)
Austin, W.: Music in the 20th Century (1966)
Banham, R.: Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960)
Beauvoir, S. de: The Second Sex (1949) Beckett, S.: Waiting for Godot (1952)
Berry. B. J. L.: The Human Consequences of Urbanization (1973)
Brittain, V.: Testament of Youth (1933)
Brownlow, K.: The Parade's Gone By (1968)
Bruce, L.: The Essential Lenny Bruce (1975)
Capote, T.: In Cold Blood (1966)
Carr, E. H.: The Russian Revolution (1979)
Carson, R.: Silent Spring (1962)
Cherry-Garrard, A.: The Worst Journey in the World (1912)
Clark, R. M.: The Scientific Breakthrough (1974)
Clarke, R. and Hindley, G.: The Challenge of the Primitives (1975)
Eliot, T. S.: The Waste Land (1923)
Esslin, M.: The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)
Fanon, F.: The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Friedan, B.: The Feminine Mystique (1962)
Friedman, M.: Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Frith, S.: The Sociology of Rock (1978)
Graves, R.: Goodbye to All That (1929)
Halberstam, D.: The Best and the Brightest (1972)
Harrison, J.: Marxist Economics for Socialists (1978)
Hebblethwaite, P.: The Christian-Marxist Dialogue and Beyond (1976)
Ionesco, E.: The Bald Prima Donna (1948)
Jones, E.: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953)
Joyce, J.: Ulysses (1921)
Kafka, F.: The Diaries of Franz Kafka (1948)
Kafka, F.: The Trial (1937)
Keynes, J.M.: The General Theory of Employment. Interest and Money (1936)
Klee, P.: On Modem A n(1943)
Kolko, G.: Main Currents in Modern American History (1976)
Le Corbusier: Towards an Architecture (1923)
Lichtheim, G.: Europe in the 20th Century (1972)
Lorenz, K.: On Aggression (1963)
McAleavy, H.: The Modern History of China (1967)
Macartney, C. A. and Palmer, A. W.: Independent Eastern Europe (1962)
McGlashan, A.: Gravity and Levity (1976)
Mailer, N.: Marilyn (1973)
Mailer, N.: The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Malaparte, C.: Kaput (1964)
Niebuhr, R.: Moral and Immoral Society (1932)
Orwell, G.: Animal Fann (1946)
Orwell, G.: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
Papanek, V.: Design for the Real World (1971)
Pirandello, L.: Six Characters in Search of an Author (1929)
Piven, F. F. and Cloward, R. A.: Poor People's Movements (1977)
Reich, W.: The Sexual Revolution (1930)
Rosen, S.: Future Facts (1976)
Rosenberg, H.: The Anxious Object (1964)
Schumacher, E.: Small Is Beautiful (1973)
Sinclair, A.: Prohibition: The Era of Excess (1962)
Solzhenitsyn, A. I.: The Gulag Archipelago (1974)
Stem, J. P.: The Fuhrer and the People (1975)
Taylor, A. J. P.: English History, 1914-1945(1965)
Terkel, S.: Work (1974)
Wing, J. K.: Reasoning about Madness (1978)
Home reference books
There is a place in most home libraries for a small collection of general reference books. We provide two basic lists, by no
means mutually exclusive; one British and one American.

British
Every collection should contain a dictionary, such as The Concise Oxford English Dictionary or Chambers Twentieth
Century Dictionary, plus/or Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (P. Proctor) and The Complete Plain Words
(Ernest Gowers).

Many people will also find a constant use for The Concise Dictionary of 26 Languages (compiled by Peter M. Bergman).
Still concerned with words, the collection should contain The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or The Penguin
Dictionary of Quotations.

There should be an atlas, such as The Times Atlas of the World: Concise Edition or New Concise Atlas of the Earth, the
indexes of which can be used as a world gazetteer. For annually updated information on world affairs get The Statesman's
Year Book, Europa Year Book or Whitaker's Almanack.

For biographical information consult Who Did What (historical and international) and Who's Who (contemporary and
British); much international coverage is provided by a good one-volume encyclopaedia such as Columbia Encyclopaedia or
Hutchinson's New 20th Century Encyclopaedia. The historical aspect of recent developments is summarized in Chronology
of the Modern World.

Finally, two useful books on general medical and legal matters: Reader's Digest Family Health Guide and Know Your
Rights (neither, of course, is meant to supplement professional advice). In any case, every home should have a book on first
aid, such as The Pocket Medical and First Aid Guide (Dr James Bevan).

American
Every collection should contain a dictionary, such as Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (the second edition is the
recommended unabridged version; the seventh is the desk edition) or The Random House College Dictionary.
The collection might also contain Roget's Thesaurus of Synonyms and Antonyms and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

There should be an atlas. Two good ones are The New York Times Atlas of the World and the Rand McNally New
International Atlas, the indexes of which can be used as a world gazetteer. Annually updated information on world affairs is
contained in The World Almanac and Book of Facts.

For biographical information consult Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. There is also a Who's Who for
each state.

Two reliable encyclopaedias for home use are Encyclopaedia Britannica and The World Book Encyclopedia. An excellent
one-volume encyclopaedia is The New Columbia Encyclopaedia.

Every home should have a book on first aid, such as Basic First Aid or Standard First and Personal Safety, both published
by the American National Red Cross.

Also useful: Know Your Rights: A Guide to Everyday Law, by Ronald Irving and Charles Anthony.
Anthropology

Anthropology was born as a formal discipline in the 19th century, when a previously haphazard interest in the cultural and
social behaviour of remote peoples was supplied with a theoretical basis and scientific procedures. At first it was very closely
linked with its sister-subject sociology; both were concerned with man the organizer, with the forces and movements which
mould human society. Gradually, however, the disciplines began to grow apart: sociology became ever more political (and
analytically "scientific"), anthropology more historical (and descriptively "artistic"). The books in this list follow the bias
towards study of the cultures of "primitive" peoples; but there are also representatives of a more modern trend towards treating
man as a single phenomenon (with local and historical variants) and extrapolating from the techniques and discoveries of
"primitive" anthropology a series of proposed solutions to the self-destructive energy of technological man. Once again the
wheel has come full circle: sociology and anthropology go hand in hand, and their concern is social change. their scenario
nothing less than the future of the human race itself.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Mead); GEOGRAPHY (Forde, Sauer); HISTORY/AMERICAN (Josephy); HISTORY/BRITISH
(Thomas); MATHEMATICS (Bronowski): MYTHOLOGY (Frazer. Kirk, Huxley, Levi-Strauss); RELIGION (Castaneda)

Agee, J. and Evans, W. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) Study in words and photographs of three poor tenant families
in the southern USA in 1936. Overpraised in its time, and the prose now seems self-consciously "poetic"; but the pictures
especially are haunting, moving, devastating.

Agee, James, American, 1909-1955.

Permit Me Voyage. Rec: Bloom
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (with Walker Evans). Rec: Bloom Boston PL Hungry Mind NYPL Utne
A Death in the Family. Rec: Time

Asad, Talal (ed) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973) 9

A new generation of anthropologists turned on their teachers and accused them of compliance with colonialism. This collection
of essays lays out their case.

Bailey, F. G. Stratagems and Spoils (1969) R *

Descriptions of the devious and clever ploys that men get up to in different societies in order to get the (differently defined)
spoils. Also: Gifts and Poisons

Benedict, Ruth, American, 1887-1948.

Patterns of Culture. Rec: Boston PL

Boas, Franz The Mind of Primitive Man (1911)

One of the great revolutionary works (revised 1937); hard but essential. Boas was the first to proclaim that mankind is
indissolubly one, and that all races have the potential to produce and create equally. The Nazis burned this book and civil rights
activists everywhere bear it like a banner.
Boas, Franz, American, 1858-1942.
Chinook Texts. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Bowen, E. S. Return to Laughter (1954)

Warm, amusing account of the everyday problems that an anthropologist encounters "in the field".

Chagnon, A. A. Yanomamo: The Fierce People (1977)

Aggression as a way of life. Text is as lively as the title; the sociological implications are wide and sharp. See Thrasher
PSYCHOLOGY (Lorenz); SOCIOLOGY (Whyte)

Clarke, R. and Hindley, G. The Challenge of the Primitives (1975) * As the future of technological society grows ever more
doubtful, some anthropologists are suggesting that a return to "primitive" concepts of kinship with nature may provide viable
alternatives. This book readably and succinctly distils the essence of this hopeful philosophy.

Cohen, Abner Two Dimensional Man (1974)

Accessible introduction to the thinking of anthropologists on symbolism, politics and their interrelationship.
Coon, C. S. and Hunt, E. E. The Living Races of Man (1965) 10* Authoritative study of the racial composition of all peoples of
the world. Also: The Origin of Races; Seven Caves
Dalton, George Tribal and Peasant Economies (1976) OP
Accessible textbook on all aspects of social economics.

Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational (1951) 0 *11"

Seminal case-study of a society moving from "mythology" to "religion". Different approaches to the irrational world lead to
different kinds of social behaviour; by studying these (and literature, philosophy, their embodiment) we discover the governing
systems and beliefs of an ancient society. Sounds narrow; is stimulating, wide-ranging. See MYTHOLOGY (Harrison, Kirk,
Slater)

Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger(1966)

Classic example of anthropologists' attempts to see meanings in the apparently trivial detail of everyday life—you'll never look
at "dirt" in the same way again. Also: Rules and Meanings-, Natural Symbols

Douglas, Mary, English, 1921- .

Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of purity and taboo. Rec: TLS

Du Bois, W. E. B., American, 1868-1963.

The Souls of Black Folk. Rec: Counterpunch NF Hungry Mind ML Nonfiction NYPL

Dumont, Louis Homo Hierarchichus (1966)& Class, caste, hierarchies in general—the enabling structures of society, or its
main inhibitors? Clear, readable introduction.

Eisley, Loren The Immense Journey (1957)

Intense, poetic, unforgettable essays by a distinguished anthropologist who later published several volumes of poems. The title
refers to the long journey of man, from the beginnings in the primordial ocean to today—and beyond?

Epstein, A. L. Politics in an Urban African Community (1958) 0P

Readable account of the changes brought to the 1950s Zambian copper belt by urbanization. Also: Ethos and Identity

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. The Nuer (1940) d P

The classic text on fieldwork, studied by every student of anthropology. Also: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the
Azande, etc

Frankenberg, IL Communities in Britain (1966)

Anthropologists' studies in Britain, of rural communities and of urban groups, neatly and usefully summarized.

Firer-Hahnendorff, Christoph von The Sherpas of Nepal (1964) 0

Readable field-study, a model of how such books can be made both authoritative and accessible to the general reader. Also: The
Naked Na gas, etc

Geipel, John The Europeans (1969)

Ethno-historical survey of the various peoples of Europe: anthropology dominates, but archaeology, social history, linguistics
and genetics are also brought into play. For modern Europeans—and immigrants to Newer Worlds—a fascinating study of how
we came to be the way we are.

Gennep, Arnold van Rites of Passage (1977)

Points of transition in the development of an individual or a society are often traumatic, often accompanied by therapeutic or
apotropaic ritual. A systematic study of such rituals in various primitive societies. See Mead.

Glob, P. V., Danish, 1911-1985.

The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Greenway, John Down among the Wild Men (1972) & Popular anthropology at its readable best: partly a witty
autobiographical account of fifteen years' study of Old Stone Age aborigines in Australia, partly a scientific account of his
findings and conclusions. Also: Literature among the Primitives; The Inevitable Americans; Ethnomusicology, etc

Gulliver, P. H. Social Control in an African Society (1963) IP

Fascinating field-study, with important general implications. See Dumont.
Hall, E. T. The Silent Language (1959) a
Hall was one of the first to write about what has become a cliche—we communicate not by ordinary language alone, but also
by "body language" and by other signals that are not expressed in words. A fascinating, essential book. See PSYCHOLOGY
(Argyle)

Hanley, Gerald, Irish, 1916-1992.

Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Kitzinger, S. Women as Mothers (1978)

Wide-ranging, well-written study of motherhood in different societies. Author's premise is that the "maternal instinct" does not
exist as such; the role of mother varies as a direct response to the needs of society. Also: The Good Birth Guide. See
PSYCHOLOGY (Rutter)

Kroeber, A. L. Configurations of Culture Growth (1945)

An attempt by one of the most influential of 20th-century anthropologists to trace the growth and decline of human thought and
art. Also: Anthropology (one of the first general texts in the field)

Kuper, Adam Anthropology and Anthropologists (1973) a

Easy introduction to the history, personalities, events and ideas of 20th-century British anthropology.

Leach, Edmund Levi-Strauss (1970) a

Useful introduction to the work of leading French anthropologist. Also: Political Systems of Highland Burma; Culture and
Communication. See Levi-Strauss; MYTHOLOGY (Levi-Strauss)

Leiris, Michel, French, 1901-1990.

Manhood. Rec: Bloom (anthropology)

Levi-Strauss, Claude The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) !IOC*

One of the great 20th-century gurus in full flood: a study of kinship groups and their binding rituals throughout the world.
Thorny style, but accessible with perseverance: he's a name to read as well as drop. Also: The Savage Mind, etc. See Leach;
MYTHOLOGY

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, French, 1908- .

The Raw and the Cooked. Rec: Boston PL
Tristes Tropiques ((A World on the Wane)). Rec: Bloom Counterpunch Trans TLS
Structural Anthropology. Rec: GBWW (Selections)
The Savage Mind. Rec: TLS

Lewis, L M. Ecstatic Religion (1971)

Attempts to make sense of "strange" religious practices by looking at the problems of the social groups which carry them out.
For a Christian view of the same area, see RELIGION (Davies). Also: An Introduction to Social Anthropology

Lienhardt, Godfrey Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (1961)(0
Fascinating attempt to explain another society's religion, with all the respect and complexity usually reserved for one's own.
Also: Social Anthropology

Lisitzky, Gene Four Ways of Being Human (1956)

Elegant survey of four "Stone Age" groups surviving, more or less unchanged, into the 20th-century: Eskimos, Hopi Indians,
Maoris and Sepang of Malaya. Mixture of anthropology and social psychology (behaviour as identity) is successful and
fascinating. See Mead.

Lloyd, P. Classes, Crises and Coups (1971) a

Readable introduction to the study of modernizing societies and the political. economic and social problems they face. Also:
Slums of Hope?: Shanty Towns of the Third World

Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)

Account of the lives, trading, canoe-building and sailing of the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in the Western Pacific. One
of the first and best examples of anthropological fieldwork. Also: The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia;
Crime and Custom in Savage Society, etc

Mead, Margaret New Lives for Old (1956) 0 *

The Manu Tribe of Papua New Guinea collapsed cultural evolution: between 1928 and 1953 they moved from the Stone Age to
the Air Age. Mead's book—typical of her wide-ranging generous scholarship—discusses the interweaving of old and new, the
psychological effects of change; draws parallels with the general evolution of the rest of the human race. Also: Coming of Age
in Samoa; Growing Up in New Guinea; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, etc. See Lisitzky;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; SOCIOLOGY

Mead, Margaret, American, 1901-1978.

Coming of Age in Samoa. Rec: Boston PL NYPL

Handy, E. S. Craighill and Elizabeth Green Handy, American, c.1893-1980 and 1921-.
Native Planters in Old Hawaii: Their Life, Lore, and Environment (With Mary Kawena Pukui). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Pocock, D.E. Understanding Social Anthropology (1976) a -I

Excellent layman's introduction (with set essays for the eager). Also: Social Anthropology

Radin, Paul Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin (1937)

Radin was a synthesizer of various strands in anthropology: economic and social structure, religion, philosophy, psychology.
His books vary in importance; this is one of the best.

Sapir, Edward Culture, Language and Personality (1961)

Collection of thoughtful essays by one of the great American cultural anthropologists and linguists.

Schapera, Isaac Married Life in an African Tribe (1966)

Readable field-work study: specific tribal details lead to general conclusions about marriage as a binding agent in society. See
Evans-Pritchard.

Steichen, Edward, American, 1879-1973.

The Family of Man. Rec: LAT NYPL (photography series)

Street. B. V. The Savage in Literature (1975)

Amusing, relevant account of the image of other societies purveyed by popular 19th-century adventure novels.

Sutherland, A. (ed) Face Values (1978)

Glossy "pop" anthropology book based on a TV series set up by professional anthropologists. Later articles, however, are quite
difficult. Also: Gypsies: The Hidden Americans

Thrasher, Frederic M. The Gang (1936) N19

Exhaustive, anthropological-sociological study of no less than 1,313 Chicago gangs. Stiff read; absorbing and disturbing. See
SOCIOLOGY (Suttles)

Tiger, L. S. and Fox, R. The Imperial Animal (1971)

Challenging study of man's socially divisive and cohesive instincts: historical, anthropological and sociological disciplines
luminously applied not to one small tribe, but to the whole human race.

Turner, V. W. The Forest of Symbols (1967) 9*

Excellent example of anthropologists' attempts to understand the complex symbols of even the "simplest" peoples: reads, at
times, like literary criticism. Also: The Ritual Process

Tylor, Edward B. Researches into the Early History of Mankind(1865) 09 *

Anthropology was once known, disparagingly, as "Mr Tylor's science". He was, to the history of what he first called "culture"
(ie, the linguistic, psychic, emotional and material fabric of a society), what Darwin was to evolution. This book is a synthesis
of his work—of absorbing interest, and still of unique value. Excellent abridged edition (1964) by Bohannan (himself a noted,
and recommended, anthropologist).
African Genesis R. Ardrey Out of Africa
Black Athena M. Bernal Out of Africa
The Journey from Eden B. Fagan Out of Africa

Aime Cesaire G. DavisBlack Culture

Black Culture and Black Consciousness L.W. Levine Black Culture
Roots A. Haley Black Culture

The Myth of the Noble Savage T. Ellingson Noble Savage

The Noble Savage H. Fairchild Noble Savage
The Fall of Natural Man A. Pagden Noble Savage
Essays M. de Montaigne Noble Savage

Greek and Roman Slavery T. Wiedermann Natural Slavery

The Fall of Natural Man A. Pagden Natural Slavery
Aristotle and the American Indians L. Hanke Natural Slavery
Roots A. Haley Natural Slavery

Secret Museum of Mankind, David Stiffler, 1999, 576 pages, $25

Archaeology

Modern archaeology was born in 1708, with the first excavations at Pompeii. At first it was informal and irresponsible, little
more than an aristocratic upgrading of the treasure-hunting and tomb-robbing characteristic of any historical period. In the 19th
century it became badged with more serious, systematic study, the archaeologists seeking for information about ancient
cultures as eagerly as for their glittering artefacts. The great names of 19th-century archaeology—Schliemann. Evans, Petrie—
made their subject a true sibling of anthropology and cultural history, the passion of the polymath, and it is mainly their
enthusiastic work which led to our century's obsession with the minutiae of ancient life. Archaeology continued as a genial,
gentlemanly pursuit for inspired individualists until World War H. Since then, it has evolved (or declined) from an art to a
science. The exactitudes of statistics, aerial photography (itself a legacy of 20th-century warfare), chemical analysis and other
scientific disciplines are applied, and the results are, first, that archaeology now has areas as arcane and specialized as nuclear
physics or X-ray crystallography, and second, that as our view of the distant past comes into ever sharper focus, we find it
extraordinarily like our own: the notion of what -civilization" is travels further backwards in time, and wider in geography,
with every newly published paper. Art or science? Amateur or specialist? The list covers books in both areas—and shades (like
archaeology itself, one of the most humane of disciplines) into history and cultural anthropology too.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Geipel); ART (Frankfort); CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Brothwell): GEOGRAPHY (Sauer);
HISTORY/ANCIENT (Grant, Lehmann)

Bellwood, Peter The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People

(1978) a.IJ
Until AD 1500 the Polynesians were one of the most widely spread ethnic groups on earth. Their origins, history, languages
and way of life are examined in this pioneering survey. Also: Man's Conquest of the Pacific

Bishop, W. and Clark, J. D. (eds) The Background to Evolution in Africa (1967) 9 -1

The origins of the human race. Outline of essential work, includes contributions from most of the leading workers in the field.

Bray, W. and Trump, D. H. A Dictionary of Archaeology (1970) Convenient one-volume reference work. Covers the whole
field of archaeology from human evolution and the prehistoric period to the civilizations of Egypt, the Near East and the
Americas.

Brothwell, D. R. and Higgs, E. Science in Archaeology (1969) 1111 "What the archaeologist is able to learn about the
past depends to a great extent on the completeness and discrimination with which he avails himself of the resources being made
available on an ever more generous scale by his colleagues in a growing range of scientific disciplines.- The important
contributions of science to archaeology are discussed: professionals' version of Wilson (qv). See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Ceram, C. W. Gods, Graves and Scholars (1951) a

Popular approach is over-breathless for specialists, and the book (despite new editions) is dating fast. But it remains an
outstanding enthusiasm-builder for would-be archaeologists. Also: The March of Archaeology, etc

Chadwick, John The Mycenaean World (1976) 0 a Terse, stimulating challenge to the orthodox view of Cretan prehistory by
one of the pioneer code-breakers of Linear B.

Chang, Kwang-Chih The Archaeology of Ancient China (1963) 9 -I 11 Chinese civilization from its primitive farming
beginnings (3rd millennium BC) to the early historic periods (2nd millennium AD). See FOOD; HISTORY/ASIAN (Eberhard,
for later history)

Clark, Grahame World Prehistory (1969) 0 a Comprehensive introduction (regularly updated) to the intellectual, material
and social progress of mankind. A suitcase of a book: everything you need is here. Also: Archaeology and Society

Coles, John Archaeology by Experiment (1973)

Vivid insights into the past can be gained by reconstructing and testing models of ancient equipment. Revaluation of methods
of food production, and of heavy and light industry. Unusual subject, expertly treated.

Cottrell, Leonard The Land of Shinar (1965) & Sniffed at by narrower academics for his easy style, Cottrell is one of the great
popularizers of archaeology. This book deals with Sumeria, the possible site of the Garden of Eden, a "lost" culture as full of
vitality as Egypt or Persia. Also: Lost Cities; The Bull of Minos, etc
Cunliffe, Barry Fishbourne (1971) M*
Cunliffe's account of the dig at the Roman villa, Fishbourne, England, is a fine case-study of the modern archaeologist at work,
balancing trowel and brush against sophisticated laboratory techniques.

Daniel, Glyn 150 Years of Archaeology (1950)

Standard introductory textbook; should be followed by Wilson (qv) or by Brothwell and Higgs (qv) for accounts of up-to-date
methodology.

Deuel, Leo Conquistadors without Swords (1967) a * -/

Narration of archaeological discovery in the Americas, interleaved with extensive, lively quotations from the archaeologists'
own accounts. Also: The Treasures of Time (ancient Near East revealed in the same enthralling way)

Frere, Sheppard Britannia (1967) 10 History of Roman Britain, from archaeological evidence. Ponderous style never entirely
engulfs the author's enthusiasm or the fascination of the subject.

Hawkes, Jacquetta The World of the Past (1963)

Excellent anthology of Hawkes' lively, expert articles and other smaller writings. Also: Dawn of the Gods, etc

Hume, Ivor Historical Archaeology (1969) • Application of archaeological disciplines to a known historical period: colonial
America. Good specialist book, of interest to the layman attracted by the period or by the unusual conjunction of disciplines.

Keating, Rex Nubian Rescue (1975)

The building of the Aswan Dam in the 1950s and 1960s led to unprecedented archaeological activity in Nubia, "Middle Egypt",
in ancient times the corridor between Mediterranean and African civilizations. This book is a clear, if rather plainly written,
summary of spectacular "rescue archaeology" (dig before the water comes).

Leone, Mark (ed) Contemporary Archaeology (1972) P*

Discusses the controversy surrounding the theories and aims of the "new archaeology", with particular reference to North
America. Polemical; hard; engrossing.

Libby, W.F. Radiocarbon Dating (1955) P

MacKendrick, Paul The Greek Stones Speak (1962) ai a Elegant, stylish: ancient culture revealed by trowel. In its time,
unrivalled for enthusiastic clarity; still an excellent general introduction. Updated edition badly needed—it's too good to lose.
Also: The Mute Stones Speak (a less dated, but also less exciting, account of Italian archaeology)

Mulvaney, D. J. The Prehistory of Australia (1969) 10

Aborigines. Neglected topic, expertly outlined.

Negev, Avraham (ed) Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land

(1972) a*./

Oates, D. and J. The Rise of Civilization (1976) a

Early agriculture; the first domestication of animals during the Neolithic period; the rise of urbanization in Mesopotamia and
Egypt. Characteristic volume in recommendable Making of the Past series.

Phillipson, D. W. The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa

(1977) 0f

Piggott, Stuart Ancient Europe: A Survey (1965) &a

European prehistory from the beginnings of agriculture to Classical antiquity. The parallel development of barbarian cultures
with the civilizations of antiquity, clearly explained and ably illustrated.

Raistrick, Arthur Industrial Archaeology (1972) & Sandars, Nancy K. Prehistoric Art in Europe (1968)
Superb volume from recommended Pelican History of Art series. See MYTHOLOGY

Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W. (eds) The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (1969) 10 P
Analysis of innovatory collaboration between archaeologists and natural scientists, to their mutual benefit and enlightenment.
Also: Man, Settlement and Urbanism
Willey, Gordon An Introduction to American Archaeology
(2 vols, 1966-71) 0 -if

Wilson, David Atoms of Time Past (1975)

Up-to-date history, for the general reader, of the use of scientific techniques in archaeology: bones and shards treated with
laboratory procedures as well as inspired individual guesswork. Notably clear, informative style.
Architecture

Architecture is, in a real sense, the measure of man's unnaturalness. Ever since he adapted the cave for his convenience, he has
rebelled against the kind of shelter which unshaped nature provides. Thus the history of architecture is that of man against
nature, however naturally he has sought to harmonize his antagonism with the materials and environment he finds on earth. The
story of architecture is told (and lived) principally by urban man. for whom buildings become the reflection of society, its
organization and its myths. This means that the debate on architectural aesthetics is also about morals. politics, religion: hence
its intense importance, its furious partialities. ("You say," said Nietzsche, "that there can be no argument about matters of taste?
All life is an argument about matters of taste.") The architect makes his artistic and concrete statement—in obstinately durable
form—and then moves on, sometimes with giant strides, sometimes on feet of clay, rarely leaving satisfactory explanation or
justification. Vitruvius and Le Corbusier, in the following list, are distinguished exceptions (and prove, perhaps, the dangers of
universalizing assertions. however impressive the credentials of the dogmatists). The majority of books cited here are by critics
and scholars, though the true critic of the building is often and decisively the man who uses it. In the present century, however,
the architectural critic has become an influential and creative force. Architecture is three-dimensional thought: hence the
significance of the "philosophers" who are its critics and proponents.
See ART (Frankfort, Giedion, Pevsner, Stedman): CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Macaulay); GEOGRAPHY (Hall, Jacobs, Morgan,
Pahl. Scientific American, Tunnard): HISTORY/BRITISH (Brown)

Alexander, Christopher, American, 1936- .

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Rec: Counterpunch NF Utne

Bachelard, Gaston, French, 1884-1962.

The Poetics of Space. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
This is a deep, magical, densely captivating book about space, our homes, how we live in them, and how dwellings and space
affect us; it is as much a book of philosophy as a work of serious literature. It requires careful, preferably leisurely reading,
with the possibility of moments to pause and digest and re-read the words. It will change the way you look at your home and
your life, providing a deeper, more insightful relationship with the spaces you occupy.

Banham, Reyner Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960)
Theories which complemented architecture and design, 1900-40, when architects and designers really tried to come to terms
with the potential of industry and science. Banham's tone here, as always, is clear, fervent, readable. Leads usefully to Jencks
(qv) and Newman(qv): the seeds are planted here. Also: The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment; Los Angeles:
The Architecture of Four Ecologies; A Guide to Modern Architecture, etc

Boethius, A. and Ward-Perkins, J. Etruscan and Roman Architecture (1970)

Like most others in the Pelican History of Art series, competent and authoritative. No light read; but text, illustrations,
exhaustive footnotes and detailed bibliography cover ground from 1400 Bc to the decline of Rome.

Burnham, D. H. and Bennett, E. H. Plan of Chicago (1909)

By 1900 the Chicago School, led by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, had established the city as the home of modern
urban architecture. Burnham and Bennett's famous plan for the further development of the city was adopted in 1909; its
lineaments may still be seen in the magnificent lakefront and other glories. Chapter 8 summarizes the plan.

Clark, Kenneth The Gothic Revival (1928)

The impetuous pioneer piece on the survival and revival of Gothic architecture, from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to full-
blooded Victorian Revivalist styles. Depicts beautifully the interaction between literature, painting, architecture and landscape
gardening, as Clark contrasts 18th- and 19-century concepts of "taste". See ART; AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Clifton-Taylor, Alec The Pattern of English Building (1960) 9-1J 0 Lateral approach to architectural history; deals less with
the development of "great styles" than with the close relationship between geology and traditional building materials,
topography and the building types which characterize England's architecture.

Collins, Peter Architectural Judgement (1971) P J Collins asks not about our response to buildings but why, in "their
professional judgement", architects, planners and developers choose one building rather than another. For believers in absolute
aesthetic standards, an essential antidote. Also: Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750 - 1950

Colvin, Howard A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1660- 1840(1954)

Conant, Kenneth Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture,
800-1200(1959) JP

Downing, A. J. Rural Essays (1853) & Downing designed many fine homes and gardens, but was especially intrigued by
American "cottage architecture"—the homely constructions, often home-made, of the lower middle class; country churches,
county courthouses and the like. His book makes for nostalgic imaginings. See Kouwenhoven.

Fleming, J., Honour, H. and Pevsner, N. Penguin Dictionary of Architecture (1966) Oaf
Basic guide to architects, architectural terms, building materials, ornamentation, styles and movements. See Pevsner; ART
(Honour, Pevsner)

Frankl, Paul Gothic Architecture (1962) a*I

Detailed analysis of style and structure; a good introduction, despite Frankl's insistence on divorcing architecture from
sculpture, stained glass, etc, at a time when unity of the arts was of the essence.

Giedion, Sigfried Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition( 1941 ) *
Polemical, path-finding book succeeds admirably in placing architecture, construction and city planning of the industrial era
(mid 18th century onwards) in the wider context of art and science. See ART

Gropius, Walter The Scope of Total Architecture (1955) Oa

Testament and manifesto of Bauhaus founder: "the approach to any kind of design, a chair, a building, a whole town or a
regional plan, should be essentially identical."

Harvey, John The Master Builders: Architecture in the Middle Ages (1971).
Also: The Gothic World, 1100-1600, The Medieval Architect; Cathedrals of England and Wales

Heydenreich, L. and Lotz, W. The Architecture of Italy. 1400-1600 (1970) P Hitchcock, Henry-Russell Architecture:
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) Ala
Despite limited illustrations, an excellent summary of 19th- and 20th-century European, British and American architecture.
Also: Modern Architecture in England; Rococo Architecture in Southern Germany

Jencks, Charles The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977) Stimulating analysis of recent trends. Useful adjunct to the
more theoretical writings of such men as Venturi (qv); a literate, often witty guide. Also: Modern Movements in Architecture

Kouwenhoven, John Made in America (1948) & ret

Readable examination, by a literary critic, of what he calls American "vernacular art"—the unselfconscious art of the
"carpenter builders" who shaped the country's aesthetic sense. See Downing.

Lancaster, Osbert A Cartoon History of Architecture (1975) £ afm Lancaster a true caricaturist: drawings pinpoint subject;
waspish comments make equally vivid impact. "Wimbledon Transitional", "Stockbroker Tudor", "Bypass Variegated"—all
begin here.

A Cartoon History of Architecture (1975) by Osbert Lancaster. Lancaster was a famous cartoonist who also wrote for the
Architectural Review for many years. His eye for detail and dry wit make this a both amusing and highly insightful guide to the
vagaries of taste.

Lawrence, Arnold Greek Architecture (1957) 111Pa-14

Authoritative, scholarly text; detailed footnotes and bibliography; essential.

Le Corbusier Towards an Architecture (1923)

Designer-in-chief of 20th-century city-scape, with its straight lines, cubes, glass, concrete and steel, Le Corbusier has had
incalculable, perhaps undue, influence; his writings remain crucial to an understanding of modern urban life. Also: Five Points
of a New Architecture, etc

Le Corbusier, French, 1887-1965.

Towards a New Architecture. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Loos, Adolf, Austrian, 1870-1933.

Ornament and Crime. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (architecture)

Illustrated History of Architecture 800-1914 (1993) by Jill Lever and John Harris. First published in 1966 as the illustrated
Glossary of Architecture. The effectiveness of this dictionary derives from the way the authors have combined clearly written
definitions of key terms with a remarkable collection of photographs with which to illustrate them.

Mumford, Lewis (ed) Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (1956)

Using original documents, Mumford analyses the intellectual germination of architecture in pre-Chicago America and the
evolution of indigenous 20th-century styles. Contrast of quotations from architects—like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis
Sullivan—and critics (Mumford and others) is particularly stimulating. Also: The City in History, etc. See ART

Murray, Peter The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (1963) a* Readable, scholarly; useful luggage for travellers. Also:
A History of English Architecture; Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome; A History of World Art

Newman, Oscar Defensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City (1972) 109a
Influential in promoting the view that architecture should be based on the study of people's psychological needs (eg for privacy,
contact, security). Essential sociological balance for the theories of (for example) Le Corbusier (qv).

Norberg-Schulz, Christian Meaning in Western Architecture (1976) Pay

Respected history of architecture, with strong theoretical bias; demanding, but usefully comprehensive.

Palladio, Andrea Four Books on Architecture (1570)

Treatise on Classical architecture; possibly the most influential pattern-book ever published. Need not be read, but should be
perused, the pages turned, designs and drawings studied; they appear, repeated endlessly, on every "Classical" building in the
Western world. For analysis, see Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism

Pevsner, Nikolaus An Outline of European Architecture (1942)

In this and numerous other books, Pevsner revolutionized British attitudes towards architecture. The latest edition performs the
same service in an American "Postscript". Also: The Buildings of England (series); Essays on Art, Architecture and Design; A
History of Building Types, etc. See Fleming; ART

An Outline of European Architecture (1963) by Nikolaus Pevsner. A confident sweep through Western (including American)
architecture: Pevsner's slightly awkward prose style persuades through its passion and its directness.

Ramsey, Charles George, American, 1884-1963.

Architectural Graphic Standards (With Harold Reeve Sleeper). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Rapoport, Amos House Form and Culture (1969) &a

This fascinating volume associates the forms of domestic architecture with the cultures that surround and influence them.

Experiencing Architecture (1959) by Steen Eiler Rasmussen. A refreshingly clear and unpretentious approach that
concentrates on the many different ways of perceiving architectural forms: as an interplay of solids and voids, as a succession
of rhythmic patterns, and even in terms of the acoustical character of buildings.

Richards, James An Introduction to Modern Architecture (1940) Q a f Recent history is often less digestible than the study of
dead civilizations. Modern architecture is no exception; even so this book persuasively argues that architecture is a social art
related to 20th-century life rather than (in the author's own words) an "academic exercise in applied ornament". Usefully read
in conjunction with Giedion (qv), Mumford (qv), and Newman (qv). Also: The Anti-Rationalists; The Castles on the Ground;
The Functional Tradition in Industrial Building

Richards, James (ed) Who's Who in Architecture: From 1400 to the Present Day (1977)
Biographical and critical studies of professional architects from Alberti and Brunelleschi onwards. Comprehensive coverage of
architects of the Western world, including the USA and Latin America; new edition adds names from Israel, Africa and the Far
East.

Ruskin, John The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) 1L !* Though Ruskin himself later called it "a wretched rant",
this book, together with Pugin's and Morris's writings, really paved the way for modern architectural history and criticism,
laying down criteria by which to judge buildings which were not simply those of Vitruvius or Alberti dressed up in 18th-
century tasteful finery. A founding father, Ruskin writes with grace as well as passion, and puts forward an eloquent case,
among other things for the preservation of historic buildings. Also: The Stones of Venice. See LITERARY CRITICISM

The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) by John Ruskin. A highly idiosyncratic look at the fundamentals of architecture.
Ruskin's high moral tone and sometimes eccentric opinions will not appeal to everyone but, after nearly 150 years, he is still
worth reading for the poetic vigour of his prose style and the brilliance of his observations.

Scott, Geoffrey The Architecture of Humanism (1914) T * A furious attack on 19th- and early-20th-century "practicality" and
a compelling psychological defence of the ornate forms of the baroque. Looking back, 60 years on, how right Scott was!

Scully, Vincent, American, 1920- .

Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance. Rec: LAT (architecture)

Smith, E. Baldwin The Dome ( 1 950)

Smith has written several books, each treating a specific architectural feature which appears over large areas of the earth. This
book is one of the best of them.

Soper, A. and Sickman, L. The Art and Architecture of China

(1956) &011-/..1 From earliest times, traditionalism and resistance to change characterize Chinese architecture: an interesting
contrast with the fashionable, ever-changing styles of the West. Also: The Art and Architecture of Japan

Summerson, John The Classical Language of Architecture (1964) Na*_,

Despite pockets of Gothic resistance, Classical architecture has dominated the "civilized" world from the Renaissance to the
present century. Summerson explains its grammatical disciplines for expert and layman alike. His purpose is to make us think
critically about, instead of just gazing at, architecture. Useful glossary of architectural terms. Also: Georgian London; Victorian
Architecture: Four Studies in Evaluation; Inigo Jones; Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, etc

Venturi, Robert Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1977) In the late 20th century, architecture is evolving from
"modernism", the human dimension reasserting itself. Seminal text by a leading US practitioner. Usefully read in conjunction
with Jencks (qv).

Vitruvius On Architecture (43 BC)

Fascinating contemporary analysis of Classical architecture, including discussion of materials for building and decorating, and
even of the design of catapults and "tortoises" (early tanks). Particularly influential in the Renaissance. Good translation: Loeb
Library.

Wright, Frank Lloyd Modern Architecture (1931) 0 As important for America as Le Corbusier (qv) was for France and
Gropius (qv) for Germany, Wright in this famous book states with the passion that imbued all his work the principles of his
very personal architecture. Also: When Democracy Builds. etc. See Mumford.

Wright, Frank Lloyd, American, 1867-1959.

The Living City. Rec: LAT

Laurie D. Olin

Laurie Olin is a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He teaches a landscape-design
studio and lectures on the history and evolution of landscapes. He has received Guggenheim and Rome Prize Fellowships for
study in landscape architecture; which he has taught at the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania and
Harvard. He is a founding partner of Hanna/Olin Ltd., a landscape-architectural firm located in Philadelphia.
These books should dispel either of two notions: the first that the world and our society are fixed or complete, and the second
that any particular current trend is destiny. Things can and must change, but to a surprising degree such change can be shaped
by dreams and design just as it can by chance or the forces currently at work in society.

Rolling C. Rolling. Tree in the Trail. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942.

Of all the books from childhood, I place this one ahead of Winnie the Pooh, Alice, The Leather-stocking Tales, and so on
(which are better literature), because it gave an exciting history of a place. The protagonist was a cottonwood tree that
witnessed three hundred years of American evolution from buffalo herds and Indian migrations through the exploration and
settling of the West by European immigrants. It opened my eyes at age eight to social and ecological history. The elegant
drawings, paintings and maps on every page conveyed as much or more content as the text, another lesson that shaped my
future self-expression.

Frank Lloyd Wright. An American Architecture. Edgar Kaufmann, ed. New York: Bramhall House, 1955.
One of the several books about Frank Lloyd Wright's work. As a young architecture student I found this book was truly an
inspiration. The clear exposition of Wright's ideas concerning the relationship between buildings and society, between structure
and form, between ornament and materials, and his attitudes toward society, work and art opened up the possibilities of
architecture and imagination.

Loren C. Eiseley. The Immense Journey (1957). Alexandria, Va.: Time—Life Books, 1981.
The first and possibly the best of his many books. More than Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which came later, this collection of
essays explicated an ecological point of view to which I still aspire. Eiseley follows Thoreau as one who presents the longer
view of man as a part of nature, who struggles with this truth and the beauty of evolution and its unfinished workings and
experiments.

Theodore Roethke. Words for the Wind (1957). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. (Pb)
The third volume of poetry published by one of the most influential teachers I ever had. Roethke introduced me to all the
modern poets as well as to the seventeenth-century metaphysical ones, but it was in the close reading of his work that I began
to see how one of my own contemporaries could make art from a living language. using material from his own experience and
mine, and give it form based upon classical and historical precedents. It was intelligent, passionate and beautiful. More
importantly, like William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, the two American poets I came to value the most, his poetry
seemed always fresh and to admonish you to "change your life."

W. G. Hoskins. The Making of the English Landscape. New York: Penguin, 1970.
This deceptively concise and readable book by the current preeminent cultural geographer of Britain led me to spend several
years of my life involved in the study of the evolution of landscapes in Europe and Britain. It also led me to classical
archaeology, to the history of settlement patterns and agriculture, to the persistence of archetypes and themes in the design of
gardens and parks, and finally to make comparisons and connections between social, ecological and artistic history and theory.
More importantly, it led me to want both to share such views with others through teaching and to add my contribution to the
palimpsest of design on the land.

Certain historic comic strips and movies were equally important to my drawing and graphic development.

Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie is an internationally known architect and urban designer with a practice in Montreal, Cambridge, Massachusetts
and Jerusalem. He has been director of Harvard's Urban Design Program of the Graduate School of Design and is the Ian
Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design. He has written three books: Beyond Habitat, For Everyone a Garden and
Form and Purpose. In addition to lecturing frequently at conferences and on campuses, his current projects range from the
Montilla business district in Jerusalem to the Montreal waterfront, a Hebrew school in Mexico City, housing in the Republic of
Singapore, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and Columbus Circle in New York City.
By definition, an architect's principal source of inspiration and learning is the study of the visual environment, cities and
buildings, observed in reality and in reproductions of drawings and photographs. The architect's eye is a greater scanner sorting
out relevancies, perceived and hidden orders, organization and patterns. The written word coexists as stimulation with the
image.

I have chosen three books. The impact of the first has been to place my consciousness within an ethical and moral framework.
The second is a book of science that connects the body theory of design to a greater universal context. The third is a book
specifically about architecture and cities, to give particular emphasis to the significance of one set of images and experiences
over others.

The Bible. King James version (1611). Book of Job.

The first book is the Book of Job and, in particular, its entirety but for the last four chapters. Job's starting point is the
comfortable world where virtue is rewarded, evil punished. Through a series of devastating experiences this simple construct
falls apart. Seeking virtue cannot be pursued for want of immediate rewards in this life, nor for Job (as for myself) does the
promise of a reward in an afterlife form a part of his consciousness. Invariably there must be other motives to seek virtue. It
comes down to the fundamental level of acting in a way that, when multiplied into the collective behavior of all humanity,
makes this planet a livable, comfortable place to be. It builds upon the ancient Hebrew saying "Thou shall not do unto others . .
." as a more elementary construct for one's personal morality than the crime-and-punishment constructs that followed, aiming
to control a fundamentally aggressive and selfish humanity. And though the last four chapters (considered by many scholars to
have been added later) soften the message, as God repents and rewards Job in this life upon the earth, I've always remained
with the lamentation of Job's dilemma and the conviction that what must govern my ethical base and morality as an architect
and as an individual must rest upon a vision of my own behavior and actions being multiplied to the infinity of collective
behavior and its impact upon the species.

Sir D'Arcy W. Thompson. On Growth and Form (1917). 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. (Pb)
Architects trained through the tradition of art history tend to think of architecture as a series of culturally based developments,
buildings and cities shaped by behavioral and psychic forces, styles evolving from one generation to the other shaped primarily
by the will of human beings. D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, published in 1917, which laid the foundation for the
science of morphology, has reshaped my understanding of the process and meaning of design. Introduced to the book by Louis
Kahn and Ann Tyng at age twenty-three, I came to appreciate the inseparable connection between design by nature and design
by man. What Thompson had proposed and demonstrated was that the forms or organisms in nature, from the simplest to the
most complex, evolved in the Darwinian sense to satisfy the criteria essential to survival. From the overused example of the
Nautilus shell to the more subtle demonstrations in the shapes of various plants; sea, land and air, fauna and flora, the bond
structure of the vulture's wing; the geometry of leaves of plants in the desert and the tundra, Thompson forever seeks and
demonstrates the connection of form to purpose.
It becomes possible to distinguish those developments in architecture and urbanism rooted in purpose, in the constraints of the
physical environment, of materials and place, and of life-style from those capricious and arbitrary explorations that surely must
have occurred in every age and engaged the builders of every period. It is in the nature of the human psyche to explore with the
same certainty that molecules and cells mutate and, in the long run, the history of architecture sorts out the explorations worthy
of survival and repetition from those destined to become dead ends.
If before D'Arcy Thompson I might have conceived the act of design as shaping in one's own image, after Thompson I was
conscious that form must evolve from the deep understanding and response to the physical and psychological structures and
constraints that shape our environment in a similar even though more complex manner as in morphology.

Bernard Rudofsky. Architecture Without Architects (1964). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969. (Pb)
With Thompson absorbed it was natural to seek in architecture that mode of building which most closely approximates
morphology in the linkage between form and purpose. The third book, Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture Without Architects,
really an exhibition catalog, is more in the tradition of architectural picture books. At a time that in our culture the architect
reigned supreme as form-giver—the one to give shape not only to buildings and cities, but to society itself—Rudofsky cried
out that the emperor was naked. Illustrating buildings and villages designed by nonarchitects, untrained human beings building
"in the vernacular," he demonstrated a world of immense beauty and complexity and, like D'Arcy Thompson, made the
connection showing how a particular form evolved in response to the inventive use of available technologies and materials, of
site and climate, where decoration emerged from myth and ritual, where efficiency, in the morphological sense, begets a sense
of order, fitness and, perhaps most relevantly, spiritual uplift.
Rudofsky establishes criteria that transcend the standard fare of art-history evaluations, suggesting the greater and more
fundamental measure from which no architect should attempt to escape. In an art world that proclaims that all is possible,
D'Arcy Thompson and Rudofsky suggest that the search is not for that which is possible, an infinity of choices, but for that
which is appropriate, a diminishing set of choices in search of truth.

Anne Whiston Spirn

Anne Whiston Spirn is associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Her research and
publications grow out of her work on theories of nature and city design, best illustrated in her recent award-winning book The
Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. She was a fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe in 1978 and a Noyes
fellow in 1985. She holds a B.A. from Radcliffe College and a M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
It was only after writing these notes that I realized that all five of the books are in one way or another a product of Harvard.
Eliot was an undergraduate at Harvard College, McHarg and Alexander studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and
John Dewey delivered Art as Experience as a Harvard lecture series founded in memory of William James.

Thomas Stearns Eliot. Four Quartets (1935-42). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968. (Pb)
I bought my first copy of the Four Quartets in a bookstore in Copenhagen. I was sixteen, living for a year on a farm and going
to school in Denmark. The Four Quartets was one of a handful of books in English that I read and reread. At first these books
were a linguistic refuge, the still center in a storm of unfamiliar words. Later, when Danish became a comfortable everyday
language, the words of the poems acquired a newness, as if heard for the first time. Eliot's use of the garden as metaphor, his
juxtaposition of nature's time and human time, struck a deep resonance. I was a city girl (suburban, really) exposed for the first
time to the violent vicissitudes of nature and a life founded on nature's rhythms as well as man's. Over the past twenty years, I
have returned to the Four Quartets again and again. They drive me to find a way to design landscapes that embody time past,
time present, and time future, that highlight the poignant contrast between nature's time and human time.

John Dewey. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch, 1934.

I first read Art as Experience as a Radcliffe undergraduate struggling to strike a balance between art and scholarship. I had
meant to major in painting, only to find upon arrival that in Harvard's fine-arts department, one studied the history of art, not its
making. The idea that aesthetic experience was not the special property of an educated elite, but was knowable, an important
and universal human phenomenon engaging the senses and capable of being experienced on many different levels, was
attractive. By sketching an aesthetic theory that related to everyday experience as well as to extraordinary moments, Dewey
constructed a bridge for me between the making of art and its history, between high art and craft. This has since defined my
own approach to the aesthetics of design, one that is grounded in both sensual experience and intellectual meaning.

Ian L. McHarg. Design with Nature (1969). New York: Natural History Press, 1971. (Pb)
Design with Nature introduced me to my profession. Through this book, I learned that landscape architecture consisted of more
than the design of gardens, that it extended to the park, the parkway, the region. Through this profession I hoped to create
"useful" art and thereby to fuse the poetic imagery of Eliot and the pragmatic aesthetic of Dewey. I subsequently studied
landscape architecture with McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania and later worked for five years in his professional office
on a wide variety of planning and design projects. These projects ranged in scope from a study of an entire metropolitan region
to portions of cities, from plans for new communities to park designs. In the office, I gained a different appreciation for the
book: for its power to shape values and to create the demand for a particular type of professional practice. Design With Nature
demonstrated for me the potential of a book to change the way the environment is perceived and built. But McHarg neglected
the city, and that was the seed for my own book.

Christopher Alexander. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. (Pb)
.et al. A Pattern Language which Generates Multi-Service Centers. Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Environmental
Structure, 1968.
These two books stand for me as one. As a graduate student in landscape architecture, the first provided a theoretical frame and
the second the application that made the theory comprehensible and meaningful. Alexander's work opened up new worlds for
me. As a visually oriented person trained in a highly verbal educational tradition, I found that the diagrams in Multi-Service
Centers packed a jolt in the way they fused abstract ideas, empirical data, and physical form. A door opened: this was a
language that seemed more native to me than words. Alexander also dispelled the mystique of design: he highlighted a
framework within which the real mystery—the flash of insight that illuminates a meaningful pattern—was facilitated.

ARCHITECTURE - INTRODUCTION
Joe Staines

Architecture is unique among the arts, in as much as it is impossible to avoid. From birth to death, the spaces that surround us
are largely defined by structures – walls, doors, windows, corridors – that have been consciously designed and built, albeit with
varying degrees of finesse. The very ubiquity of architecture leads most people to take it for granted. It usually enters our
awareness only for the most negative reasons: the destruction of something familiar and well loved, or the arrival of something
else that seems incongruous or out of scale. The experience of architecture can be much more rewarding than this, and the
following books have been chosen because all the authors, in their varying ways, have the ability to make the act of looking at
the build environment seem like an active and creative process, an act of interpretation as much as one of contemplation.

All find architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) by John Ruskin. A highly idiosyncratic look at the fundamentals of architecture.
Ruskin’s high moral tone and sometimes eccentric opinions will not appeal to everyone but, after nearly 150 years, he is still
worth reading for the poetic vigour of his prose style and the brilliance of his observations.
Experiencing Architecture (1959) by Steen Eiler Rasmussen. A refreshingly clear and unpretentious approach that
concentrates on the many different ways of perceiving architectural forms: as an interplay of solids and voids, as a succession
of rhythmic patterns, and even in terms of the acoustical character of buildings.

An Outline of European Architecture (1963) by Nikolaus Pevsner. A confident sweep through Western (including American)
architecture: Pevsner’s slightly awkward prose style persuades through its passion and its directness.

A Cartoon History of Architecture (1975) by Osbert Lancaster. Lancaster was a famous cartoonist who also wrote for the
Architectural Review for many years. His eye for detail and dry wit make this a both amusing and highly insightful guide to the
vagaries of taste.

Illustrated History of Architecture 800-1914 (1993) by Jill Lever and John Harris. First published in 1966 as the Illustrated
Glossary of Architecture. The effectiveness of this dictionary derives from the way the authors have combined clearly written
definitions of key terms with a remarkable collection of photographs with which to illustrate them.

The Classical Language of Architecture (1963) by John Summerson. Originally a series of radio talks, this is an elegantly
phrased and lucid account of the way in which the essential elements of Classical Greek and Roman architecture have been
used and reinterpreted by succeeding generations of architects from Bramante to Le Corbusier.

Masterpieces of Architectural Design (1982) edited by Helen Powell and David Leatherbarrow. Architects have used drawing
in a variety of ways over the centuries: as a conceptual tool, as a means of communicating with builders, and as a way of
impressing clients. This book presents over 100 fascinating examples accompanied by short but apposite commentaries.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE
Joe Staines
The rebuilding of the east end of the abbey church of St Denis, just north of Paris, was begun in 1140. It took just four years
and is widely regarded as the first consistent manifestation of Gothic architecture. It was rapidly followed by similar building
and rebuilding programmes across the Isle de France, then in England, and eventually throughout Europe. The vital elements of
Gothic building - the pointed arch, the rib vault, and the flying buttress - all enabled the medieval master builder to replace the
solid but earthbound architecture of the Romanesque with something more dynamic and transcendent. Walls, no longer load-
bearing, could be filled with windows of coloured glass, creating - as at Chartres - a jewel-like glow within the often vast
interiors. The Gothic cathedral dominated the surrounding landscape and the lives of those within it, so it is hardly surprising
that subsequent architectural history has concentrated on ecclesiastical buildings almost entirely at the expense of secular ones.

Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar
or noble ... it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and
unexhausted energy.

JOHN RUSKIN

Cathedral (1974) by David Macaulay. The story of the construction of an imaginary, but typical, French cathedral is told for
children using vivid explanatory drawings and a minimum of text. Much essential information is imparted in the most painless
of ways.

The Cathedral Builders (1980) by jean Gimpel. The perfect compliment to Macaulay's book, written by an enthusiast. A
stimulating text gives us the political and religious background to the `cathedral crusade', and provides a detailed view into the
lives of the various itinerant craftsmen responsible for its realization.

Gothic (1967) by George Henderson. Henderson sees the Gothic as rather more than a revolution in architectural construction.
His short book provides an overview of all the medieval visual arts, concentrating on their stylistic unity and emphasizing both
their human quality and their ornamental daring.

Gothic Architecture (1962) by Paul Frank. A wide-ranging history of Gothic architecture that stresses the importance of
structural developments. This is a classic account written by one of the subject's greatest scholars in a style that is thoroughly
readable and enjoyable. Includes a brief survey of secular architecture.
The Gothic Cathedral (1956) by Otto von Simson. For Simson, the symbolic function of the great cathedrals - as an image of
the City of God - is their greatest importance. Using contemporary texts, especially the writings of Abbot Suger of St Denis, he
tries to show the true significance of these buildings for medieval man.

Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning (1992) by Charles M Radding and William W Clark. In this challenging book a
historian and an an historian attempt to unravel the connections and shared approaches between architecture and scholasticism
in the 11th and 12th centuries. Not an easy read but worth the effort.

The Nature of Gothic (1853) by John Ruskin. This chapter from The Stones of Venice was so admired by William Morris that
he printed it as a separate work. It is not difficult to understand Morris's enthusiasm, for here is Ruskin at his most rhapsodic:
confidently defusing the essentials of Gothic architecture, extolling its superiority - both aesthetic and moral - to all other
architectural styles, and linking this superiority to the independent character of those from northern climes.

RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE

Francesca M Speight
The study of architecture reflects, perhaps more than any other art form, the prevailing aesthetic tastes of a period. The
Renaissance is no exception, the rebirth of Classical ideas on form, proportion, and decoration, as found in the remains of
ancient Greece and Rome, providing inspirarion for such major architectural masters as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo
Brunelleschi, and Michelangelo. Baroque architecture, however, reflects the penchant of the time towards lavish decorative
schemes on a grand scale, the simplicity and clarity of the Classical giving way to the love of complexity and dramatic effects.

He departed not a little from the work regulated by measure, order and rule which other men did according to a common use
and after Vitruvius and the antiquities, to which he would not conform ...
GIORGIO VASARI ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF MICHELANGELO

Introduction to Architecture (1983) by Stephen Gardiner. A valuable textbook which looks at the origins and development of
each style, followed by important examples of each type being examined, and concluding with a review of the international
impact and national variations of the style in question.

The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (1969) by Peter Murray. Clear, beautifully illustrated account, ideal for the
beginner.

The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture (1966) by John Fleming, Hugh Honour, and Nikolaus Pevsner. An invaluable aid for
the newcomer to the many terms used within this discipline.

History of Italian Renaissance Art (1970) by Frederick Ham. Packed with information on all major and minor painters,
sculptors, and architects, all placed within a broad historical context. For over 20 years this has been considered to be the best
book written on this period.

Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) by Rudolf Wittkower. A seminal work, lucid and stimulating.
Relating Renaissance architecture to Renaissance music, philosophy, and science, Wittkower argues that its aesthetic principles
were grounded not in a secular view of the world, but a deeply religious one - that it was, fundamentally, a 'sacred' architecture.
An Outline of European Architecture (1943) by Nikolaus Pevsner. Reprinted many times, this remains a standard reference
book of exceptional quality. It is scholarly in approach, but the reader's perseverance is well rewarded in the wealth of
information it contains.

Baroque and Rococo (1964) by Germain Bazin. The author explores the richness and complexity of this period, and takes into
account the persistence of earlier styles. A scholarly but accessible study of the architecture as well as painting and sculpture of
the Baroque and Rococo.

WESTERN ARCHITECTURE 1750-1900

Rosamund Diamond
From the middle of the 18th century, as much as the other aspects of culture, architecture was affected by ideas of the
Enlightenment and significant changes that were taking place in the political structures of certain nations, the most significant
of these being the French and American Revolutions. Architecture became influenced by contemporary philosophy, in its ideas
about nature and society, and the conflict between empiricism and rationalism. Change in conceptions of history, and
archaeological expeditions to cultivate the examination of Roman and Greek architecture, led to the questioning of Vitruvius'
Classical precepts and the singular route presented by Renaissance and Baroque. It also resulted in the development of Neo-
Classicism.

In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution presented architecture with new approaches to development, as a result of both
mass increases in production and technological innovation. Enlarged urban development and, in the densely occupied cities, the
need to install comprehensive servicing systems, such as the provision of drainage and water, as well as advances in mobility
and communication, led to strategic planning, which produced both structured urban designs and, in the latter part of the
century, suburbanization. The rise of the new bourgeois classes in cities generated places of leisure and consumption: new
parks marked the urbanization of landscape, and technological advancement made possible the construction of the arcade.
Technical innovation from the middle of the 18th century, which included the development of iron as a structural material and
the birth of the steam engine, encouraged a division in the roles of the engineer and the architect. The new materials and
techniques of construction presented multiple rather than singular solutions to design projects. This presaged 20th-century
diversity. Advances in the production of power, leading, for example, to the invention of the lift and the electric light, resulted
not only in more ambitious constructions, but in architecture as a more sophisticated means of tempering the environment,
which might respond to individual need while expressing changes in society.

Unremittingly science enriches itself and life with newly discovered useful
materials and natural powers that work miracles, with new methods and
techniques, with new tools and machines. It is already evident that inventions
no longer are, as they had been in earlier times, means for warding off want
and for helping consumption; instead, want and consumption are the means
to market the inventions. The order of things has been reversed.
GOTTFRIED SEMPER

Neo-Classical and Nineteenth Century Architecture (1979) by Robin Middleton and David Watkin. (The paperback version
is in two volumes: The Enlightenment in France and England and The Diffusion and Development of Classicism and the
Gothic Revival.) This is one of the most useful and readable studies of the period 1750-1850, covering its major themes, which
include the influence of the antique, visionary architecture, Neo-Classicism, and the Gothic revival. It includes an invaluable
list of the main architectural protagonists and a comprehensive bibliography.

The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (1980) by Allan Braham. This is a well-illustrated, thorough survey of the
period, which includes a study of pre- and post-Revolutionary architecture.

The Writing of the Walls: Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment (1986) by Anthony Vidler. Another, more
particularised, investigation of architectural theory of the period.

Laugier and Eighteenth Century French Theory (1962) by Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann. This is a translation of An Essay
on Architecture (1753) by Marc-Antoine Laugier. Whereas the source text may be hard to read, the introduction by the
Herrmann provides an excellent guide to the theorist who, using the idea of the `primitive hut', pro-posed a `natural'
architecture.

Boullee and Visionary Architecture (1976) by Helen Rosenau. Covers the grandiose building projects of one of the most
extraordinary architects of the period.

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux - Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the Ancien Regime (1990) by Anthony Vidler.
This is one of the few thorough English-language studies of the visionary architect Ledoux.

Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of Western Design Theory (1995) by Mark Gelernter. Chapter 6 (The
Enlightenment) and Chapter 7 (The 19th Century) are useful in presenting the background of ideas to the development of
architecture.

History of Modern Architecture (1971) by Leonardo Benevolo. This work is in two volumes. Volume 1 covers the period
from 1740 to the 20th century, and has important sections on the birth of industrial towns that are relevant to a study of 19th-
century architecture.

The Modern City: Planning in the 19th Century (1970) by Francoise Choay. This book covers one of the most important
themes in the development of 19th-century architecture.
Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) by Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Readable general study by a major
architectural historian.

The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings (1851-69; translated 1989 by H F Mallgrave and W Herrmann) by
Gottfried Semper. Semper was one of the most important 19th-century architectural theorists. The style of these texts may be
harder to read, but they are of great importance in establishing his ideas about the origins of architecture, and how structure
might relate to architecture and the expression of style.

Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays (1949) by John Summerson. John Summerson was one of Britain's foremost
architectural historians in the 20th century. This is a series of readable essays including a fascinating text on Viollet-le-Duc.

The Rise of an American Architecture (1970) edited by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. Interesting account that includes the
development of cities and parks, and the skyscraper.

The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (1959) by Paul Frankl. Important study of
Gothic architecture that includes its incamadon in 19th-century architecture. See also Gothic Architecture (1960) by the same
author.
Mechanization Takes Command (1948) by Sigfried Giedion. A look at construction in terms of concepts of comfort and its
acquisition; for example, bathing and hygiene. Although there are many omissions, or issues covered too thinly, it at least
addresses and introduces the cultural climate in which architecture was developing in the 20th century.

In Search of Modern Architecture - A Tribute to Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1982) by Helen Searing. This book was
produced as a festschrift for the famous architectural historian. It includes an interesting range of essays including architectural
and urban design topics from 1740 up to the 20th century.

20TH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
Rosamund Diamond

The history of modem architecture could be described as a history of ideas, in which the apparent divergence of approaches,
and the number of movements, in contrast to previous centuries, resulted from the wide range of possibilities made available by
new technologies. This not only made architects address different methods of construction, but also the social effects of their
buildings, individually and collectively, in shaping and reflecting the way people live in the modem age. Architects such as Le
Corbusier projected visions of whole conurbations and environments to support the new social structures that they envisioned.
It is hard to be precise in attempting to trace the start of modem architecture when one considers both its technological and its
visionary characteristics.

In one sense its origin may be found in the origins of the Industrial Revolution, but in another it lies as much in the
development of ideas in the middle of the 18th century. The individual's place in an increasingly mechanized field of
production is often questioned in the debates of 20th-century architecture, and this growing dilemma is expressed in the late
century's divergence of stylistic approaches.
The machinery of society, profoundly out of gear, oscillates between an
amelioration, of historial importance, and a catastrophe. The primordial instinct of
every human being is to assure himself of shelter. The various classes of workers in
society today no longer have dwellings adapted to their needs; neither the artisan
nor the intellectual. It is a question of building which is at the root of the social
unrest of today; architecture or revolution.
LE CORBUSIER

History of Modern Architecture (Volume 2, 1971) by Leonardo Benevolo. This is a very interesting history of modem
architecture because, unlike many of the personality-dominated histories, it sets architecture and urbanism into its industrial,
economic, and social contexts.

Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (1941) by Sig&ied Giedion. This study of modem
architecture and its development in the USA has been one of the most frequently read by students. It avoids some of the
ideological influences that Benevolo and Tafuri (see below) present as central to their studies of modern architecture.
Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) by Kenneth Frampton. This is one of the most valuable recent brief
introductory studies of modern architecture, by one of the leading critical writers on the subject, including contemporary work.

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960), Age of the Masters (1962), Architecture of the Well-Tempered
Environment (1969), all by Reyner Banham. Banham's work is always carefully researched, placed in a general cultural
context, and very readable. On the one hand, he apparently has an easy style which concerns his sense of the power of things
contemporary and immediate; on the other, it is this, together with his scholarship, that allows him to question the
developments of modem architecture, their successes and failures, rather than freezing them as historical events. The last title is
still important as a critical study of the impact of environmental engineering.

Programmes and Manifestos on 20th-Century Architecture (1970) edited by Ulrich Conrads, translated by Michael
Bullock. This is a good source book of some of the most important statements of position made by architects between 1900 and
the early 1960s.

Architecture Culture 1943-1968 (1993) by Joan Ockman with the collaboration of Edward Eigen. This is another version of
the previous book with the inclusion of a later generation of architects.

Sources of Modern Architecture (1967) by Dennis Sharp. A very useful bibliography listing many significant architects of the
Modem movement, with basic information on their lives and their work, and publications by or on them.

Modern Architecture (2 volumes; 1986) by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co. Like the work of Benevolo, this sets
architecture into a political and cultural context, that is prepared to reassess history and with it the Modem movement.

Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century (1985, 1990) by David Dunster. Volume 1 covers houses 1900-44 and Volume 2
1945-89. Both consist of brief studies of individual buildings significant to the development of 20th-century architecture,
providing a useful companion to the broader histories.

Oeuvre Complete (1910-65) by Le Corbusier, edited by W Boesiger. In seven volumes, an extraordinary record of one of the
century's most important architects, including his own descriptions of his work.

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) by Robert Venturi. One of the few architectural treatises of the late
20th century. It presages what is now described as Post-Modem architecture.

Learning from Las Vegas (1972) by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steve Izenour. This is a study of the popular
culture that the authors identify as confronting contemporary architecture.

The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1984) by Heinrich Klote, translated by Radka Donnell. Thorough general
review of the main Post-Modernists, although to understand this late 20th-century development, general cultural works that
examine other arts should be studied.
Art and Design

At first sight, it might seem that there are too many art books: too much reading goes on, and not enough looking. But for most
people, art books are a personal gallery to the majority of the world's great pictures, the only possible ticket to the contents of
far-flung galleries. For this reason, art books are recommended here for quality of pictures, standard of reproduction, first;
second comes authority or accessibility of text. We have, however, chosen not so much picture books about individual artists,
as books about trends, about art itself. Where art becomes a practical as well as an aesthetic matter, and particularly in the new,
prescriptive discipline of design, things are a little different. Here theory and philosophy are crucial matters, and elegance of
text bulks large. The best books of all—and it is interesting to see how many of them are by artists themselves—are those
which combine experience, vision and articulacy of style. They are the cream of a rich and nourishing list.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Agee, Kroeber, Turner): ARCHAEOLOGY (Sandars); ARCHITECTURE (Banham, Clark.
Kouwenhoven, Lancaster, Lawrence, Newman, Soper); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Cellini, Clark); BIOGRAPHY (Freud, Grigson,
Hudson, Lindsay, Renoir, Thompson); DIARIES (Dali, Van Gogh); GEOGRAPHY (Tunnard); HISTORY/AMERICAN
(Josephy, Jones); HISTORY/ ASIAN (Basham); HISTORY/BRITISH (Burn, Burton, Dillon, George, Strong); HOME (Conran,
Jeffs, Johnson, Kron); HUMOUR (Hollowood, Larry, New Yorker, Searle, Schulz, Steadman, Steinberg); LITERARY
CRITICISM (Benjamin); MATHEMATICS (Hofstadter); MEDIA (Evans. Maclean); MEDICINE (Trevor-Roper); MUSIC
(Hoffnung); NATURAL HISTORY (Audubon, Be-wick, Holden)

Adburgham, Alison (ed) A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841-1940(1961) *

Since few of us can house, let alone afford, the 7000 back numbers of Punch, this volume suffices to show how valuable this
magazine is, to social historians and the inquisitive alike, as a marvellous source of information on changes in attitudes. The
cartoons offer an accurate guide to fashion from bloomers to the zip fastener. Battock, Gregory (ed) The New Art: A Critical
Anthology (1973) p a., For those worried about deciphering the art of the post-machine age and understanding the
preoccupations of painters, sculptors, space enclosers, volume envelopers, earth movers and esoteric talkers, this collection of
essays provides some useful insights. Also: Idea Art; New Ideas in Art Education. See Rosenberg.

Baudelaire, Charles The Painter of Modern Life (1863)

The poet on the visual arts of his time is wiser and more perceptive than many full-time professional critics. Ostensibly about
Constantin Guys, this book is crammed with general judgements on artistic society at large. Also: Art in Paris, 1845-1862. See
Delacroix; BIOGRAPHY (Starkie); DIARIES; POETRY Behrman, S. N. Duveen (1952)
Witty, scathing account of the extraordinary career of one of the most successful 20th-century art dealers, who provided many
newly rich Americans with ancestors-to-order culled from the stately homes of England, and single-handed made the
unremarkable Romney into one of the world's most sought-after painters.

Bell, Clive Art( 1 914)

Cornerstone of Bloomsbury Group aesthetics, with its emphasis on "significant form" and the presentation of humane values in
an increasingly inhuman world. Also: Civilization. See Fry.

Berger, John Ways of Seeing(1972) Pa*J

Influential essays on the gap between what we see and the knowledge and beliefs that we articulate in words. In particular
Berger examines our assumptions that there is such a thing as "art" and that the perception of art objects—aesthetic experience?
—is somehow set apart from other perceptions. Hard; rewarding. Also: Permanent Red; Art and Revolution, etc.

Black, J. A. and Garland, M. A History of Fashion (1975) Audacious successful attempt to trace the history of fashion
practically from Adam and Eve, certainly from the age of skins and paint, to the kaleidoscopic seventies. See Adburgham.

Bland, David Farrant, English, ca. 1911-1970.

History of Book Illustration. Rec: Ward

Breuil, Henri, French, 1877-1961.

The Evolution of Rock Art in the Caves of France. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Clark, Kenneth Looking at Pictures (1960)

The title expresses exactly what this book is about, and what Clark does as well as any living man. He makes a personal
anthology of paintings—good reproductions accompany the text—and reading the book is like walking through a gallery with
Clark at one's side. Also: The Nude, etc. See ARCHITECTURE; AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Clark, Kenneth, English, 1903-1983.
Civilisation. Rec: National Review (art history)

Conrad, Peter The Victorian Treasure-House(1973)

Switch-back progression through the labyrinth of the Victorian British mind, as manifested primarily in the visual arts, though
there are constant vitalizing cross-references to poetry, fiction, technology and history. Also: Shandyism

Various authors, Various, Pub. 1951.

The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology (Edited by Robert Motherwell (1915-1991)). Recommended by: Counterpunch NF

Delacroix, Eugene Journal( 1893)

Vivid, fetching picture of the French art world in the mid 19th century, seen through the eyes of one of its leading figures.
Compare with B audelaire (qv).

Faure, Élie, French, 1873-1937.

History of Art. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Frankfort, H. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954) a*-if

Fry, Roger Vision and Design (1920)

Essays on a variety of subjects which roused the passions of this most dynamic member of the Bloomsbury Group, exploring
and explaining his sensations in front of a Claude, a Cezanne or a masterwork of the Renaissance in terms still illuminating to
the layman. Also: Transformations; Cezanne Letters. See Bell.

Fry, Roger, English, 1866-1934.

Cezanne: A Study of His Development. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Gaunt, William The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy (1942)

Excellent introduction to the Pre-Raphaelites, their lives, their sometimes scandalous loves, and their deadly serious work.
Also: Victorian Olympus; The Aesthetic Adventure

Giedion, Sigfried Mechanization Takes Command ( 1 948) Oa*

The potter's wheel, the weaver's loom, iron casting and printing with movable type were early instances of the mechanization
of design processes. From gradual beginnings, with the commercial exploitation of the innovations of the Industrial Revolution
in the 18th and 19th centuries, mechanization does indeed take command. Giedion's account puts up all the hares—even, in
1948, feminism—in the race for comfort, convenience, cleanliness and, above all, not godliness, but commercial success. See
ARCHITECTURE

Gilson, Etienne The Arts of the Beautiful (1965 )

Gilson (a noted and dependable critic) writes with grace and style not of pictures only, but of art in general. An important and
highly enjoyable book: aesthetics at their unpretentious best. Also: Form and Substance in the Ans; The Choir of Muses, etc.
See PHILOSOPHY

Gogh, Vincent van, Dutch, 1853-1890.

Complete Letters. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Ward

Gombrich, Ernst Art and illusion (1960) OP./

Exploration of the psychology of pictorial representation, covering the whole history of what artists actually did and what they
thought they were doing (often two very different matters). Profound scholarship, lightly worn. Also: The Story of Art; The
Sense of Order; Meditations on a Hobby Horse, etc.

Gombrich, E. H., American, 1909-2001.

The Story of Art. Rec: Fadiman 3
Art and Illusion. Rec: Counterpunch Trans ML Nonfiction

Guilbaut, Serge, French, 1943- .

How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Hauser, Arnold, German, 1892-1978.

The Social History of Art. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Haydon, Benjamin Robert Autobiography and Journals (1853) Life and reflections of a painter with genius but no talent.
Haydon knew everybody, and always has something interesting to say, not least about his own contradictory nature.

Hogarth, William The Analysis of Beauty (17 53) *

Hogarth's paintings and engravings attacked the conventions and hypocrisies of society in general and the art world in
particular. In print too he kept up the good work, with broadsides against connoisseurship and especially against classicism as
the current artistic credo, in an attempt to make the language of art understandable to more than a small dilettante elite.
Stimulating, invigorating essays–with points still valid today. Facsimile edition (1969) recommended.

Honour, Hugh Neoclassicism (1968) Oaf'

Far-ranging, compact introduction to a whole climate of thought and feeling in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as cool
and graceful in style as the art it celebrates. Also: Romanticism; Chinoiserie. See ARCHITECTURE (Fleming)

Ivins, William M. Prints and Visual Communication (1953) it J Apparently dry subject (how various graphic processes
evolved conventions of representation in order to put over their meaning) transformed into a breathless historical detective
story which illuminates far more than its immediate subject.

Various Artists, Japanese.

Japanese Landscape Painting. Rec: StJE

Jones, Owen The Grammar of Ornament (1856) * Though it was not regarded as art, decoration was a subject of consuming
interest to the Victorians. Industry, newly mechanized, had a voracious appetite for new patterns. What better, Jones and many
others thought, than the study of nature and history? Theories still relevant; colour lithographs a joy for all.

Klee, Paul On Modern Art (1948) P a 1'

In this self-analytical sketchbook—collected thoughts and illustrations—Klee worries about the isolation (self-inflicted, he
thinks) of the modern artist. Also: Notebooks
Klee, Paul, Swiss writing in German, 1879-1940.
The Thinking Eye. Rec: Ward
The Nature of Nature. Rec: Ward (art)

Laver, James Taste and Fashion: From the French Revolution to the Present Day (1937)
Elegant text; delightful plates. Revised edition (1945) recommended.

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian, 1452-1519.

Notebooks. Rec: Adler Bloom Ward

Lynton, Norbert, English, 1927- .

Story of Modern Art. Rec: Ward

McGraw-Hill (publisher) Encyclopaedia of World Art

(15 vols, 1963-68) •alt./
Mondrian, Piet Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art (1937) P J Mondrian, with the minimum of words and faded but adequate
images, outlines the conversion of a realist landscape painter to abstract painting, his individual brand of Cubism being known
as Neo-Plasticism. A great help in understanding what sort of activity painting has become in the 20th century.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian, 1475-1564.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward

Morison, Stanley Politics and Script(1972)

No mere catalogue of scripts and types this: Morison relates the history of lettering to political, social, religious, aesthetic, and
commercial factors. Unusual subject; absorbing book.

Mumford, Lewis Technics and Civilization (1934)

Mumford removes our historical blinkers by relating advances in design since the Industrial Revolution to their wider historical
context. His inventory of inventions is endlessly fascinating. See ARCHITECTURE
Mumford, Lewis, American, 1895-1990.
The City in History. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Technics and Civilization. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Murray, P. and L. A Dictionary of Art and Artists (1959) a

Newton, Stella M. Health, Art and Reason (1974) • J

Fascinating study of conflicting attitudes to female fashions in the wildly ambiguous Victorian era when reforms in dress were
argued for, initiated and sometimes abandoned, on grounds of health and hygiene, art, and reason. Also: Renaissance Theatrical
Costume and the Sense of the Historical Past. See Adburgham; Black.

Nochlin, Linda Realism (1971)

Forceful study of 19th-century relations between art and life, particularly in the work of those artists whose work contains
specific social or political commitment. Osborne, Harold The Oxford Companion to Art (1970)
Alphabetical reference book, more chunky and full than Murray (qv). If you can afford just one art-reference book, this should
be it.

Panovsky, Erwin Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955) Q J

Provocative collection of essays by the inventor of "iconology"—the study of the artist's visual language and how artists have
conveyed meaning to spectators in various historical periods. Also: Studies in Iconology; The Life and Art of Albrecht Diirer
Panofsky, Erwin, German-American writing in German and English, 1892-1968.
Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Perspective as Symbolic Form. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Papanek, Victor Design for the Real World (1971) i *

Pied Piper Papanek cannot, even in the face of the worsening energy crisis and the polarization of wealth, persuade lemming-
like designers to accept responsibility for solving realproblems. Their ideals are submerged by the marketing idea of the "ideal
consumer", and the poor—individuals and nations—the sick and the needy are neglected. See Schaeffer.

Pevsner, Nlkolaus Pioneers of Modern Design (1936) fli*.f

The irresistible force of the Industrial Revolution meets the immovable object—the nostalgia of Victorian Revivalism—yet
somehow "modern" architecture and design emerge. Revised edition (1960) recommended. Also: The Englishness of English
Art; Studies in Art, Architecture and Design (especially volume II), etc. See ARCHITECTURE (Fleming, Pevsner)

Pissarro, Camille Letters to His Son Lucien (1943)

The great Impressionist writes regularly to his artist son in London over twenty years, mixing professional advice, art gossip
and domestic details in a charming, revealing way.

Read, Herbert Art and Industry (1934)

Practical yet impassioned statement of faith on the principles of industrial design, by one of the major pioneers in its study.
Catches the feeling of the earnest thirties; but the arguments are still relevant. Also: The Philosophy of Modem Art; Icon and
Idea; The Meaning of Art, etc

Reitlinger, Gerald The Economics of Taste (3 vols, 1961-70)

Intimidating title disguises a riveting account of the rise and fall of prices and reputations in pictures (vol I) and objets d'art (vol
II) since the mid 18th century. Vol III carries the tale through the swinging sixties.

Reynolds, Joshua Discourses on Art (1769 - 91)

Classic statement of classical 18th-century academic attitudes, by the then President of the British Royal Academy and one of
their most successful exponents. Who should know better? Who could put it more elegantly?

Richter, Jean Paul (ed) The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1939)
Richter's sleuth work in collating innumerable intriguing notes from the artist's notebooks and manuscripts, aided by his
cultivated ability to read Leonardo's reversed writings without the use of a mirror, makes Leonardo's contributions to art and
science seem all the more remarkable. 1970 reprint recommended. See BIOGRAPHY (Freud)

Rosenberg, Harold The Anxious Object (1964)

Art critic of the New Yorker genuinely enjoys many of the more bizarre manifestations of "modern art". Enthusiasm is the best
advocate, especially when matched (as here) by style, common sense, and a very necessary sense of humour. Also: The
Tradition of the New; The De-Definition of Art; Artworks and Packages. See Battock.

Rothenstein, John Modern English Painters, 1952– 1974 (1976) aka Lively accounts of fifty 20th-century artists, most of
whom the former director of the Tate Gallery, London, knew personally and describes with a fund of anecdote as well as crisp
critical perception. Compare with his autobiography, Brave Day
Hideous Night.

Ruskin, John, English, 1819-1900.

Selected Writings. Rec: Lubbock
Praeterita. Rec: Ward
Modern Painters. Rec: Bloom Lubbock
Stones of Venice. Rec: Bloom
Unto This Last. Rec: Bloom
Queen of the Air. Rec: Bloom

Sandler, Irving The Triumph of American Painting (1970)

Blow-by-blow account of the rise of Abstract Expressionism in America, by one who saw it all happen, knew and knows most
of the principal characters, and is able, before even the dust of the battle has completely stilled, to step back and judge with
unnerving sense and precision. Also: The New York School Schaeffer, H. 19th-century Modern (1970) 9 a The essential
antidote to Pevsner's (qv) classic Pioneers, with its artist-craftsman bias. Victorian consumer products, like bicycles, spoons
and even gynaecological forceps are examined and the roots of modernism are traced in this functional tradition. Schaeffer
raises a moral question too: when the perfect solution to a design problem has been reached, why should "stylists" deceive
consumers with seductive new models? See Papanek.

Scharf, Aaron Art and Photography (1968) 0.1 Standard work on the tricky relations between the traditional arts and
photography. Breezy; full of oddities as well as serious information; cheerily opinionated.

Sickert, Walter Richard A Free House (1947)

Fine (and eccentric) artist lays about him on subjects connected with painting, friends, enemies, the art establishment (which he
abhorred) and the advantages and disadvantages of the English, both of which he was well placed to appreciate. Selection by
Osbert Sitwell recommended.

Smith., John Thomas Nollekens and His Times (1828)

Sublimely bitchy anecdotal biography by his former pupil and assistant of one of the 18th century's great eccentrics, who
happened also to be a sculptor of note. Stedman, John The Rule of Taste from George Ito George /V(1936) Postulates general
agreement upon what was considered "correct taste" in the period of the British Georges; traces the influence of Vanbrugh,
Burlington, Kent, Walpole, and Adam in architecture and interior decoration and also that of Kneller, Gainsborough, Romney
and other painters.

Sontag, Susan, American, 1933-2004.

On Photography. Rec: Harvard

Steichen, Edward, American, 1879-1973.

The Family of Man. Rec: LAT NYPL (photography series)

Sypher, Wylie Four Stages of Renaissance Style (1955)

A noted literary critic discusses the styles of the Renaissance as manifested not only in painting and sculpture, but also in
literature, music and the other arts. A tour de force of enthusiasm and knowledge.

Vasari, Giorgio Lives of the Artists (1550 -68) 0* Anecdotal and a pleasure to read, but also an interesting historical
document which covers every aspect of art and artists in Renaissance Italy when, as Gombrich (qv) puts it, "artists became
conscious and over-conscious of the great achievements of the past that weighed on them".

Vasari, Giorgio, Italian, 1511-1574.

Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Rec: Bloom Ward

On Painting L. Alberti Principles in Art

The Four Books of Architecture A. Palladio Principles in Art
Patrons and Painters F. Haskell Principles in Art
The Greek Revival J. Mordant Crook Principles in Art

James Ackerman

James Ackerman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts. His essays and articles are on the history of architecture.
critical and historical theory, and the interaction of art and science. His books focus on his long-held fascination with Rome:
The Architecture of Michelangelo, Palladio and Palladio's Villas. Recently he has expanded his artistic interests to film:
Looking for Renaissance Rome (1976) and Palladio the Architect and His Influence in America (1980).
I'm not sure that any of these books (except possibly for Barthes) would have the same impact today that they did when
published: they are still worth reading, but they were written in and for another milieu. If all important books retained their
value permanently we wouldn't need to produce any new ones.

Roger Fry. Vision and Design (1920). New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. (Pb)
I was sixteen when I bought this book of essays on various themes, and I was overwhelmed by my first contact with its subtle
and sensitive approach to art. Fry's elegant prose reinforced his message that the essence of art resides not in the reproduction
of nature but in form, color, rhythm and other abstract characteristics. Today his idealistic position seems rather old hat, but his
writing is still much more engaging and persuasive than that of almost any of our current critics.

Sigfried Giedion. Space, Time, and Architecture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941.
In my post-college years, this book introduced me and my fellow students to modern architecture when hardly any examples of
it could be found in America. For Giedion, the new architecture, especially that of Europe, was not only the first great
expression since the Baroque period, but was destined to revolutionize the way we live. We swallowed the argument whole and
did what we could to crusade for a totally modern environment. Today I see the shortcomings as well as the virtues of Giedion
and architectural modernism, but I am offended by the shallow attack on both by some "postmodern" critics.

E. H. Gombrich. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960). Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1961. (Pb)
This book fundamentally influenced the way I speak and write about pictures. Gombrich's central argument, which was based
on the most advanced research in perception psychology, was that artists cannot see the visual world except in terms of
formulas that shape their perceptions, and that to a great extent these formulas are based on their experience of existing works
of art. We, in turn, approach their work with our own formulas. The book laid to rest the claim of Ruskin and later criticism that
the best painters of nature had learned to look with an "innocent eye," uncontaminated by concepts or knowledge. Gombrich
showed how much every effort to project onto a flat surface the "real" world we perceive as we move about and use two eyes is
affected by the social environment, by preexisting art and by personal experience.

Percy W. Bridgman. The Way Things Are (1959). New York: Viking, 1961.
No intellectual innovation in this century is comparable in its far-reaching impact to that sparked by the discovery in natural
science and mathematics that no proposition can claim to have absolute authority; each can be verified only in terms of the
operations employed to measure it. This book, by a Nobel Prize—winner in physics, articulating what he calls "operational"
reasoning, helped me to see the implications of this concept for the criticism of literature and art. The humanities as well as the
sciences had been in the grip of absolute principles and were liberated by their dissolution. Incidentally, nearly all the major
humanistic writings of the past generation have been the work of scientists, not humanists.

Roland Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Richard Miller, trans. New York: Hill & Wang, 1975. (Pb)
This is the only relatively recent book I have included, which proves that the mind becomes less receptive with age. It is a
collection of Pascalian Pensees which, as the title implies, ruminate on the relaxed and sensuous enjoyment of reading. It was
calculated to counteract and balance the excessive sophistication and Puritanism of modern criticism. Since Barthes, as one of
the fathers of structuralist /semiotic interpretation, exerted a powerful influence on the making of that criticism, one of the
pleasures of Pleasure is in its sly subversiveness. Because a major enjoyment in the reading of this or of almost any well-
crafted text is in the quality of the language, much is lost in translation.

Oleg Grabar
Oleg Grabar is the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art at Harvard with a long-standing interest in Islamic art, architecture and
archaeology. His responsibilities on the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture take him throughout the
world. This year marks the fiftieth and fifty-first Ph.D. theses he has supervised. The Formation of Islamic Art and Alhambra
are his best-known books and he is currently completing two more general books on Islamic architecture.

Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers (1844). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45). New York: Bantam, 1981. (Pb)
These are the books I have most often reread since the age of twelve or thirteen for, regardless of their technical imperfections
and psychological shallowness, they keep reminding me of the facts that dealing with the past is always talking about people,
that imagination is part of the historian's trade, that the past can be fun, and especially that such contemporary terms as
"model," "scenario," and "intervention" are nothing but fancy transformations of a novelist's plot to grab a reader's attention.

Ernst H. Kantorowicz. Frederick the Second (1927). E. O. Lorimer, trans. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957.
This book, read when I was an undergraduate, fascinated me with its imagination in reconstructing dramatic events and in
weaving complex ideological struggles around an extraordinary individual. The book is inseparable in my mind from other
books by the same historian and from my eventual acquaintance with him and the sheer brilliance of his mind and
conversation. The book or books are like the imperfect mementos of a man who felt the past as an adventure with a mission.
The adventure was people, the mission ordering power.

Earl Baldwin Smith. Architectural Symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages (1956). New York: Hacker Art Books,
1978.
Here again a flawed book is in fact tied to Smith's teaching and to my growing awareness of the meanings associated with
forms and of the possibility of the universal principles of artistic processes and interpretations. Smith's work is inseparable in
my mind with several articles written by Richard Krautheimer, Andre Grabar, Karl Lehman and other more-or-less
contemporary historians who, wittingly or not, transferred their own.- visceral perception of contemporary totalitarianism into
an explanation of the past.

Roman Jakobson. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Style in Language, Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Cambridge: Technology Press of
M.I.T., 1960.
Another, particularly vibrant introduction to a world in which theoretical models seem almost capable of explaining the
realities of art. From this and structuralism it was just a step to semiology, even though nothing has as yet succeeded as well as
Jakobson's formulas, because Jakobson felt and knew poetry before he worried about its structure.

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE: CLASSICAL ART

Graham Ley

It is inevitable that the lavishly illustrated coffee-table book will attract most attention in this as in other artistic subjects, and
most libraries have a good stock of volumes of this sort. But in this extremely short reading list I have also included more
modest books which provide a clear discussion of the artefacts, and offer helpful critical guidelines on an introductory level. So
readers are advised to `move about' between the different books for illustrations and commentary, and to be aware that each
particular selection of objects or pictures is always (and inevitably) going to give a rather limited impression of what is
available. The more recent books can take advantage of any discoveries that have been made, and most contain suggestions for
further reading.

Yet Greek art is not only the first entirely self-conscious art that we know of,- it stands apart from all other traditions in its
almost exclusive search for beauty, and in particular the beauty of the human form ...
ROGER FRY

Oxford History of Classical Art (1993) edited by John Boardman. An excellent, new survey of both Greek and Roman art in a
relatively large format, with good illustrations and up-to-date suggestions for reading in specialist areas.

Minoan and Mycenean Art (1981) by R Higgins. The art of the societies of Bronze Age Crete (Minoan) and mainland Greece
(Mycenaean) presented in the second edition of a popular introduction.
Greek Art (1985) by John Boardman. The most comprehensive, and consequently also the most concise, of a series of
illustrated handbooks by a distinguished commentator.

Art and Experience in Classical Greece (1972), Art in the Hellenistic Age (1986) by Jerry Pollitt. These two books offer
stimulating interpretations of Greek art in major periods. The latter considers Greek art from the time of Alexander the Great
until the domination of Rome.

Archaic Greek Art (1971) Classical Greek Art (1973) Hellenistic Art (1973) by J Charbonneaux and others. These three
volumes provide superb illustrations.

Art of the Etruscans (1970) by M Moretti and G Maetzke. An illustrated guide to the art of the culture dominant in central
Italy before the Romans.

Roman Art (1991) by Susan Walker. A short, well-illustrated introduction to the subject, which draws on the artefacts in the
British Museum in London.

Roman Art (1976) by Donald Strong. One of the best and most reliable introductions.

Handbook of Roman Art (1983) edited by Martin Henig. A careful, collective survey of major aspects, which also includes a
helpful chapter on `Late Antiquity'.

Roman Painting (1953) by A Maiuri. Extremely valuable for its excellent illustrations of the remarkable survivals.

MEDIEVAL ART
Chris Murray

A very elastic term, `medieval' changes its scope according to context. Here it is being used in its widest sense: the period from
the end of the Roman Empire (4th century AD) to the beginning of the Renaissance (15th century). This vast stretch of time, far
from being an artistic Dark Age - first barbaric and then dominated by monkish virtues, stern and life-denying - was a period of
extraordinary variety and richness. In varying degrees, the styles of the collapsed Roman civilization blended with those of
such `barbaric' peoples as the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons to produce styles expressing the complex and dynamic character of a
new civilization - Christendom. In Byzantium in particular, where the Roman legacy was strongest, the need to express a
spiritual sense of the world produced a style of great grandeur and power. The masterpieces of medieval art include stained
glass, metalwork, manuscript illumination, sculpture (in stone, metal, wood, and ivory), frescoes, and panel paintings. The
main artistic divisions are: early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic.
The contrast between suffering and joy, between adversity and
happiness, appeared more striking. All experience had yet to the minds of
men the directness and absoluteness of the pleasure and pain of child-life.
Every event, every action, was still embodied in expressive and solemn
forms, which raised them to the dignity of a ritual.
JOHAN HUIZINGA

Early Christian and Byzantine Art (1970) by John Beckwith. A scholarly yet quite accessible account. This covers the very
earliest part of the Middle Ages. Most of the book looks at Byzantine art, but the section on early Christian an, tracing how
Roman styles were gradually transformed by the need to find a Christian form of expression, is welcome as this is a much
neglected period.

A Concise History of Painting from Prehistory to the 13th Century (1967) by David Talbot Rice. The title is somewhat
misleading, for an until the Christian era is covered in 60 pages, the rest of the book (another 200 pages) being devoted to
medieval an. Brief text (many illustrations) by one of the leading scholars of early art.

Medieval Art (1989) by James Snyder. A clear, perceptive, and enthusiastic account of the period from the 4th century to the
14th, covering all the arts. Nearly 700 beautiful illustrations, giving a strong impression of the range and vitality of the
medieval arts.
Byzantine Style and Civilization (1975) by Steven Runciman. A short, classic study, beautifully illustrated. Byzantine art,
which has a history of over 900 years, forms the richest and stylistically most consistent expression of medieval art.

Early Medieval Art (1969) by John Beckwith. A standard work that looks at the period from the coronation of Charlemagne
(800 AD) to the 12th century - that is, the styles known as Carolingian, Ottonian, and Romanesque. A European art is forming
out of the many tribal divisions of Europe.

Gothic Art (1967) by Andrew Martindale. This can be seen as a companion to Beckwith (published in the same series). It
covers the period from the 12th century to the 14th. For many, Gothic an is the quintessential an of the Middle Ages.

Cambridge Introductions to the History of Art: The Middle Ages (1982) by Anne Shaver-Crandell. Although this looks
mostly at architecture, it is the best short introduction. The author covers the period from the 11th century to the 14th.

Gothic (1967) by George Henderson. A stimulating complement to Martindale, this examines Gothic an in terms of the ideas,
and the political and social order, of the late Middle Ages.

The Rise of the Artist (1972) by Andrew Martindale. A short but fascinating account of the changing role of the artist (and
therefore art and society) in the late Middle Ages, when courts were becoming increasingly important sources of patronage.

RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE

Francesca M Speight

The Renaissance (French for `rebirth') was a relatively brief but vital period in the history of Western European culture in
which inspiration came from the antique remains of ancient Greece and Rome. It reflects both the continuation of the Christian
beliefs found in the preceding Middle Ages and the revival of humanist thought, resulting in an increasing emphasis on the
individual and on secular concerns. The Renaissance, which is usually seen as extending approximately from 1400 to 1600,
includes the approach known as Mannerist, which was subsequently viewed as a falling-away of the achievements of the High
Renaissance period, but is now recognized as a valid and important style in its own right.

With the commencement of the 17th century, the dominant style was that of Baroque, which echoed a time of renewed Catholic
fervour and confidence in the church, and this is clearly seen in the dramatic and turbulent approach which incorporates
illusionism on a grand scale combined with sumptuous decoration and the merging of all three art forms - painting, sculpture,
and architecture. Interiors were especially lavishly conceived, with decorated ceilings particularly revered at this time. The
Baroque in Germany and eastern Europe became even more lavish and exuberant; in France and England, on the other hand, it
was tempered by a preference for Classical restraint.

The deity which invests the science of the painter functions in such a
way that the mind of the painter is transformed into a copy of the divine
mind, since it operates freely in creating many kinds of animals, plants,
fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.
LEONARDO DA VINCI

History of Italian Renaissance Art (1970) by Frederick Hartt. Considered for over 20 years to be the best book written on this
period, it is packed with information on individual painters, sculptors, and architects, all placed within a historical context.

The Art of the Renaissance (1963) by Peter and Linda Murray. Covers the early Renaissance, commencing with Giotto and
culminating in the High Renaissance giants of painting and sculpture - Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

The Late Renaissance and Mannerism (1967) by Linda Murray. A companion to The Art of the Renaissance, this begins with
the late works of the major High Renaissance artists and continues to the close of the 16th century and Mannerism, ending with
an appraisal of the art of El Greco.

Baroque and Rococo (1964) by Germain Bin. Bazin explores the richness and complexity of the Baroque and Rococo, taking
into account the persistence of earlier styles, and studies in depth the `Baroque' and `Realist' approaches to an, both of these
considered to be the two `new styles' of this period. The `Romanticism' of Rococo is also analysed.
Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy (1972) by Michael Baxandall. This book serves as an introduction to painting
in Italy during the early Renaissance, and also introduces the reader to the technique of reading social history from the style of
the pictures produced. For Baxandall, Renaissance painting is closely `related to such activities as preaching, dancing, and
gauging barrels'.

The Medici (1980) by Marcel Brion. A history of this famous dynastic family of 15th-and 16th-century Florence, with
emphasis placed on their role as influential patrons of the arts. This book also gives clear insights into the social conditions,
intellectual climate, and artistic ideas that prevailed during this period.

Encyclopedia of the Italian Renaissance (1981) edited by J R Hale. An invaluable guide to every aspect of the Italian
Renaissance.

Patronage in Renaissance Italy (1994) by Mary Hollingsworth. Perhaps a little demanding for the uninitiated, but worth the
effort, for patronage was a vitally important factor in the development of Renaissance an.

Baroque (1977) by John Rupert Martin. Still one of the best introductions to the Baroque. Instead of looking at the Baroque in
Italy, the Baroque in France, and so on (the standard approach), Martin looks at the whole broad range of 17th-century art in
terms of such concepts as space, light, allegory, `passions of the soul'. A delight.

NEO-CLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM

Francesca M Speight

Neo-Classicism was a style of the late 18th and early 19th centuries strongly influenced by Classical an from the ancient Greek
and Roman empires - even to the point of some painters and sculptors taking their subject matter from ancient history and the
antique. This is seen especially in the works of the French artist Jacques Louis David. Neo-Classicism places great emphasis on
draughtsmanship, on pure, clean con-tours, on idealized and noble subjects treated in a solid, three-dimensional way. David's
The Death of Socrates is a key example.

The Romantic style of the 19th century arose as a direct reaction against the intellectual conceptions of the Neo-Classicists.
The clearly defined forms and cool tones of Neo-Classicism gives way to indefinite shapes, warm tones, and atmospheric
effects. In the French school of Romanticism, led by Eugene Delacroix, a love of the Oriental and exotic is seen; J M W Turner
and William Blake are considered to be the leading English Romantics.

How awful is the silence of the waste, / Where nature lifts her
mountains to the sky. / Majestic solitude, behold the tower /
Where hopeless Owen, long imprisoned, pined /
And wrung his hands for liberty, in vain.
JMW TURNER

Neo-Classicism (1968) by Hugh Honour. Short standard work. Honour's achievement lies in showing that Neo-Classicism, far
from being a conservative movement supporting establishment values, was the culmination of Enlightenment radicalism, high-
minded, idealistic, revolutionary. Artistically and politically it was the avant-garde of its day.

Civilisation (1969) by Kenneth Clark. This book is a classic portrayal of how western Europe evolved after the collapse of the
Roman Empire, and provides a very readable account of the major art produced within each age, a particularly good section
covering the time of both Neo-Classical and Romantic works of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Romantic Rebellion (1973) by Kenneth Clark. Here Clark gives a far more detailed account of Romanticism. Lucid and
authoritative, his account is of particular value because it focuses on the constant interplay between Romanticism and
Classicism.

The Story ofArt (1950) by E H Gombrich. The classic, standard textbook for all those interested in the arts as a total picture of
human endeavour from prehistoric times to the experimental art of the first half of the 20th century. The Age of Reason and the
subsequent break in tradition are clearly and interestingly set out by the author.
Rococo to Revolution (1966) by Michael Levey. This book covers the major trends in 18th-century painting, and is based on a
series of lectures given at Cambridge during the author's tenure there as Slade professor of an.

The Arts and Crafts Movement (1991) Elizabeth Cumming and Wendy Kaplan. Surveys all aspects of design within the
movement, including architecture, furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, and books.

The Art of J M W Turner (1990) by David Blayney Brown. This is a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the artist's
work, is beautifully illustrated, and avoids an academic approach in favour of using revealing analysis which vividly brings the
subject to life. Incorporating many original sources of information, such as letters, critics' reviews, and political records, the
author gives a complete background to Turner's life and times.

Art of the Romantic Era (1966) by Marcel Brion. Superbly illustrated history of Romantic art. This very accessible account is
particularly interesting because it looks not only at the many major figures, but also at a host of fascinating minor ones.

IMPRESSIONISM TO POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Francesca M Speight

This period includes the school of Realism, headed by the French artist Gustave Courbet, which turned its back on the
ennobling subject matter beloved by the official Academy, and focused instead on everyday contemporary scenes depicted in
an accurate manner rather than idealized or transformed into `picturesque' works. Another form of Realism is found in the
French Impressionist movement's output, but they saw their motifs in terms of the analysis of light, which produced a new way
of observing reality and has earned them the accolade of `the first modern movement' in the history of art.
Working through Impressionism and developing their own distinctive individuality where the Post-Impressionists, including
Georges Seurat (Neo-Impressionism), Paul Gauguin (a form of Symbolism), Vincent van Gogh (early Expressionism), and
Paul Cezanne (combining Realism and Classicism).
This period also includes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an English group of idealistic young men drawn to medieval legends
and romantic literary sources as subject matter, but using a technique of microscopically detailed analysis, in which truth to
nature was uncompromisingly observed.

Show me an angel and I'll paint one.

GUSTAVE COURBET

Impressionism (1967) by Phoebe Pool. A good basic textbook on the movement, ideal as an introduction.

The History of Impressionism (1973) by John Rewald. A detailed, extensively researched history of the movement by one of
the leading authorities. It was works like this that rescued Impressionism from chocolate-box sentimentality and gave it (after
decades of critical neglect) a firm intellectual and aesthetic foundation. Essential reading.

A History of Modern Art (1969) by H H Amason. A comprehensive guide, commencing with the prehistory of modem
painting and continuing through all the major movements and individual figures up to Conceptualism.

The Victorian Treasure House (1973) by Peter Conrad. A wide-ranging study of Victorian art, with excellent coverage of the
history and artistic output of the Pre-Raphaelites.

The New Painting: Impressionism 1847-1886 (1986) by Charles S Moffet. A scholarly presentation of the history of the
movement, with each of the Impressionist exhibitions dealt with in detail.

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904 (1966) by Linda Nochlin. A collection of sources and documents in the
History of An series, containing the critics' views of the movement at that time, accounts of the individual major masters, and
source material concerning Cezanne and the Neo Impressionists, van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Symbolists.

Cezanne (1989) by Hajo Duchting. This monograph critically analyses the successive stages of Cezanne's an in both subject
matter and style, culminating in the late, great paintings which earned him the name of the father of Modernism.

Realism (1971) by Linda Nochlin. A standard work, lucid and scholarly, which sets the many expressions of Realism within
the political and social upheavals of the second half of the 19th century.
20TH-CENTURY ART
Francesca M Speight

This period commences with Cubism, a movement considered to be the source of all subsequent abstract an. Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque were the leading exponents of this new, intellectual approach to perception. Cubism produced many offshoots,
including such styles as Neo-Plasticism, represented by Piet Mondrian, and also the geometric reliefs of Britain's Ben
Nicholson. Concurrently a representational and intensely romantic stance in art continued alongside abstraction, as seen in
Fauvism in France and Expressionism in Germany.

Other major movements to emerge in the 20th century include Surrealism, with Salvador Dali and Rene Matte perhaps the
best-known exponents; American Abstract Expressionism exemplified by such artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de
Kooning; and Pop an, which began in England but was taken up on a bigger and brasher scale by such Americans as Andy
Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Subsequent developments include Land art, Conceptual art, Installation an, Op an, and many
variations on past styles. The enfant terrible and darling of the art world at present is Damien Hirst, with his installations of
animal corpses displayed in tanks of formaldehyde. The shock element has always been associated with the avant-garde since
Courbet produced his unidealized peasant scenes, and it seems destined to stay.

Sometimes I think that extreme beauty must be absolutely humourless. But then I think of Marilyn Monroe and she had the
best fun lines.
ANDY WARHOL

The Story of Modern Art (1980) by Norbert Lynton. The author states his intention of not only helping readers towards a
confident relationship with modem art through providing information, but also actively encouraging the reader to combine this
information of historical facts and knowledge of the works themselves with his or her experience of modem life and thought.

Painting in the Twentieth Century (1961) by Werner Haftmann. Two invaluable volumes of material of modern art. Volume 1
is solely text and sources information; volume 2 consists mainly of illustrations to complement volume 1. However, the second
volume contains an excellent commentary throughout.

Art Today (1977) by Edward Lucie-Smith. Informative and lavishly illustrated, this book takes the reader through the birth of
Modernism in both painting and sculpture and continues to Post-Modernism and the revival of Classicism.

The Bride and the Bachelors (1965) by Calvin Tomkins. The eyewitness description of the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely
creating a self-destructing sculpture, complete with tooting horns and smoke bombs, is enough to make this book worth
seeking out. The essay on Marcel Duchamp is a good introduction to this seminal figure. Tomkins also writes about Robert
Rauschenberg and the composer John Cage.

The Shock of the New (1980) by Robert Hughes. One of the most lucid and authoritative histories of 20th-century art. Hughes
has broad sympathies, but is not shy about expressing his own preferences. Lavishly illustrated.

Warhol: The Biography (1989) by Victor Bockris. Warhol's life encompassed the heyday of the New York art scene, from
1950s Abstract Expressionism to the gallery graffiti of the 1980s. This acclaimed biography shows the interaction between the
artist's life and work. The films, freaks, drugs, and rock and roll are amply covered. An insider's view.

David Hockney (1976) by David Hockney. Britain's best-known living artist is also one of the best and least pretentious
communicators on the subject. This book has hundreds of pictures with his explanations.

How to Look at Modern Art (1991) by Philip Yenawine. A stimulating introduction to a broad range of modern artists. The
author (director of education at the Museum of Modem Art in New York) is less concerned with exploring the many complex
theories that underlie modern an than with encouraging readers/viewers to explore their own reactions to specific works.

What Is Post-Modernism? (1986) by Charles Jencks. Short, surprisingly lucid account of a very complex and still
controversial subject. A good starting point, wherever your sympathies may lie.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Susan Sontag

To write about photography, as I discovered when I was writing my own essays on the subject, is nothing less than to write
about the world. There is no activity that is distinctively modem which so evidently touches on and obliges us to confront the
principal issues of modernity - political, moral, and aesthetic. We all take photographs or think we could or should. More
important, we all understand a great deal of the world - indeed, reality itself - through the medium of, and by the standards set
by, photographed images. Resisting the temptation to use my allotment of recommendations to cite some contemporary
favourite books of photographs, from The Americans (1958) by Robert Frank to The Silence (1995) by Gilles Peress, I've
chosen instead to list a number of books which can give the curious reader a complex sense of the history of photography and
the rich debate about the many issues raised by its imperious scope.

Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether
photography is an an. The primary question - whether the very invention of
photography had not transformed the entire nature of an - was not raised.
WALTER BENJAMIN

Looking at Photographs (1973) by John Szarkowski. One hundred pictures from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
chosen and commented on by John Szarkowski, the director of the Department of Photography at MoMA for several decades
and a leading influence in the formation of contemporary photographic taste.

Art and Photography (1968) by Aaron Scharf. A rapid, lucid historical overview of the relation between photography and
other visual arts, particularly painting.

Photographers on Photography (1966) edited by Nathan Lyons. An anthology of statements by some of the great
photographers, starting from the turn of the century. Among those included are Alfred Stieglitz, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray,
Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank.

Photography in the Modern Era (1989) edited by Christopher Phillips. A more ample collection of statements by important
photographers and critical writings and manifestoes about photography covering the period from 1913 to 1940. The critics
(many of them visual artists in their own right) and photographers are all European. Among them are Jean Cocteau, Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy, August Sander, Alexander Rodchenko, and F T Marinetti.

Photography in Print (1981) edited by Vicki Goldberg. Another anthology of statements by photographers and critics, this
one covering the whole history of photography from Niepce and Fox Talbot forward. Perhaps not surprisingly (so rich is this
literature), there is hardly any overlap between the documents selected for this anthology and the two listed above.

On Photography (1977) by Susan Sontag. A cycle of six essays written between 1973 and 1976 about some of the problems,
aesthetic and moral, posed by the omnipresence of photographed images. The first book-length consideration in English on
photography as such.

Camera Lucida (1980) by Roland Barthes. One of the last books by the great French critic, and a highly personal, partly
autobiographical, meditation on the pathos and seductiveness of certain kinds of photographed images.

The Waking Dream (1993) by Maria Morris Hambourg and Pierre Apraxine (curators). The catalogue for the exhibition in
1993 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art of selections from the Gilman Paper Company holdings, which may be the
world's most beautiful and original private photography collection. The span of the collection, which includes great
photographs by unknown photographers as well as little-known masterpieces by most of the great names, is from 1839, the
inception of photography, to the 1930s.

The Photographic Experience, 1839-1914: Images and Attitudes (1993) by Heinz K Henisch and Bridget A Henisch. A
sophisticated, sociologically alert retelling of the complex development of photography in all genres: as art, as commerce, as an
adjunct to science and to the exercise of political power.

Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973-1983 (1984) by Allan Sekula. An incisive early example of
the recent literature on the ideological implications, frequently conformist, of the taking of photographs in many conventional
contexts.
FASHION: HISTORY OF FASHION
Jacqueline Herald

The first histories of dress were published in the 19th century. They focused on period costume and were used as a visual
reference source for theatre designers and artists depicting historical themes. In the early 20th century, more radical texts on
fashion considered the psychological dimension of dress and identity. More recently, books on historic and contemporary
fashion have fallen into four main categories: manuals on cut and construction of historic garments; glossy descriptive books
about haute couturiers, emphasizing style, texture of fabrics, and ingenious decorative details; educational books with line
drawings, presenting a chronology of dress and how it reflects the lifestyle of a particular period; and socio-anthropological
studies of dress as cultural system of signs, denoting distinctions of gender, class, and attitude, both individually and
collectively.

Common sense and most historians of costume have assumed that the
demands of either utility, status or sex must have been responsible for
the invention of clothing. However ... scholars have recently informed
us that the original purpose of clothing was magical.
ALISON I.CTRIE

A History of Men's Fashion (1993) by Farid Chenoune. Generally fashion histories have focused on women; this is an
interesting overview of the development of menswear since the French Revolution.

Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (1985) by Elizabeth Wilson. An excellent introduction: a brief history followed
by discussion of the industry, eroticism, gender and identity, fashion in the city, popular culture, and dress reform.

Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader (1992) edited by Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson.
A compilation of essays on the language of clothes, the relationship between high fashion and popular culture, and on utopian
and alternative dress.

Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (1985) by James Laver. Laver pioneered the study of dress history in the 1960s,
setting fashion in the context of cultural and economic change.

Dress and Morality (1986) by Aileen Ribeiro. A historical inquiry into attitudes towards extravagance and modesty and how
individuals, church, and state affected the clothed image.

Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning (1992) edited by Ruth Barnes and Joanne B Eicher. An intriguing range of
anthropological case studies on the meaning of apparel and textiles in determining women's status within different cultures
around the world.

Fashion, Culture and Identity (1992) by Fred David. A sociological analysis of what makes the fashion industry tick,
partially based on interviews with fashion designers.

Fashions of a Decade: 1920s to 1990s (1991-93) by Patricia Baker, Vicky Carnegie, Yvonne Connikie, Maria Constantino,
Elane Feldman, Jacqueline Herald. Aimed at teenagers, lively, with images of the period and newly commissioned illustrations.
Succinct text, nevertheless introduces many aspects of fashion history. A good starting point for the younger reader.

Seeing Through Clothes (1975) by Anne Hollander. Discusses the history of different ways of depicting people, attitudes of
the period, especially in historic painting and sculpture.

The Face of Fashion (1993) by Jennifer Craik. An up-to-date sociocultural approach; well argued and accessible text on how
identities are communicated through clothes.

20TH-CENTURY FASHION AND STYLE

Jacqueline Herald
The study of dress style is currently in vogue. In the last decade or so more books dedicated to fashion designers and looks
have been published than ever before. Some are glossy picture books on the creations of a particular couturier; others are fun
visual references to the story of a particular garment or cult accessory (the Hawaiian shirt, the necktie, the handkerchief). Other
books concentrate on the means of creating a particular image, through fashion photography or illustration. There are also the
more flippant manuals or style, taken seriously by some dedicated followers of fashion, which guide the reader about what to
wear, where to buy, either for a particular social occasion or an effect - Madonna look-alike, for example. Other, more serious
studies include reference dictionaries on design and designers and more discursive texts on the meaning of style among
different class, age, and cultural groups.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period.
When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state
of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.
COCO CHANEL

The Fashion Conspiracy (1988) by Nicholas Coleridge. A lively, gossipy, and highly entertaining account of the top designers'
fashion empires, from catwalk to sweatshop, written by the editor of Harpers and Queen magazine.

Jocks and Nerds (1989) by Richard Martin and Harold Koda. This is a witty visual history of men's fashion in the 20th
century. It examines the leaders of style within social types and the particular looks associated with them, including the
Cowboy, the Military Man, the Rebel, Joe College, the Businessman, and the Man about Town.

Fashion Sourcebook (1988) by Amy de la Haye. A general directory of the key people, ideas, and looks in 20th-century
fashion.
Street Style (1994) by Ted Polhemus. The book of the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition of that name, tracing the
transition of subcultural dress from sidewalk to catwalk. It looks at punks, New Romantics, New Age travellers, and other
groups which have hit the music stage and the news headlines and then influenced mainstream fashion in modified forms.

Women of Fashion (1991) by Valerie Steele. A look at some of the most influential women in the world of fashion in this
century, including the great Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Cult Objects (1985) by Deyan Sudjic. The `yuppie' 1980s is the period in which, arguably, conspicuous consumption adopted
an unprecedented degree of status for everyone. Cult looks and individual credibility did not just depend on clothes, but on the
gadgets and accessories wom or displayed with them. Sudjic discusses with humour and irony the reasons behind the language
of Rolex watches, Anglepoise lamps, four-wheel drive vehicles in to, and dress classics such as Levi 501s and the Burberry
raincoat.

CRAFT AND DESIGN: HISTORY OF CRAFTS

Jacqueline Herald

There are numerous books on the crafts, which fall into distinct categories. Potted histories can be found in dictionaries of
decorative arts, which are useful for general reference: more detailed and often generously illustrated books on craft are
devoted either to a particular craft discipline or the types of objects most closely associated with it (such as textiles, ceramics,
jewellery), or to a particular country or culture. In an industrial or postindustrial world, the crafts are often viewed with
nostalgia, being perceived as traditional and handmade from natural materials, even though contemporary craft practice
incorporates machines, computers, and synthetic media. A very large proportion of the books available are of the `how to do it'
type, extremely instructive but sometimes lacking in imagination.

The story of craft is not only the story of man's increasing skill with materials
and increasing power over the natural environment; it provides in addition,
evidence of the way in which society itself has developed. Men often define
themselves through the skills they acquire, and the uses to which they put them.
EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH

World Crafts (1992) by Jacqueline Herald. Written in collaboration with Oxfam Trading, this explains the processes and
meaning behind crafts from around the world, particularly in developing countries where women especially have turned to craft
as a means of generating income. It explains the reasons for changes to traditional designs in adapting products to the Western
tourist and export markets.

The Story of Craft (1981) by Edward Lucie-Smith. To the expert, this is an infuriatingly general history. However, it is a
worthwhile introduction to the craftsperson's role in society from the ancient world to today's craft revival. The focus is
Europe, but Islam and the Far East are discussed for their contribution to craft skills and organization, and in relation to modem
craft movements.

International Crafts (1991) edited by Martina Margetts. This is a compendium of the best of contemporary craft from around
the world, covering many different techniques and media. Although highly selective, it is a useful survey and includes a good
introductory essay on the state of crafts in the late 20th century.

The Unknown Craftsman (1989) by Soetsu Yanagi. Subtitled `A Japanese Insight into Beauty', this book by the poet and an
critic Yanagi, who was close to the British potter Bernard Leach and to the Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, questions the value
of handwork. He was instrumental in the 1920s in cultivating the appreciation of Japanese folk an as the country was rapidly
industrializing. His collection of folk an became the nucleus of the Mingei-kan, the Japanese Folk Art Museum in Tokyo. The
questions raised have a universal relevance in that they consider the artistic role of the studio-based maker within a mechanized
world.

Women and Craft (1987) by Gillian Elinor and others. A feminist look at women's craft as personal creativity in domestic and
professional settings.

DESIGN
Guy Julier

Since its inception as a professional activity in the late 19th century, design has been a haphazard activity. In bridging the gap
between the conception and execution of objects, designers have invariably moved between the creative and the formulaic, the
intellectual and the manual, the cultural and the commercial. Its lack of `rules' or professional norms is mirrored in the breadth
of design writing. In its early form, design publications sought professional legitimacy by drawing on traditional modes of
architectural and art criticism and history. Design was explained as the result of the work of individual `hero' designers.
However, in recent years, with the development of design history and criticism as a separate academic discipline, design
writing has taken in a broader range of perspectives. On the one hand writers have sought explanations for the look or existence
of artefacts in terms of their production, taking into account such aspects as technology, materials, the organization of labour,
and distribution systems. Consumption has also been taken into account: thus design has begun to be read from the point of
view of the user's experience. This may range from the very scientific approach within ergonomics to the more theoretical
readings of the role of desire and fantasy in consumerism, informed by a psychoanalytical approach. It remains clear, however,
that with the growing professionalization of design practice and its ascendant academic status, the historical gap between its
practice and criticism is narrowing.

Design has a twofold relation, having in the first place, a strict reference to utility
in the thing designed; and secondarily, to the beautifying or ornamenting that utility.
The word design, however, with the many has become identified rather
with its secondary than with its whole signification - with ornament, as apart from,
and often even as opposed to, utility. From thus confounding that which is
in itself but an addition, with that which is essential, has arisen many of those
great errors in taste which are observable in the works of modern designers.
HENRY COLE, 1849

Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936) by Nikolaus Pevsner. Republished as Pioneers of Modern Design 1960. Invariably
invoked as the first design-history book to be published, Pevsner's account tracks the development of design practice and ideas
from the doctrines of William Moms in the late 19th century to the Modernist canons of Walter Gropius in the 1920s. Relying
on an account of individual architect/designers, the book assesses each of them in terms of their contributions towards
Modernism as the zenith of design.
Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (1948) by Sigfried Giedion. Whereas Pevsner was
clearly a Modernist, Giedion's history of design is that of a technological determinist. His study tracks the rise of the designer
and designed objects as the result of developments in industrial production and materials technology.

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) by Reyner Barham. This lively text suggests that the history of design in
the early 20th century was not so much a development to a purist aesthetic as Pevsner had argued. Rather, the pioneer
European modernists were in fact responding to the exciting new challenges of technological development such as
transportation and electrification.

Objects of Desire (1985) by Adrian Forty. Forty places the history of design within social history. He reads the development of
office design as part of the changing pat-terns of labour, the development of bathrooms through attitudes to hygiene. Thus he
retrieves the `consumer' as a key force in the shaping of design practice and ideas.

An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century (1986) by Penny Sparke. Key developments in design are
treated thematically in this inquiry: issues such as education, materials technology, mass consumption, and the rise of
consultant design are covered in this global account. The book therefore reveals the eclectic nature of design history.

Twentieth-Century Ornament (1990) by Jonathon Woodham. Lavishly illustrated, this book eschews a discussion of heady
design philosophy in favour of popular artefacts - ceramics, textiles, fashion, posters, public monuments, and entertainment
architecture. The text analyses interactions between taste and consumerism, the decorative arts, the fine arts and architecture
and design, to reveal tensions which invariably give rise to reaffirmations of nostalgia and nationalism in ornament.

A View from the Interior: Feminism, Women and Design (1989) edited by Judy Attfield and Pat Kirkham. Drawing on a
range of feminist readings of design and the consumption of design, this discursive book largely centres on women and design
in Britain since the mid-19th century. It analyses how views of femininity have been constructed within design as well as the
lived experience of women designers and consumers.

Graphic Design: A Concise History (1994) by Richard Hollis. Covering most 20th-century graphic design forms - from the
poster to digitization - this whirlwind tour links the major graphic designers to their commercial and theoretical contexts.

Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts (1993) by Paul Greenhalgh. This compendium of quotations is
arranged thematically and provides a useful short cut to source material as well as key reflections within the historiography of
design.

The Meanings of Modern Design (1990) by Peter Dormer. This highly readable critique considers design as the product of
economic forces. It then analyses the various, and sometimes contradictory, value systems which define and guide design
practice. Thus he discusses such contemporary conceptions as `craft', `style', `engineering', and `high design'.

Design After Modernism (1986) edited by John Thackara. After two decades of design history and criticism that either
confirmed the Pevsnerian approach or struggled free from it, this book brought together a series of texts reflecting the
eclecticism of design writing. It also marked the convergence of practice and theory in design - some of its contributors, such
as Nigel Coates, were also professional practitioners of design. New challenges to design, such as the development of digitized
technologies, were thus brought into the debate for the first time.

Manufactured Pleasures: Psychological Responses to Design (1994) by Ray Crozier. A discursive text which examines the
major psychoanalytic theories and subsequently considers how our perception of artefacts is governed by the subconscious.
Autobiography and Memoirs

The opportunity to make a recension of one's own life is clearly difficult to resist—and results, more often than not, in mayfly
publishing, a few hours' dance in the sun followed by oblivion. Our choice (a selective one) is based first on excellence (of
perception or style), and second on relevance (a person of lasting interest or an age defined). Particularly interesting are
memoirs which can be checked for bias. and those of writers whose main work is in other fields. The selection of material from
one's own life is a critical act, sometimes as revealing as the incidents of that life themselves. If Beethoven had written an
autobiography, would it have been about earache or symphonies?
See ART (Haydon); BIOGRAPHY (Trelawny); CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Durrell); DRAMA (Cibber); FILM (Brown. Fields,
Griffith, Love, Montagu, Niven, Parrish); HISTORY/BRITISH (Burnet); HUMOUR (Milligan); MATHEMATICS
(Heisenberg, Watson); MEDIA (Higham, Knopf); MEDICINE (Copeland); MUSIC (Berlioz, Kirkpatrick, Stravinsky, Varese);
NATURAL HISTORY (Bewick, Burton, Durrell, Maxwell, Waterton); OCCULT (Bennett, J. B., Lethbridge); RELIGION
(Newman, Phillips); TRAVEL (Genet, Lawrence. Schultz, Twain)

Adams, Henry The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Grandson and great-grandson of American presidents, Adams pretended that his own life as a scholar and novelist had been a
failure. Ironic, third-person autobiography treats its subject as a victim of historic, indeed cosmic circumstance. See
HISTORY/AMERICAN; RELIGION
Adams, Henry, American, 1838-1918.
The Education of Henry Adams. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Hungry Mind ML Nonfiction NYPL Ward
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. Rec: Bloom National Review Ward

Aksakov, Sergey, Russian, 1791-1859.

A Family Chronicle. Rec: Bloom

Angelou, Maya, American, 1928- .

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Rec: Hungry Mind NYPL

Ashton-Warner, Sylvia, New Zealander, 1908-1984.

Spinster. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Augustine Confessions (5th century) P

Augustine felt that, until his conversion to Christianity at the age of 32, he had lived a life of sin. This is a moving personal
account of one man's coming to terms with God; Augustine writes with particular sensitivity of his human relationships, too—
with his mother, his friends, his mistress and his loved son Adeodatus ("Godgiven"), who died young.

Ball, Edward, American, 1959- .

Slaves in the Family. Rec: Hungry Mind

Bamford, Francis (ed) A Royalist's Notebook: The Commonplace Book of Sir John Oglander, Knight, of Nunwell, 1622–
1652 (1936) 9 Ise
Oglander lived on the Isle of Wight during the English Civil War. The book transcends temporal detail as a picture of the horror
evoked by such uprisings; particularly good on social horror, the bewilderment of the ruling class when the lower orders
suddenly, inexplicably, get out of hand.

Berkman, Alexander, American, 1870-1936.

Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist and other works. Rec: Rexmo

Betjeman, John Summoned by Bells (1960) ..1/

Verse autobiography; sensitive evocation of childhood in Edwardian London, Cornwall and Oxford, with Archibald the teddy
bear and apparently total recall of everything he ever saw or heard.

Brittain, Vera Testament of Youth (1933)

Well-brought-up middle-class girl in Edwardian Britain finds her life and views changed by World War I, in which her fiance,
brother and many friends were killed. Fine portrait of the changing status and ideas of women at the time of the suffragettes.
Also: Testament of Friendship: Testament of Experience
Caesar, Julius The Civil Wars (47-44 BC)
The very archetype of a general's memoirs. Ostensibly detached and objective, in fact Caesar's own justification for treason and
the usurpation of autocratic powers. (He did it all in defence of his prestige and dignity.) Also: The Gallic Wars. See DIARIES
(Cicero); HISTORY/ANCIENT (Selzer)

Julius Caesar, Roman, 102-44 BCE.

War in Gaul. Rec: Rex

Cardigan, Countess of My Recollections (1909)

Shocking Scandal, Victorian style. Society women are said to have gone down on their knees to stop her publishing. Don't
leave it in the spare room, however honest your guests.

Casanova, Giacomo, Italian, 1725-1798.

History of My Life. Rec: Rex

Cellini,Benvenuto Autobiography (1728)

The artist as bohemian, free to disregard the laws and customs of ordinary men. Sculptor, goldsmith of genius, Cellini worked
for popes, dukes and kings, led a colourful life full of amorous encounters and brushes with the law. Great fun, if you can stand
the pace.

Cellini, Benvenuto, Italian, 1500-1571.

Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Rec: Bloom Ward

Chaplin, Charles My Autobiography (1964)

First part best: recollections of his Dickensian childhood in the slums of Victorian London. See FILM (McCabe)

Chateaubriand, Francois-Rene de, French, 1768-1848.

Memoirs (Memoires d'Outre-tombe). Rec: Ward
Atala. Rec: Bloom
René. Rec: Bloom
The Genius of Christianity. Rec: Bloom

Clark, Kenneth Another Part of the Wood (1974)

Clark was director of the National Gallery-, London, and a skilled popularizer of art. The book is amusing, occasionally feline;
good stories; memorable account of his own happiest of marriages. See ARCHITECTURE; ART

Cleaver, Eldridge, American, 1935-1998.

Soul on Ice. Rec: LAT

Cockburn, Claud, English, 1904-1981.

I, Claud. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Commynes, Philippe de, French, ca. 1447-1511.

Memoirs. Rec: Bloom

Dalí, Salvador, Spanish, 1904-1989.

Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Ward

De Quincey, Thomas, English, 1785-1859.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Rec: Bloom Ward
Selected Prose. Rec: Bloom

Fox, George Journal (1694) 9 Written by the founder of Quakerism, with hindsight, in sedater, pacifist old age; a vivid picture
of the social and religious crisis from which the Quakers emerged. Franklin, Benjamin Autobiography (1771-88)
The quintessential American success story, from rags not only to riches, but also to great political influence and power and an
eternal warm spot in the hearts of all his countrymen. Franklin the adventurer, the printer and businessman, the scientist, the
politician are here; Franklin the lover and friend must be assumed from other sources. See BIOGRAPHY (Van Doren)
Gandhi, Mahatma Autobiography: The Story of My Experiences with Truth (1924)
Written in and out of prison during the early 1920s, this simple, direct, revealing document inspired millions, and led others to
assume that Gandhi, however great, was after all only a man.

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, Indian, 1869-1948.

Satyagraha (Non-Violent Resistance). Rec: NYPL
Satyagraha in South Africa. Rec: Boston PL
The Gandhi Reader. Rec: Utne
Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Rec: App Counterpunch Trans Good Reading Oriental Ward

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German, 1749-1832.

Autobiography: Poetry and Truth From My Own Life (Dichtung und Wahrheit). Rec: Adler Bloom Lubbock Ward

Gorky, Maksim, Russian, 1868-1936.

Autobiography. Rec: Bloom

Gosse, Edmund Father and Son( 1907) 0P Study of a relationship: classic of the genre. Gosse senior was an eminent
marine biologist (he crossed swords with Darwin), and a fanatical member of the Plymouth Brethren. A widower, he brought
up his son (author of this book) "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord", until the boy finally went to boarding school and
discovered his own soul.

Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs (2 vols, 1885 - 86)

Grant could not escape scandal by leaving the White House; he lent his name to his son's brokerage firm, which failed,
bringing the entire family into disrepute. Grant, old and sick, determined to make up everyone's loss. Signing a contract with
his old friend Mark Twain, he set to work on the volumes that he just barely completed before his death. Surprisingly they are
full of pleasant humour and insights about his colleagues and the president he had so greatly admired, Old Abe; they endure as
among the very best of military and political memoirs.

Graves, Robert Goodbye to All That(1929) a •

Argument about which is the finest set of British memoirs of World War I stops here. Post-war pages tell of T. E. Lawrence,
friends in Oxford and Bloomsbury, marriage, children—and divorce in 1929, when he went to live abroad. If there are standard
works of autobiography, this is one. See FICTION/NOVELS; MYTHOLOGY; POETRY

Graves, Robert, English, 1895-1985.

Goodbye to All That. Rec: Counterpunch NF Harvard ML Nonfiction

Hahn, Otto A Scientific Autobiography (1966)

"Father of nuclear chemistry" reviews his scientific work from the discovery of radio thorium in 1904, via the splitting of the
atom in 1938, to the Nobel Prize in 1944. The science is lucidly explained but may test the layman. See MATHEMATICS
(Irving)

Hart, Basil Liddell (ed) The Rornmel Papers (1950) IS * One of the best diaries from World War II. Charts Rommel's gradual
disillusionment with Hitler, from the time of his own early victories to his forced suicide. Bitter, eloquent evidence for the
grandeur and waste of war. See Speer; BIOGRAPHY (Bullock); HISTORY/EUROPEAN; POLITICS (Stern)

Harrer, Heinrich, Austrian, 1912- .

Seven Years in Tibet. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Hellmnan, Lillian An Unfinished Woman (1969)

From raffish Jewish family in the American South came this distinguished, successful dramatist: talented, nervous and difficult,
friend of Dorothy Parker and lover of Dashiell Hammett, whose left-wing views led her to politics. Sad and moving. Also:
Pentimento; Scoundrel Time, etc

Hellman, Lillian, American, 1906-1984.

Pentimento: A Book of Portraits. Rec: LAT

Herr, Michael, American, 1940- .

Dispatches. Rec: Hungry Mind NYPL (memoir of Vietnam)
Hervey, Lord Memoirs of the Reign of George 11(1848)
Nearest English equivalent to Saint Simon (qv). Lively account of George II, his Queen and their court. Little-known; a rare
delight.

Herzen, Aleksandr, Russian, 1812-1870.

My Past and Thoughts. Rec: Bloom Utne
From the Other Shore. Rec: Bloom

Himes, Chester, American, 1909-1984.

My Life of Absurdity. Rec: Hungry Mind

Hitler, Adolf, German, 1889-1945.

Mein Kampf. Rec: Boston PL NYPL

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese, 1890-1969.

Reflections from Captivity. Rec: Boston PL

Horton, Myles, American, 1905-1990.

The Long Haul: An Autobiography. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Hudson, W. H. Far Away and Long Ago (1918)

Poet's recollections of early childhood on the Argentinian pampas. Prose-poetic, limpid. fine. Also: Idle Days in Patagonia, etc.
See NATURAL I (STORY

Husayn, Taha, Egyptian (Arabic), 1889-1973.

An Egyptian Childhood. Rec: Bloom (memoir)

Kamo Chomei, Japanese, 1153-1216.

Account of My Hut. Rec: App MW Asian Ward

Keller, Helen The Story of My Life (1903)

Perhaps we shall never cease to be fascinated and astounded by the story of this extraordinary woman who triumphed over
nearly complete sensory deprivation—deaf, dumb and blind from early childhood—to become one of the great figures of our
time.

Keller, Helen, American, 1880-1968.

The Story of My Life. Rec: NYPL

Kropotkin, Peter Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899) 9

Kropotkin, born a prince, became an anarchist and leading thinker behind the Russian Revolution. Geographer, explorer,
political philosopher, he writes well of early socialism in Russia, France and Britain. A fascinating world, as remote now as the
moon.

Leblanc, Adrian Nicole, American, 1964- .

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. Rec: Harvard

Lee, Laurie Cider with Rosie (1959) it * Superb evocation of childhood and 1920s British countryside, a book as good as that
of Hudson (qv). Also: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, etc

Lee, Li-Young, American, 1957- .

The Winged Seed. Rec: Hungry Mind (memoir)

Levi, Primo, Italian, 1919-1987.

If this is a Man. Rec: TLS

Levi, Carlo, Italian, 1902-1975.

Christ Stopped at Eboli. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (memoir)

Lin Yutang, Chinese, 1895-1976.

The Importance of Living. Rec: Ward

Lumumba, Patrice, Congolese, 1925-1961.

Lumumba Speaks. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Luxemburg, Rosa, German, 1870-1919.

Rosa Luxemburg Speaks. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

MacLean, Fitzroy, Scottish, 1911-1996.

Eastern Approaches. Rec: Counterpunch NF (memoir)

Macmillan, Harold The Winds of Change, 1914-1939(1966) irtle

World War I, Depression and the rise of Fascist dictators form the background to the autobiography of this urbane British
publisher-politician. Political memoirs come and go: this one will endure. Also (sequels): The Blast of War; Tides of Fortune.
See MEDIA (Nowell-Smith)

Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X(1965)

Having been involved in drugs, crime, pimping, conversion to and dismissal from the Black Muslim movement, Malcolm X
was murdered in 1965. If he had survived he might have been a major political force. His book will live.

X, Malcolm, American, 1925-1965.

Autobiography of Malcolm X (With the assistance of and epilogue by Alex Haley). Rec: Colcc91 Counterpunch NF Hungry
Mind LAT ML Nonfiction NYPL

Markham, Beryl, English, 1902-1986.

West With the Night. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Much more than a pilot's memoir, West With the Night is a wise, funny, and inspiring exploration of a life well lived. (amazon)

Matthiessen, Peter, American, 1927- .

The Snow Leopard. Rec: LAT (memoir)

Maugham, W. Somerset The Summing Up(1938)

Judicious look back at what life had taught a professional writer who chose never to wear his heart on his sleeve; dry, touching
portrait of the artist as an old man. Also: A Writer's Notebook. See DRAMA; FICTION/CRIME; FICTION/NOVELS:
FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Mead, Margaret Blackberry Winter (1973)

Generation of ambitiously intellectual American women produced Margaret Mead, anthropologist, writer, traveller, whose life
is here chronicled as far as 1939. See ANTHROPOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

Menchu, Rigoberta, Guatemalan, 1959- .

I, Rigoberta Menchu. Rec: Counterpunch Trans NYPL

Miller, Merle Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry Truman (1974)

Miller captured the words of the ex-President on tape, had them transcribed and produced from them this marvellous, moving,
quixotic book.

Morris, Jan Conundrum (1974)

James Morris was a successful British journalist, writer and traveller, happily married and with children—but this was a painful
facade: since childhood he had felt that he was a woman trapped in a man's body. How body and spirit became one (through
hormones and surgery) is told with charm, delicacy and humour. See TRAVEL (Morris, James)

Muggeridge, Malcolm Chronicles of Wasted Time

(2 vols. 1972-73) Ite Like many British intellectuals of his late-Edwardian generation, Muggeridge always lived his life d clef.
Turn the key deftly, and tiptoe into the wide-eyed, artfully candid world of a wastrel intellect, penitently impenitent, discreetly
blabbering: enjoyable traipse through Kippsian Croydon and the Fabian world of the repellent Webbs. on to British India and a
lifetime of journalism. Never did apprentice Christian more rabidly bite the hands that fed him.
Muggeridge, Malcolm, English, 1903-1990.
Chronicles of Wasted Time. Rec: National Review
Nabokov, Vladimir Speak. Memory (1966) t *
Russian novelist writes of his childhood in a wealthy, pre-Revolutionary family—a never-forgotten dream of happiness
irretrievably snatched away. See BIOGRAPHY; CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Carroll); FICTION/NOVELS; POETRY (Pushkin)

Nerval, Gérard de, French, 1808-1855.

Aurelia. Rec: Bloom (memoir)

Paustovsky, Konstantin, Russian, 1892-1968.

The Story of a Life. Rec: Ward
It is not a historical document but rather a long, lyrical tale focusing on the internal perceptions and poetic development of the
writer . It has been called a "biography of the soul" rather than a biography of events.

Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, Russian, 1827-1907.

Reflections of a Russian Statesman. Rec: National Review

Read, Herbert, English, 1893-1968.

The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies. Rec: Ward

Reitman, Ben L., American, 1879-1942.

Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas, French, 1734-1806.

Monsieur Nicolas. Rec: Rex
The extraordinary autobiography of Monsieur Nicolas (16 vols., 1794-1797), in which at the age of sixty he has set down his
remembrances, his notions on ethical and social points, his hatreds, and above all his numerous loves, both real and fancied.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The Confessions (1782) *

Writer, thinker, composer, Rousseau fought with all his friends, was always in a disastrous amorous state, lived a humdrum life
with a mistress whose five children went to the foundling hospital. Unrivalled self-portrait of a difficult, distracted genius at
loggerheads with the everyday. See POLITICS

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, French, 1712-1778.

Confessions. Rec: Bloom Col37 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Seymour-Smith Ward
La Nouvelle Héloïse. Rec: Bloom

Saint Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Memoirs (18th century) P* Discursive, ironic, waspish: among the best memoirs
ever published. Vivid, caustic picture by a survivor of Louis XIV's court. Style at first indigestible, then compulsive.

Sarashina, Lady, Japanese, 1008-ca. 1064.

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. Rec: Ward
At its heart, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a song sung in retrospect by Lady Sarashina. This is a song of denied dreams
that always just barely seem to fail.

Sartre, Jean Paul, French, 1905-1980. Nobel Laureate

War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War, 1939-1940. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
The Words. Rec: Bloom

Serge, Victor, Belgian, 1890-1947.

Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Shostakovich, Dmitri Testimony (197 9)

Distracted, dictated memoirs from Shostakovich's last years. Chillingly describes his 50-year persecution by bureaucratic
tyrants, his continuous self-haunting misery. Not, perhaps, for lovers of his music, or of the Soviet state; for students of
political repression or artistic neurosis, vital.

Simenon, Georges When I Was Old (1970)

Frightening book, by a man haunted by his own creativity. Frank comments on drinking, never-ceasing need for women,
methods of writing, memories of children when young; musings on contemporaries and on other writers. Revealing; especially
relevant to the debate about how much an artist's life inhabits his work. See FICTION/CRIME

Sitwell, Osbert Left Hand, Right Hand (1944 – 46) too The Sitwells were to 1920s and 1930s Britain what the Algonquin set
was to the USA: inessential but definitive. Eccentrics all, they were often extremely funny, and never lost an iron grasp of their
own self-importance and their putative place in English letters. (See John Pearson's Facades for efficient outside account.) See
OCCULT (Sitwell, S.); POETRY (Sitwell, E.)

Speer, Albert Inside the Third Reich (1970)

Chilling, invaluable account of life as Hitler's pet courtier and political architect. Speer's intellectual quality illuminates but
never explains his master's fatal power; he is the epitome of a man whose "honour rooted in dishonour stood" and whom faith
unfaithful has kept falsely true. See Hart; BIOGRAPHY (Bullock); POLITICS (Stern)

Stein, Gertrude, American, 1874-1946.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Rec: Hungry Mind ML Nonfiction Radcliffe

Washington, Booker T., American, 1856-1915.

Up From Slavery. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Webb, George, Native American, 1893?- .

A Pima Remembers. Rec: LAT
“an amazing look back in time as to when Pimas' were Pimas'” ( amazon)

Wiesel, Elie, Romanian-American writing in French, 1928- .

Night. Rec: NYPL

Wolff, Tobias, American, 1945- .

This Boy's Life. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Woolman, John Journal (1774)

For thirty years the elderly Woolman travelled about the American colonies trying to persuade his fellow Quakers that to own
people was wrong. As a direct result the Quakers were the first important group to ban slavery, a fuse that led to the Civil War
and beyond.

Woolman, John, American, 1720-1772.

Journal. Rec: Rexmo
Biography

Modern biography combines the skills of historian, essayist, psycho-analyst, critic and (biographers like to think) novelist. The
books in this list are chosen, like those in Autobiography and Memoirs, for the importance or interest of the subject and for
evocation of period or character. They fall into two categories: objective, where historian and critic predominate, and
subjective, where memoirist and analyst tend to take over (and where what a writer says about his subject is often deeply
revealing of himself). One or two cases (for example Sartre on Genet and Troyat on Tolstoy) stray delightfully (or
scandalously) into fiction. Whether biography is an art or not—and despite the documentary fetish which has led to renewed
prolixity in recent times (for example in Michael Holroyd, after all the slimming work of Lytton Strachey)—it is nearly always
metaphorical or allegorical: for a life can never be written: it must be lived.
See ART (Smith, Vasari); DRAMA (Fitzsimons); HISTORY/ AMERICAN (Aaron. Morgan, Woodward);
HISTORY/ANCIENT (Selzer); HISTORY/ASIAN (Suyin); HISTORY/BRITISH (Hibbert, Longford, Magnus, Neale, Plumb,
Scarisbrick, Willson); HISTORY/EUROPEAN (Geyl, Grey, Massie, Origo, Tyler); FILM (McCabe. Septon, Taylor);
LITERARY CRITICISM (Hazlitt); MATHEMATICS (Davis, Moszkowski. Reid); MEDIA (Berg); MUSIC (Einstein, Nichols,
Nolan, White); NATURAL HISTORY (Adams, Blunt); PSYCHOLOGY (Watson); RELIGION (Wat, Wendel); TRAVEL
(Ronay)

Aldington, Richard Lawrence of Arabia (1955)

Definitive example of the "irresponsible" hatchet-job. Priceless malice, eg over T. E. Lawrence's claim to have read every book
in the Bodleian Library while at Oxford. To be taken with the pinch of the salt it so liberally supplies. Also: Portrait of a
Genius, but . . (about D. H. Lawrence). See TRAVEL (Lawrence)

Aubrey, John, English, 1626-1697.

Brief Lives. Rec: Bloom

Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand (1950)

Excellent short book on Luther and the Lutheran Reformation; religious aspects preponderant and thoughtfully discussed. Also:
Erasmus of Christendom

Baker, Carlos Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969)

Fast-talking, fast-moving mixture of punditry and pungency; "in-depth" journalism at its upmarket best. See
FICTION/NOVELS (Hemingway); FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Hemingway)

Bate, W. J. John Keats (1963)

On the West side of the Atlantic, at least, now the standard biography. And Bate's Life of Dr Johnson is even better. Both are
extraordinary: they carry their learning gracefully; they are also as dramatic as life itself. See Gittings; LITERARY
CRITICISM (Keats): POETRY (Keats)

Bate, W. Jackson, American, 1918-1999.

Samuel Johnson. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Bell, Quentin Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972)

Two civilized volumes by Virginia Woolf's nephew, making extensive use of her intimate journals. Notable for fine analysis of
Woolf's relationships with her friends; dubious jibes at Leonard. See Woolf; DIARIES (Woolf); FEMINISM (Woolf);
FICTION/NOVELS (Woolf)

Blake, Robert, English, 1916-2003.

Disraeli. Rec: National Review

Boswell, James The Life of Samuel Johnson L1.D. (1791) P * Perhaps the one assured world classic in English biography.
Remarkable for its almost proverbial re-creation of Johnson's talk; for acute observation of English foible and eccentricity; for
power to set a scene and adjudge an encounter; for gathering sense of the moral greatness of its subject, and above all for deep
underlying affection. Also: A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. See Bate; Johnson; Krutch; DIARIES; LITERARY
CRITICISM (Johnson); REFERENCE (Johnson); TRAVEL (Johnson)

Boswell, James, Scottish, 1740-1795.

The Life of Samuel Johnson. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Ward
Journals. Rec: Adler (Selections) Bloom

Brodie, Fawn M., American, 1915-1981.

Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. Rec: LAT

Bullock, Alan Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952) 109J Measured, convincing, composedly British account of Hitler's
extraordinary character and destructive genius. The narrative of the years up to 1940 is unsurpassed; more recent research, and
re-assessment of evidence from the Nuremberg Trials, have challenged Bullock's picture of the final years. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Hart, Speer); POLITICS (Arendt, Stern)

Capote, Truman In Cold Blood (1966)

Biography as murder investigation: in this case a multiple murder executed by two footloose psychopaths in a small country
township in Kansas. Interweaving factual reportage and fictive reconstruction, Capote builds up a detailed portrait of mid-West
America.

Cecil, Lord David Melbourne (2 vols, 1939-54)

As a young man, Melbourne (Sir William Lamb) married Lady Caroline; thus the first part of this life concerns the ensuing
Byron scandal. Later, Melbourne was twice Prime Minister, and became the fatherly confidant of the young Queen Victoria.
Common to sovereign and adviser is an abiding melancholy, admirably treated by Cecil. Also: Max: Sir Max Beerbohm;
Visionary and Dreamer: Two Poetic Painters
Cecil, David, Lord, English, 1902-1986.
Melbourne. Rec: ML Nonfiction (biography)

Charters, Ann Kerouac: A Biography (1973)

Sad, panoramic re-creation of Kerouac's life and the "beat" circle of the 1950s: Ginsberg, Burroughs, Cassady, Snyder eta!.
There was vision there, and hope; but the elegiac tone was already strong. See DIARIES (Ginsberg); FICTION/NOVELS
(Kerouac)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Biographia Literaria ( 1817)

Subtitled Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, probably the best criticism of a friend and collaborator by
his friend: Coleridge on Wordsworth. Ambitious philosophical criticism shows characteristic depth and range of Coleridge's
mind. Also: Notebooks; Shakespearian Criticism, etc. See De Quincey; Lefebure; DIARIES (Wordsworth); POETRY
(Coleridge, Wordsworth)

Comnena, Anna, Byzantine Greek, 1083-ca. 1153.

Alexiad. Rec: Ward (biography)

Debo, Angie, American, 1890-1988.

Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place. Rec: Counterpunch NF

De Quincey, Thomas Recollections of the Lake Poets (1834-40) 9

Rambling perceptive reminiscences: the Opium Eater is a master of digression and sly innuendo. See Coleridge; Lefebure;
POETRY (Coleridge, Wordsworth)

Donaldson, Frances Edward VIII (1974)

Astringent (but never slick or malicious) antidote to modern royal "lives", with their tendency to be impartial on the side of the
famous. Edward had a hellish childhood (oh those sewn-up trouser pockets, with all they say of the fear of sex and small
change), but he was a spoiled man of small brain and less judgement, whose "romance" was perhaps a necessary escape from
responsibilities he could not face.

Edel, Leon Henry James (5 vols, 1953-72) 0 9

Ambitious, enthralling but uneven, fluctuating between Freudian psycho-biography, detailed literary criticism, and urbane
anecdote. The first three volumes are the best. Also: Literary Biography (influential theoretical work). See James; DIARIES
(James); FICTION/NOVELS (James); FICTION/SHORT STORIES(James); LITERARY CRITICISM (James)
Edel, Leon, American, 1907-1997.
Henry James (5 vols.). Rec: Good Reading LAT National Review (biography)

Ellmann, Richard James Joyce (1959) P3

Lovingly re-creates not only Joyce's Dublin, but his European cities too, and establishes the autobiographical figure behind the
fiction. Ellmann writes with a unique combination of scholarship and pixie charm, ideally suited to his subject. Also: Golden
Codgers: Biographical Speculations; Yeats: The Man and the Masks. See DIARIES (Joyce); FICTION/NOVELS (Joyce);
FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Joyce)
Ellmann, Richard, American, 1918-1987.
Oscar Wilde. Rec: Good Reading
James Joyce. Rec: Good Reading ML Nonfiction

Erikson, Erik, German-American writing in German, 1902-1994.

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History. Rec: TLS
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. Rec: TLS

Flexner, James Washington: The Indispensable Man (1974) *

One-volume recension of Flexner's superb four-volume biography of Washington, which appeared over a period of nearly
twenty years. Now probably the best short biography of the founding father—pa ter patriae. See Freeman.

Freeman, D. S. Robert E. Lee (4 vols. 1934 –35); Washington (6 vols, 1948-54)

Seldom does a single biographer produce two standard and definitive biographies, certainly not of two such august and eminent
—and different—men as Lee and Washington. Both were Virginians (as was Freeman); both were soldiers; and both had a deep
love of their country, differently expressed as this obviously was. At any rate both these massive biographies are masterpieces.
Almost equally good is Lee's Lieutenants, on which Freeman worked in between Lee and Washington. See Flexner.
Freeman, Douglas Southall, American, 1886-1953.
R. E. Lee. Rec: National Review

Freud, Sigmund Leonardo da Vinci (1910) 9

This brief monograph of the links between Leonardo's art and his childhood upbringing succinctly demonstrates what
"Freudian biography" actually means—and also contains some shrewd warnings from the sage himself on its inherent risks.
See Jones; ART (Richter); MEDICINE (Freud)

Froude, James Thomas Carlyle (4 vols, 1882-84) 9 One of the great Victorian classics of biography. Central to Carlyle's life
was his unhappy and unfulfilled marriage, which Fro ude depicted with a sympathy (for the wife) and a frankness that outraged
his contemporaries; yet Carlyle the writer and prophet emerges with a bitter grandeur. Excellent one-volume abridgement by
John Clubbe (1979). Also: My Relations with Carlyle. See DIARIES (Carlyle); LITERARY CRITICISM (Carlyle)

Gaskell, Elizabeth The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) 9

Mrs Gaskell knew Charlotte well; the biography, though sentimental and reticent, gives an authentic picture of Brontë
Yorkshire and is unique as a contemporary account by another woman writer. Should be read in conjunction with Gerin (qv).
See FICTION/NOVELS (Bronte, Gaskell)

Gerin, Winifred Branwell Bronte (1961) * The most haunting of an impressive series of biographies which together
reconstruct the entire Bronte world. Also: The Brontës (2 vols. See Gaskell; FICTION/NOVELS (Bronte)

Gittings, Robert John Keats (1968) to * J

This moving biography has established itself as a classic of what might be called the "mainstream" school of modern
biography. Also: Young Thomas Hardy; The Older Hardy; The Nature of Biography. See Bate; LITERARY CRITICISM
(Keats); POETRY (Keats)

Gorky, Maksim, Russian, 1868-1936.

Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev. Rec: Bloom

Gowing, Lawrence, English, 1918-1991.

Vermeer. Rec: ML Nonfiction (bio)

Graves, Robert, English, 1895-1985.

I, Claudius. Rec: Harvard ML Novels Time

Green, Peter Kenneth Grahame, 1859-1932 (1959) f * At Classical scholar subjects the author of much-loved The Wind in the
Willows to a sensitive post-Freudian interpretation, emphasizing the passing of an Edwardian bachelor golden age. Provoking,
and thought-provoking too. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Grahame)
Grigson, Geoffrey Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years (1947) P 3 Mt Grigson has written on folklore, herbalism, wild
flowers, topography, poetry and painting; probably none of his books have combined these elements so magically as this early
biographical study. The book put Palmer (the most English of rural
painters) on the map after years of neglect. Also: Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision

Hersh, Seymour, American, 1937- .

The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. Rec: Counterpunch NF (biography)

Holmes, Richard Shelley (1974)

Almost in that class of biography typified by Andre Maurois' delectable Byron (and perhaps by his Ariel, also a study of
Shelley) in which a poet's life is treated with narrative zest but with little serious attention to the poetry. Holmes, if prosaic,
carried out his investigations with thoroughness and readability. The flame is missing, but the fuel is excellently assembled. See
Trelawny; POETRY (Shelley); LITERARY CRITICISM (Shelley)

Holroyd, Michael Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography

(2 vols, 1967 – 68) lit This unbrief life, combining polished literary style with scandalous Bloomsbury material,
discovered a huge new readership for modern British biography. Holroyd gives the fraught emotional life of Strachey and his
circle the unexpected quality of comic epic. Also: Augustus John; Hugh Kingsmill. See Strachey.

Howarth, David The Desert King: Ibn Saud, Founder of Saudi Arabia (1964)
Wonderful swashbuckling biography of the father of his country—and also of more than 125 sons and an uncounted number of
daughters (not uncountable, just uncounted).

Hudson, Derek Munby: Man of Two Worlds (1972)

Extraordinary story of a respectable Victorian gentleman with a passion for buxom working-class girls, who spent his life
secretly drawing, photographing and interviewing them, and finally married the prize specimen, his housekeeper, Hannah.
Bizarre; touching; great fun. Also: Thomas Barnes of "The Times"; Lewis Carroll; Arthur Rack ham. See FEMINISM (Riley)

Hubinga, Johan Erasmus of Rotterdam (1924)

Elegant, moving biography of one of Europe's greatest humanists, freely illustrated with drawings by Dtirer, Holbein, Cranach
and others. See HISTORY/EUROPEAN; RELIGION (Phillips)

Hyde, H. Montgomery Oscar Wilde (1976)

Hyde conducts his biographies like court-hearings (they often centre on celebrated trials); his dramatic but detached approach
is peculiarly effective in dealing with Wilde's mesmeric, histrionic personality. Also: The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh;
The Trial of Sir Roger Casement; Carson. See DIARIES (Wilde); DRAMA (Wilde); FICTION/NOVELS (Wilde)

Jahiz, al-, Arab, ca. 780-ca. 868.

The Life and Works of Jahiz. Rec: Ward

James, Henry Partial Portraits (1913) *

Supreme examples of the essayist as biographer. A great novelist looks with affectionate, sometimes sly acumen at eminent
contemporaries. George Eliot, Trollope, Maupassant, Stevenson and Turgenev definitively abbreviated. See Edel; DIARIES;
FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; LITERARY CRITICISM

Johnson, Dr Samuel The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1783) P*?
Celebrated studies of 52 poets (including Donne, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray) from the early 17th century to the late 18th.
18th-century prose at its magisterial, grandiloquent best. See Bate: Boswell; Krutch; LITERARY CRITICISM; REFERENCE;
TRAVEL

Jones, Ernest The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud

(3 vols, 1953-57) P3 A Freudian on Freud (who emerges as a heroic and surprisingly attractive figure, set against a dark period
of European history). Jones is a hagiographer: expect no objective analysis here, no dirt. See Freud; Pickering; MEDICINE
(Freud);
OCCULT (Vyvyan, for anti-Jones polemic)

Krutch, Joseph Wood The Life of Samuel Johnson LLD. (1945)

Krutch was a redoubtable scholar and one of the great raconteurs of his time (as well as a distinguished naturalist). All these
strains came together in a fine but little-known life of Dr Johnson, with whom Krutch had much in common. See Bate;
Boswell; Johnson; LITERARY CRITICISM (Johnson); NATURAL HISTORY; REFERENCE (Johnson); TRAVEL (Johnson)

Lachouque, H. The Anatomy of Glory: Napoleon and His Guard(1978) AJ

It's said that there are over 300,000 books about Napoleon and at least one (a novel) by him. This is one of the best—we think.
Napoleon was a startling combination of genius and monster; this author shirks not a single wart. See HISTORY/EUROPEAN
(Chandler, Geyl)

Lefebvre, Molly Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage

of Opium (1974) 9 J
Coleridge's entire life seen in terms of his drug addiction, rather than (say) through his visionary poetry, his politics and
journalism, or his position as a major English Romantic critic and philosopher. Readable, grim interpretation of a notably
unhappy life. See Coleridge; De Quincey; POETRY (Coleridge)

Lindsay, Jack J. M. W. Turner: His Life and Work (1966) 9J

Turner's difficult, withdrawn personality has often proved intractable to biographers. But by making use of his verse-jottings
and sketchbooks, Lindsay produces a convincing psychological interpretation, set against a detailed evocation of the art-world
of the period. See MATHEMATICS

Longford, Elizabeth Wellington (2 vols. 1969-72)

Readable and detailed, but never dull. This Wellington entertains all the contradictions of an English grandee, at once sensitive
to the horrors of war and a great captain, a reactionary splendidly contemptuous of received ideas. Philip Guedalla's The Iron
Duke is written with more style, but less authority. See HISTORY/BRITISH

Madariaga, Salvador de Bolivar (1951)

Compendious literary account of the creator of South American independence (of a kind) from Spanish domination.

Mailer, Norman Marilyn (1973)

Ravishing photo-portraits of Marilyn Monroe; the text is written as a pastiche of American advertising copy—"a very
Stradivarius of sex," etc—and a polemic against earnest show-biz biographies. The ironic form of the book is a rare delight.
See FICTION/NOVELS

Malone, Dumas, American, 1892-1986.

Jefferson and His Time (6 vols.). Rec: ML Nonfiction (biography)

Manchester, William, American, 1922-2004.

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill. Rec: National Review

Marchand, Leslie Lord Byron: A Biography (3 vols, 1957)

Definitive example of the modern three-decker "definitive" life. Exhaustingly informative; a fascinating, if oddly unbalanced
monument. Also: Byron: A Portrait; Byron's Letters and Journals. See Trelawny; DIA RIES (Byron); POETRY (Byron)

Marek, George R., Austrian, 1902-1987.

The Eagles Die: Franz Joseph, Elisabeth, and Their Austria. Rec: Harvard (biography)

Masters, John Casanova (1969)

Tragi-comic life of one of the world's most charming rogues. Admirably balances author's deflating research against the
tumescence of Casanova's own memoirs. It's less like life than a Rossini comic opera—but Casanova's pervasive melancholy
gives the book dark overtones. How sad to be the cynosure of half Europe, and the court jester of the other half!

Milford, Nancy Zelda Fitzgerald: A Biography (1970) J

Scott Fitzgerald's life seen from Zelda's standpoint. Written con amore, with a feminist edge. See DIARIES (Fitzgerald);
FICTION/NOVELS (Fitzgerald); FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Fitzgerald)

Mitford, Nancy Voltaire in Love (1957)

Stylish account of 18th-century country life at the Chateau de Circy in Champagne, and also the pleasures of elegant Parisian
intercourse at the Hotel Lambert on the Ile Saint-Louis. Also: Madame de Pompadour; Frederick the Great. See
FICTION/NOVELS (Voltaire)
Morison, S.E. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: The Life of Christopher Columbus (1942)
Standard English-language biography of the "discoverer" of America (who never touched the American continent). See
HISTORY/AMERICAN; TRAVEL

Nabokov, Vladimir Nicolai Gogol (1944)

Brilliant, eccentric study, beginning with Gogol's "death and youth", and ending with a comic interview between Nabokov and
his unsatisfied publisher. Captures the strangeness of Gogol's personality, and the peculiar Russian humour of Dead Souls. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Carroll);
F1CTION/NOVELS (Gogol, Nabokov); POETRY (Pushkin)

Nicolson, Harold King George V: His Life and Reign (1952) P./
Dignified, engaging portrait of a monarch at the centre of a declining empire. Also: Curzon: The Last Phase; The Development
of English Biography; Some People. See DIARIES

Painter, George Marcel Proust: A Biography (1959-65)

This authoritative English biography produced a revolution in Proustian studies, largely by its reconstruction of Remembrance
of Things Pastin terms of Proust's own relationships and youthful experiences. Massive, but delicate as Proust himself in its
perception of people and places; an exceptional piece of prose.
Also: Andre Gide; Chateaubriand. See Pickering; DRAMA (Johnson); FICTION/NOVELS (Proust); LITERARY CRITICISM
(Beckett)

Parkman, Francis La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West

(1879) AS 0 let
Biographical history, at times using La Salle's own words. La Salle was the indomitable but unlovely explorer who claimed
Louisiana for France and was murdered for his pains by his own men. A Coriolanus in the American wilderness. See
HISTORY/AMERICAN

Pickering, George W. Creative Malady (1974)

Highly original study of how psychological illness contributed to the productivity of six well-known individuals. Fascinating
biographical sketches of Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddy, Freud, Proust and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Plutarch Parallel Lives ( 1 05 -115)

Regarded in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as one of the most important of classical books to survive, this had an enormous
influence perhaps hard to understand today, when moralizing biography is not the height of fashion: without it, for example,
Shakespeare's history plays would have been heavier on bland pageantry, lighter on the analysis of political motivation and
influence. Parallel Lives: famous Greeks compared with famous Romans. Sounds forbidding: in fact is light and a joy to read.

Plutarch, Greek, ca. 46-ca.120 CE .

Parallel Lives. Rec: Adler Aquinas (Selections) Bloom GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Rex Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections)
Ward

Renan, Ernest The Life of Jesus (1863)

Renan was the first writer to apply modern biographical methods to Jesus. The result created an uproar similar to that following
Darwin's The Origin of Species. Short, elegant and sceptical, in the best Voltairean tradition, it is still eminently readable. Also:
Marcus Aurelius

Renoir, Jean Renoir My Father (1962) & Intimate, uninhibited picture of a great painter. From life—or studio portrait?
The father-figure is very like a Michel Simon performance from one of Jean Renoir's early films. Still, a stylish evocation of
French country life, and of the quirks and dedication of the creative mind.
Renoir, Jean, French, 1894-1979.
Renoir, My Father. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Ricks, Christopher Tennyson (1972) di ✓.1

Short on day-to-day events, though never shirking psychological issues; sympathetic, uncensorious critique of a genius of
verbal niceties, who perhaps became a little too nice for his own poetic good. See POETRY (Tennyson) Rolt, L. T. C. Isambard
Kingdom Brunel: A Biography (1957) it Rolt successfully presents the great bridge-builder and boat constructor as a heroic
representative of Victorian energy and enterprise, a Michelangelo of engineering. The biography is given tension and
excitement by accounts of the various disasters, collapses, and sinkings which accompanied Brunel's triumphant progress.
Also: George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution; James Watt

Rosenberg, Jakob, American, 1893-1980.

Rembrandt: Life and Work. Rec: Ward

Sandburg, Carl Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (2 vols, 1926-29); The War Years (4 vols, 1939)
There are many biographies of Lincoln—he is an irresistible subject—and many are good, but Sandburg's magnum opus is
probably the most monumental and endearing. See DIARIES (Lincoln)

Sartre, Jean-Paul Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (1952) P

Existentialist biography of the criminal and playwright Jean Genet. Though long and analytico-rhetorical, it presents an
interesting alternative to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of empirical biography. Also: Baudelaire; Flaubert. See DRAMA;
FICTION/NOVELS; PHILOSOPHY; SEX (Genet); TRAVEL (Genet)
Sartre, Jean Paul, French, 1905-1980. Nobel Laureate
Saint Genet. Rec: Bloom
The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert. Rec: Bloom

Starkie, Enid Baudelaire (1957)

Meticulous with a warmth and sympathy rare in academic biography. Excellent on both Baudelaire's love affairs and his poetry.
Usefully read in conjunction with Sartre's Baudelaire. Also: Arthur Ritnbaud; Flaubert. See ART
(Baudelaire); DIARIES (Baudelaire); POETRY (Baudelaire)

Steegmuller, Francis Cocteau: A Biography (1970)

Cocteau's chameleon personality (novelist, poet, painter, film-maker, impresario) provides a glittering, amusing guide through
the avant-garde Paris of Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Picasso, Stravinsky, Radiguet and Isadora Duncan. Also: Apollinaire: Poet among
the Painters; Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait; Maupassant: A Lion in the Path. See DIARIES

Strachey, Lytton Eminent Victorians (1918)

Elegant, mocking studies of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Arnold of Rugby School, and General Gordon of
Khartoum. The book marks the beginning of the immense influence of Bloomsbury on modern British biography, destroying
forever what Strachey called "the tedious panegyric" of Victorian biography. Also: Queen Victoria; Portraits in Miniature. See
Holroyd.

Strachey, Lytton, English, 1880-1932.

Eminent Victorians. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Taylor, A. J. P. Bismarck (1955)

Terse, critical but teasingly just appraisal of the Iron Chancellor by the emery paper of British historians. Also: War Lords;
Beaverbrook, etc. See HISTORY/BRITISH

Thompson, E. P. William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary (1955) 9 Brilliant, dogmatic biography by leading
left-wing historian. "The transformation of the eccentric artist and romantic literary man into the socialist agitator may be
counted among the great conversions of the world." See HISTORY/BRITISH

Tomalin, Claire The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (1974) Short, admirably balanced life of the first British feminist
(1759-97), author of Vindication of the Rights of Women. See FEMINISM (Wollstonecraft)

Trelawny, Edward John Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1858)
Trelawny was a natural raconteur, and his bubbling, opinionated and often mendacious biography, packed with dramatic
incident and reconstructed dialogue, reads with all the life and outrageousness of a Ken Russell film. See Holmes; Marchand;
DIARIES (Byron); POETRY (Byron)

Trevor-Roper, Hugh A Hidden Life: The Enigma of Sir Edmund Backhouse (1976)
Full of fantastic sexual adventures at the turn of the 19th century, this remarkable biography patiently reconstructs the life of a
forger, swindler and conman who, among other things, sold the British Government 200,000 non-existent rifles in 1915. Also:
Archbishop Laud; The Last Days of Hitler

Troyat, Henri Tolstoy (1965) -Or

Rich, imaginative presentation of Tolstoy as a man of enormous inner contradictions and appetites, vividly re-created through
the eyes of his long-suffering wife, children, and literary contemporaries. The style is self-consciously Tolstoyian, but retains a
very French ironic detachment. Should be a novel—and very nearly is. Also: Pushkin; Gogol. See FICTION/NOVELS
(Tolstoy); LITERARY CRITICISM (Tolstoy)

Van Doren, Carl Benjamin Franklin (1938)

Franklin is an immense subject for a biographer—scientist, politician, philosopher, lover, he was all things to all men. Van
Doren captures the many-sidedness of the man in this popular, well-written book. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Franklin);
REFERENCE (Adler)

Wall, Joseph F. Andrew Carnegie (1970)

Gigantic biography of the giant industrialist and philanthropist; particularly good on his Scottish background, and on the
operation of his early corporations in the late-19th-century heyday of American industrial enterprise. (Carnegie had interests in
oil, railways, bridges, telegraphy, iron and steel—among other things.) Interesting comments on how the Civil War affected
businessmen in the next two generations, and on Carnegie's attitude to business rivals and to labour relations. Sober; thorough;
absorbing. Also: Henry Watterson, Reconstructed Rebel

Wolff, Geoffrey, American, 1937- .

Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Woodham-Smith, Cecil Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910 (1950) *_,

One of the most outstanding and readable narrative historians of her generation, Woodham-Smith concentrated all her
knowledge of the ways of the Victorian establishment in this splendid vindication of Miss Nightingale's rumbustious career.
See Pickering; Strachey; HISTORY/BRITISH

Woodham-Smith, Cecil, Welsh, 1896-1977.

Florence Nightingale. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Woolf, Virginia Flush (1933)

Whimsical biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's red cocker-spaniel, complete with line-drawings by sister Vanessa.
Woolf carries it off by prose style alone, and gives a splendidly confused vision of the elopement to Italy, with striking effects
of light, shade, scent, and lapsing time. Also: Roger Fry; Orlando: A Biography (a spoof). See Bell; DIARIES; FEMINISM;
FICTION/NOVELS

Zweig, Stefan Three Masters (1920) * These studies of Balzac, Dickens and Dostoyevsky show the early influence of
Freudian psychology, and Zweig's own special brand of imaginative-biographical criticism. Also: Master Builders (HOlderlin,
von Kleist, Nietzsche). See FICTION/NOVELS (Balzac, Dickens, Dostoyevsky)

Zweig, Stefan, Austrian, 1881-1942.

The World of Yesterday. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Balzac. Rec: National Review

BIOGRAPHY
Claire Tomalin

Biographies are on the whole ephemeral. Nothing seems so old-fashioned as the biographies of the 1920s, gathering dust on
library shelves. The exceptions are those that are fired by passion and understanding of their subject and period, and writ-ten
with as much an as good fiction. A biography cannot put you inside someone else's skin, as fiction tries to, but it can (and
should) immerse you in another world. The biographer draws on many disciplines - history, geography, sociology, medicine,
psychology, an history among them - and has to be a scholarly jackdaw, picking up bits of information wherever they can be

found. There may also be an intention to establish or restore a reputation, reveal a social problem, or do justice where it has not
hitherto been done. Among the earliest English-language biographies are William Roper's of his father-in-law Thomas More
(1626) and Izaac Walton's of the poet John Donne (1641); biography has been much more popular with the English and the
Americans than with other nations.
A true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is
capable of interesting the greatest man; ... all men are to an unspeakable degree
brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every man's; and ... Human
Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls.
THOMAS CARLYLE

The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell. By general consent one of the greatest books in the language, for its
first-hand portrait of the man and rendering of his conversation, and for the art with which Boswell put his material together
after the death of his friend.

Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) by William Godwin. Written immediately after the
death of Godwin's wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, in childbirth. Its frankness about her private life, extraordinary for the time,
made it a cause of scandal, but it is a deeply affecting short account in which the characters of both author and subject emerge
with striking force.

Life of John Sterling (1851) by Thomas Carlyle. Sterling was a minor literary figure, poet, and friend of the poet and critic S
T Coleridge, and a political idealist who in his youth planned to assist in the overthrow of Ferdinand VII of Spain, only failing
to join the disastrous expedition at the last minute, remaining behind to get married instead. He died in his thirties of
tuberculosis, mourned by his many devoted friends, but he would scarcely be remembered were it not for Carlyle's affectionate
tribute.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) by Elizabeth Gaskell. Another scandalous book when it first appeared, it is the tribute of
a friend and a finely judged account of the almost overwhelming difficulties facing a woman of genius attempting to work in a
society that preferred women to be purely domestic creatures. It remains brilliantly readable, and can profitably be followed up
by Jenny Uglow's excellent Elizabeth Gaskell 1993.

John Keats (1968) by Robert Gittings. Casts new light on the process of composition as well as the life of the poet; a masterly
study.

Henry James (1953-1972) by Leon Edel. A five-volume study, totally absorbing to admirers of James's work. It is the product
of immense labour, feelingly written, and still the best available. (There is an abridged version, but what Jamesian would want
that?)

Disraeli (1966) by Robert Blake. A classic political biography, magisterial in pace and tone, and enthralling.

The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969) by John Gross. Could be called a group biography, one of the most
entertaining, original, and informative ever written.

Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence (1983) by Andrew Hodge. This gave many readers their first insight into the
development of computer technology, and at the same time an appalling revelation about officially sanctioned persecution of
homosexuals, for Turing ended his life in suicide.

Mrs Humphry Ward (1990) by John Sutherland. Minor subject, major biography of a best-selling niece of Matthew Arnold
and aunt of Aldous Huxley, indomitable charity worker, hypochondriac, and anti-suffragette: a witty, marvellous book.

Coleridge: Early Visions (1989) by Richard Holmes. A finely wrought account which takes the reader out walking the fells
with the poet as well as into his intricate and sometimes disordered mind; the narrative rises to a wonderful climax.
Children's Books

Any list of children's books should make nostalgic browsing for adults; but it should also include the sort of books children
actually still read. This list is a choice of classics (all recommend-ably readable, and read) and good contemporary books,
potentially of classic status too.
See DIARIES (Frank); FICTION/NOVELS (Swift, Twain): FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Grimm): HUMOUR (Schulz);
REFERENCE (Merit, New Arthur Mee, Opie); RELIGION (Bible)

Adams, Richard Watership Down(1972)

Long, allegorical novel about rabbits; occasional turgidities offset by strong story-line. Adam's later books are full of detailed
violence, could be a test for the squeamish. (10+)

Aiken, Joan Tales of Arabel's Raven (197 4)

Slapstick adventures of ordinary little girl and pet raven in contemporary London. Expert comedy for the 7+ set; older children
(11+) may prefer her densely-plotted historical novels (Go Saddle the Sea; The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) or her collections
of short stories (A Harp of Fishbones; The Kingdom under the Sea, etc).

Alcott, Louisa May Little Women (1868)

One of the great progenitors of the family story. Alcott writes from her own life with a sincerity and warmth which transcend
the often pious particularity. (10+)

Alcott, Louisa May, American, 1832-1888.

Little Women. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Almedingen, E. M. Ellen (1971)

Ellen Polotratzky, the author's grandmother, is the central character; five other biographical novels complete the sequence, and
build a fascinating picture of pre-Revolutionary Russia. (12+) Also: A Candle at Dusk; The Knights of the Golden Table, etc

Andersen, Hans Christian Fairy Tales (1835 – 72)

Among the plethora of available translations, two may be singled out: Corrin's in Ardizzone's Hans Andersen (1978, illustrated
by Edward Ardizzone); and Haugaard's Hans Andersen: His Classic Fairy Tales (1976, illustrated by Michael Foreman). (6+)

Andersen, Hans Christian, Danish, 1805-1875.

Fairy Tales and Stories. Rec: Meaningful

Atwater, F. and R. Mr Popper's Penguins (1938)

Where do you keep a flock of penguins in a city apartment? Naturally, in the bath. So how do you take a bath? Splendid,
deadpan humour, like children's Thurber. (8+)

Baum, Frank L. The Wonderful World of Oz (1900)

This famous century-inaugurating story was followed by several others by Baum and dozens of others by inferior copiers.
Sentimental and foolish at times, but the characters of Dorothy and her loyal friends are warm and—with Judy Garland's help
—unforgettable. (10+)

Bawden, Nina Carrie's War (1973)

World War II evacuee children in Welsh mining community. Strong on period detail—and that includes period attitudes, adult
emotions seen through a child's eyes. (10+) Also: A Handful of Thieves; The Runaway Summer, etc

Blume, Judy, American, 1938- .

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. Rec: Time

Boston, Lucy M. The Children of Green Knowe (1954)

Boston's own historic house is central to all her Green Knowe stories. In this one, Tolly from the present and the ghost-children
from the house's past share adventures and troubles in a time-free world. (8+) Also: Castle of Yew, etc

Botkin, B. A., American, 1901-1975.

A Treasury of Mississippi River Folktales. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Brothwell, D.R. (ed) The Rise of Man(1976) a
Superb account for children of man's evolution from fossil evidence to remains of great civilizations. Demanding text is offset
by the clarity and simplicity of the illustrations (drawings and diagrams are especially good, and well-captioned). In the same
series, and of the same quality: The Universe (Kerrod); The Prehistoric Work/(Sheehan); The Living World(Chinery). (12+)
See ARCHAEOLOGY

Brown, Margaret Wise, American, 1910-1952.

Goodnight Moon. Rec: NYPL

Brunhoff, Jean de The Story of Babar (1934)

Exploits of young elephant acquiring and passing on the trappings of bourgeois society, told with a gentle satire not lost on
today's readers. Delightful illustrations. Original, large-format edition best; continuations of saga by author's son Laurent are
markedly less good. (6+) Also: Babar's Travels; Babar the King-, Babar at Home

Buchan, John The Thirty-nine Steps (1915)

First class thriller. The stuff of every schoolboy's dreams: stiff upper lips, gripping adventures, good Scottish scenery. (10+)
Also: The Three Hostages, etc

Burnett, Frances Hodgson The Secret Garden (1911) *P

A story in true Romantic tradition: two lonely, spoilt children (one an invalid who is miraculously cured) discover a secret,
forbidden and neglected garden in which, through working to restore its former glory, they discover their own better natures.
Sharp, sympathetic characterization; her best book. (10+)

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, American, 1875-1950.

Tarzan of the Apes. Rec: NYPL

Carroll, Lewis Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 0

Among the editions in print, those with Tenniel's original illustrations are the best. For the adventurous or curious, a translation
into Russian by Nabokov is available. (8+) Also: Through the Looking Glass

Carroll, Lewis, English, 1832-1898.

Complete Works. Rec: Bloom Ward
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard
Through the Looking-Glass. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Christopher, John The White Mountains (1967)

Together with The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire, this makes up a science-fiction triology in which man,
dominated by an alien race, painfully throws off his servitude. Racy style; good introduction to major SF children's author. (9+)
Also: The Lotus Caves; The Guardians; The Prince in Waiting

Cole, William (ed) Oh, What Nonsense! (1968)

Collection of nonsense rhymes, illustrated by Tomi Ungerer—sure winner with younger children. Sample: "The time to tickle a
lizard is before, or right after, a blizzard .. ." (6+)

Cooper, Susan Over Sea, Under Stone (1965)

First of a series of five novels. Light battles with Dark for control of the world, with children for warriors. (11+)

Dahl, Roald Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) *

Charlie's passion for chocolates was made worse by living within sight of Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. How he got into
the factory and came to run it is told with an off-beat humour and a lateral view of reality that goes down especially well with
young children. (6+) Also: James and the Giant Peach, etc

De La Mare, Walter Come Hither(1923) * Wide-ranging poetry anthology by one of the best-loved 20th-century poets. If
you buy no other poetry anthologies, buy this one. (8+) Also: Collected Stories for Children; Three Royal Monkeys, etc

Dickinson, Peter The Changes (1975)

Combined edition of three books ( The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children) that make up a dystopian fantasy
in which present-day Britain has reverted to a medieval way of life and all machines are regarded as intrinsically evil. (12+)
Also: The Blue Hawk, etc. See FIcrioN/CRIME

Dinesen, Isak, Danish writing in English, 1885-1962.

Winter's Tales. Rec: Bloom
Seven Gothic Tales. Rec: Bloom
Out of Africa. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Dixon, E. (ed) Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights ( 1958) * Arabia, China and India all contributed to these folk tales of
the East, which have been used as bedtime stories since Scheherazade first captured her audience. This well-illustrated edition
(pictures by Kiddell-Monro) recommended. (7+)

Durrell, Gerald My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Winning combination of animals, insects, and the author's slapstick family (he is the brother of Lawrence Durrell), all set in
Corfu between the wars. Amusing, affectionate, observant: a modern classic. (9+) Also: Birds, Beasts and Relatives; Fillets of
Plaice, etc. See NATURAL HISTORY

Fleischman, Sid Jingo Django (1971)

Orphan chimney-sweep in 19th-century Boston begins a treasure-hunt which takes him by stagecoach, river-scow and gipsy
caravan to Mexico. Fast and funny; poetic style juicy with period slang and atmosphere. (10 +)

Forbes, Esther Johnny Tremain (1943)

Moving, enduring novel about a young hero in Boston during the American Revolution. (10+)

Gag, Wanda Millions of Cats (1928)

"Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats"—so goes the silly refrain of this lovely book in
which the author-artist draws, or seems to draw, every one of those remarkably proliferating cats. (3+)

Garfield, Leon The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1971) Garfield is a leading exponent of the historical novel with an
18th- or 19th-century setting; this book introduces an element of farce, which allows full play for his ironic wit. Alarums and
excursions at Dr Bunnion's Academy after Harris attempts to expose his infant sister according to the customs of ancient
Sparta. (10+)

Garner, Alan Elidor (1965) a

Elidormarks the peak of Garner's fantasy writing for children ( The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; The Moon of Gomrath; The
Owl Service). Here, the battle between good and evil in mythological Elidor breaks through into this world, involving four
children in a strange power-struggle before balance is restored. (10+) Garner has also written four books of a different kind
( The Stone Book; Toni Fobble's Day; Granny Reardutt; The Abner Gate): prose-poetic in style, they build up a portrait of a
family of British village craftsmen (stonemasons and blacksmiths) spanning five generations from the mid 19th century to the
outbreak of World War H.

Grahame, Kenneth The Wind in the Willows (1908) *JP

Rat, Mole, Badger and Toad are part of the mythology of childhood; life on the river bank is an experience not to be forgotten,
especially when assisted by E. H. Shepard's illustrations. (7+) See BIOGRAPHY (Green)

Grahame, Kenneth, English, 1859-1932.

The Wind in the Willows. Rec: Radcliffe

Haggard, H. Rider King Solomon's Mines (1885)

Masterly adventure story of speculators in southern Africa. With Conan Doyle's The Lost World (hereby recommended), a fine
tale from a splendid era of adventure fiction. The jargon has dated; the pace hasn't. (10+)

Various Authors, Japanese, ca. 1185-1371.

Heike Monogatari (Tales of the Heike). Rec: App Rexmo

Hoban, Russell The Mottse and His Child (1969)

Carefully plotted, engaging story—a modern classic of children's fantasy. (8+) Hughes, Ted The Iron Man (1968) *1'
Superb mixture of science fiction and fable. The Iron Man appears from nowhere, disastrously gobbling up anything metal,
until he is sent to the scrap yard where he grows sleek and "gleaming blue like a new gun barrel". In gratitude he helps earth
against an invading space-creature. As with most classics, bald account tells nothing of style, imagination, quality. (8+) See
POETRY

Hoffmann, E. T. A., German, 1776-1822.

The Devil's Elixir. Rec: Bloom
Tales. Rec: Bloom

Hunter, Norman The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawnt (1933)

Excruciating schoolboy humour, mad professor and friends in style of 1930s Punch. Stories more than match the zany genius
of their illustrator, Heath Robinson. (7+) Also: The Peculiar Triumph of Professor Branestawm, etc

Jansson, Tove Finn Farnily Moomintroll (1950)

The Moomintrolls, looking like small, amiable hippos, live in the forests of Finland. During the long, dark winters they sleep,
but in spring they come to full-blooded life and have wonderful, magical summer adventures. (7+)

Keats, Ezra Jack, American, 1916-1983.

The Snowy Day. Rec: NYPL (children)

Keller, Gottfried, Swiss writing in German, 1819-1890.

Green Henry. Rec: Bloom
Tales. Rec: Bloom

Kingsley, Charles The Heroes (1856)

Retelling of Greek myths in simple, direct style. Perseus, Jason, Theseus—Kingsley's first, most likeable children's book. (9+)
Also: The Water Babies; Hereward the Wake; Westward Ho!

Kingsley, Charles, English, 1819-1875.

Westward Ho!. Rec: Lubbock

Kipling, Rudyard Just So Stories ( 1902)

Adults may find these whimsical stories of how the animals got their
characteristics the most dated and arch of all Kipling's work; but young children (4+) always come back for more. The Jungle
Book is darker, more disciplined, on a level nearer that of his adult writing. (8+) Also: Puck of Pook's Hill, etc. See
FICTION/SHORT STORIES; POETRY

Konigsburg, E. L. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler (1968) *

Witty, sensitive story of two adolescents who run away, take up residence in a museum, discover a beautiful statue and set out
to find its maker. Particularly good on brother-sister relationships, everyday detail of museum life, dialogue between adults and
children. (10 + ) Also: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William, McKinley, and Me. Elizabeth, etc

Lang, Andrew The Blue Fairy Book (1889) mJla

First of twelve "colour" fairy books. Stories from all over the world; available either as a straight reprint of 19th-century
editions, or in a newly edited version by Brian Alderson, with fresh illustrations and (in part) new translations. (7+)

Lear, Edward, English, 1812-1888.

Complete Nonsense. Rec: Bloom

Le Guin, Ursula A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Dark-versus-Light trilogy, set in fantasy world with echoes of Tolkien (qv) and Lewis (qv). This is the first of the books, in
which Sparrowhawk attains full magical powers and begins his journey towards his destiny. (11+) Also: The Tombs of Atuan;
The Farthest Shore. See FICTION/SF

LeGuin, Ursula K., American, 1929- .

The Left Hand of Darkness. Rec: Bloom
The Earthsea Trilogy. Rec: Harvard
The Dispossessed. Rec: Utne
L'Engle, Madeleine, American, 1918- .
A Wrinkle in Time. Rec: Harvard

Leskov, Nikolai Semyonovich, Russian, 1831-1895.

Tales. Rec: Bloom Ward

Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)

Pevensie children enter the world of Narnia through a wardrobe and become agents of change, subject to the Christ-like figure
of Asian the lion. Religious symbolism troubles some adults, but is rarely explicit and seems to pass most children by as they
are carried forward by the adventures. (8+) Also: Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", etc. See FICTION/SF

Lindgren, Astrid, Swedish, 1907-2002.

Pippi Longstocking. Rec: Meaningful

Lindsay, Norman The Magic Pudding (1918)

Australian classic with unique brand of humour. Bunyip Bluegum, Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff, keepers of the irascible
Magic Pudding, enjoy riotous adventures, defending it from thieves and feeding well from it, as they travel the country.
Antipodean odyssey, Mark Twain crossed with Roald Dahl. (5 + )

Lines, Kathleen Lavender's Blue (1954)

Harold Jones's delicately coloured illustrations help to make an appealing collection of nursery-rhymes for very young
children. Nicola Bayley's picture book of Nursery Rhymes sits neatly on the fence between the frankly popular and self-
consciously artistic, while Helen Oxenbury's Cakes and Custard will appeal to an older age group.

Lively, Penelope The House in Norham Gardens (1974)

The seedy atmosphere (deteriorating house, aged academic lady owners) is cleverly established, as is the character of the young
niece who uncovers a tambour in the attic and thereby releases a dream-fantasy from ancient New Guinea. (12+) Also: The
Wild Hunt of Hagworthy; The Ghost of Thomas Kernpe

Lobel, Arnold Frog and Toad Are Friends (1970)

Designed for children taking their first steps in independent reading; delightful story of Frog's and Toad's summer frolics, full
of good natured humour and wit. (6+) Also: Small Pig; The GreatBlueness

Lofting, Hugh The Story of Dr Dolittle(1920) *

Dr Dolittle talks every animal's language, keeps a collection of weird animal friends (eg the Pushmi-pullyu), with whom he has
adventures of a Heath Robinsonesque imagination. Gentle, delightful, warm. (8+)

Macauley, David Cathedral (1973) *I/

Superb account of why and how a cathedral (imaginary, but typical) was planned and built. Author an architect; drawings pin-
sharp and accurate as well as evocative. Especially good on detailed working-methods of masons, carpenters, glass-blowers,
etc, and on how the building grew on its site (dizzy perspectives of medieval scaffolding). (8+) Also: City; Castle; Pyramid, etc

MacDonald, George The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

Published in a rich period for children's classics, this unusual fairy tale retains freshness, originality, draws its readers into the
magical world of Celtic folktale and legend. (8+) Also: The Princess and Curdie; At the Back of the North Wind

MacLachlan, Patricia, American, 1938- .

Sarah, Plain and Tall. Rec: NYPL (children)

Marshall, James Vance Walkabout (1959)

Two American children stranded in the Australian desert after an aircrash are led to food and water by an Aborigine boy. The
young American boy soon learns from their guide; but the older girl, full of adolescent fears, shies away and inadvertently
destroys the Aborigine, for he believes she has seen the Spirit of Death in his eyes. (12+) Original title: The Children

Masefield, John The Midnight Folk (1927)

Led by Nibbins the cat through secret passages in the old house, Kay escapes from dreary governesses and guardians to the
magic world of the Midnight Folk; meets witches, smugglers and talking animals in his search for Great Grandfather's lost
treasure. (9+) Also: The Box of Delights; Jim Davis. See DRAMA
Mayne, William Earthfasts (1966)
Nellie Jack John, the drummer boy, comes marching out of the castle mound into the 20th century after 200 years of searching
for Arthur and his sleeping knights. (10+) A varied and prolific writer, for almost each age-group, his work has consistent
quality. Also: A Game of Dark; The Jersey Shore, etc

Milligan, Spike Silly Verse for Kids (1963)

Title tells all. "There are holes in the sky, where the rain comes in. The holes are small—that's why rain is thin." (8+) See
HUMOUR

Milne, A. A. Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) *.11A This clumsy, greedy and lovable bear has been bumbling his way into
children's affections for more than half a century. Timeless; enchanting. (6+) Also: The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were
Very Young; Now We Are Six, etc

Milne, A. A., English, 1882-1956.

Winnie-the-Pooh. Rec: NYPL Radcliffe

Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables (1908)

In her heyday, Montgomery was read by politicians and housemaids; her Canadian orphan, Anne, still retains especial charm
for teenage girls. (12+) Also: Anne of Avortlea

Nesbit, E. The Railway Children (1906)

After their father goes to prison, the children live in a dilapidated cottage near the railway and spend much of their time
watching the line and indirectly bringing about their father's release. (10+) Also: Five Children and It; The Story of the
Treasure Seekers, etc

Norton, Andre Knave of Dreams (1976)

Ramsay, the Knave, transported to a parallel time as a tool to destroy an evil ruler, has to adjust to a wholly new way of life, for
there is no returning to his own time. (12+) Also: Moon of Three Rings; Breed to Come, etc

Norton, Mary The Borrowers (1952)

The Borrowers are miniature people who inhabit old houses and live by borrowing. If they are discovered they must move. But
Arrietty has broken the rules and made friends with a human boy—which is how Mrs May comes to tell Kate everything. (7+)
Also: Bedknobs and Broomsticks, etc

Pearce, Philippa Minnow on the Say (1955)

Boys messing around in a canoe on a sunny river, a hunt for lost treasure and the restoration of family fortunes provide the
ingredients for this friendly, uncomplicated story. (9+) Tom's Midnight Garden older, tougher: discovery of the past leads to
discovery of self. (11+) Also: A Dog So Small, etc

Perrault, Charles The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault(1697)

Some of the best-loved of all fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, etc), well written and
pleasingly unsentimental. Edition by Angela Carter (1967) recommended. (6+)

Peyton, K. M. Rambards (1967)

Horses and flying machines; nostalgic romance set in decrepit English Edwardian country house. Novelettish plot is redeemed
by sensitive characterization and witty style. (12+) Also: Thunder in the Sky; Pattern of Roses

Potter, Beatrix The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1900) * Although Potter's animals are anthropomorphized, they never suffer
from the coy sentimentality displayed by less able executants. Her down-to-earth directness makes no concessions to "childish"
vocabulary or tender emotions: Peter's father was "put in a pie and eaten". (2+) Also: The Tale of Mrs Tiggywinkle; The Tale of
Benjamin Bunny, etc

Potter, Beatrix, English, 1866-1943.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Rec: NYPL

Proysen, Alf Little Old Mrs Pepperpot and Other Stories (1958) lb Old woman wakes up one morning, finds herself
size of a pepperpot, loses no opportunity to take full advantage. Witty slapstick, like updated folk-tales. (6+)

Ransome, Arthur Swallows and Amazons (1931)

Ransome's true motives and popularity have been questioned; but there is no doubt that for many readers his stories of children
messing around in boats or prospecting for gold in the English Lake District hold an imaginative reality equalled only by
Sherlock Holmes. (8+) Also: Coot Club; Winter Holiday; Old Peter's Russian Tales, etc

Rey, H. A., American, 1898-1977.

Curious George Learns the Alphabet. Rec: Harvard

St Exupery, Antoine de The Little Prince (1943)

Written for children "because adults don't understand anything", this story of a downed aviator and his friend, a prince from a
far-off star, has surface beauty, emotional profundity. (9+)

Scarry, Richard Best Rainy Day Book Ever (1974) di _0

In a dozen bright, comic-strip picture-books, Scarry creates a colourful world of anthropomorphic animals (Sam Pig, Huckle
Kitten, Lowly Worm). Exuberant detail: the books are notable for clear, accurate drawings of how things work: electricity,
water supply, hospitals, travelling on a bus. Blend of fantasy and the everyday, and terrible jokes, may seem arch to some
adults; but this is the kindergarten world (and the world through kindergarten eyes) exactly caught.

Sendak, Maurice Where the Wild Things Are (1970) * Original, imaginative picture book: little boy can tame wild things
simply by staring at them. Especially good with young children who suffer from nightmares about wild animals and monsters.
Also: In the Night Kitchen, etc

Sendak, Maurice, American, 1928- .

Where the Wild Things Are. Rec: Harvard LAT NYPL

Seuss, Dr. (Theodor Seuss Geisel), American, 1904-1991.

The Cat in the Hat. Rec: NYPL

Sharmat, Marjorie Getting Something on Maggie Marmelstein (1971) Splendid saga of life at American Junior High School.
Thaddeus Gideon Smith V has a worst enemy, Maggie Marmelstein, who Knows Something Terrible about him. He sets out to
restore the balance of the sex-war by playing Frog to her Princess in the school play. (9+ ) Also: Goodnight Andrew, Goodnight
Craig; Gladys Told Me to Meet Her Here, etc.

Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island (1883) *C

The very model of an adventure story—buried treasure, secret maps, pirates, mutiny on the high seas. (10+) See
FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Stevenson, Robert Louis, Scottish, 1850-1894.

Essays. Rec: Bloom
Kidnapped. Rec: Bloom
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Rec: Bloom
Treasure Island. Rec: Bloom
The New Arabian Nights. Rec: Bloom
The Master of Ballantrae. Rec: Bloom
Weir of Hermiston. Rec: Bloom

Sutcliff, Rosemary Eagle of the Ninth (1954)

The fortunes of a family of Roman settlers in Britain. Splendid story concerns the fate of the Ninth Legion, which mysteriously
disappeared beyond "the Wall" at the height of the Empire. Subsequent volumes follow the family through "the decline and
fall" in Britain. to the coming of Arthur and the Danes. (10+)

Tanizaki Junichiro, Japanese, 1886-1965.

The Makioka Sisters. Rec: Fadiman 4 Good Reading Smiley Ward
Seven Japanese Tales. Rec: MW Asian

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit (1937) *3 1'

Hobbits are small, home-loving creatures; Bilbo's uncharacteristic expedition with the dwarfs to find dragon treasure leads,
among other things, to finding the fateful ring which, in later (adult) The Lord of the Rings trilogy, leads his nephew Frodo to
the edge of Mordor and the destruction of its dark powers. Brevity and unpretentious narrative strength make this book one of
Tolkien's best. (8+)
Treece, Henry The Dream Time (1967)
Treece interprets scant evidence with sincerity and his fundamental theme—the rejection of change—is as valid today as it was
in the early tribal society he describes. A fine book by a poet and major children's novelist. (11+) Also: Man with a Sword;
Viking's Dawn, etc. See FICTION/NOVELS

Uden, Grant A Dictionary of Chivalry (1968)

Alphabetical tour of the medieval knight and his world, from "Abatements of honour" to "Zutphen, Battle of". Should be
specialist, dry; is witty, fascinating. Good illustrations in period style. (11+)

White, E. B. The Trumpet of the Swan (1970) *I%

Voiceless Trumpeter Swan, with help of small boy and advice from old cob, his own father, learns reading, writing, and
ultimately happiness and self-respect. White's is a rare voice, of great distinction: beauty and "the tears of things" have seldom
been better caught. (7+) Also: Charlotte's Web; Stuart Little. See DIARIES (Garnett, White); HUMOUR; REFERENCE
(Strunk)

White, E. B., American, 1899-1985.

Charlotte's Web. Rec: Harvard NYPL Radcliffe

White, T. H. The Once and Future King (1958) *

Compendious (700-page) fantasy on the life of King Arthur. White's combination of slapstick and erudition is unique—as if
Laurel and Hardy were set down in a Middle Ages accurate to the last detail. Nearest analogy is Tolkien (qv); but White writes
better, and his mode is historical rather than imaginative fantasy. (10+) See MYTHOLOGY (Malory)

White, T. H., English, 1906-1984.

The Once and Future King. Rec: Burgess Smiley

Wilder, Laura Ingalls The Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
In this and other "Little House" books the author wrote about her own childhood in 19th-century pioneer America. Warmth and
sincerity have endeared these stories to generations of children. (8+) Also: Little House on the Prairie, etc

Williamson, Henry Tarka the Otter (1927)

Outstanding, non-anthropomorphic story of otters. (10+)

Zindel, Paul The Pigman (1968)

Sensitive novel about relations between old and young: two teenagers befriend an old man and then wreck his home while he is
in hospital. There is a rich school of teenage fiction in current American writing; this novel shows it at its serious best. (12+)
Also: My Darling, My Hamburger, etc

Barrie, J. M., Scottish, 1860-1937.

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Rec: NYPL

Baum, L. Frank, American, 1856-1919.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Rec: NYPL Radcliffe

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Alison Lurie

Until about 20 years ago children's literature was the Cinderella of literary studies. Everyone read fairy tales and books like
Tom Sawyer, The Wizard of Oz, and Winnie-the-Pooh when they were young, but almost no one thought about them seriously
later. This meant that some of the most original and influential works of all time were overlooked by critics and scholars. Today
the situation is much improved. Many universities in America now offer courses in children's literature, and there are several
first-rate periodicals in the field, including Children's Literature, Children's Literature Quarterly, and The Lion and the Unicorn.
And good books about the subject, including those listed below, continue to appear.
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem
not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom
offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
GARRISON KEILLOR

Childhood's Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children's Fiction 1770-1950 (1975) by Gillian Avery. A very
well-informed, interesting, and thoughtful study by a recognized British authority, who is also the author of many much-
admired historical novels for children. It is especially good on England and on the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books (1993) by Eleanor Cameron. A collection
of sensitive and wide-ranging essays by the American critic, author of many popular children's books, and winner of the
Commonwealth Award. The focus is meditative and personal rather than analytic.

Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature (1985) by Humphrey Carpenter. Brilliant, original, and
knowledgeable discussion of the most famous writers for children by a well-known British biographer who is also the coeditor
of the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature.

Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Books (1992) by Jerry Griswold. This is a lively,
intelligent, and much needed study of American fiction for children from a cultural-history point of view. It includes and
analyses some immensely popular books like Toby Tyler and Pollyanna, which have often been over-looked by other writers.

Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E B White (1978) by Roger Sale. An unusual and well-written collection of
essays on works of children's literature and folk-lore, and what they have meant to the author, addressed to the general reader
as well as the expert. Professor Sale's earlier book, Man Reading and Child Reading: Oz, Babar, and Pooh is also interesting.

Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (1979) by Jack Zipes. Professor Zipes, a world-class
expert on the folk tale, is also one of the most interesting and original writers on modem fairy tales. As the title suggests, his
approach is radical, with an emphasis on social and political history. His recent Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary
Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England (1986) combines the best examples of the genre with a first-rate analysis.
Diaries and Letters

For the reader, diaries and letters offer the voyeur's pleasure of a peep into other people's (more or less) unguarded lives; for the
writer, anticipating this reaction, they are often a carefully contrived and artfully autobiographical form. The books on this list
are of three kinds: those written from the start with publication in mind; those arranged, more or less cosmetically, for
publication by the writers themselves; and (a rare few) intimate, personal documents intended for the writers' use alone.
See ART (Delacroix, Haydon, Pisarro); DRAMA (Redfield); FEMINISM (Rosen); HISTORY/ASIAN (Preble); HUMOUR
(Gros-smith); LITERARY CRITICISM (Keats); MEDIA (King, Nowell-Smith); NATURAL HISTORY (Banks, Douglas-
Hamilton, Holden, White); OCCULT (Reyner); RELIGION (Bonhoeffer, Weil); TRAVEL (Cook, Lewis)

Abelard, Pierre and Héloïse, French writing in Latin, 1079-1142 and 1101-1164.
Letters. Rec: Rexmo Ward
Historia Calamitatum. Rec: Ward

Anderson, Emily (ed) The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1966) *

Mozart and his father were devoted letter-writers; this collection of over 600 letters gives an absorbing insight into Mozart's
life, character, opinions and views on music. Also: The Letters of Beethoven. See music (Einstein)

Barrett, E. and Browning, R. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-46(1897)
Love letters can make boring reading, unless you happen to be the recipient. However, these are extraordinary. A bizarre,
intriguing literary courtship. See Heyden; BIOGRAPHY (Pickering); POETRY (Browning)

Baudelaire, Charles Intimate Journals (1920)

As a young poet in Paris Baudelaire was the fashionable dandy par excellence: eccentric, outrageous, abandoned. Most of this
brief but powerful journal was written in Brussels after 1857, when he was miserably in debt, reviled as a pornographer and
dying of syphilis. Disturbing account of a personal descent into hell. See ART; BIOGRAPHY (Starkie); POETRY

Bennett, Arnold The Journals of Arnold Bennett. 1896-1928 (1932-33)

Thousands of words a week: what he ate, what he did in the evenings, how late the trains were, how many words he wrote and
what he was paid for them. Also: Letters. See FICTION/NOVELS

Boswell, James Boswell's London Journal (1763)

Disarmingly candid, it charts the keen young Scotsman's attempts to become both a fully-fledged libertine—tumbling whores
in St James's Park—and a member of the most respected literary salons; sparkling verbatim conversations with Garrick.
Goldsmith and, of course, Dr Johnson. 1950 edition recommended. Also: A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Dr Samuel
Johnson (Scotland as dystopia—not to be missed). See BIOGRAPHY

Burney, Fanny Diary (1846)

Daughter and unofficial secretary of Charles Burney, the musicologist; fashionable novelist; lady-in-waiting to Queen
Charlotte; wife of French army officer during the Revolution and later under Napoleon—Burney lived a full life, and spent
much of it writing letters and the famous diary. Fresh; intimate; stylish; as domestic and as witty as Pride and Prejudice.
Original seven volume edition rarely flags. For a sample, try Lewis Gibbs' one-volume selection (1940). Also: Memoirs of
Doctor Bumey, etc

Byron, Lord Letters and Journals(1898)

Among the most famous of English letters. Full, charismatic impact of Byron the man dramatically revealed in direct, vivid and
astonishingly modern tones. See BIOGRAPHY (Marchand, Trelawny); POETRY

Carlyle, Thomas (ed) The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845)
Cromwell's letters, and even more his speeches, are vivid evidence for the revolutionary puritan conscience, the zealot as self-
inventor, denier of self. Carlyle supplies idiosyncratic running commentary, snaking points of his own about mid-19th-century
British society. Two revolutionaries, in action and thought, in endlessly fascinating juxtaposition. See BIOGRAPHY (Froude);
LITERARY CRITICISM

Carlyle, Thomas, English, 1795-1881.

Past and Present. Rec: Lubbock
The French Revolution. Rec: Lubbock
Selected Prose. Rec: Bloom
Sartor Resartus. Rec: Bloom

Chesterfield, Lord Letters to His Son (1774) P*

Letters from statesman father to beloved bastard son; actually short essays in beautifully-poised 18th-century prose on
manners, morals, politics, the way of the world. Definitive sketch of a gentleman of honour in the Age of
Elegance—and personal and intimate too.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius Letters (1st century BC)

Cicero, the great lawyer-politician of late Republican Rome, was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, and was intimately
concerned in the upheavals of the Civil War and the manoeuvrings which led to Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. His more than
900 private letters reflect the cares and anxieties of a sensitive, honourable public man, and are particularly revealing of the
clash between public and private political morality. Good translation by Shackleton Bailey.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Caesar); HISTORY/ANCIENT (Selzer)

Cicero, Roman, 106-43 BCE.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Selected Works. Rec: Aquinas Ward
On the Gods. Rec: Bloom
On the Good Life. Rec: Colcc91
Offices. Rec: Aquinas Lubbock
On Friendship. Rec: Lubbock
On Old Age. Rec: Lubbock

Cowper, William Selected Letters (1926)

Numerous collections have appeared of the graceful, charming intimate letters of this most domestic of English poets, who
alternated between long periods of country calm and savage bouts of insanity which finally killed him. Much read in his day,
his poetry is no longer greatly regarded, but the letters remain, their careful observation and transcendent sweetness ensuring
Cowper's fame. Crèvecoeur, Hector St John de Letters of an American Farmer (1782) "Here individuals of all nations,"
Crevecoeur wrote, "are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great change in the
world." Published in London, these letters fired the imaginations and hopes of a generation of British emigrants to the New
World.

Crossman, Richard Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 1964 – 70 (3 vols, 1975-77) 9 _I lse

Greeted on publication with much brouhaha and attempts to get them censored, Crossman's censorious diaries turned out to be
something of a let-down. Nonetheless they remain far and away the best account of how modern British government actually
works. Fascinating to compare it with "insider accounts" of earlier politics, such as those of Cicero (qv) and Greville (qv).

Dali, Salvador Diary of a Genius (1966) P

Weird, wonderful, near-certifiable musings; a true companion to his paintings—effectively explains such phenomena as
burning giraffes, swarming ants and auto-sodomized virgins. Anti-memoirs? Could be. Also: The Unspeakable Confessions of
Salvador Dali

Durrell, L. and Miller, H. Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence (1963)
Exchange began when Durrell (aged 23) wrote Miller (43) a fan-letter about Tropic of Cancer; it continued over several
decades. Energetic, ego-brimming letters, full of spontaneity and trail-blazing self-evaluation. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS
(Durrell, G.); F1CTION/NOVELS (Durrell); POETRY (Durrell); SEX (Miller); TRAVEL (Durrell)

Edgeworth, Maria Letters from England, 1813 -44 (1971) & Personal letters of English novelist (1767 -1849).
Her circle of friends and acquaintances included Wedgwood, Darwin, Byron and Walter Scott; but her most delightful letters
are those to her numerous family, on landscape, town life and above all human foible, viewed with unaffected warmth and wit.
This selection by Christine Colvin recommended. Its introduction, notes and index are models of thoroughness and tact.

Einstein, Albert, German-Swiss-American, 1879-1955.

Ideas and Opinions. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Evelyn, John The Diary of John Evelyn (1818) 9*

Posterity-conscious diary contains brilliant portraits of Restoration figures. Evelyn was a wholly different man from his friend
Pepys, who remarked of him, "A most excellent person, and must be allowed a little for his conceitedness." Worth reading in
conjunction with Pepys (qv), and with Aubrey's Brief Lives (herewith recommended).

Fitzgerald, F. Scott and Perkins, Max Dear Scott, Dear Max (1971) Fascinating exchange of letters between celebrated writer
and equally well-known editor. Intriguing expose of a working relationship that illuminates the nuts and bolts, dollars and
cents, of being a famous novelist. Compare with Bennett (qv) and (for private agonies of authorship) Simenon
(AUTOBIOGRAPHY) and Steinbeck (qv). See BIOGRAPHY (Milford); FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES;
FILM (Latham); MEDIA (Berg)

Flaubert, Gustave Selected Letters (1953) *

Lively literary letters (edited by Francis Steegmuller) from the period when Flaubert was writing Madame Bovary and many
deal with the problems of creating that work. Flaubert is hardly a genial genius but is none the less fascinating for that. See
Goncourt; FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Frank, Anne The Diary of Anne Frank (1947) * Difficult to avoid words like "deeply moving" and "unique" in relation to this
justly famous diary, a rare document of the unsullied, untarnished human spirit. See Tuttle.

Frank, Anne, Dutch, 1929-1945.

Diary of a Young Girl. Rec: Boston PL Counterpunch Trans National Review NYPL

Garnett, David The White/Garnett Letters (1968)

Poised, elegant correspondence between E. B. White and David Garnett: two high-class literary craftsmen striking amiable
sparks from each other. Great fun. See White; CHILDREN'S BOOKS (White); HUMOUR (White); REFERENCE (Strunk)

Ginsberg, Allen Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties (1977)

Ginsberg can sometimes seem a pain in the neck, but these journals are fascinating chronicles of the "beat generation": a
motley collection of variously talented writers, junkies, Buddhists, manic depressives and homosexuals whose never dull brand
of naïve decadence defined their era. See BIOGRAPHY (Charters); FICTION/NOVELS (Kerouac)

Goncourt, E. and J. de The Goncourt Journal (1887-96)

"Dinner with Flaubert .. .", "Zola was in a talkative mood . ..", "We discussed the question of Mme Sand's love affairs . . ."—
the Goncourt brothers' engagingly jaundiced eyes evaluate their celebrated contemporaries with scant regard for their public
image. Shortened edition by Baldick recommended. See Flaubert; FICTION/NOVELS (Flaubert, Zola); FICTION/SHORT
STORIES (Flaubert)

Goncourt, Edmond de and Jules de, French, 1822-1896 and 1830-1870.

Journal. Rec: Rex

Gorki, Maxim Fragments from My Diary (1924)

Gorki consciously modelled his themes and style on Tolstoy—with the crucial change that he replaced what Marxist critics saw
as "decadent" themes (eg the morbid love affair in Anna Karenina) with a framework of dynamic social realism (eg the
revolutionary fervour of Mother). Some Western critics, preferring their own dogma, have accordingly dismissed him. But he is
a great novelist, no more propagandist than Dickens or Mann. These diary fragments make an excellent introduction to his
complex, thoughtful work, shamefully neglected in the West. Also: The Confession (autobiography); Foma Gordeyev (novel)

Green, Julien Diary, 1928– 1957(1964)

Green, an American, made his reputation as a French novelist. Diary provides an outsider's view of French intellectual society
but is also a quiet, reflective record of a writer's life. Comparison with Bennett (qv) is revealing and fascinating—and then
compare Kafka (qv) and Joyce (qv).

Gregory, Kenneth (ed) The First Cuckoo (1976)

Are the British the sanest or the dottiest race on earth? Prove both contentions conclusively with this selection of letters to The
Times. Ciceronian, barbed, pungent: the literate British perfonning party tricks.

Hall, Ruth (ed) Dear Dr Stopes (1978)

Edited compilation of letters written to the great 1920s British sex liberationist, Marie Stopes, between 1918 and 1928, after the
publication of her book Married Love. Some of her sane, helpful replies are included. Ghastly first-hand evidence of human
sexual and compassionate failure: implicit indictment of the medical profession and churchmen of the time. Have we really
changed that much?

Heyden, P. and Kelley, P. (eds) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs David Ogilvy (1973)
Intimate letters to a close friend (and fellow poetess), on family matters (chiefly children) and on literary life. Newly
discovered in 1971, these letters are unforced, affectionate and reveal what an unexpectedly witty woman EBB could be. See
Barrett; BIOGRAPHY (Pickering)

James, Henry The Letters of Henry James (1969)

James dwelt as lovingly over a phrase in his many letters as he did in his novels and these (edited by Percy Lubbock)—or the
letters selected by Leon Edel, James's biographer (1955)—are eminently worth reading for their insights into the man as well as
their comments on life and literature. See BIOGRAPHY (Edel, James); FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES;
LITERARY CRITICISM

Joyce, James The Collected Letters of James Joyce (1957)

In these letters the private Joyce breaks out of the citadel of doctoral theses and critical monographs in which he is nowadays
enclosed—and nowhere more so than in the astonishing exchange of torrid love letters that passed between Joyce and his wife
when they were temporarily separated in 1904. Full collection in three volumes; one-volume selection also issued. See
BIOGRAPHY (Ellmann); FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Kafka, Franz The Diaries ofFranz Kafka, 1910-1923 (1948)

Rapid access to the mind and personality of one of the most extraordinary writers of the 20th century; invaluable source for
many of his acclaimed stories and literary themes. See FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Kierkegaard Soren The Last Years (1865) Kierkegaard—the "depression over Denmark"— was the father of both secular and
religious existentialism. These diaries and their brilliant introduction make a good beginning to his thought. Also: The Present
Age. See PHILOSOPHY

Kilvert, Francis Thomas Kilvert's Diary (1938-40) Mo Diary of 1870s country curate in a remote Welsh community.
Kilvert's admirable, unselfconscious personality shines undiminished from its pages; book is also a bleak testimony to the
nasty, brutish and short lives many people led in rural Victorian Britain. See Woodeforde.

Lawrence, D. H. The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (1932) Lawrence used his letters like weapons: often scathing and
always stimulating, he berated friends and intellectuals, attacked established dogma and passionately propagated his own. See
FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/EUROPEAN; LITERARY CRITICISM; POETRY: TRAVEL

Lincoln, Abraham Speeches and Letters (1919)

Numerous collections of Lincoln's writings—mostly speeches and letters, both formal and informal—have been published, and
this (edited by Angle) is an especially pleasing one. Lincoln was an extraordinary writer, even in the most ephemeral letters and
notes—no politician surpasses him for his power over words. As he lived in a time of great events, the combination is
explosive. See BIOGRAPHY (Sandburg)

Mahler-Werfel, Alma, Austrian, 1879-1964.

Diaries, 1898-1902. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Mansfield, Katherine The Journal of Katherine Mansfield(1927) Another Bloomsbury journal that reveals best and worst of
the movement: arch self-consciousness coupled with memorable observation. For example, Mansfield on E. M. Forster, he
"never gets any further than warming the teapot. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no
tea." See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley Complete Letters (1965-67) 5

Sense and sensibility: the upper-class life of Georgian Britain discussed in cool, elegant prose.

Nicolson, Harold Diaries, 1930-62(1966-68)

Highly literate, effortlessly readable, semi-private account of a life rich in literary and political insights and in-fights. See
BIOGRAPHY

Pepys, Samuel The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1825) P*

Perhaps the most celebrated of all English diaries. Splendid historical document covering the years 1660-69 but even more
compelling for the self-portrait of Pepys: an engaging, hard-working, sensuous man. Of attractive women he notes, a little
regretfully that it "is a strange slavery that I stand in to beauty, that I value nothing near it." The complete nine volumes have
recently been published—a hefty read, but there are several good abridgements.

Pliny the Younger Letters (2nd century)

Pliny does for his age what Pepys (qv) does for his. His letters reflect the private life of a public man (he was a distinguished
lawyer-statesman). Evocative accounts of villas, meals, journeys, literary and political occasions, the gossip and daily life of
aristocratic Rome. Urbane; ironic; cool—a Renaissance humanist before his time.

Pliny the Younger, Roman, ca. 62-ca. 113 CE.

Letters. Rec: Ward

Pope John XXIII Letters to His Family, 1901-62(1968)

Rilke, Rainer Maria Letters to a Young Poet (1954)

One of the great poets of the 20th century, Rilke paid careful heed to his voluminous, masterful correspondence with friends all
over the world. This selection (translated by Norton) is a fine one. See POETRY

Sacco, N. and Vanzetti, B. The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (1928) Atheists, anarchists, draft dodgers, Sacco and Vanzetti
appeared enormously threatening to most Americans in the 1920s, even though they probably did not commit the armed
robbery and murders for which they were finally executed in 1927. The long years of protests and counter-protests, as well as
court manoeuvres, produced many remarkable and moving letters from these nearly illiterate but enormously articulate men.

Saro-Wiwa, Ken, Nigerian writing in English, 1941-1995.

A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Sarton, May, American, 1912-1995.

At Seventy. Rec: Hungry Mind (journal)

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Letters from a Stoic (1st century)

Seneca, banker-statesman, tutor to the young Nero (no sinecure), wrote a series of "letters" at the end of his life. They are really
essays on aspects of Stoic philosophy. For modern readers, the interest is twofold: in Stoicism itself (closely akin to Pauline
Christianity in ethical and moral arguments), and in Seneca's lively pen-portraits of life in Rome, the noisy capital of the world,
and on his peaceful country estates.

Seneca, Roman, ca. 4 BCE-65 CE .

Tragedies. Rec: Bloom (Selections)
Letters from a Stoic. Rec: Ward
Moral Essays. Rec: Ward
Works. Rec: Lubbock

Steegmuller, Francis (ed) Your Isadora (1974) ih 4*

The love story of Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig, told through breathless romantic letters and diaries. Warm, intimate, often
very funny: the grandest of grand passions, a three-handkerchief read. See BIOGRAPHY

Steinbeck, John Journal of a Novel (1970) 9

Steinbeck used this journal to write himself out of a creative block and to "warm himself up" for East of Eden. Honest,
revealing; may even outlast the novel. Also: Letters; A Life in Letters (ed Elaine Steinbeck). See FICTION/NOVELS:
TRAVEL

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre Letters to Two Friends, 1926 - 52 (1968)

The great religious thinker and philosopher wrote these letters as a kind of spiritual journal: they cover external events, but are
mainly concerned with charting his inner life, and in particular the crucial evolution in his thinking from early palaeontological
studies to the programmatic certainties of his later years. The dark night of the soul, and the bright dawn of hope, movingly
described. See RELIGION

Thomas, Dylan The Letters of Dylan Thomas (1966)

Thomas worked on his letters with almost the same diligence that he devoted to his poems; his regular unscrupulous sponging
also prompted feats of penmanship: the begging letters are masterpieces of flattering cajolery and artistic bombast. See
POETRY

Tuttle, Andrew (ed) The Journal of Andrew Bihaly (1972) 9*

Bihaly's story is as harrowing and poignant as Anne Frank's (qv). He was eight when his parents left him in a monastery
housing delinquent boys, with a forged birth certificate concealing his Jewishness. Shortly afterwards both his mother and
father died in Hitler's concentration camps; Andrew himself was raped and brutalized by his companions. He later escaped to
the USA—and this journal is an account of how he tried to come to terms both with the horrors in his own soul and the life of a
drop-out in the Manhattan slums of the late 1960s (Vietnam, the Peace Corps, drugs and communes). An essential text for
anyone trying to understand the roots of alienation in our own torn era—and a moving document of a ruined human soul.

Van Gogh, Vincent The Letters of Van Gogh (1927)

Moving account of Van Gogh's struggles against encroaching mental illness and artistic neglect; but full of the sharp irony that
hindsight brings: "I dare swear to you," he writes towards the end of his life, "that my sunflowers are worth 500 francs".

Wagner, Cosima Letters and Diaries (1979) *

No less an autocratic, inspired bully than her husband, Cosima Wagner was the Iron Lady of Bayreuth in its founding years,
and for a generation after. Everyone knows Wagner was intolerable as a man—however did she live with him? These letters
and notebooks tell—and now, we wonder, however did he live with her? See MUSIC (Newman, Wagner)

Walpole, Horace Letters (1920)

Walpole turned on an elegant style like water from a tap; he saw letters as the epitome of his urbane age, and used them to
reflect on everything, from political scandals to ladies' bonnets and the merits of sea bathing. He was called (by Walter Scott)
the finest letter-writer in English, and the four volumes of his correspondence are full of endless delights. For those with less
leisure than he had, Hadley's one-volume selection (1926) supplies the cream.

Warren, Nella The Letters of Ruth Draper, 1920-56(1979)

Ruth Draper's monologues "peopled the stage with characters"; these personal letters have the same bustling energy, wit and
perception of the eccentricities and delights of humanity. Life as a game, and savoured—a welcome, unbitchy addition to the
showbusiness shelves.

White, E. B. The Letters of E. B. White (1976)

No American journalist ever wrote better than E. B. White—or no American writer was a better journalist. His essays and
comments for the New Yorker and for other magazines are rightly famous, but his letters make equally fascinating reading. See
Garnett; CHILDREN'S BOOKS; HUMOUR; REFERENCE (Strunk)

Wilde, Oscar The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962)

Wilde's mercurial career encapsulated in his own words, from international literary fame to public obloquy, destitution and
neglect. Full text included of the famous De Profundis letter to Lord Alfred Douglas; bitter, poignant reading: "I thought life
was going to be a brilliant comedy ... I found it to be a revolting and repellent tragedy." See BIOGRAPHY (Hyde); DRAMA;
FICTION/NOVELS

Wilde, Oscar, Irish, 1854-1900.

Letters. Rec: Bloom

Wilson, Edmund Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912 -72 (1977)

America's nearest thing to Dr Johnson, but less polysyllabic, Wilson was an opinionated, opinion-forming critic who, almost
single-handed, tried to make writing an important part of American life and sought, successfully, to be its monitor and prize-
giver. The letters should be supplemented by his memoirs, eg The Twenties. See HISTORY/AMERICAN; LITERARY
CRITICISM; POLITICS

Woodforde, James The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802 (1924) *Int

Kilvert's (qv) great rival, and a worthy one. Gossipy, self-indulgent account of the author's remarkably secular life and his
obsession with food. Vivid illumination of English village life: "Poor Tom Cary died this morn' of a violent fever ... His parents
almost distracted ... a very good-natured, inoffensive man. At cribbage this evening with Nancy won 0-6.” See Kilvert.

Woolf, Virginia A Writer's Diary (1953)

Possibly the best of the Bloomsbury diaries, though the standard is generally high. Woolf emerges as at once sympathetic arid
awesome, with a nice line in dismissive bitchery. Interesting to compare Mansfield (qv). Also: Letters. See BIOGRAPHY
(Bell, Woolf); FEMINISM (Woolf); FICTION/NOVELS (Woolf)

Wordsworth, Dorothy The Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1941) *

Vivid, unaffected account of Wordsworth's friendship with Coleridge and his daily life in the Lake District during one of his
most creative periods. See BIOGRAPHY (Coleridge, De Quincey, Lefebure); POETRY (Coleridge, Wordsworth)

Wordsworth, Dorothy, English, 1771-1855.

Grasmere Journal. Rec: Bloom
Drama

A selective list, covering a huge and varied field. Crucial playwrights, with typical (or best introductory) works: standard
guides and works of criticism, especially those that explain or define a vital area: a few biographies and memoirs for fun. The
interested reader will want to explore the heights (and crevasses) for himself—this list provides a base camp and a survival kit.
See DIARIES (Warren); HISTORY/BRITISH (Strong); HUMOUR (Green); LITERARY CRITICISM (Bradley, Johnson,
Stendhal)

Aeschylus The Oresteia (458 BC)

First and one of the greatest of all tragedians, Aeschylus was for long regarded as influential but unstageable, a reader's
dramatist. Recent productions have proved this false: his work is as accessible (and as fine) as Shakespeare's. The Oresteia is
magnificent with theatrical energy, its poetry as resonant and comprehensible as that of Hamlet. Good translations by Roche
( The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus, 1962) and by Raphael and McLeish ( The Serpent Son, 1979). Also: Prometheus Bound, etc

Aeschylus, Greek, 525-456/5 BCE.

Tragedies. Rec: Adler GBWW
The Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides). Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good
Reading Lubbock Rex SJC Ward
Prometheus Bound. Rec: Bloom Lubbock SJC
Seven Against Thebes. Rec: Bloom
Persians. Rec: Bloom
Suppliant Women. Rec: Bloom

Albee, Edward Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1961)

Albee is one of the best post-war American dramatists; this is his most successful play. Raucously witty, agonized dissection of
campus marriage; a bravura piece for bravura actors. Also: The Zoo Story; A Delicate Balance, etc

Albee, Edward, American, 1928- .

The American Dream. Rec: LAT

Alfieri, Vittorio, Italian, 1749-1803.

Saul. Rec: Bloom

Anouilh, Jean Ring Round the Moon (1950)

Strong on character and theatricality, Anouilh is not as fashionable, but is certainly as entertaining as Miller (qv), and at times
(eg this play) as good as Shaw (qv). This, or Antigone (reworking of Sophocles (qv) in modern terms) are the best introductions
to a lively, graceful playwright. Also: Traveller without Luggage; Waltz of the Toreadors

Anouilh, Jean, French, 1910-1987.

Becket. Rec: Bloom
Antigone. Rec: Bloom
Eurydice. Rec: Bloom
The Rehearsal. Rec: Bloom

Arden, John Sergeant Musgrave's Dance (1959)

Sergeant and three soldiers descend on a small town, ostensibly seeking recruits. They are in fact deserters, obsessed with a
feverish mission to awaken their countrymen to the futility and cruelty of war. Arden's tendency to write tracts is here offset by
a sharp plot and vivid theatricality. An important heterodox dramatist. Also: The Workhouse Donkey; The Waters of Babylon,
etc

Arden, John, English, 1930- .

Plays. Rec: Bloom

Aristophanes Women in Power(4th century BC)

First and one of the greatest comic dramatists, Aristophanes is still fresh and funny today. Style is like modern Absurd drama
crossed with Laurel and Hardy. This play (original title Ecclesiazusae) is a satire on communism, women's rights and sex
(hilarious music-hall finale on the theme "the ugliest shall be first"): topical, timeless, vigorous. Good English translations by
Parker ( The Congresswomen, 1967) and by McLeish (in Aristophanes' Clouds, Women in Power, Knights, 1980). Also:
Lysisrrata; The Frogs; The Birds, etc

Aristophanes, Greek, 448-388 BCE.

Plays. Rec: Adler (Selections) GBWW Good Reading Ward
Lysistrata. Rec: Bloom Col61 Fadiman 4
The Clouds. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 4 Lubbock SJC
The Birds. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 4
The Frogs. Rec: Bloom Col37 Col61
Plutus. Rec: Col37
Knights. Rec: Bloom Lubbock
Wasps. Rec: Bloom
Assemblywomen. Rec: Bloom

Arnott, Peter The Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre (1971) a -1 J

Short, crisp, non-specialist introduction.For fuller treatment (standard works accessible to the layman) see Kitto's Greek
Tragedy (1939), Dover's A ristophanic Comedy (1972) and Duckworth's The Nature of Roman Comedy (1952).

Artaud, Antonin The Theatre and Its Double (1938) 9

Artaud (1896-1948) was the leading theoretician of modem "experimental theatre". Believing that the theatre of his day lacked
any kind of authentic correlative, he advocated a theatre that would replace naturalism and realism with the old "magical"
elements of myth and ritual. This collection includes the seminal manifesto on the Theatre of Cruelty and also the controversial
article "Seraphim's Theatre" on the actor's craft and his role in society.

Aubigné, Agrippa d', French, 1552-1630.

Les Tragiques. Rec: Bloom

Auden, W. H. and Isherwood, C. The Ascent of F6 (1936)

Supreme example of high camp at high altitudes; straightfaced feu d'esprit which deserves its place in the margin of English
expressionist drama. Also: The Dog beneath the Skin. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Isherwood); LITERARY
CRTTICISM (Auden); POETRY (Auden)

Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher, English, 1584-1616 and 1579-1625.

Plays. Rec: Bloom

Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot(1952) *

One of the seminal texts of contemporary theatre. Two tramps (play originally conceived for Laurel and Hardy in old age) wait
by the roadside for arrival of Godot, whoever he may be. Their crosstalk, with interruptions, is like a sketch from an
existentialist, esoteric revue. Also: Krapp's Last Tape; Endgame, etc. See Esslin; FICTION/NOVELS ; FICTION/SHORT
STORIES; LITERARY CRITICISM

Beckett, Samuel, Irish writing in French and English, 1906-1989. Nobel Laureate
Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamamable. Rec: Meaningful
Murphy. Rec: Bloom
Watt. Rec: Bloom
Waiting for Godot. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW NYPL Ward
Endgame. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Krapp's Last Tape. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Molloy. Rec: Bloom Ward
Malone Dies. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Unnamable. Rec: Bloom Ward
How It Is. Rec: Bloom

Benavente, Jacinto, Spanish, 1866-1954. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Blok, Aleksandr, Russian, 1880-1921.

The Twelve and Other Plays. Rec: Bloom
Bond, Edward, English, 1934- .
The Fool. Rec: Bloom
Saved. Rec: Bloom

Braun, Edward The Theatre of Meyerhold (1979)

Taught by Stanislayski (qv), Meyerhold was one of the first to grasp the significance of the grotesque for modern theatre. After
the Russian Revolution he committed himself to the Bolshevik cause, and became the first exponent of agitprop theatre. He is a
major influence; this book gives his essence, well. Also: Meyerhold on Theatre.

Brecht, Berthold Mother Courage (1939)

However alienated we have been by the "alienation-effect", Brecht here displays that indisputable theatrical sense which made
his Berliner Ensemble the eye-opening force that it was in the 1950s. The cyclic futility of war parades before us, spiked with
marvellous moments (eg that when Mother Courage must deny, with a smile, that she recognizes the corpse of her own son)
that make nonsense of theatrical ideology. Also: The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Galileo; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, etc.
See Heilman.

Brecht, Bertolt, German, 1898-1956.

Poems, 1913-1956. Rec: Bloom
The Threepenny Opera. Rec: Bloom
Galileo. Rec: Bloom
Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
The Good Woman of Setzuan. Rec: Bloom Ward
Caucasian Chalk Circle. Rec: Bloom Ward
Mother Courage and Her Children. Rec: Bloom GBWW

Brook, Peter The Empty Space (1968) IMP* a Personal statement of intent by one of best–respected, most influential of
British experimental directors. Book (and Brook) something of a cult; but his theories are important and challenging.

Büchner, Georg, German, 1813-1837.

Danton's Death. Rec: Bloom
Woyzeck. Rec: Bloom

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, Spanish, 1600-1681.

Life is a Dream. Rec: Bloom Ward
Mayor of Zalamea. Rec: Bloom
Mighty Magician. Rec: Bloom
Doctor of His Own Honor. Rec: Bloom

Capek, Karel, Czech, 1890-1938.

War with the Newts. Rec: Bloom
R.U.R.. Rec: Bloom

Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard (1904)

"It has turned out not a drama," said Chekhov, "but a comedy, in parts a farce." Much is amusing; but (as always with
Chekhov) on the splinter-edge of tears. The cherry orchard falls; the old life, the old Russia pass with it. Also: The Seagull;
Three Sisters; Uncle Vanya. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Japanese, 1653-1725.

Major Plays. (See also Takeda) Rec: Oriental Ward
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. Rec: MW Asian

Churchill, Caryl, English, 1938- .

Cloud Nine. Rec: Utne (drama)

Cibber, Colley An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740)
18th-century dramatist, actor, inferior poet laureate, butt of Pope (in The Dunciad), Cibber in these memoirs discursively and
amiably describes, defines the vigorous theatre of his time. Book contains among other things, a famous description of Thomas
Betterton's performance as Hamlet.
Clurman, Harold The Naked Image: Observations on the Modern Theatre (1966)
One of the founders of Group Theatre, which in the rosy dawn of the New Deal tried to bring community theatre to 1930s New
York, tells of the trials and real achievements that brought to light Clifford Odets, and to bright lights men like Franchot Tone
who finally succumbed, graciously but inevitably, to Hollywood. See McCrindle.

Cocteau, Jean, French, 1889-1963.

Les Enfants Terribles (Children of the Game, Holy Terrors). Rec: Ward
The Infernal Machine and Other Plays. Rec: Bloom

Congreve, William The Way of the World (1700)

Superb comedy, in which plot is to wit (in words of play) "as a dead whiting's eye to a pearl of orient". The prose rhythms are
what matter, their lift and sway, the tumble of characters from the cheerful disorderly house of Restoration theatre.

Congreve, William, English, 1670-1729.

The Way of the World. Rec: Adler Bloom
Love for Love. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Various Nations, Various, 20th C.

Contemporary Drama. Rec: Fadiman 3

Corneille, Pierre, French, 1606-1684.

Chief Plays. Rec: Ward
The Cid. Rec: Aquinas Bloom
Polyeucte. Rec: Bloom
Nicomède. Rec: Bloom
Horace. Rec: Bloom
Cinna. Rec: Bloom
Rodogune. Rec: Bloom

Coward, Noel Private Lives (1930)

Definitive Coward comedy, perhaps his best play. Clipped, brittle dialogue is all. Coward is as dazzling (though not as
rhetorical) as Wilde (qv), as sparkling (though not as warm) as Travers (qv). Also: Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit, etc

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, Swiss writing in German, 1921- .

The Visit. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Physicists. Rec: Ward

Echegaray, José, Spanish, 1832-1916. Nobel Laureate

Works. (drama)

Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

Eliot's play on the murder of Thomas a Becket (in a 20th-century reinterpretation of Greek classic style) is a masterpiece of
modern theatre: fine dramatic verse, measured argument, a noble exposition of the nature of saintliness. This is his most
accessible and resonant play: the others are elliptical, mannered, sometimes tedious. Also: The Confidential Clerk; The Family
Reunion; The Elder Statesman. See LITERARY CRITICISM (Eliot, Gardner); POETRY

Esslin, Martin The Theatre of the Absurd (1961) Ai Ma

Absurd (meaning "at odds with the surroundings" rather than "ridiculous") drama is the dominant, most fruitful style of post-
war theatre: it has influenced other arts (notably film and the novel), and partly helped shape social attitudes and manners at
large. This book is a finely written account of the theories, and a guide to the work of major figures (Adamov, Beckett, Genet,
Ionesco and a dozen followers such as Grass, Pinter and Kopit).

Etherege, Sir George, English, ca. 1634-1691.

The Man of the Mode. Rec: Bloom (drama)

Euripides The Bacchae (405 BC)

Euripides is the most controversial of the great Greek tragedians; raw ideas ride through his plays, invested with superb
theatrical power. The Bacchae (religious ecstasy and the tearing apart of the king who opposes it) is his most "contemporary"
play: resonance (eg for drug culture) remarkable; action horrific, irresistibly in the theatre-of-cruelty mode. Good translation by
Volanakis in Corrigan (ed): Laurel Classical Drama: Euripides, 1965. Also: Medea; The Trojan Women; Hippolytus

Euripides, Greek, 484-406 BCE.

Plays. Rec: Adler (Selections) GBWW Good Reading Rex Ward
Alcestis. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Andromache. Rec: Bloom
Bacchae. Rec: Bloom Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 SJC
Cyclops. Rec: Bloom
Electra. Rec: Col37 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Hecuba. Rec: Bloom
Helen. Rec: Bloom
Heracles. Rec: Bloom
Hippolytus. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rexmo SJC
Iphigeneia at Aulis. Rec: Bloom
Iphigenia in Taurus. Rec: Col37
Ion. Rec: Bloom
Medea. Rec: Bloom Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Lubbock Meaningful
Orestes. Rec: Bloom
Trojan Women. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Farquhar, George The Beaux' Stratagem (1707)

One of the most revived of 18th-century plays, this marks the end of Restoration drama and the beginning of modern dramatic
sensibility. Farquhar died at 28; this, his last play, makes one wonder what he might have accomplished if he had survived into
a new age. Also: The Recruiting Officer

Farquhar, George, Irish, 1678-1707.

Beaux' Strategem. Rec: Bloom
Recruiting Officer. Rec: Bloom

Fitzsimons, Raymund Edmund Kean: Fire from Heaven (1976)

Kean was one of the greatest actors in 19th-century British theatre. Hazlitt said "He bore on his brow the mark of the Fire from
Heaven"; Coleridge, "To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning". This biography is vivid, relaxed,
readable—interesting to compare with Sartre's (qv) play (where Kean is an existential mirror-man, only himself when
performing). Also: The Charles Dickens Show

Various Authors, German, 18th-19th C.

Five German Tragedies. Rec: Ward

Fo, Dario, Italian, 1926- . Nobel Laureate

Works.
Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Rec: Utne

Ford, John, English, 1586-after 1639.

'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Rec: Bloom

Frisch, Max The Fire–raisers(1959)

Brechtian fable: bourgeois household invaded by endlessly talkative terrorists intent on destroying it. Absurd comedy, or black
parable of Europe in decline? Either way, it brings the house down. Also: Andorra. See Heilman.

Frisch, Max, Swiss writing in German, 1911-1991.

Andorra. Rec: Ward

Fugard, Athol, South African, 1932- .

A Lesson from Aloes. Rec: Bloom

García Lorca, Federico, Spanish, 1898-1936.

Gypsy Ballads. Rec: Meaningful NYPL
Three Tragedies. Rec: Bloom Ward
Theory and Play of the Duende. Rec: Ward

Garnier, Robert, French, 1544-1590.

Mark Antony. Rec: Bloom
The Jewesses. Rec: Bloom

Gascoigne, Bomber World Theatre (1968) m 10*1

Scholarly, zestfully written history of "drama" from Stone-Age ritual to theatre of the absurd.

Gay, John, English, 1685-1732.

Beggar's Opera. Rec: Bloom

Genet, Jean, French, 1910-1986.

The Balcony. Rec: Bloom

Gilbert, W. S., English, 1836-1911.

Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. Rec: Bloom
Bab Ballads. Rec: Bloom

Giraudoux, Jean Tiger at the Gates (1935)

Marvellous retelling of Homer showing in a modern context how the Trojan War had to take place although nobody wanted it
—political parallels in the 1930s were clear and compelling. The Mad Woman of Chaillot (1946) was Giraudoux's post-war
comment on the idiocy of the intervening years.

Giraudoux, Jean, French, 1882-1944.

Four Plays. Rec: Bloom

Goethe, J. W. von Faust (1808)

It sometimes escapes notice that this play, which influenced so many subsequent 19th-century creative minds, also exists in its
own powerful right. Good translations: C. F. Maclntyre; A. Raphael. See POETRY

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German, 1749-1832.

Egmont. Rec: Bloom
Faust. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful Rexmo SJC
(Selections) Ward
Faust, Part 1. Rec: Col37 Collh91
Verse Plays. Rec: Bloom

Goldoni, Carlo The Servant of Two Masters (c. 1750)

Goldoni is underrated in the English-speaking world (possibly because of scarce, poor translations). He is as funny as Moliere
(qv) or Beaumarchais; a master of farcical comedy, with a warmth like that of (say) Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Also:
The Campiello, etc

Goldoni, Carlo, Italian, 1707-1793.

Mine Hostess. Rec: Ward
The Boors. Rec: Ward
The Fan. Rec: Ward
Servant of Two Masters. Rec: Bloom

Goldsmith, Oliver She Stoops to Conquer (1773)

Perennial stage favourite; classic upstairs-downstairs comedy, with the downstairs characters having rather the better of it.

Goldsmith, Oliver, Irish-English, 1729-1774.

Vicar of Wakefield. Rec: Bloom Lubbock Ward
She Stoops to Conquer. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Traveller. Rec: Bloom
The Deserted Village. Rec: Bloom Ward

Gorky, Maksim, Russian, 1868-1936.

The Lower Depths and Other Plays. Rec: Ward

Granville-Barker, Harley The Madras House (1910)

In The Madras House (the name of a London dress shop) Granville-Barker, the leader with Shaw of the Edwardian theatre of
ideas, examined feminine repression and, in general, the state of women and their future. Best remembered now for his fine 3-
volume Prefaces to Shakespeare (herewith recommended), he was also a powerful, Ibsenish dramatist. Also: The Voysey
Inheritance; Waste, etc

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 5th C BCE-8th C CE.

Great Sanskrit Plays in New English Transcreations. (See also Kalidasa and Shudraka) Recommended by: Ward

Grotowski, Jerzy Towards a Poor Theatre (1968)

Grotowski created the Theatre Laboratory in Poland in 1959, a company as revolutionary and as influential for contemporary
drama as Stanislayski's (qv) Moscow Arts Company was at the beginning of the century. This book records the company's
methods and discoveries, a seminal text for those who seek a philosophical basis for theatre of today.

Hampton, Christopher Savages (1974)

Kidnapped by guerillas and kept in a cell while his ransom is negotiated, an ineffable English diplomat provides the backbone
of a play which sets out to do nothing less than indict Western man for his wholesale murder of a tribe few, if any, of us have
ever heard of. Hampton was a new, disturbing voice in the 1970s—dazzling theatrical style, uncomfortable messages.

Hartnoll, Phyllis Concise History of Theatre (1968) itif/*

Hauptmann, Gerhart, German, 1862-1946. Nobel Laureate

Five Plays. Rec: Ward

Havel, Vaclav, Czech, 1936- .

Garden Party. Rec: Ward
Memorandum. Rec: Ward
Largo Desolato. Rec: Bloom
Living in Truth. Rec: TLS (drama)

Heilman, Robert E. The Iceman, the Arsonist and the Troubled Agent (1973)
Excellent study of "tragedy and melodrama on the modern stage". Balances O'Neill. Williams and Miller against three
Europeans, Brecht, Frisch and Durrenmatt. Useful scholarly adjunct to Esslin (qv) and Taylor (qv).

Hethman, Robert H. (ed) Strasberg at the Actors' Studio (1965)

The home of American Method acting: tape-recorded sessions transcribed, with commentary by Strasberg and his colleague-
pupils. Fascinating first-hand account of a central development in modern acting.

Heyse, Paul von, German, 1830-1914. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Ibsen, Henrik Ghosts (1881)

One of the group of plays on a favourite Ibsen theme: the way we are haunted, dominated by the past, the way (as he put it)
"We sail with a corpse in the cargo". Good translation (of complete plays) by Michael Meyer, whose biography of Ibsen is also
the standard account. Also: The Wild Duck; Hedda Gabler, etc

Ibsen, Henrik, Norwegian, 1828-1906.

Plays. Rec: Adler (Selections) Good Reading
Selected Plays. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Brand. Rec: Bloom Ward
Peer Gynt. Rec: Bloom Ward
Emperor and Galilean. Rec: Bloom
Pillars of Society. Rec: Ward
Doll's House. Rec: Aquinas GBWW Meaningful Ward
The Wild Duck. Rec: GBWW
Hedda Gabler. Rec: Bloom GBWW
The Master Builder. Rec: Bloom GBWW
Lady from the Sea. Rec: Bloom
When We Dead Awaken. Rec: Bloom

Ionesco, Eugene The Bald Prima Donna (The Bald Soprano) (1948)
Surreal parody of drama itself; hilarious surface masks bleak philosophy—"I imagined I had written something like the tragedy
of language", he later wrote of it. Also: Rhinoceros; Walking on Air; The Chairs, etc. See Heilman.

Ionesco, Eugène, Romanian-French, 1912-1994.

The Bald Soprano. Rec: Bloom
The Chairs. Rec: Bloom
The Lesson. Rec: Bloom
Amédée. Rec: Bloom
Victims of Duty. Rec: Bloom
Rhinoceros. Rec: Bloom

Johnson, Pamela Hansford Six Proust Reconstructions (1958) A bonne bouche: Hansford Johnson has extended and
"improved" Proust in a radio sequence which at once criticizes (affectionately), embellishes and reveals his world: Marcel air-
waved a la mode. See BIOGRAPHY (Painter, Pickering); FICTION/NOVELS (Proust); LITERARY CRITICISM (Beckett)

Jonson, Ben The Alchemist(1610) 0 One of the best plays (and certainly the easiest to begin with) by Jacobean dramatist and
poet second only to Shakespeare. The "quick theatre-stuff" of his plays carries all the "humours" of Jacobean London. Absurd
drama, 17th-century style: like Aristophanes (qv) crossed with a dictionary of antique slang. Also: Volpone; Bartholomew Fair,
etc

Jonson, Ben, English, 1573-1637.

Plays. Rec: Bloom Ward
Volpone. Rec: Rex
Poems. Rec: Bloom
Masques. Rec: Bloom

Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu, Japanese, 1435-1516.

Ataka. (See also No [Noh] Theatre) Rec: MW Asian (drama)

Kleist, Heinrich von, German, 1777-1811.

Writings. Rec: Ward
Five Plays. Rec: Bloom

Kushner, Tony, American, 1956- .

Angels in America. Rec: Bloom Utne

Kyd, Thomas, English, 1558-1594.

The Spanish Tragedy. Rec: Bloom

Lessing, Gotthold, German, 1729-1781.

Nathan the Wise. Rec: Bloom (drama)

Lorca, Frederico Garcia The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)

Lorca was murdered by Fascist gunmen at age of 37. (See Ian Gibson's The Death of Lorca, 1957.) This play is a parabolic
comment on 1930s Spain—the tyranny of the central female character paralleling that of Franco. He is a great poet of the
theatre; Synge or Yeats with dark Iberian overtones. Also: Blood Wedding; Yerma

Massinger, Philip, English, 1583-1640.

A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Rec: Bloom

Mayer, Edwin Justus, American, 1896-1960.

Children of Darkness: A Tragi-Comedy in Three Acts. Rec: Bloom (drama)

McCrindle, Joseph F. (ed) Behind the Scenes (1971)

Outstanding theatre and film interviews from the Transatlantic Review. Littlewood, Kopit, Stoppard, Orton, Tynan, Fellini,
Clurman, Marceau, Pinter, Vidal, and dozens more. Should be on every theatre-lover's shelf.

Mamet, David, American, 1947- .

American Buffalo. Rec: Bloom
Speed-the-Plow. Rec: Bloom

Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblin de, French, 1688-1763.

Seven Comedies. Rec: Bloom
Up From the Country. Rec: Ward

Marlowe, Christopher Tamburlaine the Great(1590) * At its best, Marlowe's poetry approaches Shakespeare's; his plays are
like magnificent symphonies of language. But they are loosely structured and often fall into rant and obscurity. Tamburlaine
shows these qualities, all of them, at peak; better seen, perhaps, than read; unforgettable. Also: Dr Faustus; The Jew of Malta,
etc

Marlowe, Christopher, English, 1564-1593.

Complete Plays. Rec: Bloom Ward

Marston, John, English, ca. 1575-1634.

The Malcontent. Rec: Bloom

Masefield, John William Shakespeare (1911) a Good general introduction. Masefield's style is direct as a Roman road;
he never wastes a word. Almost everything one needs to know; no fruitless speculation; well-judged quotations. See Granville-
Barker; Shakespeare; Van Doren; CHILDREN'S BOOKS; LITERARY CRITICISM (Bradley, Johnson, Knight, Stendhal);
POETRY (Shakespeare)

Maugham, W. Somerset For Services Rendered (1932)

Maugham, precise storyteller, can be an over-estimated dramatist; but this play is likely to last. A picture of the chaos brought
by war, symbolized by events in a small Kentish household. Also: Collected Plays (3 vols); Theatre (a novel). See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; FICTION/CRIME ; FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Menander, Greek, 343-292 BCE.

Girl from Samos. Rec: Bloom (drama)

Middleton, Thomas and William Rowley, English, 1580-1627 and ca. 1585-1626.
The Changeling. Rec: Bloom (drama)

Miller, Arthur The Crucible (1953) * Miller is one of finest American tragedians of the century: clear prose, good
characterization, rock-solid theatricality. This play (on witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692) discusses freedom of
conscience, and develops it so as to draw parallels with the 20th century (the play was produced shortly after the McCarthy
scandal, in the early 1950s). Also: Death of a Salesman; A View from the Bridge, etc. See Heilman.

Miller, Arthur, American, 1915-2005.

Death of a Salesman. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Spanish, 20th C.

Modern Spanish Theatre: An Anthology of Plays. Rec: Ward

Moliëre, Jean Baptiste Poquelin de The Misanthrope (1666)

Rhymed verse not being too popular on the English-speaking stage, Moliere is often represented by shoddy translations which
capture plot but nothing of style or atmosphere. This may account for his comparative neglect. Read him (or see him) in French
if possible; there is a tolerable English translation by Tony Harrison (1975), and even that is sometimes arch, over-sophisticated
and false. Also: The Miser, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, etc

Molière, French, 1622-1673.

Comedies. Rec: Adler (Selections) Fadiman 3 (Selections) Fadiman 4 (Selections) Good Reading Lubbock (Selections) Ward
(Selections)
School for Wives. Rec: Bloom Col61 GBWW
Critique of the School for Wives. Rec: GBWW
Tartuffe. Rec: Bloom Col37 Col61 GBWW SJC
Misanthrope. Rec: Bloom Col37 Col61 SJC
The Learned Ladies. Rec: Bloom
Physician in Spite of Himself. Rec: Col37 Col61
Don Juan. Rec: Bloom GBWW
School for Husbands. Rec: Bloom
Ridiculous Precieuses. Rec: Bloom
The Miser. Rec: Bloom GBWW
Would-Be Gentleman. Rec: Bloom GBWW
Imaginary Invalid. Rec: Bloom GBWW

Molina, Tirso de, Spanish, 1583-1648.

Rogue of Seville. Rec: Bloom Ward (drama)
El Burlador de Sevilla is a play by Tirso de Molina, published in Spain around 1630 , and set in the 14th century. Its title
translates as "The Scoundrel of Seville" or "The Playboy of Seville." Evidence suggests it to be the first written version of the
Don Juan legend. The author's name, Tirso de Molina, is a pen name.

Mrozek, Slawomir, Polish, 1930- .

Tango. Rec: Ward
The Ugupu Bird. Rec: Ward (drama)

Various Authors, Japanese, 14th C.

No (Noh) Theatre (selection such as Twenty Plays of the Noh Theatre). (See also Kanze, Zeami) Rec: Oriental StJE Ward

O'Casey, Sean The Silver Tassie (1928)

Poignant, tragic play on war and its aftermath, free of the surface Irish whimsy that can disfigure even O'Casey's best work.
Also: The Shadow of a Gunman; Juno and the Paycock; The Plough and the Stars

O'Casey, Sean, Irish, 1884-1964.

Juno and the Paycock. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Shadow of a Gunman. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Plough and the Stars. Rec: Bloom Ward

O'Neill, Eugene The Iceman Cometh (1946) * At his worst, O'Neill is portentous and bombastic; at his best (as here)
he earns the extravagant praise once heaped on him ("greatest genius of American theatre"). In a cheap tavern, craven dreamers
are startled into action by a travelling salesman—in effect a salesman of death. Also: Anna Christie; Mourning Becomes
Electra; Long Day's Journey into Night. See Heilman.

O'Neill, Eugene, American, 1888-1953. Nobel Laureate

Plays. Rec: Good Reading
Mourning Becomes Electra. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
The Iceman Cometh. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Long Day's Journey into Night. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Ward
Lazarus Laughed. Rec: Bloom

Orton, Joe, English, 1933-1967.

The Complete Plays. Rec: Bloom

Osborne, John Look Back in Anger (1956) 0 Resolute, over-praised play ("Love it or leave me," said Tynan), whose peevish,
ranting anti-hero set a long trend in snappy nihilism. It now seems dated, pat and over-emphatic. But it has energy and dramatic
power—the main qualities of Osborne's later, increasingly misanthropic output. Also: Luther, The Entertainer, Inadmissible
Evidence

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich, Russian, 1823-1886.

The Thunderstorm. Rec: Bloom Ward (drama)

Otway, Thomas, English, 1652-1685.

Venice Preserv'd. Rec: Bloom
Pinero, Arthur W. The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893)
Drawing-room Ibsen: urbanely concerned and wittily reflective. Pinero was overshadowed (not to say eclipsed) by early Shaw,
but is a solid craftsman producing enjoyable evenings in the theatre. Also: Trelawny of the "Wells"; The Magistrate, etc

Pinter, Harold No Man's Land (1975) * Paranoid despair expressed in ambiguous, poetic prose: the rhythms of ordinary
speech given elusive, unnerving hardness. Also: The Caretaker, The Homecoming; The Birthday Party, etc. See Esslin;
McCrindle.

Pinter, Harold, English, 1930- . Nobel Laureate

The Caretaker. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Room. Rec: Ward
The Dumb Waiter. Rec: Ward
The Homecoming. Rec: Bloom

Pirandello, Luigi Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)

A company of six characters appears during a rehearsal, announces that it is the incomplete, unused creation of the author's
imagination, and demands to be allowed to perform the drama that was never written for them but is implied in their lives.
Also: Henry IV; Tonight We Improvise, etc. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Pirandello, Luigi, Italian, 1867-1936. Nobel Laureate

Naked Masks: Five Plays. Rec: Bloom
The Late Mattia Pascal. Rec: Ward
Six Characters in Search of an Author. Rec: Boston PL GBWW NYPL Ward

Plautus, Roman, ca. 254-184 BCE.

Comedies. Rec: Ward
Pseudolus. Rec: Bloom
Braggart Soldier. Rec: Bloom
The Rope. Rec: Bloom
Amphitryon. Rec: Bloom

Priestley, J. B., English, 1894-1984.

The Image Men. Rec: Burgess
The Good Companions. Rec: Good Reading

Rabe, David, American, 1940- .

Streamers. Rec: Bloom

Racine, Jean Phaedra (1677) *

Pellucid, civilized verse, grave and sonorous, animates gory human dilemmas (incest, parricide, assassination) from the
mythology and history of Greece and Rome. Like Moliere (qv), Racine is not notably well served in English translation: best
enjoyed in French. This play is an exception: Robert Lowell's translation (1963) is dignified and fine, poet matching poet line
for line. Also: Berenice; Andromache; A thaliah, etc. See LITERARY CRITICISM (Stendhal)

Racine, French, 1639-1699.

Tragedies. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Phèdre. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Rexmo SJC
Berenice. Rec: GBWW
Andromache. Rec: Bloom
Britannicus. Rec: Bloom
Athaliah. Rec: Bloom

Rattigan, Terence The Winslow Boy (1946)

Switchback critical reputation; but Rattigan's best work (this play; The Deep Blue Sea; Separate Tables) will last. He is a first-
class dramatist of the second rank, the Galsworthy of drama (except that Galsworthy got there first).
Redfield, William Letters from an Actor (1966) a When Gielgud and Burton toured Ham let in America in 1964, Redfield
played Guildenstern. Throughout, he wrote letters describing the preparation, performance and reception; then worked the
letters up into this enjoyable, informative book.

Roberts, Vera M. The Nature of Theatre (1971)

Magnificent book on the aesthetics and practicalities of drama: what comedy, tragedy, melodrama are; the role of the audience
in "creating" a performance; the function of spectacle. Accessible, compendious, important.

Sartre, Jean-Paul Crime Passionel (Les Mains Sales)(1948)

Probably the best political play of the post-war period, embraced by cold warriors as an expose of Communist opportunism—
the plot hinges on a change in the Party "line"—and as often disowned by Sartre because he felt he had betrayed the cause he
intermittently endorsed. Also: Nekrassov; Kean; The Flies; and (again, superb theatre) Vicious Circle (Huis-clos). See
BIOGRAPHY; FICTION/NOVELS; PHILOSOPHY

Sartre, Jean Paul, French, 1905-1980. Nobel Laureate

No Exit. Rec: Adler Bloom

Sayers, Dorothy, L. The Man Born to Be King (1943)

Dated but exemplary version of the Gospels, simplified but never falsified (especially for those who greet the news as
genuinely good). Radio drama is a relatively neglected field; Sayers was a pioneer and a masterly popularizer. See
FICTION/CRIME

Schiller, Friedrich von, German, 1759-1805.

Wilhelm Tell. Rec: Lubbock
The Robbers. Rec: Bloom
Mary Stuart. Rec: Bloom
Wallenstein. Rec: Bloom
Don Carlos. Rec: Bloom Ward

Shaffer, Peter Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964)

Mannered, stylish, theatre-of-spectacle mixed with Rattiganesque private agonizing, this stunning play charts the relationship
between the conquering Pizarro and the Incas of Peru in 1533. A healing friendship: they adopt, invest each other. Also: Equus;
Five Finger Exercise, etc

Shakespeare, William Othello (c. 1604)

What can one say? He is an Everest, and all other dramatists stumble in his foothills; the poet of poets, the man of men? All of
that, and none of that: he is unique. Othello is one of the most accessible of his greatest plays: poetry, form and spectacle are
kept in perfect balance. For readers, the excellent Arden edition is recommended for good text, interesting and useful notes.
Also: Complete Works. See Granville-Barker; Masefield; Van Doren; LITERARY CRITICISM (Bradley, Johnson, Knight,
Stendhal); POETRY

Shakespeare, William, English, 1564-1616.

Henry VIII. Rec: Harvard
Complete Works. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Seymour-Smith Ward
Richard II. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Henry IV, Part 1. Rec: Aquinas Col37 Col61 SJC
Henry IV, Part 2. Rec: Col37 SJC
As You Like It. Rec: SJC
Twelfth Night. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Hamlet. Rec: Aquinas Meaningful SJC
Othello. Rec: Aquinas Meaningful SJC
King Lear. Rec: Aquinas Col61 Collh91 Meaningful SJC
Macbeth. Rec: Aquinas Rex SJC
Antony and Cleopatra. Rec: Col61
Tempest. Rec: Aquinas Col61 Rex SJC
Sonnets. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Julius Caesar. Rec: Aquinas
Coriolanus. Rec: Utne
Shank, Theodore J. (ed) A Digest of 500 Plays (1963) 10 Compact guide: outline of plots, difficulties and production
requirements of significant plays from Aeschylus' Persians to Wouk's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.

Shaw, George Bernard Saint Joan (1924) * Shaw's unsentimental, unfussy drama at its best. Prose has poise and point;
arguments lucid, not too wordy; stage action compelling; portrait of clear-headed young girl (a recurring theme in Shaw's
work) persuasive and warm. Also: Our Theatres in the Nineties (critical writings)

Shaw, George Bernard, Irish, 1856-1950. Nobel Laureate

Plays and Prefaces. Rec: Adler (Selections) Good Reading
Selected Plays and Prefaces. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Heartbreak House. Rec: Bloom
Man and Superman. Rec: Ward
Pygmalion. Rec: Bloom NYPL
Saint Joan. Rec: Bloom GBWW Ward
Major Barbara. Rec: Bloom
Back to Methuselah. Rec: Bloom
Major Critical Essays. Rec: Bloom

Shepard, Sam, American, 1943- .

Seven Plays. Rec: Bloom

Sheridan, Richard B. The School for Scandal(1777) * One of the most enduring comedies in English: funny dialogue, in
graceful 18th-century prose; razor characterization; fast action. For grace and speed, matched by his other most enduring play,
The Rivals, a generally tighter, less prismatic piece. Also: The Critic, etc

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, Irish-English, 1751-1816.

The Critic. Rec: Lubbock
Plays. Rec: Ward
School for Scandal. Rec: Bloom Lubbock
Rivals. Rec: Bloom Lubbock

Shudraka, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 400.

Little Clay Cart. (See also Great Sanskrit Plays in New English Transcreations) Rec: MW Asian Oriental

Sophocles King Oedipus (c. 430 BC) 11: One of the rocks on which all later European drama is founded. Formal,
elegant poetry: for grandeur of themes, Sophocles is matched only by Shakespeare (qv); for limpidity of style, by Racine (qv).
His work resists translation: good English versions are by Kitto (Sophocles: Three Tragedies, 1962—plain), and by Roche (The
Oedipus Plays of Sophocles, 1958—fancy). Pound's magnificent The Women of Trachis (1956) is one of the crankiest
translations ever made. Also: Antigone; Electra, etc

Sophocles, Greek, 496-406 BCE.

Tragedies. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward
Oedipus Rex. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Lubbock Meaningful Rex SJC
Oedipus at Colonus. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rex SJC
Antigone. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rex SJC
Ajax. Rec: Bloom Col61
Philoctetes. Rec: Bloom Col61 SJC
Electra. Rec: Bloom
Women of Trachis. Rec: Bloom
Theban Plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone). Rec: Good Reading

Soyinka, Wole Death of the King's Horseman (1972) * The greatest play of the greatest African playwright. Based on a true
story of the jarring conflict between old ways and new, between tribal mores and the imposed ways of the British resident, in
southern Nigeria at the end of World War II. Soyinka has some of the power and eloquence of the Greek tragedians, though he
lacks their poetry. An extraordinary and forceful play.

Soyinka, Wole, Nigerian writing in English, 1934- . Nobel Laureate

A Dance of the Forest. Rec: Bloom
Aké. Rec: Good Reading
Stanislayski, Constantin Building a Character (1950) fiiP
Greatest single influence on 20th-century acting technique, Stanislayski was responsible for the school of "method acting",
advocating intense inward preparation for the physical realization of character on stage. Also: An Actor Prepares

Stoppard, Tom Travesties (1972)

Considers wittily what might have happened if Lenin, Joyce and the Dadaist poet Tzara (all living in Zurich simultaneously
during World War I) had met each other. Stoppard's passion is the interplay of intransigent philosophies: his method is a cold
cascade of words. Also: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Jumpers; Night and Day, etc. See McCrindle

Stoppard, Tom, English, 1937- .

Travesties. Rec: Bloom

Strindberg, August, Swedish, 1849-1912.

Plays. Rec: Ward
To Damascus. Rec: Bloom
Miss Julie. Rec: Bloom
The Father. Rec: Bloom
The Dance of Death. Rec: Bloom
The Ghost Sonata. Rec: Bloom
A Dream Play. Rec: Bloom

Synge, J. M. The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

Magical Irishness, about a stranger arriving at a remote Mayo inn (the Iceman cometh?); whimsical surface with skeleton of
steel. Also: Riders to the Sea; The Well of the Saints, etc

Synge, John Millington, Irish, 1871-1909.

Collected Plays. Rec: Bloom

Taubman, Howard The Making of the American Theatre (1965) fi 0 Lively history of the growth of the theatre in 19th-
century America. For some, first nights in Boston and New York; for others, touring in covered wagons, treading the dusty trail,
bringing theatre like water to thirsty desert land. Great fun.

Terence, Roman, ca. 195-159 BCE.

Comedies. Rec: Ward
Girl from Andros. Rec: Bloom
The Eunuch. Rec: Bloom
The Mother-in-Law. Rec: Bloom

Tourneur, Cyril, English, ca. 1575-1626.

The Revenger's Tragedy. Rec: Bloom

Travers, Ben Rookery Nook (1926) *

Travers' Aldwych farces are definitive works: warmer and more humane than Feydeau or Coward (qv), full of ingenious twists
of plot and language. His stature increases with time; his plays are sure to last. Also: Thark; Plunder, The Bed before Yesterday,
etc

Van Doren, Mark Shakespeare (1939) di .1

Trenchant essays on each of the plays by a well-known American poet-teacher. Influential on production style in the 1940s and
1950s; full of insight and good sense, in a fluent and graceful style. Also: Don Quixote's Profession. See Granville-Barker;
Masefield; Shakespeare; LITERARY CRITICISM (Bradley, Johnson, Knight, Stendhal); POETRY (Shakespeare)

Vega, Lope de, Spanish, 1562-1635.

Peribáñez. Rec: Ward
Fuente Ovejuna. Rec: Bloom Ward
Dog in the Manger. Rec: Ward
Knight from Olmedo. Rec: Bloom Ward
Justice Without Vengeance. Rec: Ward
La Dorotea. Rec: Bloom
Lost in a Mirror. Rec: Bloom

Vicente, Gil, Portuguese writing in Spanish and Portuguese, ca. 1465-ca. 1536.
Four Plays. Rec: Ward

Wang Shifu, Chinese, fl. 1295-1307.

Story of the Western Wing (Romance of the Western Chamber). Rec: MW Asian
It is an amplified tsa-chu; a then popular theatrical form. (wikipedia)

Webster, John The White Devil (1612)

T. S. Eliot said that Webster "saw the skull beneath the skin", and this is certainly true of the two "revenge" tragedies on which
his reputation rests. Violent and macabre; all-pervasive evil and darkness relieved by passages of fiercely brilliant poetry. Also:
The Duchess of Malfi, etc

Webster, John, English, ca. 1578-ca. 1632 .

White Devil. Rec: Bloom
Duchess of Malfi. Rec: Bloom Rex

Wedekind, Frank, German, 1864-1918.

Lulu Plays. Rec: Bloom
Spring Awakening. Rec: Bloom

Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Eamest(1895)

Cool as a cucumber sandwich, reasonable as Euclid, this famous farce avoids the melodrama that often flaws Wilde's other
work. Also: Lady Windermere's Fan, etc. See BIOGRAPHY; DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS

Wilde, Oscar, Irish, 1854-1900.

Plays. Rec: Bloom

Wilder, Thornton Our Town (1938)

By now the American classic, revived almost every year in almost every American town. The play deserves this fate, being
utterly simple and basic, about birth, love, life, death, the immemorially important dramatic themes. Also; The Skin of Our
Teeth; The Matchmaker

Wilder, Thornton, American, 1897-1975.

Three Plays. Rec: Bloom
The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Rec: ML Novels Time
Heaven's My Destination. Rec: BOMC

Williams, Raymond Drama in Performance (1954)

Brilliant recreations of first audiences' experience of Greek theatre (Sophocles' Antigone), English medieval drama
(Everyman), Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra), Restoration theatre, Stanislayski (Moscow Arts' The Seagull), modern
experimental theatre (Eliot, Brecht, Beckett) and film (Bergman's Wild Strawberries). Analyses the relationship between text
and performance, a neglected, vital subject. Revised edition (1968) recommended. Also: Drama from Ibsen to Eliot. See
MEDIA

Williams, Tennessee A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Theatre of magnolia-scented exoticism. Set in the French quarter of New Orleans, with characters and dialogue as lush and
exuberant as the place itself. Williams' stature is hard to assess; the theatrical power of his plays is undeniable. Also: Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, etc. See Heilman.

Williams, Tennessee, American, 1911-1983.

The Glass Menagerie. Rec: Bloom
A Streetcar Named Desire. Rec: Bloom
Summer and Smoke. Rec: Bloom
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Rec: LAT
Moise and the World of Reason. Rec: Harvard

Wilson, August, American, 1945-2005.

Fences. Rec: Bloom
Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Rec: Bloom Utne

Wycherley, William The Country Wife (1675)

Savage but nonetheless comic satire of Restoration—and human—foibles. This was the first great stage success after the return
of the English court from exile in France, and is still a successful theatrical piece. Important for brilliant comic dialogue,
unheard of on the English stage before. Also: The Plain Dealer Yeats, W. B. The Countess Cathleen (1892)
Yeats' plays (really dramatic poems) display a mixture of influences, treating Gaelic legend in styles adapted from Greek and
Japanese theatre. Unstageable; unique; unforgettable. See POETRY

Wycherley, William, English, 1641-1715.

The Country Wife. Rec: Bloom
The Plain Dealer. Rec: Bloom

Yamauchi, Wakako, American, 1924- .

Songs My Mother Taught Me. Rec: Hungry Mind

Zeami, Japanese, 1363-1443.

Atsumori. (See also No [Noh] Theatre) Rec: MW Asian
Izutsu. (See also No [Noh] Theatre) Rec: MW Asian

William Alfred

William Alfred is the Abbott Laurence Lowell Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. A native of New York City, he is a noted
playwright (Hogan's Goat), translator (Modern Library Beowulf) and teacher. Besides his achievements in the classroom, he
continues to produce screenplays and scripts for television and the theater.

These books might prepare their readers for the challenges of the twenty-first century by prompting them to ask questions of
the fictions they indulge themselves in, along these lines:
1. Since changes inevitably alter life and our way of dealing with it, so threatening any fixed order we may aspire to that we
grow desperate or enraged, can no way be found to assess the perils of that desperation and rage by assessing the fictions in
which those feelings are expressed?
2. Does private rage avalanche into international catastrophe?
If that be the case, can no means be found to divert that rage from racist, religious, national or political objects to those
elements in our nature which in the nobly furious words of Conor Cruse O'Brien "make us more eager to die for the good of
mankind than to live and work for it"?

John Dos Passos. Three Soldiers (1921). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. (Pb)
I saw the Lew Ayres—Lewis Wohlheirn movie version of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front when I was
eight or nine, and remembering it still at sixteen, took Three Soldiers out of the library. Reading it made me a pacifist.

Evelyn Waugh. Vile Bodies (1930). Boston: Little, Brown, 1977. (Pb)
In the pinched, sad thirties, I became an addict of P. G. Wodehouse through reading his novels serialized in the Saturday
Evening Post, which at a nickel a copy even I could afford. Someone told me Evelyn Waugh was funnier; and I read Vile
Bodies. Funnier the book was; but I was as troubled as amused by such passages as:
"Adam darling, what's the matter?"
"I don't know... Nina, do you ever feel that things can't go on much longer?"
"What do you mean by things—us or everything?" "Everything."
Those, taken together with the book's ending, in 1930, on a battlefield during World War II gave me a bleak pause.
Wodehouse's irrepressibly cheerful Noel Coward fox-trot had turned into Ravel's "La Valse" under Waugh's manic baton.

Waugh, Evelyn, English, 1903-1966.

Vile Bodies. Rec: Bloom
Put Out More Flags. Rec: Bloom

Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain (1924). H. T. Lowe-Porter, trans. New York: Random House, 1969. (Pb)
I read Mann's ironic diagnosis of the diseases which brought imperial Europe down in Harry Slochower's unforgettable course
at Brooklyn College. I had just returned, my pacifism even more confirmed, from service in the war in the Pacific. I was
particularly struck by the way Mann built toward the bloody delirium of his last chapter by dramatizing the growing anger of
his characters at private unfulfillment and the fright and disappointment that accompanies the death of an accepted order.

Elizabeth Bowen. The House in Paris (1935). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)
Years later, advising a tutorial student on a thesis, I reread The House in Paris; and I saw the anger which Mann had
anatomized in his male characters embodied in a woman. Appalled by the prospect of a stuffy marriage with a man of her own
class, that book's upper-middle-class heroine betrays both her husband-to-be and her best friend by sleeping with her best
friend's fiancé. Waking the next morning in a gray hotel room, she assesses that experience in terms of a failed revolution:
"People must hope so much when they tear streets up and fight at barricades. But, whoever wins, the streets are laid again and
the trams start running again. One hopes too much by destroying things." She must be the first writer who noticed the
dangerous fusion of elated hope with destructiveness.

George Orwell. Coming up for Air (1940). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1969. (Pb)
I reread Corning up for Air with that same tutorial student when I assigned it to her to widen her sense of the uses of narrative
in that period. In the third chapter of that book, its protagonist, a white-collar worker, looks out of his commuters' train at a
bomber overhead and thinks, with a calmness that seems part relief, that in two years' time such planes will be blasting
everything in sight to kingdom come. I also assigned the letters of Evelyn Waugh from the years preceding and immediately
following the First World War that she might notice the reaction of exasperated envy that irascible seismograph of his culture
had to those returning from the international massacre.

Robert Brustein

Robert Brustein is artistic director of the acclaimed American Repertory Theater company in Cambridge, director of the Loeb
Drama Center and professor of English at Harvard University. As one of the leaden of the American resident theater movement,
he is known for his enormous support of innovative work and his ability to galvanize other creative people. He is theater critic
for the New Republic.

Anton Chekhov. Plays and Letters (1884-1904). New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. (Pb)
The best example—after Shakespeare—of how an artist can express himself truthfully and still retain the full measure of his
humanity.

Lionel Trilling. The Liberal Imagination (1950). New York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1979.
At the same time a great collection of essays on literature and society, and a demonstration of the continuing tension between
liberalism and art.

William Butler Yeats. The Poems of W B. Yeats (1887-1939). Richard Finneran, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. (Pb)
The master modern poet, finding language for every human emotion from the pangs of unrequited love to the ache of old age.
Henrik Ibsen. Complete Major Prose and Plays (ca. 1880s). Rolf Fjelde, trans. New York: New American Library, n.d. (Pb)
. Speeches and New Letters (ca. 1880s). Arne Kildal, trans. Brooklyn: Haskell, 1972.
No better record of the adversarial relationship between the artist and the state.

James Joyce. Ulysses (1918-20). New York: Random House, 1976. (Pb)
All of English literature in one book—compressed and mythologized through the language and vision of a unique modern
artist.

Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophy and Truth (1870s). Daniel Breazeale, ed. and trans. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1979.
A revolutionary series of treatises on the transvaluation of all inherited values.

THEATRE: WORLD THEATRE

Graham Ley
Study and appreciation of the theatre have expanded in recent decades from close attention to scripts and plays to a
consideration of performance. In this reading list I have concentrated on introductions with that emphasis, accepting that
readers may wish to `travel' in their interests outside Britain and Europe, and back from the present to the past. Illustrations are
undoubtedly important in any appreciation of performance, and, with some specific exceptions, the books listed here are
helpful in that respect.

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of the play is to arouse

the passions of the audience so that by the route of passions may be opened up new
relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man.
ARTHUR MILLER

Theatre Through the Ages (1975) by Cesare Molinari. A clear and coherent presentation, with excellent illustrations, that
concentrates on Europe.

Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Theatre (1977) edited by Martin Esslin. A broad introduction edited by one of the most
impressive of modern critical thinkers on the theatre.

Illustrated History of British Theatre (1994) by Simon Trussler. An ambitious and informative new survey of British theatre
from its beginnings to the present day.

Shakespeare's Theatre (1992) by Peter Thomson. The second edition of an excellent and thoroughly readable introduction to
the Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatrical performance.

A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theatre (1991) by Graham Ley. A companion for those particularly interested in
the performance of Greek tragedy and comedy.

The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (1985) by Richard Hunter. An excellent introduction to the forms of Greek and
Roman comedy which anticipate modern social comedy.

The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre (1993) by James Brandon. An excellent, short introduction to the immense range of
theatrical performance in Asia by a leading expert.

Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance (1990) edited by Farley Richmond and others. A thoughtful appreciation, in
informative detail, of traditions which include a strong emphasis on dance as well as drama.

The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre (1994) by M Barham and others A new survey of drama and
theatre practice which offers an unparalleled introduction.

A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (1990) by E Barba. This look at intercultural theatre practice and experiment has
fascinating illustrations.

The Director and the Stage (1982) by E Braun. On the art of the director.

British Theatre Design: The Modern Age (1989) by J Goodwin. This has superb illustrations, and is a good starting point for
an interest in this aspect of theatre.

SHAKESPEARE
Derek Parker

One of Dr Johnson's chief regrets at being mortal was the thought of leaving this world for one in which Shakespeare's works
were no longer available. I am on his side. A good edition of the Complete Works is an essential: probably in the celebrated
Arden edition, though there are plenty of handy individual paperbacks of the plays and poems. Shakespeare is quite simply
inexhaustible: and if the time comes when you think you have exhausted him, there is a long line of critics and biographers to
remind you that far from touching bottom, you are still splashing in the shallows. My favourite biography is Samuel
Schoenbaum's wonderful Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, which came out in 1975 and reproduced every contemporary
document remotely connected with the poet.
This is sadly long out of print, but is well worth seeking out; and happily, Professor Schoenbaum has followed it up with a
simpler edition, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (1977). As for the rest, we shall never be able to put our
hand on Shakespeare's shoulder, but through the plays, the criticism, the biographies, we can make an effort to clutch at his
sleeve - and sometimes seem to feel it flutter in our grasp, across four centuries.

Shakespeare's writing was a magic circle in which he himself could only tread ... He invented a work which was peculiar to
himself, and not to be compared with the productions of any writer of any nation - in which he had no follower nor second.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (1975) by Samuel Schoenbaum. Contrary to popular belief, we know a great deal about
Shakespeare's life - perhaps more than about any other Elizabethan except the Queen herself. Schoenbaum gives it to us
straight: no interpretation, no guesses - just the facts.

Going to Shakespeare (1978) by J C Trewin. Trewin saw every notable Shakespearean production between 1920 and 1980;
his comments on the plays are based on performance, and in this book he shows us how they work, illuminating many a scene
by remembering how Laurence Olivier declaimed a particular speech, or how Godfrey Tearle moved on a particular line. For
sheer insight, this beats many a scholarly tome hollow.

Young Shakespeare (1988) and Shakespeare: The Later Years (1992) by Russell Fraser. There are more lives of
Shakespeare in and out of print than the strongest man could shake the largest number of sticks at; these two are among the
most accessible. There is a certain amount of conjecture, but it is sensible conjecture, and Fraser not only presents all the
alternatives, but supports the most likely with good argument - and gives us at the same time some excellent background to the
age.

Shakespeare: Court, Crowd and Playhouse (1993) by Francois Laroque. A charming little book which gives us a vivid
picture of life in Shakespeare's time – with excellent and often unusual illustrations - and a selection of the most important con-
temporary documents.

The Elizabethan World Picture (1943) by E M W Tillyard. One of the difficulties about reading Shakespeare is his age is so
remote to us: his anti-Semitism and vivid chauvinism ring strangely in our ears. Professor Tillyard helps us over all the stiles
with an insight into the Elizabethan world which is dazzlingly interesting as well as illuminating.

The Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817; recent editions available) by William Hazlitt. Hazlitt was perhaps the most
sympathetic of all 19th-century critics of Shakespeare. Wonderfully readable, his opinions have dated little - and he is man
enough to know when he is beaten: he wishes he did not have to write about Lear, because 'all that we can say must fall far
short of the subject'.

Shakespeare's Workmanship (1918) by Arthur Quiller-Couch. Here is a critic who, first beaten down by F R Leavis, has
remained stubbornly out of fashion; but there are few writers about Shakespeare's plays in whose company I would rather be.
Quite simply and above all, the king of enthusiasts, he makes you want to read the man.

Prefaces to Shakespeare (1923-47) by Harley Granville Barker. Barker, one of the great Shakespeare directors of all time,
sadly failed to write prefaces to all the plays; but those he did prepare are among the great examples of practical Shakespeare
criticism.

A Notebook on William Shakespeare (1948) by Edith Sitwell. Nobody would now put forward Edith Sitwell as a great critic,
but her devotion to Shakespeare gave her quirky insights and a sense of excitement which raise the short hairs on the back of
the neck.

ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA

Derek Parker

The best option is, of course, to read about the plays and then see them in performance. However, the best dramas can well bear
reading as well as seeing, and there is beauty in Marlowe, fun in Ben Jonson, darkness and honor in John Webster and Thomas
Middleton which delight and intrigue almost as much on the page as on the boards. If the Elizabethans had an unequalled way
with language, the harsher, more astringent tragedies of the Jacobeans can be as exciting - and in the absence of novels, bring
their period alive with quite extraordinary brilliance.
Great drama is the souvenir of the adventures of a master
among the pieces of his own soul.
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

Five Pre-Shakespearean Comedies (1934) edited by F S Boas. Among these, Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister 1553 is
the earliest known English comedy, about the courting of the Widow Custance, and Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece
1486 the earliest `straight' secular play. They show a distinct debt to the ancient Greek and Roman dramatists, though
thoroughly anglicised.

The Collected Plays (1590-1604; several modem editions) by Christopher Marlowe. The bloodshed, treachery and titanic
ambition of Tamburlaine the Great, the isolated pathos of Edward II, and above all the tragic, ironical dignity and majesty of
Doctor Faustus, make Marlowe's plays pioneering works for their time, and a considerable influence on Shakespeare.

The Collected Plays (1598-1631; several modem editions) by Ben Jonson. `0 rare Ben Jenson!' says the stone over his grave in
Westminster, and if his plays now seem stronger in production than on the page, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair repay
reading, bringing the London of the early 1600s vividly alive - swindlers and mountebanks, lawyers and pickpockets, idle
women and busy gossips.

Early English Stages (1959) by Glynne Wickham. To understand fully just how the Elizabethan dramas appeared on the stages
of the time, we need to know about the boy players, methods of staging, the theatrical politics of the time, the rivalries between
the various companies - and how the productions slowly began to take a form we would recognize today.

English Plays and Players (1956) by G B Harrison. A fascinating survey of the 35 years or so which comprised the great
period of Elizabethan drama - that is, from the writing of Marlowe's Tamburlaine in the 1580s to Shakespeare's Hamlet at the
turn of the century, with just a few reputable dramas in the following 15 years. Stage and university, the boy players, the lives
of Jonson, Marlowe, Robert Greene, Essex's rebellion ... all written with vigour and commitment.

The Rise of the Common Player (1962) by M C Bradbrook. It takes a real effort of imagination, now, to believe that a boy
could have played Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth; but reading a good account of the actors of the Elizabethan theatre we begin to
under-stand how it may have been - and how the often clumsy comedy must have been leavened by the jigs and knockabout
farce of the period.

ENGLISH DRAMA 1700-1900

Derek Parker

Really excellent dramatists were thin on the ground between the end of the Restoration period and the years of the solid, safe
Victorian theatre - where nevertheless a number of anti-Victorian dramatists beavered away subversively - Wilde, Shaw, Arthur
Pinero, T W Robertson, Henry Arthur Jones managing to entertain but also shock and educate audiences.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors to escape from the pressure
of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
CHARLES LAMB

Four English Comedies (1950) edited by J M Morrell. Just four plays give us a bird's-eye view of the English theatre between
1606 (when Ben Jonson's Volpone was first performed at Lincoln's Inn) and 1777, when Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The
School for Scandal delighted audiences at Drury Lane. In between are William Congreve's The Way of the World 1700 and
Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer 1773 - four of the best, wittiest, most delightful plays in the language.

Restoration Tragedy (1930) by Bonamy Dobree. A first-rate survey of the subject, including the work of John Dryden, George
Etherege, Thomas Shadwell, and John Vanbrugh - most of whose plays are brilliant comments on the period and its foibles.

The Plays of Oscar Wilde (1892-95) by Oscar Wilde. If there is any British comedy after She Stoops to Conquer which can
compare with Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest 1895, it is probably one of Wilde's other plays; his theatrical instincts
were impeccable, his wit coruscating; here are four plays that are as enjoyable to read as to see.
Our Theatre in the Nineties (1932) by George Bernard Shaw. For a general survey of English drama towards the end of the
19th century, turn to Shaw, who remains the most entertaining (if not always the shrewdest) of all theatre critics, even including
the great William Hazlitt. The articles he wrote for the Saturday Review between 1895 and 1898 are quite simply wonderful.

Around Theatres (1953) and More Theatres (1969) by Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm succeeded Shaw as drama critic for the
Saturday Review, and his essays lead us gently into the 20th century with articles on all the major plays produced between
1898 and 1910.

BRITISH DRAMA 1900 TO THE PRESENT

Derek Parker

World War I changed the theatre just as it changed everything else; soon came Coward, ready to show the 1920s their own face
in The Vortex 1924, putting drugs on stage for the first time. There was a brief flirtation with poetic drama, led by T S Eliot and
Christopher Fry, with W H Auden and Christopher Isherwood in the wings; Terence Rattigan, with elegant, mannered
comedies, bridged the period between the 1930s and the 1950s, when came the new generation - Samuel Beckett, Harold
Pinter, Arnold Wesker, John Arden followed by Tom Stoppard, Edward Bond, David Storey, David Hare - and the most fruitful
period of English drama for 400 years.

We do not think that a play can be worth acting and not worth reading.
W B YEATS

The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw (1882-1948; several modern editions) by Bernard Shaw. Here is the Goliath of modern
drama, who produced a body of work that cannot be ignored. Few of his plays failed to rouse audiences to argument, from
Widowers' Houses (and in 1892 a play about a prostitutes' madam and her daughter made a sensation) to The Apple Can 1929,
which ends with America pleading to be allowed to rejoin the Commonwealth. It is difficult to conceive of anyone who would
not find the majority of these plays amusing and stimulating.

The Voysey Inheritance (1905) and The Madras House (1907) by Harley Granville Barker. The former, about a scandal which
destroys a family business, and the latter, a feminist social comedy, show what can be done in the way of skilful workmanship
(Barker started life as an actor) combined with a strong sense of social values. Read, too, Barker's Prefaces to Shakespeare
(1923-47), the best of Victorian Shakespearean criticism.

The Collected Plays of Noel Coward (several editions) by Noel Coward. Two of Coward's plays may be (a dangerous
prophesy) as near immortal as any writer could hope: Hay Fever 1925 and Private Lives 1930. These are comedies such as the
English stage had not seen since Congreve. But recent productions have shown other, less regarded plays - Design for Living
(1933) and even Peace in Our Time (1949) to be well worth revival.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967),Jumpers (1972), and Arcadia (1994) by Tom Stoppard. All his plays are
examples of high wit and dramatic ingenuity. These three at least should be read. Elegance is not a quality we immediately
associate with most contemporary playwrights; here it energizes rather than weakens the plays.

The Birthday Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960), and No Man's Land (1965) by Harold Pinter. The Caretaker bears
perhaps a stronger resemblance to traditional drama than any other of his pieces. These lead into the writer's private dream
world; asked what any line of his play `means', the author replies that it means what it says, and we must make what we can of
that; but few people will read his work without at the very least a puzzled fascination, and at best a feeling of being in the
presence of a very considerable dramatist.

Murder in the Cathedral (1935) by T S Eliot. Arguably the best verse drama of our time, though The Family Reunion (1939)
has fine passages; Eliot wrote three other plays, none of which has found a place in the contemporary repertory.

The Lady's Not for Burning (1949) by Christopher Fry. Fry is the only other verse dramatist since 1900 whose work survives
in occasional production; this remains his best play, and still delights through his pleasure in playing with language; but some
of his others - notably A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946) - are better than some critics allow.
Look Back in Anger (1956) by John Osborne. A seminal play which altered the face of English drama by its rage, invective,
emotional conviction, and determination to present on stage the passions of our time. It must be read for that reason, though
recent revivals have proved it irredeemably second-rate as drama. The Entertainer (1957) is a somewhat better play.

Waiting for Godot (1955) by Samuel Beckett. Many a playgoer went to see Waiting for Godot convinced that it was nonsense,
only to emerge - perhaps without 'understanding' the play - convinced that s/he had been in the presence of greatness. It now
seems easier than it did 40 years ago; Happy Days 1962, End Game 1958 and others still present difficulties for the literal-
minded, but cannot, should not, must not be ignored.

The Norman Conquests (1974) by Alan Ayckbourn. The astonishingly prolific Ayckboum has probably brought more
audiences to the edge of hysteria than any dramatist since Coward. His plays must be seen, but many of their qualities come
through on the page - including his amazing ingenuities of construction, and his darkly effective talent for showing us tragedy
through the lens of comedy.

AMERICAN DRAMA
T J Lustig

“There are no dramatic subjects in a country which has witnessed no great political catastrophes and in which love invariably
leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony” - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835). Right about so
much else, de Tocqueville was signally wrong in this, for the political and emotional problems of 20th-century American
democracy have produced a rich body of dramatic work. The tradition has been a predominantly realist one, though it has often
strained that overstretched word well beyond its breaking point. But within its characteristic concentration on the relation
between the (mainly middle-class) individual and society, American drama has told the story of the nation from the period of
colonial expansion to that of imperial domination. It has dramatized the political in the personal in its treatment of the
individual and the family. And it has staged the personal in the political in its analysis of the American dream and its spiritual
evacuation. Often concerned with property, violence, truth, and the presence of the past, 20th-century American drama has seen
itself both as weapon and as cure.

American drama stages a nation thinking (or not thinking) in front of itself.
MATTHEW ROUDANE

Trifles (1916) by Susan Glaspell. An early one-act play with a poignant and beautifully crafted feminist twist. Glaspell's
treatment of women from their own point of view has not been equalled until the more recent works of Marsha Norman and
Beth Henley.

Desire under the Elms (1924) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) by Eugene O'Neill. Precise notations of family
conflict, underwritten by an eerie sense of the presence of the past and the hard American landscape. O'Neill's use of language
and symbol can seem heavy-handed, but these are works of unparalleled dramatic intensity, crucial statements of the central
dynamic forces in American drama.

Waiting for Lefty (1935) by Clifford Odets. With its triumphant final chorus of `Hello America! ... We're stormbirds of the
working class', this is the definitive American agitprop play.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams. Unique in its raw intensity, but apparently committed to emotional
sensationalism at the cost of any political or philosophical engagement

Death of a Salesman (1949) and Broken Glass (1993) by Arthur Miller. The most powerful, coherent, and ethically engaged
of American dramatists, Miller has made his work a long attempt to assert the value of connection, of the individual's profound
relation and responsibility to wider communities.

True West (1980) by Sam Shepard. This highly focused treatment of sibling rivalry resonates with American myths.

Fences (1985) by August Wilson. Beginning with family life in the back yard of a black American family, this play goes on to
expose inexorably the historical determinants of 20th-century African-American experience.
Oleanna (1992) by David Mamet. Misunderstood by some audiences of the first production as an attack on political
correctness, Mamet's latest play is in fact a classic liberal study of the ineluctable corruptions of power.
Economics

Watching economists tear at one another's throats, and reflecting on the holes in his own pockets, the layman might be forgiven
for wondering, cynically, just how relevant this subject is to human life. The books in this list (an unpolemical, undogmatic
selection) may go some way to providing an answer, or answers. "You pays your money . .
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Dalton); MEDICINE (Fuchs); PHILOSOPHY (Ortega y Gasset); POLITICS (Schumpeter);
SOCIOLOGY (Weber)

Barber, William J. A History of Economic Thought (1967) Pa

Introduction to the work of Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Keynes. Critical outline of their theories, set in the context of
the particular economic problems they were trying to solve.

Beckerman, Wilfred In Defence of Economic Growth (1974)

Reply to Mishan (qv) and the Club of Rome, making a strong case that the hidden costs of growth can be accounted for, and
that economic growth that takes these into account will still show a net gain in welfare.

Boyer, Richard O., American, 1903-1973.

Labor's Untold Story (With Herbert M. Morais). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Braverman, Harry, American, 1920-1976.

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Chaianov, A. V. (Chayanov), Russian, 1888-1939.

The Theory of Peasant Economy. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Donaldson, Peter Economics of the Real World (1973) a

A concise introduction, in accessible language.

Drucker, P. F. The Age of Discontinuity (1969) a

Lucid discussion of the wider issues at the heart of the new economy: micro-technology, industrial pluralism, mass leisure, the
multinational economic state. Full of theories and programmes for action—still (a dozen years after the book was written)
relevant, essential and largely unfulfilled. Ideal reading for those baffled by today's economic headlines. Also: Landmarks of
Tomorrow; The Future of Industrial Man, etc

Friedman, Milton Capitalism and Freedom (1962) 9*

The Samuel Smiles of the "New Monetarism" shows the relationship between his brand of laissez-faire economics and his
ideology. Read it to understand the wider—or narrower—significance of the current fashion for monetarist economic policies.
Also: Essays in Positive Economics, etc

Friedman, Milton, American, 1912- .

Capitalism and Freedom. Rec: National Review TLS
Tax Limitation, Inflation and the Role of Government. Rec: LAT
A Theory of the Consumption Function. Rec: NYPL

Galbraith, J. K. Economics and the Public Purpose (1974)

Galbraith was the first to draw widespread attention to the paradox of private affluence and public squalor, and to recommend
measures to deal with it. Roughly handled by critics, he remains one of the best starting points for exploring contemporary
economic concerns. Also: The Affluent Society; Money: Whence It Came Where It Went; The New Industrial State, etc

Galbraith, John Kenneth, Canadian-American, 1908-2006.

The Affluent Society. Rec: LAT ML Nonfiction NYPL TLS

Gamble, A. and Walton P. Capitalism in Crisis: Inflation and the State (1976)
Clear, uncomplicated polemic (with left-wing bias) about what has gone wrong with economic theories and the British
economy.

Gilder, George, American, 1939- .

Wealth and Poverty. Rec: National Review
Gilder points out that we have been misled by popular economics as it relates to how we increase wealth and curtail poverty.
He then introduces the concept of Supply-Side Economics to the general reader.

Glynn, A, and Sutcliffe, R. British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze (1972)
A Marxist view of the crisis which has been developing in British industry since the 1960s. Compelling alternative to the
monetarist analyses and nostrums which are our daily fare.

Harrison, John Marxist Economics for Socialists (1978) aka

Short, readable account of Marxist economics. Wide scope; clear style. Harrod, Roy Towards a Dynamic Economics (1949)
Significant (though now dated) first attempt for over a century to see the economic system as a fluid, not static phenomenon.
Also: The Trade Cycle

Hawken, Paul, American, 1946- .

The Ecology of Commerce. Rec: Utne

Heilbroner, R. L. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1967) a
Exceptionally useful—it replaces reading thousands of pages of impossible learned prose.

Hicks, John Capital and Time (1973)

Good example of solid workmanship, honest critique of the idiocy of last year's ideas.

Hirsch, Fred Social Limits to Growth (1977)

At the present level of development of rich economies, individual decisions become less effective in allocating resources. To
save capitalism again (shades of Keynes, qv) a more collectivist approach is required.

Hirschman, Albert, American, 1915- .

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Rec: TLS
Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyality is a book written by an economist but accessible to all - a rare achieve in any
academic disipline, especially economics. The book was written in the early 70's but still has relevant today.

Innis, Harold A., Canadian, 1894-1952.

The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Jacobs, Jane, American, 1916-2006.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Rec: National Review NYPL TLS Utne
The Economy of Cities. Rec: National Review

Keynes, John Maynard The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) f flip
Influential classic: a dialogue by Keynes with other economists and with his own past. Also: The Economic Consequences of
the Peace; Essays in Biography, etc

Keynes, Maynard, English, 1883-1946.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Rec: TLS
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Rec: Boston PL Counterpunch NF GBWW ML Nonfiction National
Review NYPL Seymour-Smith TLS

Kidron, Michael Western Capitalism since the War (1968)

Kidron's major thesis (that the world economy has been kept going by the arms race—a view he has since radically revised)
was highly debatable; his book nevertheless applies a Marxist analysis to the problems of today with vigorous conviction. Also:
Capitalism and Theory

Kropotkin, Peter, Russian, 1842-1921.

The Conquest of Bread. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Kuznets, Simon Six Lectures on Economic Growth (1959) 9

Kuznets allies a strong sense of realism with humour and delicacy. Accessible specialist book. Also: Economic Growth of
Nations; Modern Economic Growth; Capital in the American Economy
Machlup, Fritz (ed) Essays on Hayek (1976)
Hayek was an innovative force in the establishment of a critical rationale and methodology for the social sciences. These
essays (by several leading US economists and economic journalists. including Buckley, Friedman and Dietz) discuss his
contribution to economics both as an academic study and as a programme for social change. Technical but accessible.

Malthus, Thomas, English, 1766-1834.

An Essay on the Principle of Population. Rec: Good Reading Seymour-Smith

Marshall, Alfred The Principles of Economics(1890)*

Useful, brilliant, essential.

Marx, Karl Capital (1867) !* Magnificent sweep of excitement, raises profound questions about the workings of
industrial society. See POLITICS; SOCIOLOGY

Marx, Karl, German, 1818-1883.

(See also Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels)
Capital (Edited by Friedrich Engels). Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Good Reading SJC (Selections) Ward
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Rec: Aquinas Counterpunch Trans SJC (Selections)

Mill, John Stuart Principles of Political Economy (1848) &a

Characteristically clear, fair and liberal. See FEMINISM; PHILOSOPHY; POLITICS

Mishan, E. J. The Costs of Economic Growth (1967)

Economist's contribution to the case being made at the time by ecologists and conservationists. Sets out the hidden costs, in
terms of social and environmental effects, of continuing increases in current patterns of production and consumption. Also: 21
Popular Economic Fallacies

Myrdal, Gunnar Asian Drama: An Enquiry into the Poverty of Nations (1968)
Enormous study of the economic and social structures of southern Asian countries, demonstrating how the experiences of
developed countries are irrelevant for helping countries such as India escape from the teeming consequences of their own
population growth.

Various Authors, Various, 20th C.

The New Palgrave: The World of Economics (Ed. By John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman). Rec: TLS

Norris, K. and Vaizey, J. Economics for Everyone (1973) a Makes other introductions redundant; elicits the minimal level of
belief necessary if economics is to be believed at all.

Robinson, Joan Economic Philosophy (1962)

Dismal state of a dismal science seen through the eyes of one of its few honest practitioners. Clear-headed; funny; gutsy. Also:
Accumulation of Capital; Collected Economic Papers (4 vols); Imperfect Competition

Rostow, W. W. How It All Began: Origins of the Modern Economy (1975) a*

How did the world survive until the 18th century without a modern economy? What is economic sense, and can it be restored?
These and other awkward questions are brilliantly discussed in a book which should be as mortifying for orthodox monetarists
as it is fascinating for the rest of us—it's reassuring to find a professional so undogma tic and open-minded about his speciality.
Hawkish Rostow became enmeshed in the politics of the Vietnam War: this book reverts to the pure economics of his
distinguished earlier career. Also: The Process of Economic Growth; The Stages of Economic Growth; Politics and the Stages
of Growth, etc

Samuelson, Paul A. Economics: An Introductory Analysis (1948) OOP For those wanting, or needing, a solid basis in formal
economics theory, this is the text book several generations of students have cut their teeth on. Heavy, but authoritative.

Samuelson, Paul, American, 1915- .

Economics: An Introductory Analysis. Rec: TLS

Schumacher, E. F. Small Is Beautiful (1973) *

You've heard the short slogan: now read the long book. Study of the requirements of an economic system based on meaningful
work, small-scale organization and respect for the environment.
Schumacher, E. F. (Ernst), English, 1911-1977.
Small is Beautiful. Rec: NYPL TLS Utne

Sen, Amartya, Indian writing in English, 1933- .

Resources, Values and Development. Rec: TLS

Smith, Adam The Wealth of Nations (1776) 1*

Jolly Smith was an early advocate of not-so-jolly laissez-faire. Influential—some say catastrophic—and essential. Also: Theory
of the Moral Sentiments

Smith, Adam, Scottish, 1723-1790.

Wealth of Nations. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 (Selections) GBWW Good Reading Lubbock (Selections) Seymour-Smith SJC
(Selections)

Stigler, George The Theory of Price (1966)

Classic statement of the case for believing that the market is the analogue by which any actual economy works.

Wanniski, Jude, American, 1936- .

The Way the World Works. Rec: National Review
The author sees human civilization as an unfolding story where societies find the best political and economic systems through a
trial and error process. This process, which continues through the present, is largely progressive. (amazon)

Westergaard, J. and Resler, H. Class in a Capitalist Society (1975) Authors' thesis is that economics is not about the balance
of payments but about power: control of institutions and the distribution of wealth and privilege. Analysis is more impressive
than the evidence; the book will be replaced by better ones; until then, it's merely indispensable.

Kenneth Andrews

Kenneth Andrews is the Donald K. David Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and until
recently was editor and publisher of the Harvard Business Review. His field is business policy and his principal book is The
Concept of Corporate Strategy.

The classics I have identified will be as relevant to the recurring problems of achieving results in organizations and of making
leadership effective that will characterize the twenty-first century as they are to those of the present day. The ideas are timeless;
their power and application are virtually unlimited.

Chester I. Barnard. The Functions of the Executive (1938). Thirtieth anniversary ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1968. (Pb)
As I said in the introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition, this is the most thought-provoking book on organization and
management ever written by a practicing executive. The combination of intellect and experience is such that his conceptual
approach to organization and management has not been made obsolete. He applies systematic thought and a generous exposure
to responsibility in explaining the necessity to achieve results through cooperation.

Mary Parker Follett. Dynamic Administration (1940). Henry C. Metcalf and L. Urwick, eds. London: Pitman, 1973.
Follett examines the importance in a democratic society and in business organization of the effort to achieve an integration of
all points of view and to find in conflict a way to a higher-order solution that is more satisfactory to those who participate in it
than would be dominance of their original point of view. Her paper on constructive conflict and the superiority of integration
over domination and of compromise as ways of dealing with it has influenced all the work I have done in trying to understand
purposeful management.

George C. Homans. The Human Group (1950). London: Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
This book was my introduction to the possibility that the human group can be understood as a functioning entity. Here, some of
the consequences of the Western Electric experiments are applied to current understanding of human organization.

William James. Pragmatism (1907). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. (Pb)
Pragmatism is the quintessential American philosophy and an integral part of the intellectual history from which the other
books that I have found influential have emerged. Though denigrated by those who misunderstand the essential nobility of
James's conviction that emotion and action can transform the world and that truth can be found in experience, this book is a
monument to the effort to make ideas influential and transform them into action. That reality consists of human experience
shaped by purpose is a central truth of great importance to leaders of business and other kinds of organizations.

F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson. Management and the Worker (1934). Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1946.
This is the definitive account of the Western Electric experiments at the Hawthorne Works which transformed the study of
business administration and, in effect, originated the study of what was once called "human relations" and is now designated
"organization behavior." Perverse interpretation of this research and its finding as exploitation of workers does not obscure its
classic importance in the understanding of human organization.

Abraham Zaleznik. Human Dilemmas of Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
This is the central volume in Zaleznik's successful application of psychoanalysis to the study of human behavior and
organizations. It has informed my still partial understanding of problems of power, authority, and dependency, and their
implications for leadership.

Alfred D. Chandler

Alfred Chandler is the Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of numerous
works, including Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (1962) and The Visible
Hand: The Managerial Revolution in Modern Business (1977). For many, he is considered to be the dean of the organizational
school of historians. His forthcoming work, a cross-national study, is tentatively titled Scale and Scope.

Max Weber. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1922). A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, trans. New York:
Free Press, 1947. (Pb)
. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946). H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979. (Pb)
These are the two best translations of the works of Max Weber, one of the world's most influential social scientists. When I
read these as an embryonic historian, they opened up a new world. From a vast array of historical data Weber developed
concepts—bureaucracy, charismatic, idea types and many others—that are still central in analyzing the recent experiences of
modern man.

Ralph Henry Gabriel. The Course of American Democratic Thought (1940). New York: Ronald Press, 1956.
A masterpiece of synthesis, this study reviews changing American attitudes and values from the early nineteenth century to
World War II, by focusing on what Gabriel calls the "American democratic faith." It provides an impressively coherent
overview of the development of ideas of such American writers, philosophers, and political thinkers as Emerson, Thoreau,
Melville, Whitman, Calhoun, Summner, Royce, Henry Adams and others, as the nation transformed itself from a rural, agrarian
westerly-moving entity to an industrial, urban world power.

Stephen K. Bailey. Congress Makes a Law. The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946 (1950). Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1980.
This is still the most illuminating book that I have read on the American legislative process. It begins by reviewing the
economic and political situations and the ideological attitudes and values that led to the gestation of this legislation and then
follows the bill along a torturous course from committees, through the Senate and House and then to the final compromises in
conference committee. Few studies illustrate more clearly and precisely the interactions of ideas and attitudes and of
procedures and traditions, as well as the impact of perceived needs and opportunities and individual personalities, on the
definition of a piece of legislation that helped to reshape the role of government in the American economy.

Thomas C. Cochran. Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953.
This is one of the finest pieces of economic and social history written in the past generation. It does more than tell a story. It
provides a systematic understanding of the ideas and actions of a discreet and most influential group, the presidents of major
American railroads from 1840 to 1890. By carefully reviewing the working correspondence of sixty senior executives, it
reveals the views of the men who created the nation's first big business on finance, ownership and control, administration,
strategies of growth, technological innovation, labor relations, public opinion and the role of government. There is no better
introduction to the implications of the rise of modern managerial enterprise than this book.

Theodore Roosevelt. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. Elting E. Morison, ed. 8 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1951-54.
Carefully selected and annotated, these letters are, like those of the railroad presidents, operating documents used to direct and
carry out the multifaceted business of the presidency. There are also letters to family, friends and a wide variety of
acquaintances in prominent positions throughout the world. T. R. was a man of energy, enthusiasm and convictions who wrote
what he meant. So these letters reveal much about the nature of the man and the nature of the presidency. They are particularly
valuable in showing a wide variety of complex matters that an active president like T. R. had to handle in a single day. Again,
like the letters of the railroad presidents, such letters are basic sources of information with which historians must work.

C. Roland Christensen

C Roland Christensen is Harvard's Robert Walmsley University Professor. He is the first member of the Harvard Business
School faculty to receive this honor. At the Business School he is known by peers and students as the father of the case method,
although he attributes the distinction to the ancient Greeks. He is well known for his association with boards of directors as a
member, as a course topic and as a field of research. He has a passionate interest in business policy.

Here are the books—all old, dog-eared, reread and reread, little (no big fat volumes), most committed to memory—of my five-
inch bookshelf. But they miss the greatest influence on this educator—Miss Adams, a seventh-grade teacher in Iowa City,
Iowa. She introduced me to poetry, where the ultimate wisdom —the philosophy of life—is found. The first step in the
development of an anthology was our study of "Miniver Cheevey" by Edwin Arlington Robinson.- It is still exciting fifty-four
years after that original encounter.

Edward H. Carr. What Is History? (1961). New York: Random House, 1967. (Pb)
Carr's little book has a magnificent message—to live we must understand our historical roots. Carr gives us a way of
understanding the past so as to predict the future.

Jean Rostand. Can Man Be Modified? (1956). Jonathan Griffin, trans. New York: Basic Books, 1959.
Rostand, a biologist, views man in a very human way, examines how science is impacting that basic humanness and then teases
us with what he/she will be in future centuries.

Mark Spade [Nigel Balchin]. How to Run a Bassoon Factory, or Business Explained (1934). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936.
Spade tickles the mind; with tongue in cheek, he describes business so that one laughs—even roars—at his chosen vocation.

Edwin Way Teale, ed. The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre (1949). New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Fabre looks at the smallest and lowest—insects—and shows us their great abilities—even wisdom. A constant reminder to look
at the ordinary to see the extraordinary.

William I. Beveridge. The Art of Scientific Investigation (1951). New York: Random House, 1960. (Pb)
For the investigator, this little book is a gold mine of reflection and practical suggestion. He brings the power of scientific
discipline to bear on everyday life.

Adolph A. Berle, Jr. Power Without Property; A New Developtnent in American Political Economy. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1959.
The book raises fundamental questions about modern business organization and ownership. It outlines the quiet revolution
which has changed the power bases of our industrial society.

Richard N. Cooper

Richard Cooper is the Boas Professor of International Econom ics at Harvard's Graduate School ofArts and Sciences. From
1963 to 1977, he was professor of economics and provost at Yale University. He served as undersecretary of state for economic
affairs from 1977 to 1981.
The accumulated wisdom of others can give direction to action, provide tools for analysis and thought, and warn of dangers to
a productive, tolerant and humane society. These books help in that.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949). London: Deutsch, 1970.
Eric Hoffer. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951). New York: Harper & Row, 1966. (Pb)
Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.
Sir John W. Wheeler-Bennet. The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945 (1953). New York: St.
Martin's, 1964.
These four books impressed on me the danger to civilized society of persons with an intolerance of dissent from their own
agenda for society, and the importance of continued vigilance to keep them from gaining and exercising power. Schlesinger's
book addresses the dangers of political extremism both on the right and on the left; Hoffer describes the psychology of what he
calls a true believer; Popper traces the philosophical history of political authoritarianism since Plato; and Wheeler-Bennett
offers a detailed history of how Adolf Hitler out-maneuvered the senior German Officer Corps in his successful pursuit of
absolute power.

Robert L. Heilbroner. The Great Ascent: The Struggle for Economic Development in Our Time. New York: Harper & Row,
1963.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples (1976). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. (Pb)
These two books indicate as well as any that history is much more than kings and generals. Famine and disease have played a
much greater role in mankind's misery, and reducing the prevalence of both is a worthy, even noble, vocation.

Paul A. Samuelson. Economics (1953). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.

Roy F. Harrod. The Life of John Maynard Keynes (1951). New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. (Pb)
These two books suggested to me that economics is a subject worth studying.
I have identified books that were formative to my own thinking, so most of them were read long ago. They are still worth
reading, though some of them will sound dated to younger minds. I read fewer books now, and more articles, which get more
rapidly to the point. For instance, I benefited greatly from John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), but I benefited even more
from Kenneth Arrow's sympathetic yet critical review of it in the Journal of Philosophy. The core argument of Robert Axelrod's
important book The Evolution of Cooperation (1984) can be found more succinctly stated in a 1981 article in the American
Political Science Review.

Hugh Heclo

Hugh Heclo was born in Marion, Ohio, studied and taught at several British universities and received a Ph.D. in political
science from Yale University in 1970. He is now a professor of government at Harvard. A former senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Professor Heclo is also a part-time tree farmer and author of three award-winning
books in public policy and American politics.

The challenge of the future is always one of trying to make sense of oneself and one's times. Books, even great books, can help
only a little bit by showing how other persons in other times have made that effort. Those forearmed in this way may be
somewhat less foolish and prideful as they write the novels, plays and social-science interpretations of the next century.

James Fenimore Cooper. The Leather-stocking Tales (1823-41). New York: Avon, 1980. (Pb)
A romantic and tragic study of manly character. Beyond their attraction as an adventure tale, these books left me as a teenager
with a troubled awareness of the conflict between American "progress" and the living of an honest life.

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (1835-40). G. Laurence, trans. New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
This book threw a new light onto things about this country that I had always taken for granted. Then at the end of the Harper &
Row volume, edited by Max Lerner in 1965 or so, one could also read de Tocqueville's notes and earlier materials for what
would become Democracy in America. One obtained a sense of how a work of penetrating insight evolves rather than happens
in a great flash.

G. W. F. Hegel. Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 1821). T. M. Knox, trans. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1965.
The Philosophy of Right offered an intoxicating excursion into a self-contained realm of abstract ideas. It seemed to show how
one could penetrate into a deeper reality simply by thinking about ideas, abstractions that moved and unfolded through time. To
realize that Hegel was saying things in German about dialectics that could not be expressed in English gave one a real sense of
intellectual accomplishment.

Karl Marx. Das Kapital (1867). Friedrich Engels, ed. Canton, Ohio: International, 1984. (Pb)
Volume 1 especially was simply stunning as an exercise in comprehensive social-historical analysis. Hegel had been brought
down to earth.

Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation (1944). Boston: Beacon, 1985. (Pb)
Another instance of comprehensive historical analysis that seemed to turn conventional wisdom upside down (free-market
economics as the true social radicalism) and began my enduring interest in interpreting the modern "welfare state."

Polanyi, Karl, Austrian-American writing in English, 1886-1964.

The Great Transformation. Rec: Counterpunch NF TLS

Eugene O'Neill. A Long Day's Journey into Night (1940) and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943). In Final Acts, Judith E.
Barlow, ed. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press,
1985.
Having read his earlier plays, I found these last works expressed many of my own ill-formulated broodings about family life,
personal careers and the meaning of it all. Again, it was Leatherstocking's honest life without the wilderness.

Duncan Kennedy

Duncan Kennedy is a professor of law at the Harvard Law School. He teaches contracts, torts, property, the history of legal
thought and housing law and policy. Two of his works are Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy (1983) and The
Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries (1979). He is a founding member of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies.
What attracts me to these books may be the effort to come to grips with large, frightening facts of inequality, oppression,
alienation, while at the same time exploring the slippery, self-contradictory nature of the self as it tangles and disentangles itself
in the world of others, without giving up on survival by speculation. collective struggle and self-doubt.

G. W. F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Mind (Die Phdnomenologie des Geistes, 1807). J. B. Baillie, ed. and trans. New York:
Harper & Row, 1967. (Pb)
An attempt to put everything together before anything was clear, revolutionary and romantic but also a classical integration. I
tried to read it three times with no success, finally made it through with a friend in tiny chunks. More than worth the pain.

Karl Marx. Das Kapital, vol. 1, The Process of Capital Production (1867). Friedrich Engels, ed. Canton, Ohio: International,
1984. (Pb)
After Book 1 (impossibly obscure) it's more like Middlemarch or Balzac than my picture of orthodox Marxism. This is the
book you're not supposed to read and that you know is all wrong before you start. But it's not much about economic
determinism or materialism or state control of everything. Instead it's how the powerful got their power and what they did with
it.

Sigmund Freud. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1909, 2d ed. 1920). New York: Boni & Liveright, 1977. (Pb)
As with Marx, it's not the tight, totalitarian theories the disciples have spun that count here. It's the unconscious, there all the
time but never there until you trick it into sight, the self permanently destabilized.

Marcel Proust. Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27). 3 vols. C. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, trans. New York:
Random House, 1982. (Pb)
The more perfectly you grasp what you and I are like and how we fit in, the more it seems our next and contradictory selves
wait around the corner in a world turned upside down. Again you have to get through a slow opening, toward bliss.

Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse (1927). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964. (Pb)
This is my favorite book, an intensely loving, utterly critical revelation of marriage and family life, men, women and children.
It gets at the amazingly complex but ephemeral ideas and emotions that are there every second in everyone without ever telling
you anything straight out. •
Jean-Paul Sartre. Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). New York: Schocken, 1983.
As with the Phenomenology, everything is here, but now after we know we can know nothing in the way Marx and Freud
wanted to know everything. The vindication of Proust and James and Virginia Woolf, also transcendence of what's passive in
their work, without their pure genius.

Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor of economics at Harvard College and a former junior fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows. An
adviser to many Latin American governments. Professor Sachs has also been a consultant to the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. He is a member of the Brookings Panel of Economists and a contributor to newspapers and
magazines in the United States and Japan.

These studies make clear that economic processes can only be understood in conjunction with politics and other social forces.
The world's economic problems cannot be solved through any simple fix of technical economics, but only through the broadest
understanding of the role of economics in the larger social order.

Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904). Talcott Parsons, trans. New York: Scribner's, 1977. (Pb)
In this and related studies (for example, General Economic History) Max Weber brilliantly illuminated the social organization
and belief system that contributed to the rise of modern capitalism.

Fernand Braudel. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (1967, 1982-84). Sian Reynolds, trans. 3 vols. New York:
Harper & Row, 1985, 1986. (Pb)
This is a magnificent history of the material development of modern society. Braudel uses paintings, literature and other
surprising sources in a remarkable evocation of day-to-day life in the formative period of modern society.

John Maynard Keynes. Essays in Persuasion (1931). New York: W. W. Norton, 1963. (Pb)
This is a series of remarkable and pithy essays by the greatest political economist of this century. Keynes comments brilliantly
and with great prescience on the major economic issues of his day. In the process we see the unfolding of the modern science
of macroeconomics.

Joseph A. Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). New York: Harper & Row, 1983. (Pb)
Schumpeter captured the essence of modern economic development with his focus on technological change and the "creative
destruction" that it brings about. Added to this focus are Schumpeter's trenchant insights into political competition in the
industrial democracies and the role of the intellectual in the capitalist order.

Schumpeter, Joseph, Austrian-American writing in English, 1883-1950.

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Rec: National Review TLS (economics)

Scitovsky, Tibor, American, 1910-2002.

The Joyless Economy. Rec: TLS (economics)
Scitovsky shows that economic practices are aspects of one's culture: people in different countries spend their money very
differently.

John Kenneth Galbraith. The Affluent Society (1958). New York: New American Library, 1978. (Pb)
This is political economy at its polemic best. Galbraith helped to define modern American liberalism with his call for an
enlarged role for the public sector. Worth rereading in a period of shrinking government and widespread budget cutting.

Bruce Scott

Bruce Scott first joined the Harvard Business School as an M.B.A. student in 1954. Since then he has become widely respected
for his international research and course development in national economic strategies. In 1973 he was appointed the first Paul
Whiten Cherington Professor of Business Administration.
These readings should raise a question of the adequacy of the role and direction of current economic theory as it affects
business policy and public policy in the United States and Europe.

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Strategy and Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1962. (Pb)
. The Visible Hand. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. (Pb)
Two prize-winning books showing how senior managers of large corporations broke away from the static notions of
microeconomics to fashion strategies based in part on internalizing market forces rather than remaining dependent upon them.

Chalmers A. Johnson. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1982. (Pb)
Miyohei Shinohara. Industrial Growth. Trade and Dynamic Patterns in the Japanese Economy. Tokyo: University of Tokyo
Press, 1982.
Ezra F. Vogel. Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979). New York: Harper & Row, 1985. (Pb)
Three views on how and why Japan has become more competitive than any of the older industrial countries. Shinohara
explains Japan's departure from Western economic theory to create a growth-oriented economic strategy. Johnson explains how
it was conceived, by whom, and how it has been implemented. Vogel explains why Japan is not and does not wish to become a
consumer-oriented welfare state.

Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Pb)
Pierre Wack. "Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead." Harvard Business Review (19 September 1985).
Wack explains the value of scenarios as alternative theories of the case. Kuhn explains revolutionary changes in the sciences as
occurring only when one theory replaces another.

The Great Transformation K. Polanyi Trade

Trade and Economy in the Early Empires K. Polanyi Trade
The Kula "J.W. Leach, E. Leach" Trade
Symbols of Excellence J.G.D. Clark Trade
Ulysses' Sail M.W. Helms Trade

Das Kapital K. Marx Capitalism

Capitalism and Freedom M. Friedman Capitalism
The Third Way A. Giddens Capitalism
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism M. Weber Capitalism
Civilizations F. Fernandez-Armesto Capitalism

John Maynard Keynes R. Skidelsky Welfare Economics

The Age of Keynes R. Lekachman Welfare Economics
The Age of Uncertainty J.K. Galbraith Welfare Economics
"Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy" J.A. Schumpeter Welfare Economics

The Wealth of Nations A. Smith Free Market

Principles of Political Economy and Taxation D. Ricardo Labor Theory of Value

The Legacy of Ricardo G.A. Caravale Labor Theory of Value
The Economics of David Ricardo S. Hollander Labor Theory of Value
Capital K. Marx Labor Theory of Value

The School of SalamancaM. Grice-Hutchinson Monetary Theory

Monetary Theory: 1601-1758 A.E. Murphy Monetary Theory
The Great Wave D.H. Fischer Monetary Theory

Mercantilism L. Magnusson Mercantilism

The Modern World-System (Vol. 2) I. Wallerstein Mercantilism
Civilization and Capitalism F. Braudel Mercantilism

Population: Contemporary Responses to Thomas Malthus A. Pyle Overpopulation

The Economics of Robert Malthus S. Hollander Overpopulation
A Concise History of World Population M.L. Bacci Overpopulation

ECONOMICS
Alain Anderton

Modern economics is often said to date from the publication of Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith was
the first writer to describe a market economy as we might recognize it today. Since 1776, economic thought has developed
considerably against a backdrop of ever more complex economies. David Ricardo, an economist working in the early 19th
century, predicted that eventually economies would cease to grow and that workers' wages would settle down at a subsistence
level while landowners and capitalists would reap huge rewards. His prediction led to economics being dubbed `the dismal
science'. We know today that Ricardo's thinking was flawed and that workers in the rich industrialized countries of the world
enjoy a prosperity undreamed of in Ricardo's time. However, economics has always been controversial because it is used by
individuals, businesses, and governments to make decisions. Economic agents all too often look around for an economic theory
that confirms their prejudices rather than accepting that our understanding of how a system as complex as a market economy
works is often imperfect. The ever changing nature of economics and the potential for entering a debate about causes, effects,
and policy implications are just some of the factors that make economics so fascinating.

The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather
than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique for thinking, which helps its possessor draw correct conclusions.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

History of Economic Thought (1991) by William J Barber. Like any discipline, economics and its concerns have changed
over time. This book is one of the most read-able and authoritative guides to these changes in economic thought which in turn
have influenced the way governments have run their economies.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; many later editions) by Adam Smith. Adam Smith
is often considered to be the founder of modem-day economics because he was the first writer to outline and appraise the
workings of a free-market economy. The workings of the `invisible hand' of the marketplace, which allocated resources
according to the self-interest of both producers and consumers, led to the promotion of the social good. Limiting competition,
for instance through monopolies, raised prices and led to less being produced. His story of the pin factory, which he used to
illustrate the benefits of the division of labour, is particularly memorable.

Capital (1867-95; many editions) by Karl Marx. This is definitely one of those books to take to your desert island. Widely
bought but rarely read, it is a seminal work which had a profound influence on the 20th century. For those who lack the time or
the patience to read this large tome, some extracts, or The Communist Manifesto (1849), will give the reader the flavour and an
insight into the abstract nature of Marxian analysis but also the very real social problems that Marx attempted to address.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) by John Maynard Keynes. This book was the starting
point for our modern-day understanding of macroeconomics, the study of how the economy works as a whole. It is very much
a book written by an economist to other economists about the great issue of the day - why could economies stay in deep
depression over a long period of time, and how could governments get economies out of the depression? In it, Keynes argues
that governments have a responsibility to kick-start an economy in deep depression by spending money, and then allowing
private businesses and consumers to take over with more investment expenditure and consumption expenditure as the recovery
proceeds.

Keynes and After (1991) by Michael Stewart. This book, which has been regularly updated over time, provides the lay
person's guide to the Keynesian revolution in economic thinking. Stewart explains Keynes's thinking and sets it in its historical
context. He then considers the monetarist counterattack to Keynesian thought mounted from the late 1960s which rapidly
became a counter-orthodoxy.

The Affluent Society (1958) by J K Galbraith. J K Galbraith has been the great popularizer of left-wing liberal economics in
the USA since the mid-I950s. This, his first seminal work, was an attack on the failure of government to provide a social infra-
structure that matched the growing affluence of private spending. He coined the phrase 'private affluence, public squalor' to
encapsulate his main theme. Galbraith has since written a number of important works, including the highly readable The Great
Depression and The Liberal Hour.
Free to Choose (1980) by Milton Friedman (with A J Schwartz). In the 1950s and 1960s, belief in the importance of state
intervention to correct a market system that was prone to failure became increasingly dominant. The tide was turned by Milton
Friedman, who became a great popularizer of right-wing economics. In Free to Choose, he outlined the benefits of allowing
markets to decide what is to be produced and how it is to be produced. Individuals should be allowed to control their own
destinies, whereas government power and control in the economic sphere should be reduced to its barest minimum. For
Friedman, governments usually made far worse decisions than the individuals whose lives were being affected by those
decisions.

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) by E F Schumacher. Traditional economics, whether
of the right or of the left, is not with-out its critics. There are those who are that we need completely new economic structures if
the planet is to survive and human beings are to be allowed to be fully human. This seminal work provided such an alternative
vision. Schumacher argues that we need to go back to small structures in society and that the trend towards the large - the large
firm, large production, global consumption - is self-defeating and unsustainable.

The State We're In (1995) by Will Hutton. A surprise best seller of 1995, this left-wing analysis of the state of the British
economy paints a gloomy picture of today's Britain. It vigorously attacks Thatcherite economic policies and argues the case for
more state intervention both to increase the efficiency of the economy and to reduce growing inequalities.

The Death of Economics (1994) by Paul Ormerod. A very readable critical appraisal of current thinking on economics and
how that thinking has influenced government policy. It is particularly harsh in its judgement on the way mathematics and
statistics have been used within the discipline and tries to suggest a way forward that is more concerned with the dynamics and
institutions of the economy.

BUSINESS
Alain Anderton

The study of business is relatively young. It is also changing so fast that what seems important today is of only historical
interest in the business climate of tomorrow. As John Harvey Smith writes in an introduction to the Penguin edition of Igor
Ansoff's Corporate Strategy: “Despite the fact that the world of business prides itself on its self-analytical and ordered
approach to things, businessmen are no less prone than the next man to fashion and crazes. As the ground of what constitutes
business success is ploughed over again and again `new discoveries' are made, new methodology is produced and new
panaceas for success are recommended, and as eagerly sought.”
Any airport bookshop will contain a wide selection of the latest books from today's fashionable gurus, testament to the
ephemeral nature of the subject. Nevertheless, there are some classics in the field and the very fact that business is so
changeable makes it one of the most compelling and exciting areas for reading today.

The best class of scientific mind is the same as the best class of business mind. The
great desideratum in either case is to know how much evidence is enough to
warrant action. It is as unbusiness-like to want too much evidence before buying
and selling as to be content with too little.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) by Frederick W Taylor. A business classic in which the US author analyses
how work can be organized under scientific principles to maximize output per labourer. For Taylor, labourers are motivated
only by money, so they need to be scientifically motivated and controlled by management.

The Practice of Management (1994) by Peter Drucker. A management classic by the father of American business gurus. In
this seminal book, he laid down many of the ideas about how managers should manage by setting objectives which were taken
up and reworked by others, such as Charles Handy and Tom Peters.

The Human Side of Enterprise (1960) by Douglas McGregor. In a counterblast to Frederick Taylor, Douglas McGregor
outlined a complex theory of what motivates workers. For McGregor, pay is just one of many factors that are important in
deter-mining motivation. He placed stress on the positive side of human nature and saw labour as a resource to be released
rather than controlled. McGregor was one of a number of people who helped develop our modem understanding of workplace
motivation.
Strategic Management (1979) by Igor Ansoff. Strategic Management is a heavy-weight classic by an author who has
specialized in writing about how businesses should operate within the business environment in which they find themselves.
Ansoff discusses, for instance, how businesses should decide what to produce, how to sell, what size to be, and how to respond
to competitors.

When Giants Learn to Dance (1992) by Rosabeth Moss Kantor. This is book aimed at those interested in the giants of the
business world - the IBMs, the Fords, and the Shells. Kantor discusses how big can mean cumbersome, bureaucratic, and
inefficient. To remain like this is to die. To survive in today's climate, giant companies need to learn how to be responsive,
nimble, flexible, and efficient.

In Search of Excellence (1982) by Tom Peters and Robert H Waterman. The case-study approach is at the root of business
education. In this seminal work, Peters and Waterman look at a number of American companies which, in their opinion, have
been immensely successful. They then focus on the management of these companies and explore why particular managers and
management cultures stand above the rest.

Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) by Michael Porter. Some countries have been immensely successful economically.
The economic performance of other countries has been mediocre, and some very poor. Michael Porter explores why this has
been the case, and in particular discusses what it is about businesses and the business environment that has contributed to
nations such as Japan being so successfully competitive.

The Age of Unreason (1989) by Charles Handy. In an information age, structures within businesses and within society will be
far more flexible than before. To survive, organizations will have to be in a continuous process of learning. To create this
environment, workers will be constantly changing their roles. Those employed within organizations will have a number of
temporary briefs. A large number of workers, however, will work on the periphery, accumulating a portfolio of jobs
subcontracted from organizations. Inevitably, the number of workers employed permanently by an organization will diminish.
Education will be a constant feature of the worker's life, and many will choose to work part-time in retirement. Handy predicts
that fewer and fewer workers will have a `job for life'.

Troubleshooter (1991) by John Harvey Jones. The former chair of ICI, famous for his loud ties, is constantly providing a
stream of light, easy-to-read but penetrating books. This book, based on a BBC television series, has John Harvey Jones
reporting on a number of businesses that faced problems. He identifies those problems and suggests solutions. A fun read!

Body and Soul: How to Succeed in Business and Change the World (1992) by Anita Roddick. This is a book for those who
want an alternative perspective on the business world. In this book, Anita Roddick describes how she founded the Body Shop
and discusses the ethics and values - including spirituality - upon which the Body Shop has been built.
Education

Freire, Paulo, Brazilian, 1921-1997.

(See also Freire, Paulo and Myles Horton)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Freire, Paulo and Myles Horton, Brazilian and American writing in English, 1921-1997 and 1905-1990.
(See also Freire, Paulo)
We Make the Road by Walking. Rec: Utne

Illich, Ivan, Austrian-American writing in English, 1926-2002.

Deschooling Society. Rec: Counterpunch NF (education)

Montessori, Maria, Italian, 1870-1952.

The Montessori Method. Rec: Boston PL

Jeanne S. Chall

Jeanne S. Chall is professor of education and director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory. Her most widely known books
include: Learning to Read: The Great Debate; the Dale-Chall Formula for Predicting Readability; and
Stages of Reading Development. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the National Academy
of Education, she has served on the board of directors of the National Society for the Study of Education and the International
Reading Association. and has been president of the Reading Hall of Fame. She is regarded as Harvard's "expert on reading."

The first three works influenced directly my choice of career and early research and scholarship. The next two influenced,
broadly. my approach to analysis of issues. And the last two represent more recent influences on my thinking.

Irving Lorge. "Predicting Reading Difficulty of Selections for Children." Elementary English Review, Volume 16 (October
1939), 229-33.
This article was the first I read on readability, and in a real sense it changed my life. Soon after reading it, I decided to go to
graduate school to become an educational psychologist and researcher. The article presented the first easy-to-use readability
formula based on a synthesis and refinement of earlier research and the author's original ideas—and it did it so clearly, simply
and effectively. The ideas and the analysis are still as fresh and compelling today as they were when first written more than
forty years ago.

Edgar Dale. The Higher Literacy: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Edgar Dale. Champaign: University of Illinois Film
Center, 1982.
Edgar Dale's writings on readability, vocabulary and the mass media have also had a strong and lasting influence on me. His
writings have also served as models of clarity and grace.

George K. Zipf. The Psycho-Biology of Language (1935). Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965.
I do not recall how I happened to read George K. Zipf s The Psycho-Biology of Language. But I thought of it as a personal
discovery. Based on a different body of theory and evidence than the one with which I was familiar, he documented that in all
languages one could find an inverse relationship between word frequency and word length. This gave me a convincing
explanation as to why readability research had consistently found word length and frequency of usage predictive of difficulty.
Zipf provided the bigger explanation—that the more the words are used, the shorter they become, and the more meanings they
tend to have.

Ruth F. Benedict. Patterns of Culture (1934). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

I read Patterns of Culture. in paperback, when it had long been accepted as a classic work, to be read by all concerned with the
human condition. It was, for me, a great awakening—a view of society and of the individual through a new lens. Societies
could be viewed in broad patterns of values and behaviors that influence what individuals do and value. Thus, behavior that is
considered abnormal in one society may be accepted and even honored in other societies. I have read and reread it entirely and
in part many times. I was influenced, first, by its ideas. I have also been influenced by its methods and have used the idea of
contrasting patterns in my research and analysis of educational issues.
David Riesman, with Reuel Denny and Nathan Glazer. The Lonely Crowd (1950). New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973. (Pb)
The Lonely Crowd had a similar influence on me. What I admired, and still admire in the book, is the broad sweep of the
analysis—historical, social, psychological—of the change in the American character. Similar to Patterns of Culture, I found
both books beautifully written.

Jean Piaget. Structuralism (1968). Chaninah Maschler, ed. and trans. New York: Basic Books, 1970.
J. B. Carroll. "Developmental Parameters of Reading Comprehension" (1974). In J. T. Guthrie, ed., Cognition, Curricu-
lum, and Comprehension. Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1977. (Pb)
I have had an almost lifelong friendship with the works of Jean Piaget. It became more intense when, in the early 1970s, I was
working on a model of reading development and a friend gave me a copy of his Structuralism. This started me on a ten-year
study of the development of reading. Toward the last phases of my work, I was encouraged Further by the model of John
Carroll.

Henry James. The Wings of the Dove (1902). New York: Penguin, 1974. (Pb)
My first introduction to Henry James was through a friend who shared with me a copy of The Americans. From then, until
about a decade ago, I was always reading or rereading some Henry James. What made him so compelling? Perhaps it was his
complexities—of character, incidents and style. I think they offered me an escape from my own work in which I strive for
clarity, simplicity and directness. I have also learned much about the psychology of reading from Henry James. When I first
started reading James, I found his sentences almost impossible. They became quite readable with exposure and practice.

Nathan Glazer

Nathan Glazer is professor of education and social structure at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. His courses focus on
issues in education, ethnicity and American social problems. He is coeditor of The Public Interest and has been on the editorial
staff of Commentary. His most notable works include Ethnic Dilemmas 1964-1982, (1983); Ethnicity: Theory and Experience,
coedited with Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1975); and Beyond the Melting Pot, on which Daniel Patrick Moynihan also
collaborated.

Richard Hofstadter. Academic Freedom in the Age of the College. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. (Pb)
Walter P. Metzger. Academic Freedom in the Age of the University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. (Pb)
These books discuss the kind of issues that are part of the history of freedom in the United States—academic freedom and
rights. They provide a perspective on how we have developed, to the point that in America these issues of freedom are no
longer major problems, for we have for the most part settled them. People have little sense of how the American college and
university came to be, how they developed, how they are organized, and why they play such an important part in American life.
This book will help them, as it did me, to understand them.

Lawrence A. Cremin. American Education. 2 vols. to date. New York: Harper & Row, 1982-. (Pb)
This is a monumental work of scholarship which deals with key aspects of American life—schools, books and news. Cremin's
work explains how we have tried to educate not only in classrooms but in all sorts of other ways. It gives a unique view of
American history.

Robert E. Klitgaard. Choosing Elites. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

Klitgaard's recent book looks at some of the key issues we face in choosing people for scarce positions. It is relevant to every
area in which difficult choices must be made. While the book focuses on choices primarily in higher education, it tells us a
good deal about problems of minority representation in the professions and in politics.

Donald L. Horowitz. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
This is a powerful analysis of ethnic conflict in the developing world, where it is a hindrance to development and where there
is destruction of people and property on a vast scale. It raises serious and grave issues for every country. The book represents
fifteen years of scholarly work and is important reading for an understanding of the problems in the developing world.

E. G. West. Education and the State. 2d ed. London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1970.
Education and the State is one of those books that formed part of the revival of conservative thinking in various spheres of
public policy. It raises, in a more convincing way than any other work, the questions, Why should the state educate? How
should the state educate? and Should the state have a monopoly on education? West approaches these questions with wonderful
scholarship and elegant analytical skills. I can't imagine anyone coming to contemporary issues of education, such as tuition tax
credits and vouchers, without reading this book. Any person with an open mind will say, "Here are things I never thought of
before."

Francis Keppel

Francis Keppel is a senior lecturer on education at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. He was dean of the Education
School from 1948 to 1962 and U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1962 to 1966. He later served as chairman of the General
Learning Corporation (1966-74) and is now chairman of Appropriate Technology International. His teaching focuses on state
and federal policies affecting education, with special interest in federal programs in compensatory education, student financial
aid and desegregation and educational boards, including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
These books may help the reader to avoid being surprised, and surprise often leads to bad judgment.

The Bible (Both the King James version and recent translations).
Even apart from matters of personal belief, the Bible is indispensable to an understanding of the history of the West. Without it,
literature and art lose some of their meaning, and the visual arts particularly have been a central part of my life.

Werner W. Jaeger. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (1934). Gilbert Highet, trans. New York: Oxford University Press,
1965. (Pb)
Jaeger's conclusion that society itself is the major force in educating the young formed my thinking when I started a lifelong
career in education after World War II.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist [Papers] (1788). Benjamin F. Wright, ed. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1961.
For any citizen of the United States, and particularly one with strong interests in public affairs, The Federalist [Papers] helps to
explain our mixture of optimism for social progress and realism about man's weakness.

Lawrence A. Cremin. American Education. 2 vols. to date. New York: Harper & Row, 1982—. (Pb)
This massive and magisterial account, stretching from colonial to modern times, puts schools and colleges into context. It is for
me a successor to Jaeger, and its annotated bibliography is incomparable.

James B. Conant. Education in a Divided World (1948). New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.
Almost forty years later, Conant's analysis stands up well, and brings back to a devoted admirer a man of remarkable honesty
and moral courage.

New York Times, daily and Sunday (1948 to date).

Candor compels me to report that I have probably spent more time reading the Times than reading books. But it is the best
continuing set of unbound volumes on paper that I know about the times of my own life and about future possibilities.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN EDUCATION

Maureen O'Connor

Education in most countries today finds itself in the front line of the war between ideologies. A utilitarian view conflicts with
the liberal notion of education for self-fulfilment more fiercely than ever. The introduction of competition and market forces is
resisted by those who hold education as a right which should be equally available to all. Education is variously regarded as a
means to social and political liberation and as a weapon in the international battle for economic hegemony. The books I have
chosen provide an introduction to these conflicts without necessarily offering solutions because one thing at least is clear: the
great education debate will continue.

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.

CLAUS MOSER
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) by Paulo Freire. The seminal text on education as empowerment, based on Freire's
experience with illiterate Brazilian peasants but equally applicable to those trapped in a `culture of silence' anywhere.
Education as an alternative to revolution.

The Unschooled Mind (1989) by Howard Gardner. Building on his work on multiple intelligences, Gardner argues that
teaching and learning must be adapted to the needs of individual children, who may learn in particular ways.

Teach Your Own (1981) by John Holt. A fierce critic of American schooling advises parents to take control of their children's
education and educate them at home.

School Matters (1988) by Peter Mortimore, Pamela Sammons, Louise Stoll, David Lewis, and Russell Ecob. The research
study which by analysing the progress of children in London primary schools gave the first scientific basis upon which school
improvement might be based.

Closely Observed Children (1980) by Michael Armstrong. A fascinating first-hand account of a progressive primary school
by a determined advocate of child-centred learning, written in the form of a teacher's diary.

Parents and Schools, Customers, Managers or Partners? (1993) edited by Pamela M. A collection of discussion papers on
the growing involvement of parents in education.

Education and the Social Order (1991) by Brian Simon. The final volume of Simon's definitive history of British education
up to and including the Thatcher revolution which has still not run its course. This and the following book look closely at the
impact of radical - or controversial - changes in educational policy of the British government during the 1980s and 1990s.

Take Care Mr Baker! (1988) edited by Julian Haviland. The initiative that brought into the light of day the responses to
Kenneth Baker's Education Reform Bill from public bodies and individuals. It exposes the strengths and weaknesses of the
legislation that still affects British schooling and is still being amended.
Essays

Chamfort, Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de, French, ca. 1740-1794.

Products of the Perfected Civilization. Rec: Bloom (essays, sayings)

Cioran, Emil M., French, 1911-1995.

Short History of Decay. Rec: Ward
Temptation to Exist. Rec: Ward
Fall Into Time. Rec: Ward
New Gods. Rec: Ward

Diderot, Denis, French, 1713-1784.

Memoirs of a Nun. Rec: Ward
Dialogues. Rec: Ward
Rameau's Nephew. Rec: Bloom GBWW Ward
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master. Rec: Meaningful Ward
The Encyclopedia (Ed. by Diderot). Rec: Seymour-Smith

Didion, Joan, American, 1934- .

Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Rec: Hungry Mind LAT (essays)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, American, 1803-1882.

Selected Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Ward
Nature. Rec: Bloom
Representative Men. Rec: Adler Bloom
Conduct of Life. Rec: Bloom
Essays. Rec: Adler Bloom Good Reading Lubbock
Journals. Rec: Adler Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hazlitt, William, English, 1778-1830.

Essays and Criticism. Rec: Bloom

Kenko Yoshida, Japanese, 1283-1350.

Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa). Rec: App Oriental Ward

Lamartine, Alphonse de, French, 1790-1869.

Meditations. Rec: Bloom (essays)

Lamb, Charles, English, 1775-1834.

Essays. Rec: Bloom
Essays of Elia. Rec: Ward
Last Essays of Elia. Rec: Ward

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, English, 1800-1859.

Essays. Rec: Lubbock

Mencken, H. L., American, 1880-1956.

Prejudice: A Selection. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Plutarch, Greek, ca. 46-ca.120 CE .

Moralia. Rec: Adler Bloom

Schweitzer, Albert, German, 1875-1965.

Out of My Life and Thought. Rec: Ward
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. Rec: Ward
More From the Primeval Forest. Rec: Ward

Voltaire, French, 1694-1778.

Candide. Rec: Adler Bloom Col37 Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Seymour-Smith Smiley Ward
Zadig. Rec: Bloom Lubbock Ward
L'Ingénu. Rec: Ward
Letters on the English. Rec: Adler Bloom
Philosophical Dictionary. Rec: Adler
The Lisbon Earthquake. Rec: Bloom
Other Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Micromegas. Rec: Lubbock

White, E. B., American, 1899-1985.

(See also Strunk, William and E. B. White)
Essays. Rec: National Review

David M. Livingston

David Livingston is a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School—molecular biology is his field. He teaches, runs a
laboratory and does active clinical medicine. His special interest is oncko genes, their products and how the latter function. He
wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times on the irksome vacuous noise broadcast over airplane loudspeakers. Additional
op-ed pieces he writes may follow.

William Thackeray. Vanity Fair (1847-48). John Sutherland,

ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. (Pb)
This poignant story left me with the indelible impression that privilege and success are not necessarily eternal even for the
brightest and / or the most well-intended people. It also exposed me, early on, to the possibility that there might be unfortunate
consequences to taking those who are apparently dependent or less fortunate for granted,

Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities (1859). New York: Bantam, 1981. (Pb)
I remember feeling that I could nearly palpate the passion of the murderous French anti-Royalists and, for the first time,
appreciate the possibility that chronic oppression could break down the barriers which normally block the expression of
uncivilized instincts.

John Steinbeck. In Dubious Battle (orig. Dubious Battle in California, 1936). New York: Penguin, 1979. (Pb)
One's cynical views of what activates the passions of many people need not be all-consuming, for there are "ordinary"
individuals who are not weird, whose daily behavior is based largely on moral principles, and who are, therefore, worth
emulating.

Paul H. DeKruif. Microbe Hunters (1926). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966. (Pb)
I didn't decide to become a physician or scientist immediately after finishing this book. However, it provided me with my first
taste of the excitement associated with a scientific hunt.

Ford Madox Ford. The Good Soldier (1915). New York: Random House, 1951. (Pb)
The practiced arts of civility among educated people are an important manifestation of the gentle nature of the human spirit.
However, from this novel I became more aware than ever that they can also be used as cover by those whose morality has been
eroded by passion.

David Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest (1972). New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
This book gave me my clearest appreciation yet for the enormity of the powers held by senior American foreign-policy makers.
It also showed how easily the thin line between responsible and irresponsible use of these powers could be crossed in the
interest of serving narrow logic.
Feminism

Feminist literature dates back to the 18th century, but there have been intervals of quiescence, during which writers devoted
their energies more to the novel and to social reform. The earliest examples of the genre tended to formal rectitude, despite the
vigour of the political argument. More recently, the tone has become personal, at times violently polemical. The American
women's movement has been especially vociferous. However. a comparison of, say, Mary Wollstonecraft with Germaine Greer
suggests that women's grievances remain much the same, as do basic attitudes on both sides of the sexual divide. Natural
history or indoctrination? It remains true that despite the considerable economic and social changes in Western society. the
repression of women has had and continues to have ugly effects all round. We have limited ourselves to books worth reading
for their originality and vigour as well as for their socio-historical importance. We hope that this list may soon be scrapped—
for the battle will have been won at last.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Kitzinger): AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Brittain, Mead): BIOGRAPHY (Tomalin):
HISTORY/AMERICAN (Krantor); MEDICINE (Boston Women's Collective); MYTHOLOGY (Slater); RELIGION (Warner):
SEX (Hite); SOCIOLOGY (Mead)

Beauvoir, Simone de The Second Sex (1949) !P*

Wordy "philosophical" analysis of the condition of women; historical, biological and literary perspectives. Rational, erudite,
convincing. Also: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. See FICTION/NOVELS

Beauvoir, Simone de, French, 1908-1986.

The Second Sex. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Colcc91 (Selections) Counterpunch Trans Good Reading NYPL Seymour-Smith TLS
Utne

Bird, Caroline Born Female (1970)

Eloquent review of the physical and psychological make-up of the female human being. Dispels many myths. Revised edition
(1971) recommended.

Brownmiller, Susan Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975)
Main, chilling argument is that rape is about male-female power politics. Evans, Sara Personal Politics (1979)
Vital for understanding the roots of women's liberation in the USA. Author traces the connections between the civil rights
movement and the New Left in the emergence of an autonomous feminist movement.

Brownmiller, Susan, American, 1935- .

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Rec: NYPL

Christine de Pizan, Italian-French, ca. 1364-ca. 1430.

City of Ladies. Rec: Bloom Colcc91

Various Authors, American, 20th C.

Feminist Frameworks (Ed. by Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg). Rec: Colcc91

Figes, Eva Patriarchal Attitudes (1970) *

Basic premise is that over the centuries women have fulfilled a role cast for them by men and that the way women are is not
given in nature but a product of society. The author discusses ideas of women in such diverse and influential sources as
religion, Schopenhauer and Freud, and suggests possibilities for change.

Firestone, Shulamith, American, 1945- .

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Flexner, Eleanor Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (1959)
Excellent historical overview. 1979 revision brings it up to date.

Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique (1962)

This book inspired the emergence of the women's liberation movement in the USA. About "the problem that has no name": the
denial of the humanity of women in American society; concluding chapters explain ways to escape the trap.

Friedan, Betty, American, 1921-2006.

The Feminine Mystique. Rec: Boston PL LAT NYPL Seymour-Smith

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, American, 1860-1935.

Herland. Rec: NYPL

Greer, Germaine The Female Eunuch (1970) r*

Witty, entertaining attack on the absurdities of the female condition, with a convincing analysis of how they arose. Makes
stylish mincemeat of the charge that feminists are humourless. Also: The Obstacle Race (on women artists)

Griffin, Susan, American, 1943- .

Woman and Nature. Rec: Utne

Hall, Radclyffe, English, 1880-1943.

The Well of Loneliness. Rec: Harvard

Hiley, Michael Victorian Working Women (1979)

Everyday lives, photographed and described in dispassionate detail by Arthur Munby, a leading 19th-century barrister.
Alternately horrifying and uplifting, the triumph over circumstance of the human spirit. See Munro; BIOGRAPHY (Hudson);
SOCIOLOGY (Chesney, Reeves)

hooks, bell, American, 1952- .

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Rec: Hungry Mind

Hufstedler, S. M. Women and the Law (1977)

Judge Hufstedler reviews the general field of American women's rights—and obligations—under the law. They are different
from men's although not in all respects: women, like men, are not allowed to commit murder, although as a general rule it is
still easier for a man to get away with killing a woman than vice versa.

Irigaray, Luce, French, 1930- .

This Sex Which is not One. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Janeway, Elizabeth Mans World, Woman's Place: A Study in Social Mythology (1971) *
The title says it all. This is one of the best feminist books—measured, eloquent, overwhelming for all of good will.

Jelinek, Elfriede, Austrian, 1946- . Nobel Laureate

Works.

Kollontai, Alexandra Selected Writings (1977)

First major collection (ed Alex Holt) of famous Russian revolutionary's writings to be published in English. Kollontai raises
still relevant questions about the family, morality and love. The publisher, Virago (London), is doing notable work in
republishing works of revolutionary and feminist interest, many from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Kingston, Maxine Hong, American, 1940- .

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. Rec: Hungry Mind

Lennox, Charlotte, English, 1729?-1804.

The Female Quixote. Rec: Smiley

MacKinnon, Catharine, American, 1946- .

Feminism Unmodified. Rec: Colcc91

Mill, John Stuart The Subjection of Women (1869) * Argues strongly that both sexes have lost out because of the political
and legal subjection of women. Stresses mutal support and the importance of a "just" society. Inspiring, influential. See
ECONOMICS; PHILOSOPHY; POLITICS

Millet, Kate Sexual Politics (1969)

How women have been and are portrayed by historians, sociologists, politicians, psychologists and writers. A revelation to
anyone who remains unimpressed by the validity of feminism. Her attacks upon Mailer, Lawrence et al (if flawed) make one
shout for joy. Also Sita; The Prostitution Papers
Mitchell, Juliet Woman's Estate (1971) a From within the politics of women's literature Mitchell defines the specific areas
of oppression and describes current attempts to break the pattern of repression imposed on women. Useful summary of the
debate between feminists and Marxist-socialists on the nature of oppression.

Munro, Alice Lives of Girls and Women (1973)

Sensitive description of growing up in small-town Canada. Brilliant descriptions of agonies of "first-dates" and the sex-versus-
intellect debate which presented itself to many 18-year-olds. Strikes many right notes; delightful, insightful read.

Munro, Alice, Canadian, 1931- .

Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You. Rec: Bloom
Lives of Girls and Women. Rec: Smiley

Norris, Jill and Liddington, Jill One Hand Tied Behind Us (1978) * A study of interconnections between trade unionism,
suffrage and socialism in Lancashire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Moving accounts of those radical suffragists'
personal lives and political views—partly gleaned from interviews.

Olsen, Tillie, American, 1912- .

Tell Me a Riddle. Rec: Hungry Mind

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (1975) Fascinating study of women in classical antiquity. "The
hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"—a comfortable (male) view, definitively examined. Lucid, elegant, shocking.

Porter, Cathy Fathers and Daughters (1976)

Women as political and social activists in the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1855 –81). The real Revolution began here. Also:
Alexandra Kollontai. See Thomas.

Ramelson, Marian The Petticoat Rebellion (1967) a Moving general account of various strands in the women's movement
in Britain from the late 18th century to the early 20th century.

Rosen, R. and Davidson, S. (eds) The Maimie Papers (1979)

Maimie Pinzer, a Philadelphia prostitute at 20, a drug addict at 25, began at 30 a correspondence with Fanny Quincey Howe, a
rich Boston feminist, reformed, and devoted her life to rehabilitating prostitutes, and to feminist causes. Warm, raucous,
passionate, she is full of good sense, full of the true life force.

Rossi, Alice The Feminist Papers (1973) a Comprehensive anthology of major feminist writings from the late 18th century
to Simone de Beauvoir (qv).

Rowbotham, Sheila Women, Resistance and Revolution (1972) Wide-ranging survey of the roots of inequality from the 17th
century to the present. As the author says, "feminism and Marxism come home to roost". They cohabit somewhat uneasily,
being at once incompatible and in need of each other. Essential for those not convinced of this mutal dependence.

Russell, Dora The Tamarisk Tree (1975)

Links the British new feminism of the 1920s and socialism in the Independent Labour Party with intellectual and political
movements, progressive education and sex reform. Social change seen in terms of the personal quest of one woman "for liberty
and love," first stimulated and then overshadowed by "Bertie's (Bertrand Russell's) genius." Also: Hypatia, or Woman and
Knowledge, etc

Thomas, Edith The Women Incendiaries (1963)

Moving description of the role of women in the Paris Commune of 1871, women on the barricades persuading the soldiers not
to shoot, standing in bread queues, speaking in the revolutionary clubs, killed and imprisoned after the fall of the Commune.

Wollstonecraft, Mary Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

One of the first British feminists was also Mary Shelley's mother and married to the anarchist philosopher, William Godwin.
Her arguments for the liberation of women are still relevant. See BIOGRAPHY (Tomalin)

Wollstonecraft, Mary, English, 1759-1797.

Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Rec: Colcc91 Seymour-Smith
Woolf, Virginia A Room of One's Own (1929)
Long essay on the need for women to have economic independence to fulfil their potential. Beautifully written, though now
(dated by the changes it helped to bring about) seems rather ladylike. See BIOGRAPHY (Bell, Woolf); DIARIES:
FICTION/NOVELS

Vindication of the Rights of Woman M. Wollstonecraft Feminism

"Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman" M. Wollstonecraft Feminism
Rights of Woman O. de Gouges Feminism
The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft C.L. Johnson Feminism

FEMINISM
Gloria Steinem

Feminism, women's liberation, the women's movement, women's rights, woman-ism, and feminisms in the plural - all these and
more are terms to describe the current transformative movement for female equality as human beings. This wave follows the
19th- and early-20th-century wave known as suffrage or female emancipation, in which women succeeded in winning an
identity. Previously they had been chattels with a legal status that provided the model for slavery.
Indeed, there have been successive waves of rebellion in every pan of the world, in public and in private, for the last few
thousand years since patriarchy replaced ways of life in which power seems to have been more balanced.
By now, the feminist argument for equal status for females of all races, classes, ages, ethnicities, abilities, and sexualities has
begun to sound reasonable and to have majority support in public opinion polls, but it is still opposed by forces that range from
religious fundamentalists to multinational companies, from right-wing patriarchs to left-wing nationalists. After all, equal pay
and equal access to land, credit, and inheritance would constitute a massive redistribution of wealth; women's sexual and
reproductive freedom would take away control of the means of reproduction from family, religion, and state; redefining and
revaluing work to include the unpaid or underpaid production and reproduction now done by 'women who don't work', whether
homemakers in overdeveloped countries or food producers in underdeveloped ones, would eliminate the world's largest source
of cheap labour; challenging the division of human nature into 'masculine' and `feminine' would uproot the passive/dominant
paradigm on which race, class, and other hierarchies are based; shifting from religions in which God looks like the ruling class
to spiritualities in which god is present in women and all living things would delegitimize man's domination of women and
nature; and nurturing the full range of human qualities in both males and females would eliminate the violence implicit in
having to prove `masculinity', and transform our ideas about human nature itself.
Whether we are working towards each person's empowerment in ways large or small, we are part of the feminist movement.
Most of these books come from North America and Europe, but many include references to movements on other continents. In
general, each book will lead you to many more.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only
know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that
differentiate me from a doormat.
REBECCA WEST

Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals (1985) by Marilyn French. A well-documented and mind-changing argument
that current power systems are neither inevitable nor natural.

The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (1987) by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor. Starting in
Africa, where human beings first developed - and with the 95% of human history that preceded patriarchy, monotheism, and
nationalism - this fills in some of the knowledge dismissed as `prehistory'.

The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (1976) by Dorothy Dinnerstein. By exploring
why women have such unequal responsibility for child-rearing - and the far-reaching impact of men raising children as much as
women do - Dinnerstein creates a starting place for changing everything from women's double role to the roots of male
violence.

Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972, 1992, and 1994) and Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings,
World War II to the Present (1994) edited with an introduction and commentaries by Miriam Schneir. These are excerpts from
essays, fiction, memoirs, letters, and political theory by major feminist writers, from pre-suffrage through Simone de Beauvoir,
Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Susan Brownmiller, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and other modern pioneers (though its
commentary misunderstands Carol Gilligan, Andrea Dworkin, and others). You can browse and see which ones you want to
read in their entirety.

Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970) edited by Robin Morgan; Radical Feminism (1973) edited by Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and
Anita Rapone; and This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1983) edited by Charrie Moraga and
Gloria Anzaldua. Any of these three anthologies will take you from the personal to the political and back again. Consciousness-
raising, rap groups, revolutionary cells: what-ever you want to call this process of learning from each other's lives and sharing
insights, it is made portable here.

Various Authors, American, 1901-2000.

Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement (Ed. by Robin Morgan). Rec:
NYPL

Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology (1984) edited by Robin Morgan. An unmatched
overview of female history and status in almost every country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with a modem feminist also
writing a personal essay from each one.

If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics (1988) by Marilyn Waring. A practical, visionary, international plan for
attributing value to women's unpaid labour and to the environment.

The New Our Bodies Ourselves: A Book by and for Women (revised edition 1995) by the Boston Women's Health Collective.
This premier self-help book of the women's health movement has been updated periodically over more than 20 years, and
translated into most of the world's major languages. (See also Ourselves Growing Older.)

Writing a Woman's Life (1988) by Carolyn Heilbrun. A slender volume full of insight into the current cultural differences
between male and female life patterns that mean many women become ourselves after 50.

Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994) by Bell Hooks. An astute and passionate black feminist critic's essays on
contemporary culture, from sex and movies to love and freedom.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (1992) by Judith Lewis Herman.
A brilliant analysis of the parallels between the mostly female survivors of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. By
exposing the similar political and spirit-breaking results of trauma, she offers ways of healing.

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (1988) by Vandana Shiva. Linkage among these mega-issues of our time by
an Indian philosopher of science and activist.

The Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism in Four Dimensions (1982; second edition 1994) by Robin Morgan. How feminism and
the new physics are breaking down hierarchy and creating holographic ways of perceiving reality.

For men - all of the above, plus:

Against the Tide: Pro feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990, a Documentary History (1992) edited by Michael S
Kimmel and Thomas E Mosmiller.

WOMEN AND LITERATURE

Kadiatu Kanneh
Women's literature has become a wide and varied field, with the range of texts, collections of essays, and criticism about
women's literature reflecting this. The following, necessarily truncated list provides an introduction to the range of writing that
women's literature represents, writing from a variety of cultures, countries, historical periods. The following provide an
overview of different feminist perspectives on the literature, different contextualizing strategies, and often conflicting
arguments.

To be a woman and a writer is / double mischief, for / the world will

slight her who slights `the servile house,' and who would rather / make
odes than beds.
DILYS LAING
Political Gender (1994) edited by Sally Ledger et al. This collection of essays by a range of academics with different critical
viewpoints approaches the issue of gender and its significance in literature. The essays discuss both historical and more
contemporary literatures.

New Feminist Discourses (1992) edited by Isobel Armstrong. A collection of essays that provides contemporary critical
analyses of women's texts from various feminist viewpoints.

Black Women Writers (1985) edited by Mari Evans. This text brings together a range of interviews with African-American
women writers, including excerpts from their poetry and prose.

Horne Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983) edited by Barbara Smith. This is a collection of critical and creative writing
by contemporary African-American women writers, allowing theory, politics, and analysis to be read together.

Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic (1994) by Madhu Dubey. Using black feminist theory, this text reads
writing by authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to challenge traditional notions of black female identity.

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (1994) by Florence Stratton. Studies the influence of
colonialism and race on African literatures, especially those by women.

Francophone African Women Writers (1994) by Irene Assiba D'Almeida. A survey of writing by French-speaking African
women that discusses the issue of silence in women's texts.

Sexual/Textual Politics (1985) by Toril Moi. Ground-breaking critical analysis of women's writing and its relation to sexual
politics.

A Literature of Their Own (1977) by Elaine Showalter. More traditional feminist analyses from a less theoretical perspective.
Lacks the range of attention to differences between women, but remains useful as an introduction to the field.
Fiction

The story. it has been argued, is finally all that men can contrive to leave behind them. their only personal immortality. Their
riches are perishable (unless they become the stuff of museums or vaults), but a man's story is his true legacy, the ghost through
which we see him forever. But man is not only a speaking and a writing animal: he is unique in being a lying animal as well.
His fictions are made of the same stuff as truth and if truth is stranger than fiction, fiction is sometimes truer. Thus though
common sense may assert that the novel is merely a narrative form and that "creative writing" is but entertainment, we have a
persistent feeling that novelists have more to tell us about life than all the psychoanalysts and sociologists. When all has been
said and done, there is one more thing to say and do: write and tell stories, read and recommend and pass them on.
The books recommended here are chosen not only to entertain, but also to give a cross-section—including a fair proportion of
masterworks—of a form of literature in which everyone will have his own taste. Some great books have, no doubt, been
omitted (especially if they are not in English), sometimes because (as in the case of. say. Doeblin's Alexanderplatz) no reliable
translation yet exists. Classics have tended to prevail over contemporary work, not least because it would have been ridiculous
to leave them out. Only a Cretan would claim that all the best novels and short fictions are contained here, and Cretans, as we
all know, are renowned for telling stories.

Crime Fiction and Thrillers

See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Buchan, Haggard, Stevenson)

Allingham, Margery The Tiger in the Smoke (1952)

Allingham has been described as "sensitive enough to make human beings out of victim, criminal and detective alike." Secure
plotting; magnificent feel for poetry of place. Also: More Work for the Undertaker-, Mystery Mile; The Beckoning Lady

Ambler, Eric The Mask of Dinzitrios (1939)

Astringent, unromantic, meticulously detailed, Ambler introduced a new and radical approach to the novel of espionage.
Buchan-style yarns told with icy irony. Also: The Dark Frontier, Dirty Story; Dr Frigo, etc

Bardin, John Franklin The Deadly Percheron (1946)

With his rediscovery in 1976, Bardin's particular brand of surreal imagination and obsession with morbid psychology have
brought him new recognition. Flawed but interesting minor master. Also: The Last of Philip Banter; Devil Take the Blue-Tailed
Fly

Canning, Victor The Golden Salamander (1947)

Canning's inventiveness, his sense of pace and humour compensate for a certain implausibility in the plotting. Also: Birdcage;
The Rainbird Pattern

Caudwell, Sarah, English, 1939-2000.

Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Rec: Good Reading

Chandler, Raymond The Big Sleep (1939)

It was not until his forties that Chandler began to write pulp novelettes for Black Mask. This apprenticeship produced the most
famous private eye of them all—Philip Marlowe. Chandler's desire to make him a modern knight-errant is redeemed by a
sardonic wit that salts the sentimentality. Also: Farewell, My Lovely; The Long Goodbye; The Little Sister

Chandler, Raymond, American, 1888-1959.

The Long Goodbye. Rec: Burgess
The Big Sleep. Rec: NYPL Time

Christie, Agatha The ABC Murders (1936)

The dapper little master detective, Hercule Poirot, took his first bow in 1915, and thanks to those phenomenal "little grey
cells", never failed to unravel puzzles of murderous duplicity. Simplistic, irritating prose-style; every other hair in place. Also:
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Ten Little Niggers (sometimes Indians); Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. etc

Christie, Agatha, English, 1890-1976.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Rec: NYPL (mystery)
Collins, Wilkie The Moonstone (1868) * T. S. Eliot called this "the first, the longest and the best of modern English
detective novels." Also: The Woman in White

Crispin, Edmund The Moving Toyshop (1946)

Crispin's highly-wrought, suave mysteries, starring the eccentric and erudite Oxford professor, Dr Gervase Fen, delight in
bizarre bafflement. Also: The Case of the Gilded Fly; Love Lies Bleeding; The Glimpses of the Moon

Davidson, Lionel Making Good Again (1968)

Davidson is not strictly a crime novelist, but rather a writer of vivid and atmospheric high adventure. This book and Smith's
Gazelle (1971) are serious novels, badged with the pace and narrative excellence of his other work. Also; A Long Way to
Shiloh; The Night of Wenceslas, etc

Deighton, Len Spy Story (1974)

Scrupulously researched, often iconoclastic writing; "a kind of poet of the spy novel" (Julian Symons). Working-class, laconic
hero—a rare treat in a generally snobbish, middle-class-oriented genre. Cracking style and pace. Also: The Billion Dollar
Brain; Yesterday's Spy

Deighton, Len, English, 1929- .

Bomber. Rec: Burgess
It is the fictionalised account of the events of "31st June" (sic), 1943 in which an RAF bombing raid on the Ruhr area of
western Germany goes wrong.

Dickinson, Peter The Poison Oracle (1974)

After five books unglamorous, elderly but crafty copper's copper, Superintendent Pibble, was obliged to retire from Scotland
Yard. Dickinson's range is now wider—stylish mysteries fizzing with bizarre invention. Also: The Lively Dead; Sleep and His
Brother, etc. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) Despite time, competition and the Reichenbach Falls,
Holmes survives as the greatest, most famous detective in literature, an enduring part of popular mythology. Also: The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Hound of the Baskervilles; His Last Bow, etc

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, English, 1859-1930.

Sherlock Holmes stories. Rec: Rexmo Ward
The Hound of the Baskervilles. Rec: NYPL Smiley

Ellin, Stanley The Blessington Method (1964)

Despite a number of fine and varied novels Ellin is best-known for his short stories. He writes with a compressed imaginative
intensity that transcends the genre. Also: The Speciality of the House and Other Stories; The Eighth Circle, etc

Fleming, Ian, English, 1908-1964.

Goldfinger. Rec: Burgess

Forsyth, Frederick The Day of the Jackal (1971)

It is a tribute to Forsyth's dramatic skill that the threat to assassinate General de Gaulle remains nailbitingly tense and
convincing, despite our knowledge that the attempt is doomed from the outset. Later books less good; this one excellent.

Francis, Dick Bonecrack (1971)

An ex-champion jockey, Francis knows the value of a good start. He hooks you on the first page and never lets go. His intimate
knowledge of horse racing has provided background for a series of tautly written adventure stories, consistent winners. Also:
Dead Cert; Nerve; For Kicks, etc

Freeling, Nicolas Criminal Conversation (1965)

After killing off Van der Valk, Freeling has not quite managed to replace the complex Dutch Inspector with the (not
unsympathetic) Frenchman Castang. An original writer, he sometimes allows philosophical ramble to obscure narrative drive.
Also: Love in Amsterdam; Gun before Butter, Because of the Cats, etc Gilbert, Michael The Night of the Twelfth (1976)
At one time, Gilbert was Raymond Chandler's legal adviser, and even drew up his will. His classic mystery, Smallbone
Deceased (1950), has a corpse discovered in a safe deposit box. Unfailingly accomplished. Also: The Crack in the Teacup;
Game without Rules
Haggard, William The Scorpion's Tail (1975)
"Haggard is a right-wing romantic of the Buchan school ... who has an agreeable streak of realism" (Julian Symons). Politics
intrusive at times; but pace and invention rarely flag. Also: The Doubtful Disciple; The Telemann Touch; The Powder Barrel

Hammett, Dashiell The Maltese Falcon (1932) t"' Tougher and more uncomprising than Chandler, Hammett's spare,
cynical, unglamorized stories looked hard at violence, crooked police and urban corruption. Also: The Glass Key; The Dain
Curse; Red Harvest-, The Thin Man. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Hellman)

Highsmith, Patricia The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)

Since her success with Strangers on the Train (1950), Highsmith has explored criminal psychology with dark and imaginative
insight. Also: Ripley under Ground; The Two Faces of January; A Dog's Ransom, etc

Hornung, E. W. Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1899)

Raffles is the perfect English gentleman—finest slow-arm bowler of his generation, and a highly successful burglar. Also: A
Thief in the Night, Mr Justice Raffles

Household, Geoffrey Rogue Male(1938)

Classic chase story, where the hunter, an English aristocratic sportsman, becomes the hunted. Suspense never slackens. Also:
Watcher in the Shadows

Innes, Michael Hamlet, Revenge (1936)

Apotheosis of "don's delight" escapist detective fiction. Suave John Appleby solves the most obscure cases as he would a
Sunday crossword. Also: The Journeying Boy; Lament for a Maker, From London Far

James, P. D. The Black Tower (1975)

Brooding, atmospheric style, and a sensitive sleuth in Adam Dagleish. Also: A Mind to Murder, Death of an Expert Witness, etc

Keating, H. R. F. Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart (1972)

Gentle, intelligent stories, whose chief joy is the endearing and bumbling character of the little Inspector. Non-Ghote novels are
underrated, but funnier, more tightly plotted, sparkling with bizarre events. Also: A Rush on the Ultimate; Death and the
Visiting Firemen; Zen There Was Murder, etc

Kemelman, Harry Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (1976)

Starting with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), Kemelman has now reached the end of a packed week. Whilst mystery
elements have become subservient to suburban American synagogue politics, that interesting but unlikely detective, Rabbi
David Small, has a sneaky advantage neither Holmes, Spade nor Maigret ever had—Talmudic logic. Also: Thursday the Rabbi
Walked Out, etc

King, Stephen, American, 1947- .

Carrie. Rec: NYPL

Lathen, Emma Murder against the Grain (1967) it Behind the pseudonym lurk two Boston businesswomen who have
made Wall Street synonymous with murder and mayhem. Also: When in Greece; The Longer the Thread; By Hook or by
Crook, etc

Le Carrë, John The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963); The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971)
Le Carre's achievement has been wildly exaggerated, and his work can be repetitive, hermetic and as dull as the routine he so
lovingly dissects. But at his best, he is grippingly good: in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold he created a true mirror of our
distracted times, and in The Naive and Sentimental Lover. he found a warmth, a depth and a dignity his other bleak visions
signally lack.

Le Carre, John, English, 1931- .

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Rec: Time (thriller)

McBain, Ed Cop Hater (1956) * Versatile, prolific, consistent, McBain has written a string of pacey police procedurals.
His detectives, Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer get regular feature spots, but unusually it is the 87th Precinct itself
that has retained the limelight. Also: The Mugger, Like Love; Give the Boys a Great Big Hand, etc
Macdonald, Ross The Goodbye Look (1969) * Lew Archer started life as a Marlowe imitator, but Macdonald's
exuberant relish for story telling has helped his sleuth acquire a precise personal identity. Also: The Far Side of the Dollar, The
Moving Target; Sleeping Beauty, etc

Maugham, W. Somerset Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928)

With these crisp short stories, Maugham not only pioneered the modern novel of espionage, but also introduced a new kind of
anti-hero with the downbeat character of Ashenden. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY; DRAMA; FICTION/NOVELS;
FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Poe, Edgar Allan Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1850)

Poe may not have held his "tales of ratiocination" in the highest esteem, but these stories alone earned him the title of "the
father of detective fiction". Even Holmes took lessons from C. Auguste Dupin. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Price, Anthony Other Paths to Glory (1974)

With cool intelligence, Price has added new polish to a sometimes tarnished genre. British right-wing upper-class heroics again
—and none the worse, perhaps, for that. Also: The Labyrinth Makers; The October Men, etc

Sayers, Dorothy L. Murder Must Advertise (1933)

Sayers claimed she wrote Wimsey stories only for money. But her inspired aristocratic detective still has few rivals. See
DRAMA

Simenon, Georges My Friend Maigret (1949) 11, How Simenon managed an output of six short novels a year coupled
with an endless series of amorous conquests is a subject for the record books. Best read in French: English translations (even
those by Baldick, the best) are slapdash and unstylish. Also: Maigret and the Enigmatic Letr, Maigret's Memoirs; Maigret
Meets a Milord, etc. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Sims, George Sleep No More (1966)

A thriller writer with a touch of class and an edge of anger, Sims manages to combine high-octane excitement with plausible
incident and an insider's knowledge of the antique and book trade. Succinct but never mannered, Luciferian heroes on the side
of the angels. Also: End of the Web, etc

Stout, Rex Fer-de-Lance (1934) it Who weighs one seventh of a ton, is nearly six feet tall, grows orchids, lives in a
brownstone in New York, and is a self-confessed genius? The answer is Nero Wolfe, who with his laconic legman, Archie
Goodwin, forms one of the most entertaining double acts in detective fiction. Also: The League of Frightened Men; The Silent
Speaker, A Family Affair, etc

Symons, Julian The Man Who Lost His Wife (1970)

Svmons's reputation and influence in the field of crime fiction have rested more with crusading criticism than with novels. His
mordant wit, psychological probing and clever plotting deserve a large audience. Also: The Man Who Killed Himself, A Three-
pipe Problem; The Blackheath Poisonings, etc

Tey, Josephine The Daughter of Time (1951)

A perennial seller, this historical detective story confines Tey's Scotland Yard Inspector Grant to his sickbed. To relieve the
boredom, Grant delves into the mystery of the murdered Princes in the Tower and absolves Richard III of guilt. A curio. Also:
The Franchise Affair, The Singing Sands, etc

Tey, Josephine, Scottish, 1896-1952.

The Daughter of Time. Rec: Good Reading

Wahloo, Per and Sjowall, Maj The Laughing Policeman (1970) Police procedurals, featuring the lugubrious Martin Beck,
take a hard and abrasive look at Swedish society. Gloomily compulsive. Also: The Abominable Man; The Locked Room; Cop
Killer, etc

Wambaugh, Joseph, American, 1937- .

The New Centurions. Rec: LAT
Wambaugh brings his unique real-life experience in LAPD to bear on this story, showing the maturation of cops in believable
fashion. The book is a little dated in terms of police procedure, but the underlying story and message are same-day fresh. This
is a cut above the typical cop's tale (amazon)
CRIME FICTION
Colin Dexter

More people read crime and detection novels than any other form of fiction. It cuts across differences of age, culture, gender,
and class, combining the fascination of crime with the reassurance of order restored, a mystery solved. It began in the 19th
century with the works of Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe, and soon became a genre with many (very different) forms -
such as the very English `murder in the vicarage' of Agatha Christie, the hardboiled American writing of Hammett and
Chandler, the psychological analysis of Patricia Highsmith. It can be pulp fiction, sophisticated entertainment, and (in the
hands of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco) philosophical speculation. One of the best introductions to crime
and detection fiction is Julian Symons's Bloody Murder (1972), a history of the genre. The following list includes
representative works from each of the main genres ('whodunnit', `whydunnit', `howdunnit', `thriller', `spy story', `historical
reconstruction').

Tremendous enjoyment underlies the superficially tragic

subject-matter of most crime fiction.
DIOGENES SMALL

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) by Agatha Christie. The most brilliant thing she ever wrote. A hugely imaginative
woman, today sometimes sadly underrated.

The Hollow Man (1935) by John Dickson Carr. Most implausible plot ever but the most staggeringly ingenious of all his
books. Excellent.

The Glass Key (1931) by Dashiell Hammett. Probably one of the best detective novels ever written. Balance between plot,
characterization, and tension is superb.

Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler. Almost everyone would have him on their list. Any book would do. This
is Chandler at his very best.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) by John Le Cane. Perhaps the finest and most poignant of all spy stories.
Haunting atmosphere, superb plot.

Malice Aforethought (1931) by Frances Iles. One of the most important crime books ever written. Frances Iles is a
pseudonym of Anthony Berkeley.

The Daughter of Time (1951) by Josephine Tey. Historical crime fiction - was Richard III a murderer? Not an easy read, but
wonderfully worth it.

A Fatal Inversion (1987) by Barbara Vine. Barbara Vine is a pseudonym of Ruth Rendell. This superb psychological thriller
displays her incredible talents to the full.

The Day of the Jackal (1971) by Frederick Forsyth. Probably the best thriller written since World War II. Everyone knows
there will be no assassination, but the ingenuity is breathtaking, and the pace splendidly maintained.

The False Inspector Dew (1982) by Peter Lovesy. Extremely clever, interesting, and so easy to read. Based on the
transatlantic liner route and the Crippen murder story. A very fine present-day writer.

Novels

See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Tolkien, White, Williamson); HUMOUR (Chevalier, Dennis, Frayn, Jerome, Loos, Petronius,
Queneau, Smith, Tinniswood, Twain, De Vries, Westlake, Wodehouse); MYTHOLOGY (Mitchison): SEX (Cleland, Genet,
Haddon, Laclos, Miller, Nin, Reage, Sade, Southern)

Abbey, Edward, American, 1927-1989.

Desert Solitaire. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Abe Kobo, Japanese, 1925- .

Woman in the Dunes. Rec: MW Asian Ward

Abish, Walter, American, 1931- .

Alphabetical Africa. Rec: Bloom
How German Is It. Rec: Bloom
Eclipse Fever. Rec: Bloom
I Am the Dust Under Your Feet. Rec: Bloom

Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart (1958)

Wry African view of comedy and scandal of independence in a Nigeria at once debauched by its one-time masters and thrust,
by their departure, into a parody of their vanities. Also: No Longer at Ease; A Man of the People

Achebe, Chinua, Nigerian writing in English, 1930- .

Arrow of God. Rec: Bloom
No Longer at Ease. Rec: Bloom
Things Fall Apart. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Meaningful NYPL Radcliffe Time Utne Ward
A Man of the People. Rec: Burgess

Alain-Fournier The Lost Domain (Le Grand Meaulnes) (1913)

School and adolescence in the French countryside: lost love rendered poignant by the author's death in the Great War, which
elevates his memory—book is surprisingly based on "reality"—into legend.

Alain-Fournier, French, 1886-1914.

Le Grand Meaulnes. Rec: Bloom

Alas, Leopoldo (Clarín), Spanish, 1852-1901.

La Regenta. Rec: Bloom

Aldiss, Brian, English, 1925- .

Life in the West. Rec: Burgess

Algren, Nelson The Man with the Golden Arm (1972)

Determinedly tough and wrong-side-of -the-trackish, Algren is of the Chicago school which refuses to make overtures to (or
accept them from) the literary establishment. His writing lacks conscious grace, but is consciously disgraceful instead: this
novel was one of the first to deal boldly, melodramatically perhaps, with drugs, and it has a typically rough, diamantine quality.
Algren is portrayed in Beauvoir's (qv) The Mandarins.

Algren, Nelson, American, 1909-1981.

The Man with the Golden Arm. Rec: BOMC
A Walk on the Wild Side. Rec: LAT

Allison, Dorothy, American, 1949- .

Bastard Out of Carolina. Rec: Harvard Hungry Mind Utne

Alvarez, Julia, American, 1950- .

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Rec: Harvard
These interconnected vignettes of family life, resilience, and love are skillfully intertwined and offer young adults a perspective
on immigration and families as well as a look at America through Hispanic eyes. (amazon)

Amado, Jorge Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon(1958)

Ilheus, a port city in the Brazilian province of Bahia, comes alive when beautiful Gabriela from the backlands is hired as a cook
by Nacib, owner of the town's most popular cafe. An enchanting novel teeming with Brazilian folklore and humour.

Amos, Kingsley Lucky Jim (1954)

Amos' first book grows ever slighter, more enduring; Jim Dixon, English grammar school-educated academic, has had a
thousand irreverent successors, none with quite his anarchic eye for the main chance.
Amis, Kingsley, English, 1922-1995.
Lucky Jim. Rec: Burgess Good Reading Time
The Anti-Death League. Rec: Burgess

Amis, Martin, English, 1949- .

London Fields. Rec: Harvard
Money. Rec: Time

Anantha Murthy, U. R., Indian writing in Kannada, 1932- .

Samskara. Rec: MW Asian
As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village of Karnataka, Samskara serves as an allegory
rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious
man living in a community of priests gone to seed. (amazon)

Anaya, Rudolfo, American, 1937- .

Bless Me Ultima. Rec: Hungry Mind

Andersen Nexø, Martin, Danish, 1869-1954.

Pelle the Conqueror. Rec: Bloom

Anderson, Jack, American, 1922-2005.

Confessions of a Muckraker. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Andric, Ivo, Bosnian, 1892-1975. Nobel Laureate

The Bridge on the Drina. Rec: Bloom

Anger, Kenneth, American, 1930- .

Hollywood Babylon. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Angulo, Jaime de, American, 1887-1950.

Indian Tales. Rec: LAT

Appelfeld, Aharon, Israeli, 1932- .

The Immortal Bartfuss. Rec: Bloom
Badenheim 1939. Rec: Bloom

Apuleius, Roman, fl. ca. 155 CE.

Golden Ass (also known as Metamorphoses). Rec: Bloom Rex Utne Ward

Arenas, Reinaldo, Cuban, 1943-1990.

The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando. Rec: Bloom

Asch, Sholem, Polish-American writing in Yiddish, 1880-1957.

East River. Rec: Bloom

Asturias, Miguel Angel, Guatemalan, 1899-1974. Nobel Laureate

Men of Maize. Rec: Bloom

Atkinson, Kate, English, 1951- .

Emotionally Weird. Rec: Harvard
Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Rec: Smiley

Atwood, Margaret, Canadian, 1939- .

Surfacing. Rec: Bloom
The Handmaid's Tale. Rec: Harvard NYPL
The Blind Assassin. Rec: Time
Austen, Jane Sense and Sensibility (1815) 10 The determination of orthodox criticism to find in Jane Austen the virtue of
moral sensitivity tends to make furtive the view that her books maintain their vitality because they are about what interests
readers: love and money. Her novels' view of life is alert to form and to reality; from that shaping tension comes classic quality.
Also: Pride and Prejudice; Em ma; Northanger Abbey, etc

Austen, Jane, English, 1775-1817.

Pride and Prejudice. Rec: Adler Bloom Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful SJC Ward
Emma. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW SJC
Mansfield Park. Rec: Bloom
Persuasion. Rec: Bloom Harvard Smiley Utne

Auster, Paul, American, 1947- .

The New York Trilogy. Rec: Harvard

Ayrton, Michael The Mazemaker (1967)

Myth of Daedalus relived by an artist as protean as the legendary Cretan craftsman; less a historical novel than a personalized
view of the relationship between power and art, grit and oyster.

Azuela, Mariano, Mexican, 1873-1952.

Underdogs. Rec: Ward
This is a marvelous book, especially for Gringos who want to understand a major element of the psyche of Mexico.

Baker, Nicholson, American, 1957- .

Vox. Rec: Smiley

Baldwin, James Another Country (1963)

Much better than Giovanni's Room—trash which brought him fame. American expatriates in 1950s and early 1960s search for
sexual and emotional liberation. Black and white, "queer" and "straight", matched with convincing sympathy and urgency.
Also: Go Tell It on the Mountain; The Fire Next Time (polemic), etc

Baldwin, James, American, 1924-1987.

The Price of a Ticket. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind
Notes of a Native Son. Rec: LAT ML Nonfiction
Go Tell It on the Mountain. Rec: Boston PL Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time
Collected Essays. Rec: Utne
The Fire Next Time. Rec: NYPL
The Devil Finds Work. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Another Country. Rec: Burgess

Balzac, Honore de Old Goriot (1834)

Old Goriot—a bourgeois King Lear living M a pension—is but one panel in The Human Comedy, and a good introduction to
its brilliant pageant of realism and fantasy, of observation and monstrous fancy. Also: Cousin Bette; Eugenie Grander, etc. See
BIOGRAPHY (Zweig)

Balzac, Honoré de, French, 1799-1850.

La Comédie Humaine. Rec: Rexmo Ward
Girl with the Golden Eyes. Rec: Bloom
Louis Lambert. Rec: Bloom
The Wild Ass's Skin. Rec: Bloom
Père Goriot. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful
A Harlot High and Low. Rec: Bloom
Eugénie Grandet. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading
Cousin Bette. Rec: Bloom GBWW Smiley
Ursule Mirouet. Rec: Bloom
Cousin Pons. Rec: Smiley

Banerji, Bibhuti Bhusan, Indian writing in Bengali, 1894-1950.

Pather Panchali (Song of the Road). Rec: Ward
Baroja, Pio, Basque Spanish, 1872-1956.
Restlessness of Shanti Andía and Other Writings. Rec: Ward

Barth, John The End of the Road (1962)

Best, early work of later logorrhoid; campus life with the blinds rolled up; scabrous tenderness illuminates characteristic 1950s
American milieu.

Barth, John, American, 1930- .

The Floating Opera. Rec: Bloom
The End of the Road. Rec: Bloom
The Sot-Weed Factor. Rec: Bloom Time
Giles Goat-Boy. Rec: Burgess LAT

Barthelme, Donald, American, 1931-1989.

The Dead Father. Rec: Bloom LAT

Bassani, Giorgio, Italian, 1916- .

The Heron. Rec: Bloom

Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de, French, 1732-1799.

Barber of Seville. Rec: Ward
Marriage of Figaro. Rec: Ward

Beauvoir, Simone de The Mandarins (1954)

Lacking wit, by a process of earnest accumulation and resolute seriousness de Beauvoir analyses post-war French intellectuals
—Sartre, Camus et al—in a book both seductive and self-indulgent. See FEMINISM

Beckett, Samuel Molloy (1950)

The novel reduced to literature; the skeleton as flesh; the flesh made words; words in a state of decomposition. Also: Murphy;
Malone Dies; Watt. See DRAMA; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; LITERARY CRITICISM

Beerbohm, Max Zuleika Dobson ( 1911)

Beerbohm's dandyism kept his literary wardrobe slim and neat. Zuleika Dobson is perhaps the most elegant bad example ever
set to the young; idle, gilded Oxford epitomized.

Beerbohm, Max, English, 1872-1956.

Zuleika Dobson. Rec: Bloom Good Reading ML Novels Smiley

Bellow, Saul The Victim (1947)

Tense study in paranoia in which forces of self-destruction and external menace are artfully balanced; one of his good early
books—Dangling Man (1944) is another—before The Adventures of Augie March (1953) led to fame and fat.

Bellow, Saul, American, 1915-2005. Nobel Laureate

Seize the Day. Rec: Bloom BOMC
Henderson the Rain King. Rec: ML Novels
The Adventures of Augie March. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading ML Novels Time
Herzog. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Hungry Mind LAT Time
Humboldt's Gift. Rec: Burgess Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
The Victim. Rec: Burgess

Bely, Andrey, Russian, 1880-1934.

Petersburg. Rec: Bloom

Bennett, Arnold The Old Wives' Tale (1908)

Lives of two sisters from one of Bennett's "Five Towns" (industrial Midlands of Britain, Victorian style), from girlhood to
grave; memorable scenes of Paris under siege in 1870. "Arnold has written a masterpiece," said Maugham. Also: Anna of the
Five Towns: Clayhanger, Buried A live, etc. See DIARIES
Bennett, Arnold, English, 1867-1931.
The Old Wives' Tale. Rec: Bloom ML Novels

Berger, John, English, 1926- .

Pig Earth. Rec: Utne
This book is part of trilogy - Pig Earth, In Europa, Lilac and Flag - depicting the erosion of traditional peasant culture and the
incorporation of the children of the peasantry into modern urban life. Taken together, these books comprise a kind of
fictionalized sociology of modernization. (amazon)

Berger, Thomas, American, 1924- .

Little Big Man. Rec: BOMC
In addition to being a great read and informative piece of historical fiction, this novel became a model for the anti-hero of a
number of other historical fiction series and works. The most notable of these is the George MacDonald Frazer, Flashman
books.(amazon)

Bernhard, Thomas, Austrian, 1931-1989.

Woodcutters. Rec: Bloom
The narrator of this story, which is told in a demanding, nonstop stream of consciousness, is a writer who finds himself roped
into a dinner party thrown by people he has avoided for 20 years. Spurning conversation, he reviews his grievances against his
hosts and their pretentious guests in what PW termed "a satirical jeremiad." (amazon)

Bjørnson, Bjørnsterne, Norwegian, 1832-1910. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Blanchot, Maurice, French, 1907-2003.

Thomas the Obscure. Rec: Bloom
Admirers of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Beckett will enjoy Blanchot's philosophical rumination on existence in the form of this
odd novela tragic existential romance of sorts. (amazon)

Böll, Heinrich, German, 1917-1985. Nobel Laureate

Billiards at Half-Past Nine. Rec: Bloom
The novel examines the lives of three generations of architects and their responses to the Nazi regime and its aftermath.
(amazon)

Borrow, George, English, 1803-1881.

Lavengro. Rec: Ward
Romany Rye. Rec: Ward

Bowen, Elizabeth, Anglo-Irish, 1899-1973.

The Death of the Heart. Rec: ML Novels Smiley Time
Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Heat of the Day. Rec: Burgess

Bowles, Paul, American, 1910-1999.

The Sheltering Sky. Rec: Bloom BOMC Harvard Hungry Mind ML Novels Time

Boyle, Kay, American, 1903-1992.

Three Short Novels. Rec: Bloom

Boyle, T. Coraghessan, American, 1948- .

Tortilla Curtain. Rec: Harvard (novel)

Bradbury, Malcolm, English, 1932-2000.

The History Man. Rec: Burgess
Husband and wife radical poseurs wreak havoc in British academia during the '60s and '70s in this satirical novel first
published in 1975. (amazon)

Braine, John, English, 1922-1986.

Room at the Top. Rec: Burgess (novel)
Broch, Hermann, Austrian, 1886-1951.
The Sleepwalkers. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal and His Time. Rec: Bloom
Death of Virgil. Rec: Bloom Ward
Broch's Trilogy is the chronicle of the evolution of Germany in particular and the whole Europe in general between the years
1888 and 1918.
The book is about Virgil's infamous deathbed request that his magnum opus, The "Aeneid," be burned because it was
imperfect. Most of the book is told in a dazzling but recondite stream-of-consciousness mode, but the best section is Virgil's
deathbed discussion with Caesar Augustus.

Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre ( I 847) 1!1

"Realistic" wish-fulfilment in which the wish-bone sticks in the heroine's throat until a happily painful operation gives her the
stars while denying her the moon. See Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) for a recension of the life of Mrs Rochester. See
BIOGRAPHY (Gaskell, Gdrin)

Brontë, Charlotte, English, 1816-1855.

Jane Eyre. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Harvard Smiley Ward
Villette. Rec: Bloom

Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights (1847)

The supreme Romantic fiction, archetypal and idiosyncratic for passion and for surging, self-justifying conviction; no parody
can match its hysterics, but Heathcliff continues to lord it over his detractors, both in the story and without. See BIOGRAPHY
(Gerin)

Brontë, Emily, English, 1818-1848.

Wuthering Heights. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful Smiley Ward
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Buck, Pearl S., American, 1892-1973. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Bukowski, Charles, American, 1920-1994.

Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Rec: LAT
Ham on Rye. Rec: Harvard
Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills. Rec: Harvard

Bulgakov, Mikhail, Russian, 1891-1940.

The Master and the Margarita. Rec: Bloom Harvard

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, English, 1803-1873.

The Last Days of Pompeii. Rec: Lubbock

Burgess, Anthony The Malayan Trilogy (1956-59)

Best, least ostentatious early work of prolific man of letters; conscript life in the oriental twilight of empire reported in plain
but personal style.

Burgess, Anthony, English, 1917-1994.

A Clockwork Orange. Rec: Boston PL Good Reading ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time
Nothing Like the Sun. Rec: Bloom

Burney, Fanny, English, 1752-1840.

Evelina. Rec: Bloom

Burroughs, William S., American, 1914-1997.

The Naked Lunch. Rec: Hungry Mind LAT Radcliffe Time

Butler, Samuel The Way of All Flesh (1903) ; Erewhon (1872) Creepy classic of the relationship between a British Victorian
father and his floundering, rationalist son, The Way of All Flesh is a consummate example of the novel-as-revenge. Erewhon is
elegant satire: illness as social crime, crime as illness have unhappily manifold modern reverberations. On father-son theme,
see AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Gosse)

Butler, Samuel, English, 1835-1902.

Erewhon. Rec: Bloom
The Way of All Flesh. Rec: Bloom ML Novels

Butor, Michel Second Thoughts (La Modification) (1957) 9

Regarded by Sartre as the best living French novelist, Butor is a nouveau romancierwhose experiments still leave us with a
story. Second Thoughtsis an innovative sequence of presents, urgent with traditional themes of personality, love and
redemption. More profound, though less readable, than Robbe-Grillet (qv).

Buzzati, Dino, Italian, 1906-1972.

The Tartar Steppe. Rec: Ward (novel)
The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari) is a novel written by Dino Buzzati in 1940, which focuses on the story of a young
officer, Giovanni Drogo, who is assigned to serve militarily in the Bastiani Fortress, a decadent, little-used border fortress. In
the nearby desert supposedly live the Tartars.

Byatt, A. S., English, 1936- .

Possession. Rec: Smiley Time

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, Cuban, 1929- .

Three Trapped Tigers. Rec: Bloom
View of Dawn in the Tropics. Rec: Bloom

Cahan, Abraham, American, 1860-1951.

The Rise of David Levinsky. Rec: Bloom

Cain, James M., American, 1892-1977.

The Postman Always Rings Twice. Rec: BOMC ML Novels

Caldwell, Erskine, American, 1903-1987.

Tobacco Road. Rec: ML Novels

Calvino, Italo, Italian, 1923-1985.

The Non-Existent Knight and the Cloven Viscount. Rec: Ward
The Baron in the Trees. Rec: Bloom Ward
Invisible Cities. Rec: Bloom
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Rec: Bloom
T zero. Rec: Bloom

Camus, Albert The Outsider(L'Ètranger) (1942); The Plague (1948) 9E*

In The Outsider (also translated as The Stranger and The Bystander) Camus eliminated formal conditions of "character" and, in
Meursault, "invented" a hero without heroic attributes or psychological coherence. The Outsiderhas cinematic terseness; The
Plague is a denser, more pretentious book: the apocalypse in Oran, foreshadowing the Algerian bloodbath.

Camus, Albert, French, 1913-1960. Nobel Laureate

The Plague. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Ward
The Stranger. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard Meaningful NYPL TLS Ward
The Fall. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Rebel. Rec: Bloom
The Myth of Sisyphus. Rec: National Review TLS
Notebooks 1935-1951. Rec: TLS

Cao Xueqin (Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in), Chinese, 1715-1763.

The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone) . Rec: App Fadiman 4 MW Asian Oriental Rex Ward

Capote, Truman, American, 1924-1984.

In Cold Blood. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind LAT ML Nonfiction NYPL Radcliffe
Other Voices, Other Rooms. Rec: BOMC

Carey, Peter, Australian, 1943- .

Oscar and Lucinda. Rec: Bloom
Illywhacker. Rec: Bloom

Carleton, Jetta, American, c.1913-1999.

The Moonflower Vine. Rec: Smiley

Carpentier, Alejo, Cuban, 1904-1980.

Explosion in a Cathedral. Rec: Bloom
Reasons of State. Rec: Bloom
The Kingdom of This World. Rec: Bloom
The Lost Steps. Rec: Bloom Ward

Cary, Joyce, Irish-English, 1888-1957.

The Horse's Mouth. Rec: Burgess Good Reading

Cather, Willa The Song of the Lark (1875)

The story of an ambitious girl from middle America who will not be silenced either by lack of opportunity or the prejudice of
family and neighbours. Her journey from prairie farm to the Metropolitan Opera is emblematic of the American Way at its
optimistic best. Also: My Antonia; Death Comes for the Archbishop, etc

Cather, Willa, American, 1876-1947.

My Ántonia. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Radcliffe
The Professor's House. Rec: Bloom
O Pioneers!. Rec: Hungry Mind Radcliffe
Shadows on the Rock. Rec: NYPL
A Lost Lady. Rec: Bloom GBWW
Death Comes for the Archbishop. Rec: BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time

Cela, Camilo José, Spanish, 1916- . Nobel Laureate

The Hive. Rec: Bloom
Journey to the Alcarria. Rec: Ward

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, French, 1894-1961.

Journey to the End of the Night. Rec: Bloom Meaningful

Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote (1605)

Don Quixote, a gaunt country gentleman crazed by reading books of knight-errantry, sets out to redress the evils of the 17th-
century world.

Cervantes de Saavedra, Miguel de, Spanish, 1547-1616.

Don Quixote. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard
Lubbock Meaningful Rex Seymour-Smith SJC Smiley Ward
Exemplary Stories. Rec: Bloom

Cheever, John Falconer (1977)

A Kafkaesque study of an intellectual, sensitive and savage, reduced (or promoted) to the level of his fellow-convicts in an
American "correctional facility", a prison where homosexuality is the rule. A sly, wished-for book with something of
Malaparte's dandyish nostalgie de la boue. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Chernyshevsky, Nikolay, Russian, 1828-1889.

What is to Be Done?. Rec: Bloom

Chopin, Kate, American, 1851-1904.

The Awakening. Rec: Bloom Radcliffe Smiley

Cisneros, Sandra, American, 1954- .

House on Mango Street. Rec: Hungry Mind

Clavell, James Shogun (1975)

An extraordinarily imaginative evocation of life in medieval Japan by a writer who previously specialized in potboilers. Here
Clavel found his subject, and treated it with range and skill.

Coetzee, J. M., South African, 1940- . Nobel Laureate

Foe. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Colette Cheri (1920) 1,1

No single work of Colette's is "great", but, in the tradition of French writing, the entire works constitute the achievement.
Language weakened in translation. Also: Claudine; The Vagabond; The End of Cheri, etc

Colette, French, 1873-1954.

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
Retreat from Love. Rec: Bloom
Chéri. Rec: Good Reading

Collins, Wilkie, English, 1824-1889.

Moonstone. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Woman in White. Rec: Bloom Smiley
No Name. Rec: Bloom

Compton-Burnett, Ivy Mother and Son (1955) P * The hypnotic tone and knotty style of Compton-Burnett's novels are
notorious. Their grave absurdity and regular wit—they are all style, with little action—can seem merely ingenious; but
stringent perceptiveness is at work throughout. The Edwardian English "domus system" never had a more searching obituary.
Also: A God and His Gifts, etc

Compton-Burnett, Ivy, English, 1892-1969.

A God and His Gifts. Rec: Ward
The Mighty and Their Fall. Rec: Burgess

Conrad, Joseph Nostromo (1904); The Secret Agent (1907)

Set in an imaginary South American republic, Nostromo is a study of adventure and the temptations of power. The "South
American novel" originates and flowers here. The Secret Agent once seemed grotesque melodrama, but modern urban
terrorism has its roots in Mr Verloc's nihilistic mania and, perhaps, domestic despair. Useful biography: Karl's Joseph Conrad:
The Three Lives. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Conrad, Joseph, English, 1857-1924.

Heart of Darkness. Rec: Boston PL GBWW ML Novels Radcliffe SJC Smiley
Lord Jim. Rec: Bloom ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe
Nostromo. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful ML Novels
The Secret Agent. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Ward
Under Western Eyes. Rec: Bloom Ward
Victory. Rec: Bloom

Constant, Benjamin, French, 1767-1830.

Adolphe. Rec: Bloom
The Red Notebook. Rec: Bloom

Cooper, James Fenimore, American, 1789-1851.

Deerslayer. Rec: Bloom

Cooper, William Scenes from Provincial Life (1961)

Neat and humorous tales, understated but never etiolated, of English adolescent life before television and jeans. The school of
Amis and Larkin was equalled and perhaps preceded by Cooper's nicely scathing, affectionate study.

Cooper, William, English, 1910-2002.

Scenes from Provincial Life. Rec: Burgess
Coover, Robert, American, 1932- .
Spanking the Maid. Rec: Bloom
The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.. Rec: LAT

Cortázar, Julio, Argentinian, 1914-1984.

Hopscotch. Rec: Bloom
All Fires the Fire. Rec: Bloom
Blow-up and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom

Cozzens, James Gould, American, 1903-1978.

Guard of Honor. Rec: BOMC

Crase, Douglas, American, 1944- .

The Revisionist. Rec: Bloom

Daumal, René, French, 1908-1944.

Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. Rec: Bloom

Davies, Robertson, Canadian, 1913-1995.

The Deptford Trilogy. Rec: Bloom
The Rebel Angels. Rec: Bloom Burgess

Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe (1719); A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) 1! Virtues of forthright style are seldom
virtuous in critical circles, but Defoe's capacity for creating suspension of disbelief bypasses aesthetics. Robinson Crusoe is an
early example of the creative use of "news stories"—it was suggested by an actual marooning—just as A Journal of the Plague
Year brilliantly impersonates an eye-witness account.

Defoe, Daniel, English, 1660-1731.

Roxana. Rec: Smiley
Robinson Crusoe. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock Rexmo Smiley Ward
Moll Flanders. Rec: Bloom Rexmo
Journal of a Plague Year. Rec: Bloom

DeLillo, Don, American, 1936- .

White Noise. Rec: Bloom Harvard Hungry Mind Radcliffe Time
Libra. Rec: Bloom
Running Dog. Rec: Bloom
Mao II. Rec: Bloom Harvard

Dennis, Nigel, English, 1912-1989.

Cards of Identity. Rec: Bloom
a witty psychological satire that gained cult acclaim. (wiki)

Desai, Anita, Indian writing in English, 1937- .

Fire on the Mountain. Rec: MW Asian
Games at Twilight. Rec: MW Asian

Dickens, Charles Great Expectations (1860 –61)

Dickens was a master of sentimental, savage Victorian journalism, the anatomist of his gory age; but plots, wit and warm
characterization triumph over particularity, and render him a timeless joy. Great Expectations is his masterpiece, autobiography
transmuted into art; but Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and above all Bleak House make almost equal claims. See
BIOGRAPHY (Zweig)

Dickens, Charles, English, 1812-1870.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Pickwick Papers. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Lubbock Rexmo Ward
David Copperfield. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock
The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Rec: Bloom
A Tale of Two Cities. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Bleak House. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3
Hard Times. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Nicholas Nickleby. Rec: Bloom
Dombey and Son. Rec: Bloom
Great Expectations. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful
Martin Chuzzlewit. Rec: Bloom
Christmas Stories. Rec: Bloom
Little Dorrit. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
Our Mutual Friend. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading
The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Rec: Bloom

Dickey, James, American, 1923-1997.

The Early Motion. Rec: Bloom
The Central Motion. Rec: Bloom
Deliverance. Rec: ML Novels Time

Didion, Joan, American, 1934- .

Play It As It Lays. Rec: Time

Döblin, Alfred, German, 1878-1957.

Berlin Alexanderplatz. Rec: Bloom Meaningful
The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his
criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that he will be unable to
extricate himself from the underworld into which he has sunk.

Doctorow, E. L., American, 1931- .

The Book of Daniel. Rec: Bloom
World's Fair. Rec: Bloom
Ragtime. Rec: BOMC ML Novels Time

Donleavy, J. P., Irish, 1926- .

The Ginger Man. Rec: Good Reading ML Novels Ward

Donoso, José, Chilean, 1924- .

The Obscene Bird of Night. Rec: Bloom

Dos Passos, John Three Soldiers (1922); Manhattan Transfer(1925); USA (1932-36)
Three Soldiers is a conventional but innovative study of Americans at war in 1917; Manhattan Transfer a montage of 1920s
life; USA an impressive attempt to manage a large, politically committed theme.

Dos Passos, John, American, 1896-1970.

U.S.A. (Trilogy). Rec: Bloom BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels NYPL

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Notes from the House of the Dead (1861); Crime and Punishment (1866)
Tolstoy's rival (according to the critic George Steiner), journalistic ranter (according to Nabokov, qv), Dostoyevsky's capacity
to dramatize deadly, comic dilemmas of Russian life under the Tsars makes him the master whose Crime and Punishment is the
best introduction. Notes from the House of the Dead—based on Dostoyevsky's life in Tsarist prisons—presages the Gulag.
Also: The Brothers Karamazov; The Idiot, The Devils, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Zweig)

Dostoyevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich, Russian, 1821-1881.

Notes from the Underground. Rec: Bloom
Crime and Punishment. Rec: Adler Bloom Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard Meaningful Ward
The Brothers Karamazov. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard Meaningful Rex
SJC Ward
The Idiot. Rec: Adler Bloom Meaningful Smiley Ward
The Possessed (The Devils). Rec: Bloom Meaningful
Short Novels. Rec: Bloom
Douglas (Brown), George, Scottish, 1869-1902.
The House with the Green Shutters. Rec: Bloom
The novel gives a strongly outlined picture of the harder and less genial aspects of Scottish life and character, and was regarded
as a useful corrective to the more roseate presentations of the kailyard school of J. M. Barrie and Ian Maclaren.

Douglas, Norman, English, 1868-1952.

Looking Back. Rec: National Review
South Wind. Rec: Bloom

Drabble, Margaret The Millstone (1970)

A characteristically sixties study (a milestone it ain't) of young motherhood, unsentimental, caustic and socially aware, though
with a strong sense of privilege (the unmarried mother is a scholarship girl). Drabble's fiction is self-conscious and less well
written than her reputation might imply. but if it is inclined to insularity, it is always at least aware of the deep water beyond the
smug island.

Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy (1925)

Inelegant, Zolaesque, Theodore Dreiser heaped up authenticity like a scrap merchant making his pile. Earnest anger makes his
social-climber hero's "murder" of his working class fiancée a "tragedy" of sentimental ruthlessness in the heyday of rugged
individualism. Also: Sister Carrie

Dreiser, Theodore, American, 1871-1945.

Sister Carrie. Rec: Bloom ML Novels
An American Tragedy. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time

Dumas, Alexandre, French, 1802-1870.

The Count of Monte Cristo. Rec: Harvard

Duras, Marguerite, French, 1914-1996.

The Lover. Rec: Bloom NYPL
Four Novels. Rec: Bloom

Durrell, Lawrence The Alexandria Quartet (1957-60)

Grandiose composition, supposedly Einsteinian in its literary "relativity"; gaudy, often splendid style. The outrageous Scobie
wittily homonymous with the dull hero of Graham Greene's (qv) The Heart of the Matter. As often with Durrell, topography
wins. See DIARIES; POETRY; TRAVEL

Durrell, Lawrence, English, 1912-1990.

Alexandria Quartet. Rec: Bloom Burgess ML Novels

Du Maurier, Daphne, English, 1907-1989.

Rebecca. Rec: Radcliffe

Eça de Queiróz, José María, Portuguese, 1843-1900.

The Sin of Father Amaro. Rec: Ward
Dragon's Teeth. Rec: Ward
The Maias. Rec: Bloom Ward

Edgeworth, Maria, Irish, 1768-1849.

Castle Rackrent. Rec: Bloom
…often regarded as the first true historical novel and the first true regional novel in English. It is also widely regarded as the
first family saga, and the first novel to use the device of a narrator who is both unreliable and an observer of, rather than a
player in, the actions he chronicles.

Edwards, G. B., English, 1899-1976.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. Rec: Bloom
The book takes the form of an autobiography of an archetypal Guernseyman who lives through the dramatic changes in the
island of Guernsey, Channel Islands from the late 19th century, through to the 1960s.

Egan, Jennifer, American, 1962- .

Look at Me. Rec: Smiley

Eichendorff, Joseph, Freiherr von, German, 1788-1857.

Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing. Rec: Ward (novel)
A typical romantic novella, voyage and love are the main topics. The protagonist leaves his father's mill and becomes gardener
on a Viennese castle and falls in love with the supposed daughter of the duke. Because she is unreacheable for him he travels to
Italy but then returns and gets to know that she is just adopted by the duke and nothing stands in the way of a marriage between
them.

Eliot, George Middlemarch(1871); Daniel Deronda (1874) Outspokenness in sexual and social matters was never better
combined with literary decorum than in Middlemarch. We know everything about Casaubon and Dorothea's terrible marriage
without ever entering their bedroom; we see Lydgate's early flame doused by his own passion and can infer his shortcomings;
morality without Christian affectations. Daniel Deronda is prolix but acute on Victorian attitudes to the Jewish problem. Also:
Silas Mauler, Adam Bede, etc

Eliot, George, English, 1819-1880.

Adam Bede. Rec: Adler Bloom Lubbock
Silas Marner. Rec: Bloom
The Mill on the Floss. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Middlemarch. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Meaningful Smiley Ward
Daniel Deronda. Rec: Bloom

Elkin, Stanley, American, 1930-1995.

The Living End. Rec: Bloom
A very strangely constructed little novel, Stanley Elkin's "The Living End" is both an afterlife fantasy and a secular meditation
on the meaning of God's creation.

Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man (1952)

Negro life in the USA: somewhat overtaken, despite its controlled rage, by black literature of 1960s and 1970s; honoured more
in pantheon than library; but truthful, literate narrative.

Ellison, Ralph, American, 1914-1994.

Invisible Man. Rec: Bloom BOMC Burgess Good Reading Hungry Mind LAT Meaningful ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time
Utne
Shadow and Act. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Emecheta, Buchi, Nigerian writing in English, 1944- .

The Bride Price. Rec: NYPL

Enchi Fumiko, Japanese, 1905-1986.

The Waiting Years. Rec: MW Asian
Masks. Rec: MW Asian

Enright, D. J. Academic Year(1955)

A dry, witty corrective to the lay-it-on-with-a-trowellishness of Lawrence Durrell (qv) is this study of studies in Alexandria, an
exquisitely deft and astringent early entrant in the long list of campus novels, by a poet and critic who is not in the habit of
letting people off.

Erdrich, Louise, American, 1954- .

Love Medicine. Rec: Hungry Mind (novel)

Exley, Frederick, American, 1929-1992.

A Fan's Notes. Rec: BOMC
A Fan's Notes is a sardonic account of mental illness, alcoholism, and failure to measure up to the American dream -- as well as
the black hole of sports fandom.

Farrell, James T., American, 1904-1979.

Studs Lonigan. Rec: BOMC ML Novels
Faulkner, William Light in August (1932)
Faulkner's style echoed European models—especially Joyce—but remained, not always happily, massively "personal" in its
experimental industry. Light in A ugustcombines swift story-telling with brilliant, multi-faceted presentation of the semi-
literate. Also: Sartoris; As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, etc. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Faulkner, William, American, 1897-1962. Nobel Laureate

The Portable Faulkner. Rec: NYPL
The Sound and the Fury. Rec: Bloom BOMC Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Hungry Mind Meaningful ML Novels
Radcliffe Time Ward
As I Lay Dying. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Smiley
A Rose for Emily. Rec: GBWW
Sanctuary. Rec: Bloom
Light in August. Rec: Bloom BOMC Good Reading ML Novels Radcliffe Time
Absalom, Absalom!. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Meaningful Radcliffe
The Wild Palms. Rec: Bloom
Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Hamlet. Rec: Bloom
The Mansion. Rec: Burgess
Go Down Moses. Rec: Hungry Mind

Fielding, Henry The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749); Jonathan Wild the Great(1743) P
The History of Tom Jones is long for modern taste: lacking in "development", a gallery of rogues and rips, it demands to be
read at a gallop. Jonathan Wild the Great is a knowing, low-life satire with a notorious criminal as "King". "The prose Homer
of human nature," said Byron of Fielding.

Fielding, Henry, English, 1707-1754.

Tom Jones. Rec: Adler Bloom Col37 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Rex SJC Smiley Ward
Joseph Andrews. Rec: Adler Bloom

Firbank, Ronald Caprice (1916)

Firbank flavours a distinct area of modern fantastic fiction—Waugh (qv), Nabokov (qv), Powell (qv) all have debts to pay—a
scandalous pointillist world of gay abandon; his novels are brilliantly coloured scatter cushions dangerous with hidden pins.
Also: Valmouth, etc

Firbank, Ronald, English, 1886-1926.

Five Novels. Rec: Bloom

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby (1925)

The Great Gatsby is memorial enough to Fitzgerald's self-destructive genius; quibbles concerning the narrator's shadowy
personality cannot bruise the flawless, original image of the jazz age, its charm and its corruption. See BIOGRAPHY
(Milford); DLARIES; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; FILM (Latham)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, American, 1896-1940.

The Great Gatsby. Rec: Bloom Boston PL GBWW Hungry Mind ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Smiley Time
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom
Tender is the Night. Rec: Bloom BOMC ML Novels Radcliffe
This Side of Paradise. Rec: Radcliffe
The Beautiful and the Damned. Rec: Radcliffe

Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary (1857); Salammbo (1862) 0

Madame Bovary is the classic novel, narrative as art. "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" said Flaubert, claiming fiction as his
kingdom. Salammbo, his "failure", is a terrific case of historical verbosity (life in old Carthage): overwritten, magnificent. See
DIARIES (Flaubert, Goncourt); FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Flaubert, Gustave, French, 1821-1880.

Madame Bovary. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful Smiley Ward
A Sentimental Education. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Rex Ward
Salammbô. Rec: Bloom
Three Stories. Rec: Adler Aquinas
A Simple Soul. Rec: Bloom

Fontane, Theodor, German, 1819-1898.

Effi Briest. Rec: Bloom Ward
Along with the more famous Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, the novel forms a trilogy on marriage in the 19th century
from the female point of view.

Ford, Ford Madox Parade's End (1957)

Ford is maddening to certain tastes; morosely punctuated with dots and dashes; but the collapse of English society during the
Great War has never been more passionately depicted than in his touching account of marriage and betrayal among the upper
middle classes. Also: The Good Soldier, etc

Ford, Ford Madox, English, 1873-1939.

Parade's End. Rec: Bloom Good Reading ML Novels Rexmo
The Good Soldier. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Smiley

Ford, Richard, American, 1944- .

The Sportswriter. Rec: Time

Forster, E. M. A Passage to India (1924)

Time is not being kind to Forster's essentially genteel muse but A Passage to India is a brave, liberal view of British India at its
confident, uncertain zenith. See also The Hall of Devi (1953) on Forster's own Indian visits.

Forster, E. M., English, 1879-1970.

A Room with a View. Rec: ML Novels Radcliffe
Howards End. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Radcliffe Utne
A Passage to India. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Smiley Time Ward
Where Angels Fear to Tread. Rec: Radcliffe

Fowles, John The Magus (1966, revised 1976)

Long, complex "novel of adolescence written by an adolescent" (Fowles in his introduction). Owes debts to Le Grand
Meardnes, to Bevis, to Great Expectations and to such contemporary novelists as Durrell (qv), Bellow (qv) and Marguerite
Duras (q non v). Convoluted games on a mesmeric Greek island: tries to provide "an experience beyond the literary" and
certainly dishes up a rich and stimulating brew. Also: The French Lieutenant's Woman; Daniel Martin, etc

Fowles, John, English, 1926-2005.

The French Lieutenant's Woman. Rec: Burgess Radcliffe Time
The Magus. Rec: ML Novels

France, Anatole, French, 1844-1924. Nobel Laureate

Penguin Island. Rec: Bloom
Thaïs. Rec: Bloom

Franklin, Miles (Stella), Australian, 1879-1954.

My Brilliant Career. Rec: Bloom

Franzen, Jonathan, American, 1959- .

The Corrections. Rec: Time

Frayn, Michael, English, 1933- .

Sweet Dreams. Rec: Burgess

Frederic, Harold, American, 1856-1898.

The Damnation of Theron Ware. Rec: Bloom

Frisch, Max, Swiss writing in German, 1911-1991.

Man in the Holocene. Rec: Bloom
I'm Not Stiller. Rec: Bloom Ward
Fuentes, Carlos, Mexican, 1928- .
A Change of Skin. Rec: Bloom
Terra Nostra. Rec: Bloom Ward

Gaddis, William, American, 1922-1998.

The Recognitions. Rec: Bloom BOMC Time

Galeano, Eduardo, Uruguayan, 1940- .

Memory of Fire (trilogy). Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Galsworthy, John The Forsyte Saga (1905-22)

Begins as a readable indictment of English Edwardianism; ends as a mausoleum. First volume, The Man of Property, is the best
and most honest, with Soames and Irene superbly contrasted in a light which favours now one now the other and leaves neither
gilded nor damned.

Galsworthy, John, English, 1867-1933. Nobel Laureate

Works.
The Forsyte Saga. Rec: Bloom

Galt, John, Scottish, 1779-1839.

The Entail. Rec: Bloom

Gao Xingjian, Chinese, 1940- . Nobel Laureate

Works.

García Márquez, Gabriel, Colombian, 1928- . Nobel Laureate

Love in the Time of Cholera. Rec: Bloom Meaningful
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Harvard Meaningful NYPL Utne
Ward

Gardner, John, American, 1933-1982.

Nickel Mountain. Rec: BOMC
Grendel. Rec: Smiley

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cranford (1853)

Life in an early-19th-century English country town. Gaskell lacks the grand scale and intellectual fire of George Eliot (qv), but
has an ironic eye for suffering and for conceit. Witty mirror-image of Bronte, Haworth and those uncouth, insufferable moors.
See BIOGRAPHY

Gaskell, Elizabeth, English, 1810-1865.

Cranford. Rec: Bloom
Mary Barton. Rec: Bloom
North and South. Rec: Bloom (novels)

Gass, William H., American, 1924- .

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Rec: Bloom
Omensetter's Luck. Rec: Bloom

Gautier, Théophile, French, 1811-1872.

Mademoiselle de Maupin. Rec: Bloom
Gautier instead turned the plot into a simple love triangle between a man, d'Albert, and his mistress, Rosette, who both fall in
love with Madelaine de Maupin, who is disguised as a man named Théodore. The message behind Gautier’s version of the
infamous legend is the fundamental pessimism about the human identity, and perhaps the entire Romantic age.

Genet, Jean, French, 1910-1986.

Our Lady of the Flowers. Rec: Bloom
The Thief's Journal. Rec: Bloom

Gide, Andre The Immoralist(1902)

Proselytizing account of self-discovery by homosexual authoritative figure. Gide's fiction is datedly daring, innovative, old hat.
Also: The Counterfeiters, etc Glanville, Brian Along the Arno (1956); The Bankrupts (1958) Along the Arno sees British
expatriate life, The Bankrupts London Jewish life without illusions; tenderness wars with derision in both.

Gide, Andre, French, 1869-1951. Nobel Laureate

The Counterfeiters. Rec: Harvard
Travels in the Congo. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
The Immoralist. Rec: Bloom
Corydon. Rec: Bloom
Lafcadio's Adventure (The Caves of the Vatican). Rec: Bloom
The Journals. Rec: Bloom

Giono, Jean, French, 1895-1970.

The Horseman on the Roof. Rec: Bloom (novel)
Angelo is an young Italian nobleman and soldier whose hot-headedness has forced him into a desperate exile in France.

Gissing, George, English, 1857-1903.

New Grub Street. Rec: Bloom
A semi-autobiographical novel about a group of novelists and journalists striving to earn a living while dealing with poverty,
stress and marital problems.

Glasgow, Ellen, American, 1874-1945.

Barren Ground. Rec: Bloom
Vein of Iron. Rec: Bloom BOMC
Barren Ground (1925) is a novel by Ellen Glasgow giving an account of thirty years in the life of a rural Virginia woman.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German, 1749-1832.

Elective Affinities. Rec: Bloom
Sorrows of Young Werther. Rec: Bloom
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Rec: Bloom
Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering. Rec: Bloom

Gogol, Nicolai Dead Souls (1842) 0

Unfinished, like the maze it depicts, Dead Souls is a satire of desperation in which the lost millions—the serfs of imperial
Russia—are "redeemed" by the scurrilous, picaresque, activities of an archetypal confidence man. Good translation:
Magarshack (1961). See BIOGRAPHY (Nabokov)

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich, Russian, 1809-1852.

Taras Bulba. Rec: Smiley
Complete Tales. Rec: Bloom
Dead Souls. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful
The Government Inspector. Rec: Bloom
Golden Lotus, See Jinpingmei

Golding, William Lord of the Flies (1954); Pincher Martin (1956)

Lord of the Flies is a devilish Coral Island: British prep schoolboys marooned on a desert island, a classic of malign vision by
Catholic apologist. Pincher Martin is a tour de force about a drowning sailor: melodramatic notions redeemed by fastidious
imagination.

Golding, William, English, 1911-1993. Nobel Laureate

Lord of the Flies. Rec: ML Novels Radcliffe Time
Pincher Martin. Rec: Bloom
The Spire. Rec: Burgess

Goldman, Francisco, American, 1954- .

The Ordinary Seaman. Rec: Hungry Mind

Gombrowicz, Witold, Polish, 1904-1969.

Three Novels. Rec: Bloom
Goncharov, Ivan Alexandrovich, Russian, 1812-1891.
The Frigate Pallada. Rec: Bloom
Oblomov. Rec: Bloom Ward

Gordimer, Nadine Guest of Honour (1977); The Late Bourgeois World (1966)
Gordimer's brave attempts to find moral orientations in an apartheid state give her dignity and seriousness, but she lacks
literary grace. Guest of Honouris about a "good" Briton returning to a recently decolonialized land; The Late Bourgeois World
is a love story between black and white in South Africa. Also: Burger's Daughter

Gorky, Maksim, Russian, 1868-1936.

Creatures That Once Were Men. Rec: Boston PL

Gottfried von Strassburg, German, fl. 1210.

Tristan. Rec: Ward

Gotthelf, Jeremias, German, 1797-1854.

The Black Spider. Rec: Bloom

Grade, Chaim, Lithuanian-American writing in Yiddish, 1910-1982.

The Yeshiva. Rec: Bloom

Grass, Gunter The Tin Drum (1959)

Inventive, patchy disquisition (as if by a German Laurence Sterne) on the Hitlerian legacy as seen by an "autobiographical"
dwarf. Grass is strident, coarse, very subtle. Also: The Flounder

Grass, Günter, German, 1927- . Nobel Laureate

Tin Drum. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Ward
The Flounder. Rec: Bloom

Graves, Robert I, Claudius (1934); Claudius the God (1934); Count Belisarius (1938)
Pioneering "autobiographies" of the stammering emperor, at once clean and scabrous. Graves claimed to write fiction to
subsidize his poetry; but Count Belisarius, with its assured use of Byzantine background, deserves more than a pot-boiling
reputation. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY: HISTORY/ANCIENT (Procopius, Suetonius); MYTHOLOGY: POETRY

Graves, Robert, English, 1895-1985.

King Jesus. Rec: Bloom
Reading this book is a rewarding challenge. It's weird, esoteric, and somehow simultaneously iconoclastic and reverent.

Gray, Alasdair, Scottish, 1934- .

Lanark. Rec: Burgess

Green, Henry Living (1929); Loving (1945)

Henry Green worked as a factory manager but was also an upper-class contemporary of the slightly envious Waugh (qv); he
wrote unpatronizingly tender, comic and economical studies of British life.

Green, Henry, English, 1905-1973.

Nothing. Rec: Bloom
Loving. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Time
Party Going. Rec: Bloom Burgess

Greene, Graham The Power and the Glory (1940)

Paradoxes of Catholic faith teasingly, sometimes superbly anatomized. The Power and the Glory is a schematic masterpiece of
a whisky priest in Mexico. The anti-Catholic case is consistently trivialized throughout his work. Later work smacks of self-
parody, eager at once to shock and to please. Also: Brighton Rock; The Heart of the Matter, The Confidential Agent, etc. See
TRAVEL

Greene, Graham, English, 1904-1991.

Brighton Rock. Rec: Bloom
The Heart of the Matter. Rec: Bloom Burgess ML Novels Time
The Power and the Glory. Rec: Bloom Burgess Time

Grey, Zane, American, 1875-1939.

Riders of the Purple Sage. Rec: NYPL

Grimmelshausen, Johann Jakob Christoffel von, German, ca. 1625-1676.

Simplicius Simplicissimus. Rec: Ward (novel)
Inspired by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language. It contains
autobiographic elements, inspired by Grimmelshausen's experience in the war.

Grossman, David, Israeli, 1954- .

See Under: Love. Rec: Bloom

Halldór Laxness, Icelandic, 1902-1998. Nobel Laureate

Independent People. Rec: Meaningful

Hammett, Dashiell, American, 1894-1961.

The Maltese Falcon. Rec: BOMC ML Novels Radcliffe
Red Harvest. Rec: Time

Hamsun, Knut, Norwegian, 1859-1952. Nobel Laureate

Pan. Rec: Bloom
Hunger. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Ward
Mysteries. Rec: Ward

Handke, Peter, Austrian, 1942- .

Slow Homecoming. Rec: Bloom

Hardy, Thomas Far from the Madding Crowd (1874); Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891); Jude the Obscure (1895)
Hard to deny Hardy classic status, hard to grant it whole-heartedly on account of his clotted style, glum philosophy. Far from
the Madding Crowd earliest, liveliest masterpiece: Bathsheba Everdene is a new woman in an old Wessex setting; Tess of the D
'Urbervilles is full of memorable images, flawed by Hardy's appetite for rigged doom; Jude the Obscures scandalous reception
turned Hardy from fiction to poetry. Also: The Mayor of Casterbridge; Under the Greenwood Tree, etc. See POETRY

Hardy, Thomas, English, 1840-1928.

The Well-Beloved. Rec: Bloom
The Woodlanders. Rec: Bloom
The Return of the Native. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
The Mayor of Casterbridge. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Far From the Madding Crowd. Rec: Bloom
Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
Jude the Obscure. Rec: Bloom Ward
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Harris, Wilson, Guayanese, 1921- .

The Guyana Quartet. Rec: Bloom
Heartland. Rec: Burgess

Hartley, L. P. The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944, trilogy with The Sixth Heaven, 1946. and Eustace and Hilda, 1947); The
Go-Between (1953)
The Go-Between charts the emotional deadening of an insecure small boy used as a go-between by lovers of different classes
in Edwardian rural England: powerful portrait of the period and of repression. The trilogy concerns a brother and sister from
cradle to maturity in England between-the-wars.

Hartley, L. P., English, 1895-1972.

Facial Justice. Rec: Burgess

Hawk, Jaroslav The Good Soldier Svejk (1922)

Endearing, caustic satire on war and the lunatic proceduralists who wage it. Svejk himself conceals intelligence under a veneer
of slavish obedience to authority—and pretentious officials are revealed for the sterile fools they are. Epic masterpiece, of the
quality of Gogol (qv) or Rabelais (qv). The definitive, unexpurgated translation by Parrott (1973) recommended.

Hasek, Jaroslav, Czech, 1883-1926.

Good Soldier Schweik. Rec: NYPL Ward

Hawkes, John, American, 1925- .

The Cannibal. Rec: Bloom
Second Skin. Rec: Bloom

Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter(1850) *

No need to continue to seek the Great American Novel; this was it. Hester Prynne's search for freedom from the prison of
society is the archetypal American story—and it ends in the same way, with a retreat, or flight, into the wilderness, where all
men are, or seem to be, free. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, American, 1804-1864.

The House of the Seven Gables. Rec: Smiley
The Scarlet Letter. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading
Tales and Sketches. Rec: Bloom
Selected Tales. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
The Marble Faun. Rec: Bloom
Notebooks. Rec: Bloom

Hayes, Alfred In Love (1954)

New York in the 1940s; love affair between a model and an older man; terse, emblematic, ironic. Hayes' post-Hemingway
brevity is also seen in stories of Italy under US occupation: The Girl on the Via Flaminia.

Hazzard, Shirley, Australian, 1931- .

The Transit of Venus. Rec: BOMC

Hedayat, Sadeq, Iranian, 1903-1951.

The Blind Owl. Rec: Harvard Ward
I have NEVER read a description of an insane mind as well written as this. (amazon)

Heidenstam, Verner von, Swedish, 1859-1940. Nobel Laureate

Works. (poetry and novels)

Heller, Joseph Catch 22 (1961)

Title proverbial; book longer than witty, though very witty. Bravura passages of anti-war farce laced with blood; Yossarian a
memorable protagonist, what one can remember of him.

Heller, Joseph, American, 1923-1999.

Catch-22. Rec: BOMC Boston PL Burgess Hungry Mind LAT ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time

Hemingway, Ernest The Sun also Rises (Fiesta)(1926): A Farewell to Arms (1929); For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Development of character was alien to Hemingway. A Farewell To Armsis the most integrated of his longer works, stained with
lost love and the blood of Caporetto; a tendency to self-ennobling postures deforms both The Sun also Rises and For Whom the
Bell Tolls but their virtues of narrative tautness and sensational pointillism easily justify his place in the modern pantheon. See
BIOGRAPHY (Baker); FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Hemingway, Ernest, American, 1899-1962. Nobel Laureate

In Our Time. Rec: Radcliffe
Short Stories. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Hungry Mind
The Short Happy Life of Macomber. Rec: GBWW
A Farewell to Arms. Rec: Bloom BOMC ML Novels Radcliffe
The Sun Also Rises. Rec: Bloom BOMC Boston PL Good Reading Harvard Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time
The Garden of Eden. Rec: Bloom
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Rec: Burgess Harvard NYPL Radcliffe
The Old Man and the Sea. Rec: Burgess Meaningful Radcliffe
Heraclitus, See Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Hersey, John The Wall (1962)

A vivid, highly effective account of the Warsaw Ghetto, its vicious encirclement and isolation from the rest of the world. A
documentary with a strong sense of indignation checked by a cool head. Hersey (whose Hiroshima was a classic account of the
bombing and its aftermath) proves that fiction remains an honourable tool in the reporting of life, and death.

Hesse, Hermann Steppenwolf (1927)

Shambling, repugnant yet touching figure of the artist as "outsider" in a smug, bourgeois world is a representative symbol of
Hesse's alert, romantic spirit. Also: Rosshalde; Siddhartha; The Glass Bead Game, etc

Hesse, Hermann, German-Swiss, 1877-1962. Nobel Laureate

Steppenwolf. Rec: Boston PL
Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi). Rec: Bloom Ward
Narcissus and Goldmund. Rec: Bloom

Hilton, James, English, 1900-1954.

Lost Horizon. Rec: NYPL

Hoban, Russell, American, 1925- .

Riddley Walker. Rec: Bloom Burgess Good Reading

Hogan, Linda, American, 1947- .

Mean Spirit. Rec: Hungry Mind

Hogg, James, Scottish, 1770-1835.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Hope, Anthony The Prisoner of Zenda (1894); Rupert of Hentzau (1898)

Supreme romantic nzittel-Europan escapism, not without wit and spirit; sequel as good as famous original.

Howells, William Dean, American, 1837-1920.

The Rise of Silas Lapham. Rec: Bloom
A Modern Instance. Rec: Bloom

Hughes, Richard, English, 1900-1976.

The Fox in the Attic. Rec: Burgess
A High Wind in Jamaica. Rec: ML Novels

Hugo, Victor, French, 1802-1885.

Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris). Rec: Bloom Ward
The Distance, the Shadows: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Les Misérables. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
William Shakespeare. Rec: Bloom
The Toilers of the Sea. Rec: Bloom
The End of Satan. Rec: Bloom
God. Rec: Bloom
Hernani. Rec: Ward

Hurston, Zora Neale, American, 1891?-1960.

Their Eyes Were Watching God. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind Radcliffe Smiley Time
Dust Tracks on a Road. Rec: NYPL Utne

Huxley, Aldous Point Counter Point (1928): Brave New World (1932)
Ostentatiously "libellous", Point Counter Point retains interest as a portrait of 1930s galere (D. H. Lawrence et al). Prurience
and wit are lively and sustaining. Brave New World is an early example of modish dystopianism: the future as awful warning.
Also: Chrome Yellow; Antic Hay; Eyeless in Gaza, etc
Huxley, Aldous, English, 1894-1963.
Antic Hay. Rec: Bloom
Point Counter Point. Rec: Bloom ML Novels
Brave New World. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe TLS
Collected Essays. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3
After Many a Summer. Rec: Burgess
Ape and Essence. Rec: Burgess
Island. Rec: Burgess

Irving, John, American, 1942- .

The World According to Garp. Rec: BOMC LAT Radcliffe

Ishiguro, Kazuo, English, 1954- .

Never Let Me Go. Rec: Time

Jacobson, Dan A Dance in the Sun (1956)

A short novel set in the South African veldt which, without rhetoric or accusation, marvellously catches the dogged spirit of the
Afrikaaner. Jacobson's later books, including Tamar and The Life of Joseph Basz, are often ingenious and astringent, but their
literary quality cuts against the dry realism which dignified the early
book.

James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady (1880); The Golden Bowl (1904)
The master of novel-as-art. The Portrait of a I ndy, the most accessible, if long-drawn-out, describes Isabel Archer, an American
heiress, and her fortunes in Europe. The Golden Bowl is a 21 carat, dense, abstruse evocation of sexual guilt and innocence.
Also: The Europeans; The Bostonians; Washington Square, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Edel, James); DLARIES;
FICTION/SHORT STORIES; LITERARY CRITICISM

James, Henry, American, 1843-1916.

American Novels and Stories. Rec: Ward
Portrait of a Lady. Rec: Bloom Radcliffe Smiley Ward
The Bostonians. Rec: Bloom Radcliffe
Prince Casamassima. Rec: Bloom
The Awkward Age. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Short Novels and Tales. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
The Ambassadors. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading ML Novels
Wings of the Dove. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe
Golden Bowl. Rec: Bloom Good Reading ML Novels
The American. Rec: Adler
The Beast in the Jungle. Rec: GBWW
The Turn of the Screw. Rec: NYPL

Jarrell, Randall Pictures from an Institution (1954)

American academic life satirized by poet. Particularly spicy for those able to unlock d clefelements, but rises above malice to
elegance. See LITERARY CRITICISM; POETRY

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, Indian writing in English, 1927- .

Heat and Dust. Rec: Bloom

Anonymous, Chinese, 1618.

Jinpingmei (Chin P'ing Mei (Ch'in Ping Mei; also known as Golden Lotus; Plum in the Golden Vase). Rec: Fadiman 4 Oriental
Ward

Johnson, Denis, American, 1949- .

Angels. Rec: Bloom
Fiskadoro. Rec: Bloom
Jesus' Son. Rec: Bloom

Johnson, Pamela Hansford, English, 1912-1981.

An Error of Judgement. Rec: Burgess (novel)
Jones, James From Here to Eternity (1951)
Another novelist promoted to impotence by early success; Jones's ponderous compendium of service life before and after Pearl
Harbour is memorable for furious honesty, at least. Also: The Thin Red Line; Some Came Running

Jones, James, American, 1921-1977.

From Here to Eternity. Rec: BOMC ML Novels

Jong, Erica, American, 1942- .

How to Save Your Own Life. Rec: Burgess

Joyce, James Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914); Ulysses (1922)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a "conventional" narrative of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin adolescence at the turn of the
century, branded by Catholic bigotry; increasingly less "difficult" in the light of its derivatives. Ulysses, once scandalous, now
classic account of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew, doubling for wily Odysseus. Joyce was a master of
pastiche and verbal ingenuity, sometimes committed to protracted (and wearisome) experiment; thus Finnegan's Wake is more
interesting as a text for academic exegesis than for its own sake. See BIOGRAPHY (Ellmann); DIARIES; FICTION/SHORT
STORIES

Joyce, James, Irish, 1882-1941.

Dubliners. Rec: Bloom Harvard
The Dead (from Dubliners). Rec: Adler SJC
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Rec: Adler Bloom GBWW ML Novels Radcliffe
Ulysses. Rec: Adler Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Harvard Meaningful ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe
Smiley Ward
Finnegans Wake. Rec: Bloom Burgess ML Novels Radcliffe Ward

Kafka, Franz The Trial (1925); The Castle ( I 926); America (1927) 10 The Trialconcerns Josef K's arrest and degradation,
"although he had done nothing wrong"; it is a supreme creation of prognostic and literary imagination. America is a comedy of
the immigrant Kafka never was (he never saw America). The Castle is a superb comic chiller of the search for a spiritual keep.
See DIARIES; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Kaniuk, Yoram, Israeli, 1930- .

His Daughter. Rec: Bloom (novel)

Karp, David The Day of the Monkey (1955)

Prescient vision of colonial crack-up, impressively avant la lettre, it foresaw the Mau Mau "emergency" in Kenya and the
emergence of a new, savagely implacable African spirit. Karp writes unhysterically (far better than Ruark in Something of
Value) and looked like becoming a major writer. His One is a better dystopian novel than more recent additions to the genre—
as nasty and as memorable as Nabokov's (qv) Bend Sinister.

Kawabata Yasunari, Japanese, 1899-1972. Nobel Laureate

The Sound of the Mountain. Rec: Meaningful
Beauty and Sadness. Rec: Fadiman 4
Snow Country. Rec: MW Asian Ward
Thousand Cranes. Rec: Ward

Kazantzakis, Nikos, Greek, 1883-1957.

The Greek Passion. Rec: Bloom
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Rec: Bloom
Zorba the Greek. Rec: Meaningful

Keillor, Garrison, American, 1942- .

WLT: A Radio Romance. Rec: Smiley

Keneally, Thomas The Confederates (1970)

An excellent, chop-licking account of Stonewall Jackson and his more or less all honourable men in the service of a
dishonourable cause (but compare Warren, qv). A memorable evocation of the sexual urgency that accompanies war, vivid set
pieces that stir the blood while always reminding one of the virtuosity of a
basilisk-eyed author.

Keneally, Thomas, Australian, 1935- .

The Playmaker. Rec: Bloom
Schindler's List. Rec: Bloom Radcliffe

Kennedy, William, American, 1928- .

Ironweed. Rec: ML Novels Bloom
The Albany Cycle. Rec: Bloom

Kerouac, Jack On the Road (1957)

Maddening "bible" of the Beat generation. Starry-eyed search for the Wide Blue Yonder was (and is) an American dream;
Kerouac's sentimental attitude to sex and to drugs was to see its apogee in a nadir called Manson. See BIOGRAPHY
(Charters); DIARIES (Ginsberg)

Kerouac, Jack, American, 1922-1969.

On the Road. Rec: Boston PL Harvard Hungry Mind LAT ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time

Kesey, Ken, American, 1935-2001.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Rec: Hungry Mind LAT NYPL Radcliffe Time

Kincaid, Jamaica, American, 1949- .

Annie John. Rec: Hungry Mind Smiley
A Small Place. Rec: Utne

Kis, Danilo, Serbian, 1935-1989.

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. Rec: Bloom

Klossowski, Pierre, French, 1905-2001.

The Laws of Hospitality. Rec: Bloom
The Baphomet. Rec: Bloom (novel)

Knowles, John, American, 1926-2001.

A Separate Peace. Rec: Radcliffe

Koestler, Arthur Darkness at Noon (1940)

Darkness at Noon is a convincing analysis of the self-inculpation of an old Bolshevik arrested by Stalin: Rubashov, innocent,
finally agrees to plead guilty "for the good of the Party". (But compare with Victor Serge, qv). See MATHEMATICS;
NATURAL HISTORY; OCCULT

Koestler, Arthur, English, 1905-1983.

Darkness at Noon. See also The God That Failed Rec: Boston PL ML Novels NYPL TLS

Kosinski, Jerzy The Painted Bird (1968)

The first and best book of a talent increasingly seduced by his own capacity for sex'n'violence. The painted bird is a young
Jewish child turned loose among the peasants of Poland when the Germans overrun the country. Kosinski keeps his
"surrealistic" impulse superbly in place here and the unwilling pilgrim's progress through a godless world is a text for our time,
alas.

Kosinski, Jerzy, American, 1933-1991.

The Painted Bird (Revised ed.). Rec: Hungry Mind LAT Time

Kundera, Milan, Czech, 1929- .

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Rec: Bloom Smiley
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Rec: TLS

Kuprin, Alexander Ivanovich, Russian, 1870-1938.

Garnet Bracelet. Rec: Ward
La Fayette, Madame de, French, 1634-1693.
Princess of Clèves. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Published anonymously in March 1678, and set in the royal court of Henry II of France a century earlier, it recreates that era
with remarkable precision. Nearly every character except the heroine is a historic figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great
faithfulness to documentary record.

Lagerkvist, Par The Sibyl (1958)

Memoirs of a poor village girl elected to act as Sibyl at Delphi, to experience the torment and ecstasy of possession by Apollo.
Bare, bony, Bergmanesque; Scandinavian Beckett (qv). Don't be misled by the awful epic film of Lagerkvist's Barabbas: he's a
major writer, a subtle, poetic stylist, as cool as spring water. Also: The Guest of Reality; The Dwarf

Lagerkvist, Pär, Swedish, 1891-1974. Nobel Laureate

Evening Land. Rec: Ward
Barabbas. Rec: Bloom

Lagerlöf, Selma, Swedish, 1858-1940. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, prince of, Italian, 1896-1957.

The Leopard. Rec: Bloom Ward

Lao She, Chinese, 1899-1966.

Camel Xiangzi (Rickshaw Boy). Rec: MW Asian

Lawrence, D. H. Sons and Lovers (1913); The Rainbow (1915); Women in Love (1920)
Lawrence has been less admired since the rise of militant feminism, yet Sons and Lovers, as a particular case (if not
"philosophy"), is unrivalled: Paul Morel's working class youth is thick with sensitive pain and observed life. The Rainbow and
Women in Love form a diptych; two sisters and their married destinies against the background of Nottingham farming and
mining life. See DIARIES; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/EUROPEAN; LITERARY CRITICISM; POETRY;
TRAVEL

Lawrence, D. H., English, 1885-1930.

Etruscan Places. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom
Studies in Classic American Literature. Rec: Bloom
Complete Short Stories. Rec: Bloom
Sons and Lovers. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful ML Novels Radcliffe Ward
The Rainbow. Rec: Bloom ML Novels
Women in Love. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading ML Novels Radcliffe
The Prussian Officer. Rec: GBWW
Lady Chatterley's Lover. Rec: Boston PL Radcliffe Smiley

Anonymous, Spanish, 1554.

Lazarillo de Tormes. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Besides its importance in the Spanish literature of the Golden Centuries, Lazarillo de Tormes is credited with founding a
literary genre, the picaresque novel, so called from Spanish pícaro meaning "rogue" or "rascal".

Lee, Chang-rae, American, 1965- .

A Gesture Life. Rec: Smiley

Lee, Harper, American, 1926- .

To Kill a Mockingbird. Rec: BOMC Hungry Mind NYPL Radcliffe Smiley Time

Lessing, Doris The Golden Notebook (1962)

Lessing was a pioneer of the unsmiling stance of modern feminism; her language is the mundane consequence of the rejection
of wit. The Golden Notebook is solemn with determination to give a full account of Modern Woman at the end of her tether.
Also: Children of Violence (5-novel sequence)

Lessing, Doris, English (childhood in Rhodesia), 1919- .

The Golden Notebook. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Burgess Good Reading Meaningful NYPL Time

Lethem, Jonathan, American, 1964- .

Girl in Landscape. Rec: Harvard (novel)

Levi, Primo, Italian, 1919-1987.

If Not Now, When?. Rec: Bloom
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Periodic Table. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch Trans
The Drowned and the Saved. Rec: TLS

Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt (1922): Elmer Gantry (1927)

Documentary novelist of the 1920s portrayed non-metropolitan post-Woodrow Wilson USA. Babbitt is a loving, never
sentimental portrait of a small-town businessman; Elmer Gantry debunks religious revivalism through the person of one
phoney preacher. Also: Main Street, etc

Lewis, Sinclair, American, 1885-1951. Nobel Laureate

Babbitt. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Hungry Mind Radcliffe
It Can't Happen Here. Rec: Bloom
Main Street. Rec: ML Novels Radcliffe Smiley

Lewis, Wyndham The Apes of God(1930); The Human Age (1955)

Lewis is regarded as a genius by some; his polemicism sent him to war with all the available targets. The Apes of God is a
rampantly comic satire on his pet 20s hates, especially Bloomsbury. The Human Age (tetralogy) is apocalyptic, vast; an epic
masterpiece or the apotheosis of turgidity, his most important work. Also: Blasting and Bombardiering (memoirs)

Lezama Lima, José, Cuban, 1912-1976.

Paradiso. Rec: Bloom

Lispector, Clarice, Brazilian, 1925-1977.

The Hour of the Star. Rec: Utne

Lodge, David Changing Places (1975)

Home and away version of Bradbury (qv), the American and British campus as seen by a pair of visiting professors who take
over each other's unfinished lives during the course of teaching each other's courses. Some slickness in the carpentered dove-
tailing, but a sense of pity lends life to schematic example of the don-it-yourself school.

Lodge, David, English, 1935- .

How Far Can You Go?. Rec: Burgess Smiley

London, Jack, American, 1876-1916.

The Call of the Wild. Rec: ML Novels Radcliffe

Lowry, Malcolm Under the Volcano (1947)

Malcolm Lowry as a lost genius is a stock figure in literary circles. Under the Volcano (anatomy of British consul in pre-war
Cuernavaca, Mexico) is a drunken, lachrymose alternative to Joyce's (qv) Bloom: a whole life revealed in a day or two of
alcoholic despair.

Lowry, Malcolm, English, 1909-1957.

Under the Volcano. Rec: Bloom Burgess ML Novels Time

Luo Guanzhong (Luo Kuan-chung), Chinese, ca. 1330-1400.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Rec: Fadiman 4

Lustig, Arnost, Czech, 1926- .

Lovely Green Eyes. Rec: Smiley

Macdonald, George, Scottish, 1824-1905.

Lilith. Rec: Bloom
At the Back of the North Wind. Rec: Bloom
His best-known works are Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Lilith, all fantasy
novels, and fairy tales such as — "The Light Princess", "The Golden Key", and "The Wise Woman". "I write, not for children,"
he wrote, "but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." MacDonald also published some volumes of
sermons, the pulpit not having proved an unreservedly successful venue.

MacInnes, Colin, English, 1914-1976.

The London Novels (Trilogy). Rec: Burgess

MacLean, Norman, American, 1902-1990.

A River Runs Through It. Rec: Counterpunch NF (novella)

Mahfuz, Najib (Mahfouz, Naguib), Egyptian (Arabic), 1911?-. Nobel Laureate

Midaq Alley. Rec: Bloom
Fountain and Tomb. Rec: Bloom
Miramar. Rec: Bloom
The Cairo Trilogy. Rec: Utne
Children of Gebelawi. Rec: Meaningful
The Harafish. Rec: Smiley

Maturin, Charles, Irish, 1782-1824.

Melmoth the Wanderer. Rec: Bloom (novel)
The central character, John Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150
extra years of life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him

Mauriac, François, French, 1885-1970. Nobel Laureate

Therese. Rec: Bloom (novel)
The Desert of Love. Rec: Bloom
The Woman of the Pharisees. Rec: Bloom

McCarthy, Mary The Group (1963)

Bitchiness as method marks Mary McCarthy's work, but malice is a piquant ingredient for a novelist and she rarely spares
herself in a clever pastiche of life-styles among well-heeled female graduates in the thirties and onwards. The clefelements lend
piquancy to the paying off of old scores among New York Trotskyites, intellectuals and climbers.

McCullers, Carson The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940); The Member of the Wedding(1946); The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
(1951)
The "Southern" theme—sexual ingrowth, social decay—repossessed by narrow, self-centred, inventive talent; restraint and
melodrama work together to unnerving effect in studies of loneliness and jealousy.

McCullers, Carson, American, 1917-1967.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Rec: Bloom
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Rec: Bloom BOMC Harvard Hungry Mind ML Novels Time

McEwan, Ian, English, 1948- .

Atonement. Rec: Smiley Time (novel)

Mackenzie, Compton Sinister Street (1913)

Mackenzie was a scholar, wit, Scottish nationalist. Sinister Street concerns Stephen Fane's adolescence at St Paul's School,
London, before World War I.

Mackey, Nathaniel, American, 1947- .

Bedouin Hornbook/Djbot Baghostus' Run. Rec: Utne

Mailer, Norman The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Tour de force of an enforced tour of duty by riflemen in the South Pacific in World War II; the sexual obsessiveness of
frightened soldiers counterpoints the power-madness of their commanders. The individual, and the American system,
thrillingly, sensationally slit open like a bag of guts. See BIOGRAPHY
Mailer, Norman, American, 1923- .
Advertisements for Myself. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch NF
The Executioner's Song. Rec: Bloom
Ancient Evenings. Rec: Bloom Burgess
The Armies of the Night. Rec: LAT
The Naked and the Dead. Rec: BOMC Burgess Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe

Malamud, Bernard The Assistant(1957)

The Jewish theme made over for inter-denominational consumption, is Malamud's speciality. The Assistant: Gentile New York
shop assistant converted to Judaism, circumcision and all, by love.

Malamud, Bernard, American, 1914-1986.

The Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Fixer. Rec: Bloom
Dubin's Lives. Rec: Burgess
The Magic Barrel. Rec: Hungry Mind
The Assistant. Rec: BOMC Burgess Time

Malouf, David, Australian, 1934- .

An Imaginary Life. Rec: Bloom
It tells the story of the Roman poet Ovid, during his exile in Tomis.

Malraux, Andre Man's Estate (La Condition Humaine) (1933) Malraux's obsessive wish to live at the centre of history can
seem rhetorical and suspect, but he had a way of being there. Like all writers, he gilded the occasion; but the collapse of the
Chinese Empire, the triumph of Kuomintang and the savage repression of Communist allies in Shanghai in 1927 are all
marvellously realized, sentimental callousness notwithstanding. Also translated as Man's Fate (Macdonald, 1948).

Malraux, André, French, 1901-1975.

The Conquerors. Rec: Bloom
The Royal Way. Rec: Bloom
Man's Fate. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 TLS
Man's Hope. Rec: Bloom
The Voices of Silence. Rec: Bloom

Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain (1924): Joseph and His Brethren (1933 –43); The Confessions of Felix Krull (1954)
Mann is sometimes said to have been, a la Victor Hugo, "the greatest living novelist—alas". The theme of the artist as
"neurasthenic" haunts his long oeuvre, but brilliant variations are played on it. His thought evolved from Nietzschean to
orthodox liberal, of which The Magic Mountain is the first, towering inkling—life in a sanatorium symbolically standing for
the European predicament. Joseph and His Brethren is a monumental "recovery" of ancient Palestine and Egypt, badged with
ingenious research and psychological slyness; The Confessions of Felix Krull is a marvellous work of old age, unfinished but
sappy with iconoclastic vigour. Also: Buddenbrooks; Dr Faustus; The Holy Sinner, etc. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Mann, Thomas, German, 1875-1955. Nobel Laureate

The Magic Mountain. Rec: Adler Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful NYPL
The Buddenbrooks. Rec: Meaningful Ward
Joseph and His Brothers. Rec: Adler Bloom
Death in Venice. Rec: GBWW
Stories of Three Decades. Rec: Bloom
Doctor Faustus. Rec: Bloom
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Rec: Bloom

Manning, Olivia, English, 1915-1980.

The Balkan Trilogy. Rec: Burgess
Olivia Manning is best known for Fortunes of War, a narrative consisting of two trilogies (The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant
Trilogy) chronicling the wartime experiences of a group of English expatriates who find themselves moving between Romania,
Greece, Egypt and Palestine as World War II progresses.

Marquand, John P., American, 1893-1960.

H. M. Pulham, Esquire. Rec: Bloom
The Late George Apley. Rec: BOMC

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) The rich, lusty story of the rise and fall of the Buendia
family in the imaginary town of Macondo, Brazil.

Maugham, W. Somerset Of Human Bondage (1915); Cakes and Ale (1930)

Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his terse, malicious best. Of Human Bondage is a ponderous, readable bildungsroman: club-
footed Philip Carey, glum but convincing alter ego for the young Maugham, progresses through arty Paris and grim Victorian
London. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY; DRAMA; FICTION/CRIME; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Maugham, W. Somerset, English, 1874-1939.

Of Human Bondage. Rec: Harvard ML Novels
Collected Short Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Moon and Sixpence. Rec: Bloom
The Razor's Edge. Rec: Burgess

Mauriac, Francois Therese Desqueyroux (1927) ; The Nest of Vipers (1932) 5

Melancholy family life among the richer inhabitants of the Bordelais is the main theme of Mauriac's fiction, of which Sartre
said that it denied freedom to its characters. Since Mauriac's Catholicism saw mankind tainted by distance from God and
doomed to suffering, this charge is both true and irrelevant, though Mauriac's Jansenism reduces all except perhaps Therese,
the murderess, to insignificance.

McCarthy, Cormac, American, 1933- .

Blood Meridian. Rec: Bloom Time
Suttree. Rec: Bloom
Child of God. Rec: Bloom
The Crossing. Rec: Hungry Mind

McCarthy, Mary, American, 1912-1989.

The Groves of Academe. Rec: Burgess

Melville, Herman Moby Dick(1851)

Pursuit of the white whale by Captain Ahab has the elemental, symbolic force demanded of the Great American Novel; this
book is often held to be just that. Erudite with whaling lore, grandiosely stocked with archetypes, it commands the memory
more than the attention.

Melville, Herman, American, 1819-1891.

Moby-Dick. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Meaningful Smiley Ward
Piazza Tales. Rec: Bloom
Bartleby the Scrivener. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Billy Budd. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom SJC
Benito Cereno. Rec: SJC
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Clarel. Rec: Bloom

Metalious, Grace, American, 1924-1964.

Peyton Place. Rec: NYPL

Mishima Yukio, Japanese, 1925-1970.

Confessions of a Mask. Rec: Fadiman 4
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Rec: Fadiman 4
Spring Snow. Rec: Ward
Runaway Horses. Rec: Ward
Temple of Dawn. Rec: Ward
Decay of the Angel. Rec: Ward
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Rec: MW Asian Smiley

Mistry, Rohinton, Indo-Canadian, 1952- .

A Fine Balance. Rec: Smiley
Set in Mumbai, India between 1975 and 1977 during the turmoil of The Emergency, a period of expanded government power
and crackdowns on civil liberties, this book is about four characters from varied backgrounds—Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his
nephew Omprakash and the young lad Maneck—who come together, develop a bond and depart from each other's lives as
dramatically as they came.

Mitchell, Margaret, American, 1900-1949.

Gone with the Wind. Rec: BOMC NYPL Radcliffe Time

Mitford, Nancy, English, 1904-1973.

The Pursuit of Love. Rec: Smiley
Love in a Cold Climate. Rec: Smiley
Don't Tell Alfred. Rec: Smiley

Momaday, N. Scott, American, 1934- .

House Made of Dawn. Rec: Hungry Mind

Moore, Alan, English, 1953- .

The Watchmen (With Dave Gibbons). Rec: Time

Moore, Brian, Canadian, 1921-1999.

The Doctor's Wife. Rec: Burgess
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Rec: BOMC

Morante, Elsa, Italian, 1918-1985.

History: A Novel. Rec: Meaningful

Moravia, Alberto The Woman of Rome (1947) A Moravia's clear style and cocky assurance has made his Rome stand for
the whole Italian imbroglio. The Woman of Rome, full of somewhat literary realism, recounts the degraded but "noble" life of a
prostitute in Fascist times; never as crude as Moravia's later, more hotly sophisticated work. Also: The Conformist

Moravia, Alberto, Italian, 1907-1990.

1934. Rec: Bloom

Morris, Wright, American, 1910-1998.

Ceremony in Lone Tree. Rec: Bloom
Field of Vision. Rec: Hungry Mind

Morrison, Toni, American, 1931- . Nobel Laureate

Song of Solomon. Rec: Bloom BOMC Hungry Mind NYPL Radcliffe
Beloved. Rec: Harvard Hungry Mind Meaningful Radcliffe Smiley Time Utne
Jazz. Rec: Hungry Mind Radcliffe
Sula. Rec: Hungry Mind

Murakami, Haruki, Japanese, 1949- .

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. Rec: Harvard
Wild Sheep Chase. Rec: Harvard

Murdoch, Iris Under the Net (1954); A Severed Head (1961) Under the Net, first novel, contains a memorable made-over
portrait of Wittgenstein. Murdoch is a professional philosopher; her novels are often fables of existential ethics, florid with
imagery and sensuality. A Severed Head is a sexual quadrille, "wish fulfilment" bristling with wit and unnerving observation.
Also: The Bell; The Black Prince, etc

Murdoch, Iris, English, 1919-1999.

Under the Net. Rec: ML Novels Time
The Sea, the Sea. Rec: Smiley
The Good Apprentice. Rec: Bloom
Bruno's Dream. Rec: Bloom
The Bell. Rec: Burgess
Murphy, Michael, American, 1930- .
Golf in the Kingdom. Rec: Utne (novel)

Musil, Robert The Man without Qualities (3 vols. 1930-43) Overlong, but influential and informative study of a Viennese
intellectual just before the Kaiser's war. The hero's attempt to define himself, against the decline of the Hapsburgs, issues in a
definition coterminous with the novel itself—punishment without crime, as it were.

Musil, Robert, Edler von, Austrian, 1880-1932.

Young Törless. Rec: Bloom
The Man Without Qualities. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Smiley (Selections) Ward

Myers, L. H. The Near and the Far(1929)

One of the purportedly great "lost" novels of the interwar years; one of a tetralogy dealing with the era of Akbar, the great 16th-
century Mogul emperor. Grandiose, sometimes impermeably philosophical; but majestic and painful with erudition.

Nabokov, Vladimir King, Queen, Knave (1928)

Nabokov stands alone in the modern canon, the idiosyncratic instance of an artist jealous of his own uniqueness. Kafka and
Joyce inspire work of sometimes maddening involution and conceit (in every sense); but his variety, wit and teasing literary
iconography make Nabokov both nightmare and addiction. Also: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight-, Laughter in the Dark;
Pale Fire, etc. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY: BIOGRAPHY; CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Carroll); POETRY (Pushkin)

Nabokov, Vladimir, Russian-American writing in English, 1899-1977.

Lolita. Rec: Bloom BOMC Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Harvard Hungry Mind LAT Meaningful ML
Novels NYPL Radcliffe Smiley Time
Pale Fire. Rec: Bloom Burgess Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 ML Novels Time
Speak, Memory. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 ML Nonfiction National Review
Ada or Ardor. Rec: Ward
The Defence. Rec: Burgess

Naipaul, V. S., Trinidadian, 1932- . Nobel Laureate

A Bend in the River. Rec: Bloom Burgess ML Novels
A House for Mr. Biswas. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Time
Guerrillas. Rec: NYPL

Narayan, R. K., Indian writing in English, 1906-2001.

The Guide. Rec: Bloom
The English Teacher. Rec: Fadiman 4
The Vendor of Sweets. Rec: Burgess Fadiman 4
The Financial Expert. Rec: MW Asian

Nashe, Thomas, English, 1567-1601.

The Unfortunate Traveller. Rec: Bloom (novel)
The narrator, Jack Wilton, describes his adventures as a page during the wars against the French, and his subsequent travels in
Italy as page to the Earl of Surrey. In his travels, Jack witnesses numerous atrocities, including battlefields, plague, and rape: at
one point he is nearly hanged, and at another, he is on the point of being cut up in a live anatomy demonstration.

Natsume Soseki, Japanese, 1867-1916.

Kokoro. Rec: Fadiman 4 MW Asian Ward

Naylor, Gloria, American, 1950- .

The Women of Brewster Place. Rec: Bloom

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Kenyan writing in English, 1938- .

A Grain of Wheat. Rec: Bloom
A Grain of Wheat is the third and best-known novel by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a novelist from Kenya. The novel weaves several
stories together during the state of emergency in Kenya's struggle for independence (1952-1959), focusing on the quiet Mugo,
whose life is ruled by a dark secret.

Nye, Robert Falstaff (1974)

The memoirs of Sir Jack Falstaff, as dictated in his swaggering Rabelaisian old age. A rich tapestry, the Middle Ages made
sack-soaked, sucks-to-Shakespeare flesh. Also: Merlin; Tales I Told My Mother (short stories)

Nye, Robert, English, 1939- .

Falstaff. Rec: Burgess

Oates, Joyce Carol, American, 1938- .

Them. Rec: Bloom BOMC

O'Brien, Flann, Irish, 1911-1966.

The Dalkey Archive. Rec: Bloom
The Third Policeman. Rec: Bloom
At Swim-Two-Birds. Rec: Burgess Time

O'Connor, Edwin, American, 1918-1968.

The Last Hurrah. Rec: BOMC (novel)

O'Hara, John Appointment in Samarra (1934) a

O'Hara's Middle-America became an imaginary province stocked with closely observed and remembered figures, a heartland,
lovingly overdrawn. His dialogue, prolix with innuendo, is often superb. Also: Butterfield 8. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Okada, John, American, 1923-1971.

No-No Boy. Rec: Hungry Mind

Okara, Gabriel, Nigerian writing in English, 1931- .

The Fisherman's Invocation. Rec: Bloom (novel)

Olesha, Yury, Russian, 1899-1960.

Envy. Rec: Bloom (novel)
It is remarkable both for its poetic style, undulating modes of transition between the scenes, its innovative structure, its biting
satire, and for its ruthless examination of Socialist ideals.

Orwell, George Animal Farm (1945); 1984 (1949)

Animal Farm, denounced by pro-Soviets in 1944, rejected by publisher Gollancz, is a Swiftian fable of the Russian Revolution
and its perversions; 1984 a glum warning of future militant banality, institutionalized "left" repression, Big Brother, Newspeak
and all. Orwell's passion for decency pumps blood into stony themes. See HISTORY/BRITISH; LITERARY CRITICISM;
POLITICS

Orwell, George, English, 1903-1950.

Animal Farm. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW ML Novels Radcliffe Time TLS
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). Rec: Bloom Boston PL Burgess Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard Meaningful ML Novels NYPL
Radcliffe Seymour-Smith Time TLS
Burmese Days. Rec: Fadiman 4
Collected Essays. Rec: Bloom National Review
Homage to Catalonia. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

Oz, Amos, Israeli, 1939- .

A Perfect Peace. Rec: Bloom

Ozick, Cynthia, American, 1928- .

Envy, or Yiddish in America. Rec: Bloom
The Messiah of Stockholm. Rec: Bloom

Pasternak, Boris, Russian, 1890-1960. Nobel Laureate

Doctor Zhivago. Rec: Bloom TLS Ward

Paton, Alan, South African, 1903-1988.

Cry, the Beloved Country. Rec: Harvard NYPL
Peacock, Thomas Love Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Peacock's satire sheathed its sharpness in amiable brevity. Nightmare Abbeyis a piquant, uncensorious skit on Byron, Coleridge
and the gloomy Romantic movement, from a detached "classical" standpoint Peacock's derision has influenced English satirical
posture—compare Anstey, Wodehouse etc—towards "enthusiasms" of all kind.

Peacock, Thomas Love, English, 1785-1866.

Nightmare Abbey. Rec: Bloom
Gryll Grange. Rec: Bloom

Peake, Mervyn, English, 1911-1968.

The Gormenghast Trilogy. Rec: Bloom
Titus Groan. Rec: Burgess

Percy, Walker, American, 1916-1990.

The Moviegoer. Rec: Bloom BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels Time
The Last Gentleman. Rec: Burgess

Pérez Galdós, Benito, Spanish, 1843-1920.

Nazarín. Rec: Ward
Halma. Rec: Ward
Misericordia. Rec: Ward
Fortunata y Jacinta. Rec: Bloom Ward

Pinget, Robert, French, 1920- .

Fable. Rec: Bloom
The Libera Me Domine. Rec: Bloom
That Voice. Rec: Bloom (novel)

Pires, José Cardoso, Portuguese, 1925- .

Ballad of Dogs' Beach. Rec: Bloom
A Balada da Praia dos Cães (Ballad of Dog's Beach) is a fiction novel relating the investigation into the murder of a political
dissident, taking place around 1961. The novel is largely based on contemporary reports of a real murder that took place.

Pirsig, Robert, American, 1928- .

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Rec: LAT

Platonov, Andrei, Russian, 1899-1951.

The Foundation Pit. Rec: Bloom

Plunkett, James, Irish, 1920- .

Farewell Companions. Rec: Burgess

Potok, Chaim The Chosen (1967)

Intense, powerful story of an orthodox Jewish youth in Brooklyn, the son of a noted rabbi, who offends his father and is
punished by silence for years. The boy survives, prospers, becomes a great scholar: his extraordinary education in Talmudic
studies is described in fascinating detail in the book.

Powell, Anthony Venusberg (1932); From a View to a Death (1933); The Music of Time (1951-1977)
The last is a sequence of twelve novels. Englishmen, often of extremely etiolated temperament, are shown in revealing postures
of upperclass-1920s onwards—embarrassment. The Music of Time is greatly admired for its evocation of wartime England—
and for those in the know, especially spicy. The early novels are sharp with wit, a good aperitif to the main 12-course meal.
Also: What's Become of Waring?

Powell, Anthony, English, 1905-2000.

Dance to the Music of Time (Series of 12 novels in four "movements"). Rec: Burgess ML Novels Time

Powys, John Cowper A Glastonbury Romance (1933)

Neglected genius, some say. Mythopoeic grandiloquence—the Holy Grail is the theme of A Glastonbury Romance—renders
him suspect in circles happier with understatement; but his force and vision are undeniable. Also: Wolf Solent, Maiden Castle;
The Brazen Head, etc

Powys, John Cowper, English, 1872-1963.

Wolf Solent. Rec: Bloom
A Glastonbury Romance. Rec: Bloom

Proust, Marcel Remembrance of Things Past (12 vols, 1912-27) 111

Not so much a novel as a library; the experience of a lifetime examined, expanded, imaginatively revived and finally restored
to life in art. Great characters—and minor—swim in translucent jelly, the narrator's consciousness and conscience rendered
prose, and the emulous nature of both social ambition and sexual desire become, in these slow and tremendous pages, the
psychoanalysis of France itself. Definitive English translation by Moncrieff and Hudson (1922-1931). See BIOGRAPHY
(Painter, Pickering); DRAMA (Johnson); LITERARY CRITICISM (Beckett)

Proust, Marcel, French, 1871-1922.

Remembrance of Things Past (À la Recherche du Temps Perdu). Rec: Adler Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good
Reading Meaningful NYPL Smiley Utne Ward
Swann in Love. Rec: GBWW

Purdy, James, American, 1923- .

Malcolm. Rec: LAT
Purdy's novel "Malcolm" is a humorous journey about a young boy found by an astrologer on a park bench. The story is
writtem mainly through Malcolm's interaction with the characters he meets through the astrologer (Mr. Cox).

Pynchon, Thomas, American, 1937- .

V.. Rec: Bloom
The Crying of Lot 49. Rec: Bloom Harvard Time
Gravity's Rainbow. Rec: Bloom Burgess Hungry Mind LAT Time

Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco Gómez, Spanish, 1580-1645.

Sueños (Dreams). Rec: Bloom Ward
Historia de la Vida del Buscón (Life and Adventures of Don Pablos the Sharper). Rec: Ward
Satirical Letter of Censure. Rec: Bloom

Rabelais, Francois Pantagruel(1532); Gargantua (1533) tij

Relish for excess, the French appetite, is here displayed at its most gluttonous, not only for food and sex but for ideas and
display of rhetorical virtuosity; the 16th century is anatomized literally and metaphorically—though at a length which inclines
one (to one's loss) to make a chapter or two stand for the whole. Urquhart's English translation (1653,1693) is that very rare
thing: a translation as great as, or greater than, the original.

Rabelais, François, French, 1483-1553.

Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rec: Adler Bloom Col37 Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Meaningful Rex
Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Utne Ward

Radiguet, Raymond, French, 1903-1923.

Count d'Orgel's Ball. Rec: Bloom

Rand, Ayn, American, 1905-1982.

The Fountainhead. Rec: Radcliffe
Atlas Shrugged. Rec: Boston PL Harvard NYPL Radcliffe

Raphael, Frederic Lindmann (1962); California Time (1976)

Lindmann is a passionate, compassionate examination of one man's guilt, and racked conscience, for the sinking of a refugee-
ship in World War II; California Time is a witty experiment, the movie novel (the novel as movie) to end them all. Also: April,
June and November, The Glittering Prizes; Sleeps Six (short stories), etc. See DRAMA (Aeschylus); POETRY (CataUS)

Raven, Simon Bring Forth the Body (1974)

The best sample for those unfamiliar with the scapegrace sequence entitled Alms for Oblivion in which old scores are paid off,
old sores re-opened by a writer who combines hedonism with a certain callous sense of justice and honour. Charterhouse, the
Army, Cambridge and high-class low life are cynically concocted into dishy, anti-feminine fare.

Rechy, John, American, 1934- .

City of Night. Rec: LAT
Set in the 1960s, the book follows the travels of a young man (Rechy uses the trem "youngman" when referring to hustlers)
across the country while working as a hustler.

Redol, Alves, Portuguese, 1911-1969.

The Man with Seven Names. Rec: Ward

Reed, Ishmael, American, 1938- .

Mumbo Jumbo. Rec: Bloom
The novel takes its plot from the struggles of "The Wallflower Order," an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism
and control, to contain the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of jazz, polytheism, and freedom. Meanwhile, the novel's hero,
the houngan PaPa LaBas, searches for a mysterious book that disappeared with black militant Abdul Sufi Hamid.

Remarque, Erich Maria, German, 1898-1970.

All Quiet on the Western Front. Rec: Boston PL NYPL

Rexroth, Kenneth, American, 1905-1982.

An Autobiographical Novel. Rec: Utne

Rhys, Jean Voyage in the Dark (1934)

The "Jean Rhys Woman", loyal, betrayed, loving and unloved, inhabits, with sly variations, all the stories; unselfpityingly
distanced, the writing is exemplary, though an example too few have followed. Also: After Leaving Mr Mackenzie; Good
Morning Midnight; Quartet. See Brontë, C.

Richardson, Samuel Clarissa (1748)

Can we refuse recognition to a founding work? No; but can we still read it? Clarissa's solemn moralizing marked the English
novel, led to a thousand works in which men confidently depicted female characters—and so helped, consciously or not, to
alienate women from their own feelings and "truth".

Richardson, Samuel, English, 1689-1761.

Clarissa. Rec: Bloom
Pamela. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Sir Charles Grandison. Rec: Bloom

Richler, Mordecai, Canadian, 1931-2001.

Cocksure. Rec: Burgess (novel)

Richter, Conrad, American, 1890-1968.

The Trees/The Fields/The Town (Trilogy). Rec: BOMC (novel)

Rhys, Jean, English, 1894-1979.

Wide Sargasso Sea. Rec: ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Smiley Time

Robbe-Grillet, Alain Jealousy (1957)

Quintessential example of the nouveau roman, of which Robbe-Grillet was both pioneer and publicist. The attempt to remove
the psychologizing fetish from fiction is superbly realized—though the "objectivity" with which a husband sees his wife's
suspected infidelity is only an iota away from being "symbolic". But forget theory: the book, especially for those who enjoyed
the film Last Year in Marienbad, scripted by Robbe-Grillet, is a pleasure to read.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, French, 1922- .

The Voyeur. Rec: Bloom
Jealousy. Rec: Bloom
In the Labyrinth. Rec: Bloom
The Erasers. Rec: Bloom
Project for a Revolution in New York. Rec: Bloom
For a New Novel. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch Trans

Roberts, Keith, English, 1935-2000.

Pavane. Rec: Burgess (novel)

Robinson, Marilynne, American, 1944- .

Housekeeping. Rec: Time

Rodoreda, Merce, Catalan, 1908-1983.

The Time of the Doves. Rec: Bloom

Rojas, Fernando de, Spanish, ca. 1465-1541.

Celestina. Rec: Bloom Ward

Rosa, João Guimarães, Brazilian, 1908-1967.

Sagarana. Rec: Ward
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Rec: Meaningful Ward

Roth, Henry Call It Sleep (1934)

Roth's only published novel: "Oedipal" childhood in immigrant New York's Lower East Side. It has been likened to a Jewish
Sons and Lovers, as seminal to Jewish writing in the USA as Ellison's (qv) Invisible Man to black.

Roth, Henry, American, 1906-1995.

Call It Sleep. Rec: Bloom Time

Roth, Joseph, Austrian, 1894-1939.

The Radetzky March. Rec: Bloom (novel)
The story of four generations of the Trottas, a family of soldiers and bureaucrats, is set against the backdrop of the Austro-
Hungarian monarchy

Roth, Philip Goodbye, Columbus (1959); Letting Go (1963); Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
Written by a Gentile, Roth's work would be anti-Semitic; by a Jew, it holds a note of furious affection. Goodbye, Columbus is a
fine novella (published with stories); Letting Go, a long, serious study of graduate life, is possibly Roth's finest book; Portnoy's
Cornplaintis a "confessional"—set-pieces of irresistibly comic anguish by the conscientious masturbator, Portnoy. Also: The
Professor of Desire

Roth, Philip, American, 1933- .

Portnoy's Complaint. Rec: Bloom Burgess Hungry Mind LAT ML Novels NYPL Time
My Life as a Man. Rec: Bloom
Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue. Rec: Bloom
The Counterlife. Rec: Bloom
Patrimony. Rec: Bloom
Operation Shylock. Rec: Bloom
American Pastoral. Rec: Time

Roussel, Raymond, French, 1877-1933.

Locus Solus. Rec: Bloom (novel)
A prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate,
Locus Solus. As the group tours the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increasing complexity and strangeness.
Again, exposition is invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the former giving way to the innumerable
ramifications of the latter

Rulfo, Juan, Mexican, 1918-1986.

Pedro Paramo. Rec: Meaningful

Rushdie, Salman, Indian writing in English, 1947- .

Midnight's Children. Rec: Bloom Meaningful ML Novels MW Asian Radcliffe Time
The Satanic Verses. Rec: Harvard Radcliffe
Russo, Richard, American, 1949- .
Empire Falls. Rec: Harvard

Saikaku Ihara, Japanese, 1642-1693.

Novels (Selection, such as Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings). Rec: Oriental Ward

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

New, liberating tone made The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield an American archetype—puzzled yet outspoken with a
jargon ("big deal") still comic and current. Later work, about the Glass family— Franny and Zooey, etc—highly rated but
incestuously self-involved.

Salinger, J. D., American, 1919- .

The Catcher in the Rye. Rec: Bloom BOMC Boston PL Burgess Harvard Hungry Mind LAT ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time
Nine Stories. Rec: Bloom
Franny and Zooey. Rec: Harvard Radcliffe

Salter, James, American, 1925- .

Solo Faces. Rec: Bloom
Light Years. Rec: Bloom (novel)

Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Yevgrafovich, Russian, 1826-1889.

The Golovlyov Familly. Rec: Ward

Sand, George, French, 1804-1876.

The Haunted Pool. Rec: Bloom

San Pedro, Diego de, Spanish, fl. 1500.

Prison of Love. Rec: Bloom
Cárcel de amor (Prison of Love, 1492) is the other sentimental novel that Diego de San Pedro is famous for and perhaps his
most well-known work. This work was dedicated to Fernández de Córdoba, alcaide de los donzeles.

Sansom, William, English, 1912-1976.

The Body. Rec: Burgess

Saramago, José, Portuguese, 1922- . Nobel Laureate

Baltasar and Blimunda. Rec: Bloom
Blindness. Rec: Meaningful

Sarraute, Nathalie, French, 1900-1999.

The Use of Speech. Rec: Bloom
The Planetarium. Rec: Bloom

Sartre, Jean-Paul The Roads to Freedom (1945 - 49)

Impressive, unremittingly glum "philosophical" study of left-bank Parisians under pressure, 1938-40. A clef elements lend
spice, but this novel of manners is self-justifyingly taken to melodramatic, hard-headed extremes. See
BIOGRAPHY; DRAMA; PHILOSOPHY

Sartre, Jean Paul, French, 1905-1980. Nobel Laureate

Nausea. Rec: Adler Bloom Ward

Schmidt, Arno, German, 1914-1979.

The Egghead Republic: a Short Novel from the Horse Latitudes. Rec: Good Reading

Schulberg, Budd What Makes Sammy Run? (1961)

Sammy Glick knows many imitators but stands supreme, a Rastignac who confronts Hollywood with an "A nous deux" and
fights it to a standstill. The legendary plagiarizer and hustler was based, it is said, on Jerry Wald, but many real Hollywood
arrivistes have surely based themselves on Sammy. It is not only art that life imitates.
Schulberg, Budd, American, 1914- .
The Disenchanted. Rec: Burgess
What Makes Sammy Run?. Rec: BOMC

Schulz, Bruno, Polish, 1892-1942.

The Street of Crocodiles. Rec: Bloom
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Rec: Bloom

Scott, Paul Staying On (1977)

A pendant to his impressive, lengthy trilogy about the British in India, Staying On is about the pensioners of the Raj, a delicate
study in sunset colours, though stronger on detail than on literary grace.

Scott, Paul, English, 1920-1978.

Staying On. Rec: Burgess

Scott, Sir Walter, Scottish, 1771-1832.

Novels. Rec: Lubbock
Waverley. Rec: Bloom Ward
Heart of Midlothian. Rec: Bloom
Redgauntlet. Rec: Bloom
Old Mortality. Rec: Bloom Smiley
The Bride of Lammermoor. Rec: Smiley

Serge, Victor Men in Prison (1931); The Case of Comrade Tulayev (1948)
Serge lived revolution and imprisonment; his novels are etched with authenticity; but despite suffering and disillusionment he
was capable of lyrical and intense flights of generous imagination. The Case of Comrade Tulayev is arguably a truer picture of
Stalinism than either Koestler's (qv) Darkness at Noon or Trotsky's "historical" accounts. Men in Prison arises from Serge's
own experiences in France where he served five years for "terrorism".

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) Unlikely winner of a competition for gothic tales in which
Byron and Shelley dead-heated for the wooden spoon, Mary Shelley's shocker is thrillingly written, full of plausible
itnplausibilities. Pregnant with Freudian clues, the monster's story is a true original among imitations.

Shabtai, Yaakov, Israeli, 1934-1981.

Past Continuous. Rec: Bloom

Shimazaki Toson, Japanese, 1872-1943.

The Broken Commandment. Rec: Ward

Shi Naian, Chinese, 1296-1370.

Water Margin (Shui Hu Chuan; also known as All Men Are Brothers). Rec: Oriental Ward

Sholokhov, Mikhail, Russian, 1905-1984. Nobel Laureate

And Quiet Flows the Don. Rec: Smiley

Shute, Nevil, Australian, 1899-1960.

No Highway. Rec: Burgess

Sillitoe, Alan Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)

Marvellously fresh, loving and yet clear-eyed vision of working class life in early post-war England. A classic and honest claim
for the vitality of the provincial hero, yet well aware of the transitory nature of sappy happiness.
Sillitoe, Alan, English, 1928- .
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Rec: Burgess
Influenced in part by the stripped down prose of Hemingway, the book attempts to convey the attitudes and situation of a
young factory worker (Arthur Seaton) faced with the inevitable end of his youthful philandering.

Simon, Claude, French, 1913-2005. Nobel Laureate

The Grass. Rec: Bloom
The Wind. Rec: Bloom
The Flanders Road. Rec: Bloom

Sinclair, Upton The Jungle (1906)

Classic realistic—compare Frank Norris' The Pit—exposé of Chicago stockyards during the heyday of union-bashing beef
barons. "Documentary" as socialist polemic. Also: World's End

Sinclair, Upton, American, 1878-1968.

The Jungle. Rec: Boston PL NYPL Radcliffe

Singer, Isaac Bashevis The Family Moskat(1950); The Magician of Lublin (1960); The Slave (1962) 10 Yiddish novelist
of cosmic scope and vision, Singer exhibits "traditional" motifs and psychological acuity, Dickensian detail; The Family
Moskat deals, with Tolstoyan range and certainty, with a ghetto family and its slow disintegration and advance into (1939)
modernity; The Magician of Lublin and The Slave are less "modern" in tone, but are both specific in their Eastern European
setting and "mythic" in timeless morality. The "foreignness" of Singer's world seems opaque at first but soon yields images and
scenes of dramatic clarity and force. See
FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Singer, Israel Joshua, Polish-American writing in Yiddish, 1893-1944.

The Brothers Ashkenazi. Rec: Bloom
Yoshe Kalb. Rec: Bloom

Skvorecky, Josef, Czech, 1924- .

Cowards. Rec: Ward
Bass Saxophone. Rec: Ward

Smith, Betty, American, 1896-1972.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Rec: NYPL
A Classic Coming-of-Age Book That Touches Your Heart

Smith, Lillian, American, 1897-1966.

Strange Fruit. Rec: NYPL
It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing
and incendiary now as the day it was written.

Smith, Zadie, English, 1975- .

White Teeth. Rec: Smiley Time

Smollett, Tobias The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker(1771)

Smollett's medical training is visible in the scatological frankness of this amiably robust epistolary novel. Humphrey is an
ostler—prefiguring Dickens' Sam Weller—attendant on a family journeying through England and Scotland.

Smollett, Tobias, Scottish, 1721-1771.

Humphry Clinker. Rec: Bloom Smiley
Roderick Random. Rec: Bloom

Snow, C. P. The Masters (1951)

Jewel in a sometimes wooden crown, The Masters is part of Snow's sequence, Strangers and Brothers, but stands happily
independent as a solemn but convincing account of the struggle to succeed the Master of a Cambridge college.

Snow, C. P., English, 1905-1980.

Strangers and Brothers (Cycle of 11 novels). Rec: Burgess

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich, Russian, 1918- . Nobel Laureate

The First Circle. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Cancer Ward. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Rec: Bloom Ward
The Gulag Archipelago. Rec: Bloom Boston PL National Review NYPL TLS
August 1914. Rec: Bloom
Southern, Terry, American, 1924-1995.
The Magic Christian. Rec: BOMC
What would you do if you had the resources to buy anyone or anything you wished? Guy Grand acts immediately and directly
on this premise, and the results are, on the surface hilarious. But it is Southern's quiet, subtle, and expertly woven satirical
narrative and incisive comment on 1950s America amid the vignettes of money-fueled chaos that are the true gems, and the
heart of this wonderful novel.

Spark, Muriel Memento Mori (1959); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Febrile with tart phrases, Spark's work glitters with unnerving, sometimes chilling ironies. Catholic ideology informs satirical
fables. Memento Mori concerns old people seeking to forget—and being reminded of—the inevitable; The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie famously, if thinly celebrates a sacred monster of a school teacher and her girls in 1930s Edinburgh.

Spark, Muriel, Scottish, 1918-2006.

The Girls of Slender Means. Rec: Burgess
The Mandelbaum Gate. Rec: Burgess
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Rec: ML Novels Time
Loitering with Intent. Rec: Smiley

Starhawk (Miriam Simos), American, 1951- .

The Fifth Sacred Thing. Rec: Utne (novel)

Stead, Christina House of All Nations (1938)

Mammoth compendium of characters and cases, of swindlers and swingers in the world of a private bank in Paris between the
two wars, with hints of Stavisky and other scandals. A curious and often facile, even Fascistic attitude towards the financial
establishment sours but cannot spoil a talent furious at human duplicity and shallowness. The novel as mural.
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath (1939) * This masterpiece easily transcends its melodramatic crudities. The Joad family's
desperate emigration from the dust-bowl to California opened eyes to the plight of the "Okies", poor farmers; retains vividness
and heartfelt warmth. See DIARIES; TRAVEL

Stead, Christina, Australian, 1902-1983.

The Man Who Loved Children. Rec: Bloom Smiley Time

Stegner, Wallace, American, 1909-1993.

Angle of Repose. Rec: BOMC ML Novels

Stein, Gertrude, American, 1874-1946.

The Making of Americans. Rec: Bloom

Steinbeck, John, American, 1902-1968. Nobel Laureate

The Grapes of Wrath. Rec: Bloom BOMC Boston PL Hungry Mind ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time
Of Mice and Men. Rec: Radcliffe

Stendhal The Red and the Black (1830); The Charterhouse of Parma (1839)
Rise and fall of Julien Sorel makes a great novel of ambition in a France open to all talents, including shameless romantic
premeditation. The Charterhouse of Parma has a more splendid hero in Fabrizio del Dongo and though less readable is
luminous with political fireworks and contains a puncturingly "modern" passage describing the Battle of Waterloo. Good
translations: The Red and the Black by Shaw (1953); The Charterhouse of Parma by Blair (1960). See LITERARY
CRITICISM

Stendhal, French, 1783-1842.

The Red and the Black. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful Rex Smiley Ward
The Charterhouse of Parma. Rec: Adler Bloom Good Reading Ward
On Love. Rec: Adler Bloom

Sterne, Laurence The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760-67) Sterne, a bucolic vicar, scandalized Dr Johnson.
Goldsmith and others, with Tristram Shandy; modern readers may wonder why. Picaresque; long; idiosyncratic; a maverick to
be enjoyed piecemeal, save by addicts of Irishness or the picaresque. See TRAVEL

Sterne, Laurence, English, 1713-1768.

Tristram Shandy. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Harvard Meaningful Rex Smiley Ward
Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Rec: Adler Bloom

Stone, Robert, American, 1937- .

Dog Soldiers. Rec: Bloom Time
A Flag for Sunrise. Rec: Bloom BOMC

Storey, David This Sporting Life (1960)

A seminal work in the emancipation of the English post-war novel from a largely metropolitan and intellectual ambience. The
use of rugby league football as a metaphor for the life-struggle presages the sports-mad sixties and seventies. A tendency to live
in the shadow of D. H. Lawrence renders this and Storey's later work somewhat sunless.

Stowe, Hariet Beecher, American, 1811-1896.

Uncle Tom's Cabin. Rec: Rexmo Smiley

Styron, William The Long March (1962); The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967); Sophie's Choice (1968)
The Long March is the shortest and best of Styron's occasional, ponderous work. It describes the conflict between the liberal
and the authoritarian through the image of a training march in which the liberal seeks to prove himself through self-destructive
endurance. The other two novels deal with Big Issues—race and Auschwitz—with a discursive thoroughness that attempts to
rehabilitate the Novel With A Purpose. Blacks resented the one, Jews described the other as "Auschwitz meets Playboy
magazine". Styron is earnest and sexy, and earnestly sexy.

Styron, William, American, 1925- .

The Long March. Rec: Bloom
Sophie's Choice. Rec: Burgess Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe
Lie Down in Darkness. Rec: BOMC
Darkness Visible. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Confessions of Nat Turner. Rec: Time

Svevo, Italo As a Man Grows Older (Sertilita)(1898); The Confessions of Zeno (1923)
Wry, self-deprecating satires of provincial life: Zeno's confessions are prompted by a desire to give up smoking. Svevo died in
a road accident in 1928, asking in vain for a smoke. "That really would have been a last cigarette," he said, and died, a
character of his own creation.

Svevo, Italo, Italian, 1861-1928.

Confessions of Zeno. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Smiley Ward
As a Man Grows Older. Rec: Bloom

Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Is Gulliver's Travels a novel? Can you play chess without the queen? Cardinal example of satire fully realized as fantasy, or
scorn gilding witty imagination; self-justifying world of big and small unfolded and decorated to the point where a political
tract of trenchant ferocity can serve as a children's classic. For grownups, its bite may be more obvious.

Tarkington, Booth, American, 1869-1946.

The Magnificent Ambersons. Rec: ML Novels

Thackeray, William Makepeace Vanity Fair (1847); The Newcomes (1853)

Vanity Fair is Thackeray's masterpiece, with Becky Sharp a superbly seductive villainess, the whole glamorous tale as sharp as
she with satirical energy. The Newcomes is more tender, but lacks Dickens' exuberant sentimentality.

Thackeray, William Makepeace, English, 1811-1863.

Pendennis. Rec: Lubbock
Vanity Fair. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock Smiley Ward
Henry Esmond. Rec: Bloom

Thelwell, Michael, Jamaican, 1939- .

The Harder They Come. Rec: Bloom
With passion and precision, Michael Thelwell recounts Rhygin's journey from a morally coherent rural universe to the teeming,
predatory slums of Kingston, his rebellion against the poverty and corruption of postcolonial Jamaica, his blazing,
simultaneous rise to the top of the charts and the Most Wanted list.

Theroux, Paul, American, 1941- .

The Mosquito Coast. Rec: Bloom Burgess

Theroux, Alexander, American, 1939- .

Darconville's Cat. Rec: Burgess

Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace (1866); Anna Karenina (1875 -77) 0
Two great novels, one flawed by its scope, the other by its schematic morality, both instinct with genius. Much is said to be lost
in translation; a world remains. Warand Peace is a masterpiece of realism, sparkling with characters and only occasionally
rendered tedious by the philosophical special pleading of which Tolstoy became a compulsive victim. Though Anna Karenina
is unbalanced by the sentimental falseness of the relationship between the Levins (to which Tolstoy's flight from marriage in
old age is a sort of bitter pendant), Anna's beauty and fineness of character, Vronsky's heartless tenderness and the odious,
touching Karenin constitute a triangle for eternity. See BIOGRAPHY (Troyat); LITERARY CRITICISM

Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich, Russian, 1828-1910.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. Rec: Meaningful
The Cossacks. Rec: Bloom
War and Peace. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard Meaningful Rex Seymour-
Smith SJC Ward
Anna Karenina. Rec: Adler Bloom Harvard Meaningful Smiley Utne Ward
A Confession. Rec: Bloom
The Power of Darkness. Rec: Bloom
Short Novels. Rec: Bloom
The Kingdom of God is Within You. Rec: Rexmo
What is Art?. Rec: Adler
Twenty-Three Tales. Rec: Adler

Toer, Pramoedya Ananta, Indonesian, 1925- .

The Buru Quartet. Rec: Utne

Toole, John Kennedy, American, 1937-1969.

Confederacy of Dunces. Rec: Burgess

Tournier, Michel, French, 1924- .

The Ogre. Rec: Bloom
Friday. Rec: Bloom

Treece, Henry Electra (1963)

Superb evocation of the dust and cruelty of ancient Greece, a vision unadorned with marbled afterthoughts; inspired empathy
with a wild girl who imagines herself Electra. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Tremain, Rose The Way I Found Her

Recommended by Carolyn See

Trilling, Lionel The Middle of the Journey (1947)

Sole novel by pundit of American liberalism. Famous fictionalization of Whittaker Chambers (accuser of Alger Hiss); lucid
analysis of intellectual and political postures in the thirties. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Trollope, Anthony, English, 1815-1882.

Barchester Towers. Rec: Good Reading
Barsetshire Novels. Rec: Bloom
The Warden. Rec: Fadiman 4 Good Reading
The Last Chronicle of Barset. Rec: Fadiman 4 Smiley
Palliser Novels. Rec: Bloom
The Eustace Diamonds. Rec: Fadiman 4 Smiley
Orley Farm. Rec: Bloom
The Way We Live Now. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4
Autobiography. Rec: Fadiman 4

Twain, Mark Huckleberry Finn (1885)

Huckleberry Finn is no more a children's book than is Gulliver's Travels, although children read and love both. The freedom
Huck seeks—like the hero of every Great American novel—is found not in the wilderness, the West, but on the smooth free-
flowing river, the Mississippi, down which he journeys on a raft with the escaped slave, Jim. By adults, Twain is as underrated
as Swift. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/AMERICAN; HUMOUR; TRAVEL

Twain, Mark, American, 1835-1910.

Letters from the Earth. Rec: Hungry Mind
Huckleberry Finn. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Meaningful Rex SJC Ward
Tom Sawyer. Rec: Ward
Pudd'nhead Wilson. Rec: Bloom
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Rec: Bloom
The Devil's Racetrack. Rec: Bloom
The Mysterious Stranger. Rec: Adler Bloom
Complete Short Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Autobiography. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Tyler, Anne, American, 1941- .

The Accidental Tourist. Rec: BOMC
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Rec: Smiley

Undset, Sigrid, Norwegian, 1882-1949. Nobel Laureate

Kristin Lavransdatter. Rec: Bloom Smiley (Selections)

Updike, John Couples (1968); Rabbit, Run (1961)

The sexual malaises and melees of middle-class New England have provided Updike with his narrow world, which he details
with merciless, narcissistic pointillism. He is a literary dandy, in the Nabokov tradition, whose Couples is a display of
shameless virtuosity. The Rabbit books show that he can play equally well away from home, in the lower middle class world of
Rabbit, a randy failure.

Updike, John, American, 1932- .

The Witches of Eastwick. Rec: Bloom
The Coup. Rec: Burgess
Couples. Rec: LAT
The Complete Henry Bech. Rec: Smiley
Rabbit, Run. Rec: BOMC Hungry Mind Radcliffe Time

Vargas Llosa, Mario, Peruvian, 1936- .

The War of the End of the World. Rec: Bloom

Vélez de Guevara, Luis, Spanish, 1579-1644.

El Diablo Cojuelo. Rec: Ward
El Diablo cojuelo (1641), a fantastic novel which suggested to Le Sage the idea of his Diable boiteux.

Vesaas, Tarjei, Norwegian, 1897-1970.

Ice Palace. Rec: Ward

Vidal, Gore, American, 1925- .

Myra Breckenridge. Rec: Bloom
Lincoln. Rec: Bloom
Creation. Rec: Burgess
United States: Essays 1952-1992. Rec: Hungry Mind Utne
Burr. Rec: BOMC LAT

Vittorini, Elio, Italian, 1908-1966.

Women of Messina. Rec: Bloom

Voltaire Candide (1759)

Not a novel? Then so much the worse for the novel. Dr Pangloss is the great, absurd antidote to chiliastic and Leibnitzian
optimism. The gardener's supreme licence ("Cultivate!") begins here. See BIOGRAPHY (Mitford)

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., American, 1922- .

Cat's Cradle. Rec: Bloom LAT Radcliffe
Slaughterhouse-Five. Rec: BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time
Breakfast of Champions. Rec: Harvard

Wald, Lillian, American, 1867-1940.

The House on Henry Street. Rec: NYPL

Walker, Alice, American, 1944- .

The Color Purple. Rec: Hungry Mind NYPL Radcliffe

Wallace, David Foster, American, 1962- .

Infinite Jest. Rec: Harvard Time

Warner, Rex, English, 1905-1986.

The Aerodrome. Rec: Burgess
"Eight years older than 1984 , its claim to be regarded as a modern classic is as sound as that of Orwell's novel," writes
Anthony Burgess in his introduction to this edition of The Aerodrome . Written as an allegory on fascism, the 1941 novel tells
of the ruination of a rural village by the building of an aerodrome in its vicinity. Large fiction collections should consider it.”
(amazon)

Warren, Robert Penn Night Rider (1938)

Poet and Southern agrarian, Warren deals with scandals—of violence and corruption, with neat sexual twists—but in a formal,
didactic style where literary skill contrives an inadvertent apology for depicted guilt. Also: All the King's Men

Warren, Robert Penn, American, 1905-1989.

All the King's Men. Rec: Bloom BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time
World Enough and Time. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Waugh, Evelyn Decline and Fall (1928); A Handful of Dust (1934); Brideshead Revisited (1945); Sword of Honour (3 vols,
1952-55) *
Waugh's pre-war novels are ruthless romps; Sword of Honourattempts more serious socio-political appraisal, but is more
memorable for Ritchie-Hook and the thunderbox than for "mature" passages, though it contains a notable account of cowardice
and collapse in Crete. Brideshead Revisited is a lushly-written encomium on old Catholic British families and Waugh's Oxford
generation, teddy-bears and all.

Waugh, Evelyn, English, 1903-1966.

A Handful of Dust. Rec: Bloom ML Novels Time
Scoop. Rec: Bloom ML Novels
Brideshead Revisited. Rec: Burgess ML Novels Radcliffe Time
Sword of Honour (Trilogy). Rec: Burgess

Weidman, Jerome Fourth Street East (1971)

Weidman's characters began life as poor immigrant Jews in 1920s New York; now, as affluent, compromised and
compromising adults, they look back at their past with rose-tinted spectacles and notably beady eyes. A prolific, consistent
novelist of wit and charm. Also: I Can Get It for You Wholesale; The Enemy Camp; Other People's Money, etc

Wells, H. G. Kipps (1905); The History of Mr Polly (1910)

Wells, in his own estimation, was always journalist, never Jamesian artist. He wrote quickly, but his accounts of lower middle-
class British life at the turn of the century are cheeky and truthful. See FICTION/SF; HISTORY/WORLD

Welty, Eudora Delta Wedding(1946)

Decorous, scintillating portrayal of Mississippi aristocratic family in the 1920s. Nobody is better at capturing Southern
dialogue and mannerisms. The Jane Austen of the South?

Werfel, Franz, Czech writing in German, 1890-1945.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
“based around an event that took place on Musa Dagh in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey”

West, Nathanael Miss Lonelyhearts (1933); The Day of the Locust (1939)
Terse, mordant satires on American life. Miss Lonelyhearts lampoons the bogus sympathy of newspapers for readers' agonies;
The Day of the Locust depicts Hollywood as a sumptuous hell. West matches Fitzgerald for sharpness, beats him for
sophistication.

West, Nathanael, American, 1904-1940.

Miss Lonelyhearts. Rec: Bloom
A Cool Million. Rec: Bloom
The Day of the Locust. Rec: Bloom BOMC Hungry Mind ML Novels NYPL Time

West, Rebecca, English, 1892-1983.

The Fountain Overflows. Rec: Smiley

Wharton, Edith The Custom of the Country (1913); The Age of Innocence (1920)
Put down as a clumsy Henry James (qv), Wharton's uncertain origins stoked her prodigious snobbery, but made her an acute
observer of "old New York" families. The Custom of the Country is a readable, cunningly plotted portrait of a less than ladylike
adventuress, sharply funny; The Age of Innocence looks engagingly back on childhood among grand families in "Edwardian"
New York. Also: The House of Mirth

Wharton, Edith, American, 1862-1937.

The Decoration of Houses (With Ogden Codman). Rec: Counterpunch NF
The Custom of the Country. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4
The Age of Innocence. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Harvard ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe
The House of Mirth. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 ML Novels Smiley
Collected Short Stories. Rec: Bloom
Ethan Frome. Rec: Bloom Radcliffe

White, Edmund, American, 1940- .

Nocturnes for the King of Naples. Rec: Bloom “A poetic novel about losing your one true love” (Amazon)
Forgetting Elena. Rec: Bloom

White, Patrick Voss (1957); Riders in the Chariot (1961)

The Australian novelist, with Voss—an account of a doomed explorer crossing the continent in the 1880s—his masterwork;
Rider in the Chariot attempts grandiloquently and majestically to grapple with anti-Semitism.

White, Patrick, Australian, 1912-1990. Nobel Laureate

Riders in the Chariot. Rec: Bloom Burgess
A Fringe of Leaves. Rec: Bloom
Voss. Rec: Bloom

Wideman, John Edgar, American, 1941- .

Philadelphia Fire. Rec: Hungry Mind

Wilcox, James, American, 1949- .

Modern Baptists. Rec: Bloom

Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Wilde said he put genius into life, talent into work. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a talented shocker, ridiculously brilliant with
epigrams but haunted by a sense of doom which, with cruel punctuality, was later to ruin Wilde's own life. See BIOGRAPHY
(Hyde): DIARIES; DRAMA

Wilde, Oscar, Irish, 1854-1900.

Works. Rec: Ward
Picture of Dorian Gray. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Williamson, Henry, English, 1895-1977.

Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (Series of 15 novels). Rec: Burgess

Wilson, Angus, English, 1913-1991.

The Old Men at the Zoo. Rec: Burgess
Late Call. Rec: Burgess
The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling. Rec: National Review

Winterson, Jeanette, English, 1959- .

The Passion. Rec: Bloom

Wolfe, Thomas Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

Logorrhoeic Great American Novel. Standard themes of boyhood—in North Carolina—and escape into more worldly circles,
decorated with interminably brilliant dialogue and nostalgia for exuberance of a once suffocating family and provincial life.
Wolfe's autobiographical novels repeat these themes with surfeiting effect. Also: You Can't Go Home Again, etc

Wolfe, Thomas, American, 1900-1938.

Look Homeward, Angel. Rec: BOMC Radcliffe
You Can't Go Home Again. Rec: Hungry Mind

Woolf, Virginia Mrs Dalloway (1925); The Waves (1931) 9*

Boom in crying Woolf makes her essential if less mysterious reading now than when her "envelopes of consciousness" seemed
filled with some rarer sense of life than any common reader could contrive. Mrs Dalloway echoes Joycean innovation and, like
Ulysses, covers one day in its heroine's life. The Waves is marvellous: a richly brocaded poetic tapestry, close-patterned with
Bloomsbury figures. Also: To the Lighthouse; The Voyage Out; Night and Day, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Bell, Woolf);
DIARIES;FEMINISM

Woolf, Virginia, English, 1882-1941.

Mrs. Dalloway. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful Radcliffe Time
To the Lighthouse. Rec: Bloom Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Meaningful ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe
SJC Time
Orlando. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Radcliffe Smiley
A Room of One's Own. Rec: Boston PL Collh91 ML Nonfiction
The Waves. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Between the Acts. Rec: Bloom

Wouk, Herman, American, 1915- .

The Caine Mutiny. Rec: Burgess

Wright, Richard Native Son (1940)

Classic of Negro life in Chicago slums seen, through the life of Bigger Thomas, without sentiment or apology; implied
indictment of white world. Wright's later work is explicitly polemical; Native Son, with Invisible Man (Ellison, qv), is a crucial
novel in the statement of the black claim.

Wright, Richard, American, 1908-1960.

Native Son. Rec: Bloom Boston PL Hungry Mind ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe Time
Black Boy. Rec: Bloom ML Nonfiction

Wu Cheng'en (Wu Chengen), Chinese, 1500-1582.

Journey to the West (also known as Monkey). Rec: Fadiman 4 MW Asian Oriental StJE Utne Ward

Wu Jingzi (Wu Ch'ing-tzu), Chinese, 1701-1754.

The Scholars. Rec: Ward

Yates, Richard, American, 1926-1992.

Revolutionary Road. Rec: Harvard Time
Yehoshua, A. B., Israeli, 1936- .
A Late Divorce. Rec: Bloom

Yoshimoto, Banana, Japanese, 1964- .

Kitchen. Rec: Harvard

Yourcenar, Marguerite Memoirs of Hadrian (1959)

The Emperor Hadrian had Greek sensitivity in a Roman mind, Christian aspirations in a pagan soul. He is the bridge between
the ancient world and ours. Yourcenar's novel "ghosts" his memoirs in fine French style.

Yourcenar, Marguerite, French, 1903-1987.

Coup de Grace. Rec: Bloom
Memoirs of Hadrian. Rec: Bloom Meaningful

Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich, Russian, 1884-1937.

We. Rec: Ward

Zola, Emile Nana (1880); Germinal (1885)

Nana is a sensational, purportedly "naturalistic" account of the belle epoque in Paris as revealed by the lurid career of a
striptease artist who strips more than she teases. Its sexual frankness shocked and delighted readers less enchanted with
Germinal, a much better book, which portrayed with terrible, wilful and "scientific" honesty the life of a mining village in the
great age of unrestricted capitalism. See DIARIES (Goncourt)

Zola, Émile, French, 1840-1902.

Thérèse Raquin. Rec: Smiley Ward
L'Assommoir. Rec: Bloom Ward
Germinal. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Ward
Nana. Rec: Bloom

ENGLISH LITERATURE: INTRODUCTION

Brenda Richardson

What are the defining boundaries of English literature? Can we use Milton's assertion to distinguish `literature' from `writing',
suggesting that `literature' contains some essence of the writer, `treasured up on purpose' for the use of posterity? Even if we do
there remains the problem of defining `English'. Is it a matter of location or language? Simply to define English literature as
British literature in English is too arbitrary. Should Northern Irish or all Anglo-Irish writing be included? Is literature writ-ten
in English in Wales or Scotland part of a Wales-wide or Scotland-wide Welsh or Scottish literature regardless of medium? If we
include the work of resident black or Asian writers in English are we denying their distinctiveness or recognizing their
Britishness? What is English? Are dialect or patois poems in English? I would like to include all interesting writing in English
in Britain or Ireland under this heading, but readers will find that many of the books suggested are more conservative.

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit: embalmed

and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
JOHN MILTON

The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) edited by Margaret Drabble. A comprehensive guide to facts and dates,
with good cross- referencing.

The Oxford Literary Guide to the British Isles (1977) edited by Dorothy Eagle and Hilary Carnell. English literature from
the other end: look up Dorchester and find out about its literary connections beyond Thomas Hardy.

The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (1975) edited by James Sutherland. A rich mine of bits and pieces of literary
information and sidelights on literary figures, giving a flavour of literary life in different ages, in different regions, for both
sexes and all classes.
Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983) by Terry Eagleton. Lucid, entertaining, comprehensive, a good way in to the
sophisticated way of talking about literature in the 1990s.

A History of English Literature: Forms and Kinds from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (1987) by Alistair Fowler. The
most accessible of the current one-volume histories: clear and concise but rather conservative in its scope.

The Short Oxford History of English Literature (1994) by Andrew Sanders. This may seem a bit stodgy but it is the history
most aware of the problems of creating a canon of English literature in 1994. The result is a survey generously revisionist
where women's writing is concerned, and offering pointers to the possibilities for multiculturalism in the English literature of
recent decades.

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1953) edited by Angela Partington. With generous samplings of major authors and
titillating glimpses of lesser-known ones, this offers a conspectus of a wide range of writing in English, literary, philosophical,
and historical.

The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: A Guide for Readers (1991) edited by Boris Ford. A compendious and
regularly updated guide that will enable the reader to find more information about almost any aspect of the field desired.

THE BRITISH NOVEL

Brenda Richardson

This entry involves problems of both definition and ideology. Down to about 1970 there is no perceived problem. Studies of
the English novel' abound, and a selection is offered in the reading list below. But after this the scope for alternative definitions
widens as Anglo-Irish novels become arguably a separate genre and practitioners of Indian or Caribbean origin reside wholly or
partly in England and produce novels from their own distinctive cultural matrices. At the same time concepts of gender or
racial identity become prominent, and it becomes tendentious to appropriate either feminist or Afro-Caribbean writing to a
genre that is seen in some quarters as a part of Victorian and post-Victorian cultural imperialism, reinforcing gender stereotypes
and imposing white, middle-class, male-centred narrative patterns. So the list also includes a couple of collections of essays
which explore these problems of racial, national, and gender identity, and their relation to narrative fiction, whether or not we
call the result a novel.

`Oh! it is only a novel!' replies the young lady:... `It is only Cecilia, or Camilla or
Belinda' or in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of
human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit
and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
JANE AUSTEN

The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) by Ian Watt. The classic study of the origins of the
novel conceived as a product of middle-class economic individualism.

The English Novel: Form and Function (1953) by Dorothy Van Ghent. Contains a mixture of studies in the interpretation of a
wide range of individual works and studies of problems of form.

The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983) by Wayne C Booth. A classic American study dealing with British and other fiction. Here we
see the rise of literary theory: concepts of the meaning of form, the importance of point of view, of reader-theory.

Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers before Jane Austen (1986) by Dale Spender. A corrective to Ian Watt and
other less carefully nuanced versions of the great male line of English novelists from Defoe to Dickens and Conrad. Dare a
feminist say that the definition of `good' may seem to need a bit of stretching?

The Modern British Novel (1993) by Malcolm Bradbury. All studies date quickly at the recent end of their period. This very
new and comprehensive book covers the wide range of subgenres and cultural subsets into which the novel tradition may be
seen to have fragmented as well as doing a good job on the `mainstreams'.

The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature: The Novel: A Guide to the Novel from its Origins to the Present Day (1993)
edited by Andrew Michael Roberts. A work of reference in which authors, genres, and technical terms can alike be checked.
Reading Women: Essays in Feminist Criticism (1986) by Mary Jacobus. This collection has a European and international
focus, indicating this aspect as well as the gender aspect of the shifting focus of literary and especially novelistic criticism in
Britain.

Nation and Narration (1990) edited by H K Bhabha. Essays on various aspects of cultural identity and cultural imperialism,
some more and some less relevant to the particular matter of the British novel, but indicating by its very existence the way in
which the study of the novel has been problematized and politicized in the present decade.

ENGLISH PROSE
Brenda Richardson

The selection, it will be seen, contains no identified writer more recent than Lytton Strachey, though the letters and diaries
come down well into the present century. Where more formal writing is concerned the defining examples do belong in earlier
periods. Nonfictional prose is not one genre but many. There are essays, biographies, history, criticism, topography, humour,
satire, pastoral, some separable, some not or barely so. The examples are chosen partly for style, partly for content, partly to
give a taste of different periods and different contexts. The pleasures_are many and diverse, and virtually impossible to
summarize.

Prose can never be too truthful or too wise.

WILI.IA vi WATSON

Essays (1597-1625; several recent editions) by Francis Bacon. Like Hamlet they turn out to be full of quotations! They also
provide a good sense of what life was like under Elizabeth I and James I and an illustration of the terse and plain style of
writing.

The Compleat Angler (1653; several recent editions) by Izaak Walton. A favourite of mine, and a lovely example of a very
minor genre, the pastoral idyll in English. Should you wish to cook pike, it can also serve as a recipe book!

Selections from the Tatler and Spectator (1988) edited by Angus Ross. 18th-century fashionable journalism, well selected,
and offering a range of interests to do with both the style and diction and the content.

Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele, English and Irish-English, 1672-1719 and 1672-1729.
Spectator. Rec: Bloom Lubbock

The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789; several recent editions) by Gilbert White. An evocation of rural life
and an example of scientific and descriptive and yet eminently readable prose.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790; several recent editions) by Edmund Burke. An elegiac celebration of
traditional aristocratic society incorporated in vigorous counter-revolutionary propaganda.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857; several recent editions) by Elizabeth Gaskell. The life of a woman by a woman from a
very paternalistic age. It offers social history and detail of the distinctive character of the West Riding of Yorkshire, as well as
chronicling Bronte's struggle to achieve self-expression and self-fulfilment.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) by Walter Pater. Romantically impressionistic essays in art history which
encouraged subjective responses to beauty.

Eminent Victorians (1918) by Lytton Strachey. Funny, irreverent, often desperately unfair, these studies offer a debunking,
ironic corrective to uncritical treatments of Victorian piety and heroism.

The Englishwoman's Diary: An Anthology (1992) edited by Harriet Blodgett. A wide-ranging sampling of the regional,
domestic, and personal writing which is characteristic of the female writer and fills in the blanks around the public life featured
in the formal essays of London male culture.
The Oxford Book of Letters (1995) edited by Frank and Alice Kermode. An anthology stretching from the 16th to the 20th
century, offering an insight into the life of different periods and the function of the letter in each.

THE 18TH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL

Chris Murray

It was during the 18th century that the prose tale underwent the subtle and profound transformation into the novel, for many the
supreme literary form of the modern world. Its origins were modest. Though novels were soon to acquire the social graces of
the drawing room, the earliest were redolent of the tavern, the brothel, and the debtors' prison, their language spiced with the
racy vernacular of pimps, harlots, drunks, thugs, cardsharps, cutthroats, penniless fops, corrupt politicians, and scheming
lawyers. In other words, early novels (strongly influenced by such writers as Cervantes) were essentially picaresques, a form
for which the burgeoning ranks of the urban middle classes had a huge appetite. Young heroes and heroines, beset by seemingly
endless series of farcical trials and tribulations, finally, often by a totally unexpected twist of fate, achieve wealth and
happiness. The following includes a few precursors of the true novel.

The novel is practically a Protestant form of art; it is a product

of the free mind, of the autonomous individual
GEORGE ORWELL

Oroonoko (about 1688) by Aphra Behn. A remarkable woman whose eventful life included working as a spy for Charles II, a
spell in a debtors' prison, and a busy career as a translator, dramatist, and novelist - she was probably the first Englishwoman to
earn her living by writing. A long prose romance influenced by continental writers, Oroonoko, with its attack on the slave trade,
anticipates the much later concept of the 'noble savage'.

Behn, Aphra, English, 1640-1689.

Oroonoko. Rec: Smiley
"The Fair Jilt". Rec: Smiley

Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe. Tradesman turned literary jack of all trades and polemicist who was thrown into
prison several times, Defoe, freely combining fiction and fact, brought a new imaginative scope and vigour to storytelling.
Robinson is his masterpiece, though his vividness of characterization, sure sense of everyday reality, and his narrative drive
make Moll Flanders (1722) and The journal of the Plague Year (1722) highly readable.

Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift. Not a novel, quite, but a bitter, and at times obscene, satire in prose (the satires of
John Dryden and Alexander Pope had set a very high standard in verse). By curious irony that might well have given its author
a good deal of sardonic pleasure, Gulliver's Travels became a children's classic (parts of it, at least).

Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (1740-42) by Samuel Richardson. Generally considered to be the first English novel. Told in a
long, long series of letters, it recounts the seduction of a young woman who, virtuous and true, brings about the moral
transformation of her vile seducer, though both of them die in the process. A successful printer by trade, Richardson had a
shrewd sense of what people wanted: a good story that ended with `an useful moral'. His sensitivity to the psychology of his
characters had a huge impact on the development of the novel, and in his lifetime he was feted throughout Europe: Dr Johnson
as well as the French philosopher Rousseau wept for Pamela.

Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding. A long picaresque romp through 18th-century England, probably the greatest novel of its
age. Fielding detested what he regarded as the prissy and hypocritical morality of Richardson (he wrote a parody called
Shame), and his own novels combine a shrewd intelligence and an earthy frankness about human nature (the character Tom
Jones is far from being a model of snowy- white virtue). His work as a dramatist gave his novels a sureness of structure absent
in many works of the period. Essential reading.

The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771) by Tobias Smollett. An account of a family on their travels through England
and Scotland, told in a series of letters by each member of the family, this is probably Smollett's finest work. Smollett hasn't
Fielding's sense of form, but the countless comic escapades of his vividly drawn characters show him to be ceaselessly
inventive, his satire on human folly relentless, though just a little mellower here than in earlier works.
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) by Oliver Goldsmith. A vicar and his family fall on hard times: he loses his position and is
finally thrown into debtors' prison, his daughter elopes with a scoundrel. But it all turns out happily in the end. A neglected
work (a little tame perhaps after Fielding and Smollett) which deserves more attention. The German poet Goethe, who dubbed
it a `prose idyll', was deeply moved.

The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (1760) by Laurence Sterne. A unique work, this is one of the strangest books of
the century. To use modern jargon, it 'deconstructs' the novel form, and far more amusingly than many 20th-century attempts. It
has long mock-philosophical authorial asides, blank pages, a few squiggles to illustrate the rambling and inconsequential
narrative, a mixture of styles high and (very) low, including stream-of-consciousness, and a gallery of colourful eccentrics -
like one of its more recent relatives, James Joyce's Ulysses, it is either a sheer delight or an insufferable irritation. Despite its
oddity it was extremely popular in his own day.

The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. This is another queer fish. Disdaining the `vulgar' realistic novels of his
day, Walpole turned to medieval stories of chivalry and high romance. The result was a surrealistic novel of the supernatural -
statues that bleed, ghosts, a giant helmet that falls from the sky killing a man, murder, rattling chains, and ruined castles. A
rejection of the down-to-earth good sense of much 18th-century fiction, The Castle of Otranto, the first `Gothic novel', is one of
the earliest expressions of Romanticism and the ancestor of the modern horror novel.

THE 19TH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL

Roz Kaveney

There is a tendency on the part of critics of the novel to talk as if Romanticism was something that only happened in poetry, or
abroad. In fact, the 19th-century British novel crucially concerns itself with key issues of Romanticism - the conflict between
the individual striving to be entirely themselves and the community that has rights and in which the individual has to some
extent to live. Often this conflict is posed in terms of a struggle between shadow selves or with a landscape; often also multiple
narrative strands make possible the exploration of more than one point of view, more than one possible way of existing.

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and
Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly
Compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
CHARLES DICKENS

Emma (1816) by Jane Austen. Has the poise and elegant malice that we expect of Austen, but is surprisingly perceptive about
the dangers of intelligence and talent. Emma makes mischief and manipulates almost everybody around her; she has a
novelist's instincts and puts them to work in real life.

The Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg. Brilliantly originates a whole school of psychological horror
stories. Its hero, persuaded of his elect status as one of the saved, comes to believe he can dispose of everyone in his way and
serve God thereby; is his companion and adviser a delusion, the incognito Russian tsar, or the Prince of Lies?

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens. A moral lecture on charity that escapes mere preachiness because of the
fertility of Dickens' fantastic imagination. It denounces not only miserliness and politics which stifles humanity in the affluent
by denying it to an underclass; in the process, it crystallizes the manners of a particular time as the authentic way of celebrating
Christmas. Mythopoeia is an underrated function of the novel and the tale.

Vanity Fair (1847) by William Makepeace Thackeray. Has a heart of unforgiving flint beneath the flip cynicism and
sentimentality of its surface. Thackeray does not let even his virtuous characters get away with anything - by the time worthy
Dobbin wins the widowed, dim Amelia, he has seen how little she is worth. Becky Sharp starts with our sympathy - she has,
after all, her way to make in a cruel world - but forfeits it by gratuitous acts of petty cruelty.

Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte. The most Romantic of great British novels, with its blasted landscapes and
hopeless love. Based as it is on some crudely conceived dualisms like the opposition of calm and storm in the make-up of its
characters, there is considerable subtlety in its execution; the distanced narrative turns up the heat on the emotional material by
pretending to recollect it in tranquillity.
Bleak House (1852-53) by Charles Dickens. Perhaps his most comprehensive denunciation of a society in which the letter of
the law is allowed to kill the spirit. The Chancery case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce becomes indistinguishable from the London
fog; spontaneous combustion, smallpox, madness, and murder strike indiscriminately and the orphan Esther, the illiterate
crossing sweeper Jo, and the snobbish Lady Deadlock have more to do with each other than we can imagine.

The Ring and the Book (1869) by Robert Browning. A great poem now most usefully read as if a novel; verse is its means of
expression, rather than its soul. A classic Roman murder case is retold time after time from different viewpoints, becoming a
meditation on truth and how truth is used within a society, and a touchstone for our perception of the characters who discuss it.

Daniel Deronda (1876) by George Eliot. Demonstrates that the 19th-century novel could be about ideas as well as plots and
emotional extremes; the critic F R Leavis disapproved of the subplots about Zionism and music and wanted to edit it down to
the story of Gwendolen Harlech, which demonstrates how little F R Leavis understood about story.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas Hardy. Reminds us usefully that the England of the 19th century started off as
a rural economy, but that things changed ... Turned sober after selling his wife at a fair, Henchard becomes a model of Victorian
energy, but secrets will out, and the assistant he fostered becomes his rival. Hardy at his best combined a sense of society as a
whole with the most complete tragic sense of the century.

The Master of Ballantrae (1889) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Uses the last British civil war, the Jacobite rebellion of 1745,
and its conflicts of loyalty to dramatize the clash of the two sorts of man. Observed by a narrator alienated from both, two
brothers struggle for estate, wife, and ascendancy; often underrated as a children's adventure story, Stevenson's best book is
endlessly inventive and emotionally subtle.

20TH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION - Roz Kaveney

The 20th-century British novel hardly exists as a single concept - nor is this just a result of nearness in time and failures of
perspective. For one thing, there was no longer any one idea of Great Britain to which to assent or dissent; a sense of
marginalization was common not only to those who had been marginalized, but also to many writers whom most would see as
at the centre of things as they were. Society is an antagonist in most of the good novels of the century, not a medium through
which protagonists move. Exploration of technique was another crucial factor, of course, but looks less of one at century's end
than it seemed in the middle; technical innovation was consistently recruited back into the mainstream so that James Joyce's
Ulysses, for example, looks greater than ever, but far less radical a departure.

Yes - oh dear, yes - the novel tells a story.

E M FoRSTER

The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad. Conrad brought a European sophisticadon about motive and the political cast of
mind to the British novel. This tale about the domesticity of the suburbs, the idiot games of high politics, and the tragedy of the
mundane was a farsighted view of how the century was going to work. at also characterizes, perhaps, the 20th-century British
novel is a sense of the weirdness of life which derives from Dickens and makes for real quirkiness; if the British novel of the
second half of the century is for the most part distinctly minor, it is because there are in it so many goodish writers who wrote
strange books.

The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford. This is, as the book's opening tells us, the saddest story ever told, largely
because its quite trivial story of adultery, deceit, suicide, and madness is made to stand for a whole dying world of middle-class
security. What seemed sensible arrangements had bad faith at the roots and destroyed everyone - the narrator gradually !cams
all that had been kept from him: Ford finished the book, and then went off to the war that the book never mentions, directly.

Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf. Woolf despised Joyce's work for its grubby realism, but successfully appropriated the
stream of consciousness in several of her books. Clarissa Dalloway is a social parasite, but she has a set of tasks to get through
in a day and becomes admirable for doing them in spite of the endless distractions of her thoughts and senses. This is a slight
book in many ways, but achieves grandeur through its sense of human solidarity.

Brighton Rock (1938) by Graham Greene. Greene's decision to divide his work into serious novels and `entertainments' cost
us, for the most part, a sense of him as a whole writer. This novel of gangsterism and damnation combines a nasty wit with a
real sense of the complexity of quite ordinary lives; it is one of the best of thrillers because it is perhaps the best novel about
criminals and their power struggles. Nemesis comes in the shape of a barmaid with a grievance and the worst horror of all is a
short-play record.
Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh. This great, rich, purple convolvulus of a book was Waugh's reactionary
farewell to the sweetness of life as he believed it to have been lived by a Catholic aristocracy he turned into myth as he worked.
It is one of the great novels of regret partly because it is so clearly set in the imagination; it is also full of great comic moments
and brilliant observation of a social climbing that was part of the artificial paradise that Waugh thought was dying.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) by Angus Wilson. If tragedy is the nonfulfilment of promise, then this is one of the best and
most pregnant tragic works of the century; Wilson's sense of Englishness is quietly unhappy, and full of chickens coming home
to roost. A complicated affair of intellectual fraud and misunderstanding comes back to haunt Gerald and triggers every booby
trap his bad faith has created.

The Fountain Overflows (1956) by Rebecca West. It is perhaps the sheer difficulty of her personality, and her longevity, that
has led to the underrating of West as anovelist. This novel of an Edwardian childhood, the only completed volume of a trilogy,
is one of the best descriptions of a child's fierce loyalties and incomplete under-standing of the world; the heroine's personally
unreliable gallant crusader of a father is a subtly conceived feminist comment on politics as Boys' Game still worth playing.

The Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys. Jean Rhys's early novels dealt with her rackety life and affairs with Ford Madox
Ford and others with a slightly masochistic wit and sense of the randomness of life that makes them starkly depressing. Even
more bracingly bleak, paradoxically, because of the richness of its prose is this late book, the story of a mad wife in Charlotte
Bronte's lane Eyre; Rhys made Woman as Victim the subject of great prose poetry.

When My Girl Comes Home (1961) and The Camberwell Beauty (1974) by V S Pritchett; both in Collected Stories (1982-
83). The novella is a form often left out of the accounting and Pritchett, probably the greatest short story writer in the language
his century, wrote two great novellas and no novels of real importance. These two tales show us private worlds and the way
that privacy skews a sense of the real world or of ordinary morality; they are at the same time quietly nightmarish and
hysterically funny.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) by Angela Carter. There had to be a great British surreal novel and
the only odd thing about it is that it took until the 1970s. Carter's journey from rationality to a dream landscape and betrayals
that leave ambiguities in the mouth is perhaps the most satisfactory fore-shadowing of our ambivalence to their legacy.

Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce. Much prosecuted, much damned, much discussed, this is a novel about a day in the life of
three Dubliners in 1905. The battery of technical devices - stream of consciousness, parody, abstracted musicalized dialogue -
are not there to replace realism, but to enhance it; even the underlying and determining structure, the analogies between each
episode and a book of the Odyssey, is a creation of limits in which the representation of the real can be pressurized. It is the
most universal and the most particular of novels; it lets you know a time and a place and some people better than almost any
other. And it includes within it a great meditation on mortality - proscribed and atheist, nonetheless Joyce is a Catholic writer.

At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) by Flann O'Brien. One of the other great 20th-century novels by an Irishman, this combines a
sense of shabby-genteel debauchery with end-less recursions into a world of cowboy novellas, heroic myths, and doggerel
about stout_ There are few books as funny - but the underlying sense of sadness comes out time and time again in the bleak
side stories. A joke is a tragedy that happened to someone else.

Daniel Aaron
Daniel Aaron is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of English and American Literature and Language Emeritus at Harvard
University and has recently edited The Inman Diary. He is also president of the Library of America, dedicated to preserving the
works of American writers. Professor Aaron has had a lifelong interest in encouraging reading.
Most of us read promiscuously. Our response to a particular book depends a good deal on when we intersect with it and under
what circumstances. In my own case, the books I was required to read usually meant less to me than those whose titles I came
across in the pages of other writers or accidentally discovered on my own. Some of the books that deeply engaged me during
my adolescence were "trash" to my mentors. It seems too pompous to say that any of the following books played "an important
role" in my life. They were important to me for personal reasons.

Edmund Wilson. Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (1931). New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.
(Pb) This book was very liberating. It was my first extended exposure to the symbolist movement and drew me to Yeats's later
poetry, to Joyce's Ulysses. to Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, and of course to Wilson's collected reviews and essays. Eventually I
read everything he wrote, and I still regard him as America's foremost modern man of letters.

James Gibbons Huneker. Egoists, a Book of Supermen (1909). New York: AMS Press, 1975.
. Iconoclasts. a Book of Dramatists (1905). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1969.
. Ivory, Apes and Peacocks (1915). Philadelphia: Richard West, 1973.
. Unicorns (1917). New York: AMS Press, 1976.
I came across Huneker's essays in 1929. By that time he was considered a relic of the fin de siècle and was hardly referred to,
but to me he was a revelation. He introduced me at a susceptible age to the "poisoned honey" of the continent, to his "soul-
wreckers." Thanks to him, I found Nietzsche, Huysmans, Strindberg, Baudelaire, Flaubert. He was more enthusiastic than
critical, but I read him at the right time.

George Henry Borrow. Lavengro. 3 vols. London: J. Murray, 1851.

I read this novel, a fictionalized autobiography, in my late teens. It tells of a young wanderer-scholar who has mastered the
Romany tongue and is befriended by a company of English gypsies. Borrow's racy earthy style and amusing irreverence
appealed to me very much. His fascination with languages ("Lavengro" is the gypsy word for "philology") matched my own.

Kenneth Burke. Permanence and Change (1935). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 1965.

Almost more than any work I can think of, this one helped me to clarify the relation between literature and society, criticism
and life. Through Burke I discovered Thorstein Veblen. His discussions of "perspectives by incongruity" and "symbolic action"
made me see the uses of history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy in the interpretation of literature. Thereafter Burke
became for me our American Coleridge.

Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle]. The Red and the Black (1830). Lloyd C. Parks, trans. New York: New American Library, 1970.
(Pb)
I suppose this is my favorite novel along with Anna Karenina. I've read it more times than any other novel for reasons never
exactly clear to me except that I take undiminished delight in its wit, audacity and stylistic brilliance and its psychological
insights. To me, at least, the novel has the perfect plot.

John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith is the Paul M. Walburg Professor of Economics Emeritus. Galbraith has enjoyed a celebrated life of
teaching, public service, writing and thinking. President Truman awarded him the Medal of Freedom. He served as President
Kennedy's ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. A former editor of Fortune magazine. he has written many books including
The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State and The Age of Uncertainty. His friends say he can frequently be found striding
the streets of Cambridge, on his way to the pool.

I do not urge economics: others will do that. Instead I urge the enjoyments and enlightenment to which the well-seasoned
economist and citizen of the future are entitled and which have brought both pleasure and reward to me in the past.

Anthony Trollope.
Barchester Towers (1857). New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
The Last Chronicles of Barset (1867). New York: Penguin, 1981. (Pb)
The Warden (1855). New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)

Evelyn Waugh.
Decline and Fall (1928). Boston: Little, Brown, 1977. (Pb)
Scoop (1938). Boston: Little, Brown, 1977. (Pb)

W. Somerset Maugham.
Of Human Bondage (1915). New York: Penguin, 1978. (Pb)
Christmas Holiday (1939). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)

Ring Lardner. Gullible's Travels (1917). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms (1929). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982. (Pb)
Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead (1948). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980. (Pb)

Paul Scott. The Raj Quartet.

The Jewel in the Crown (1966). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)
The Day of the Scorpion (1968). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)
The Towers of Silence (1971). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb) The Division of the Spoils (1975). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)

Robertson Davies. The Deptford Trilogy. (Pb)

Fifth Business (1970). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)
The Manticore (1972). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)
World of Wonders (1975). New York: Viking, 1977. (Pb)

Richard J. Herrenstein

R. J. Herrenstein is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where he has primarily done research on
human and animal motivational and learning processes. His books include Psychology, I.Q. in the Meritocracy and Crime and
Human Nature.

These books were important to me—at a particular time and a particular point in my life. They may not be suitable for other
times or other people.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1966.
First read when I was about seventeen. Probably the first "great book" I truly enjoyed. It shaped certain views about history.

Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species (1859). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
Important for the obvious reason, plus my own fascination with the way it dealt with the subject of instinct.

John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath (1939). New York: Penguin, 1976. (Pb)
I doubt that this would have the impact now that it did when I read it in the 1940s sometime, but it filled me then with a sense
of outrage over social and economic injustice.

Franz Kafka. The Castle (1926). Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, trans. New York: Random House, 1974. (Pb)
. The Trial (1937). Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, trans. New York: Penguin, 1953. (Pb)
. Amerika (1938). Edwin Muir, trans. New York: New Directions, 1946. (Pb)
These, too, have lost their punch for me, but at the time I read them, they captured the lunacy and futility of individuals
struggling with bureaucracies.

Winston S. Churchill. The Second World War (1948-53). 6 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983,
This account—especially the early volumes—counteracted to some extent Tolstoy's view of history.

John B. Bury. The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (1920). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Edmund Wilson. To the Finland Station (1940). New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972. (Pb)
Wonderful books that tell a good story, and that set a standard for writing on intellectual history.

Matina Homer

Matina Horner has been president of Radcliffe College since 1972. Prior to assuming that position, she taught in Harvard's
Department of Psychology and Social Relations. In addition to her leadership responsibilities as a college president, she
teaches as an associate professor. One of her continuing research interests is the psychology of women.

This is a very tough question—to consider books that have shaped my thinking. I guess the first would have to be the collected
works of Emily Dickinson, which I began to read in junior high school.
Emily Dickinson. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (mid-nineteenth century). Thomas H. Johnson, ed. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1960.
It was the complete poems of Emily Dickinson that made a difference, rather than any one poem, except perhaps for the one
that begins "I dwell in possibility." The idea of focusing on possibilities is important to me and I often return to the poem to
make this and other points.

Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth (1931). New York: Washington Square Press, 1983. (Pb)
During a recent trip to China, I was reminded of another book from my younger days that also made a lasting impression on
me, Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, It had a very strong impact on me then which has persisted. Its powerful presentation of
some basic cultural differences was a valuable way to be introduced to the importance of seeing and respecting different
cultures and values, of accepting cultural differences and of acknowledging the value of other perspectives. Now, back from
China, I am tempted to reread it.

Sojourner [Olive Gilbert] Truth. Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878). Salem, N.1-I.: Ayer, 1968.
Later on, Sojourner Truth's autobiography also made a lasting impression on me. I first read it during the 1960s—as we were
beginning to think about women's roles in new ways and feminist views and ideas were being publicly debated. My thinking on
these issues began within the supportive environment of a college where expectations for and about women were very high.
Sojourner Truth's compelling phrase, "and ain't I a woman," which she used after each description of an activity she did that
challenged basic assumptions about women's strength and skills, powerfully captured for me the kind of change being sought
in expectations about women, then and now.

Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). New York: Avon, 1980. (Pb)
Edward C. Tolman. Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man (1967). New York: Irvington, 1967.
Professionally, Freud's collected works, especially his Interpretation of Dreams, the first of his works that I read, and Tolman's
Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man, were very important to the development of my thinking. Both challenged previous
assumptions about human and animal motivation and behavior. Freud's depiction of the role of unconscious instincts and
impulses in human behavior and Tolman's convincing examples of the ability of animals to learn "what leads to what" and thus
to "think" were critical not only to my thinking but to the history of psychology.

Dr. Seuss [Theodor Seuss Geisel]. The Sneetches, and Other Stories. New York: Random House, 1961.
I can't resist including Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, that wonderful children's book that powerfully shows the foolishness of our basic
need or tendency to divide ourselves into "we" and "they" and our inability to grasp our fundamental interdependence. Not
only have I enjoyed reading it to my children but I have used it in college classes to make some key points.

Elizabeth McKinsey

Elizabeth McKinsey is both an associate professor of English and American literature at Harvard and the director of the Mary
Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. She is the author of The Western Experiment: New England
Transcendentalists in the Ohio Valley and Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime.

Central to American literature, all these books enrich our understanding of our cultural and psychic heritage—our myths,
assumptions, preoccupations and conflicts. By broadening our historic imagination and sympathy, they can help us face
squarely the issues of human and political relations—between the sexes, among racial and ethnic groups, and among nations —
that will continue to be critical as we move into the twenty-first century.

Perry Miller, ed. Margaret Fuller: American Romantic. A Selection from Her Writing and Correspondence (1963). Gloucester,
Mass.: Peter Smith, Pubs., 1969.
When I first read Margaret Fuller (transcendentalist; friend of Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne: one of this country's first and
most accomplished literary critics) in college, I kept coming back to her. It took several years to realize why: a brilliant,
powerful, passionate, sensitive person, she embodied the split between intellect and femininity that I had been socialized to
feel. As a powerful expressive spirit, her works provide both a window on nineteenth-century American culture and a mirror of
our own attitudes toward gender, society and achievement.

Herman Melville. Moby Dick (1851). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. (Pb)
Unquestionably the "biggest" book in American literature, Moby Dick wrestles with all the huge metaphysical questions—
religious, epistemological, ontological, aesthetic—at the same time that it depicts in minute detail the U.S. whaling industry
and through it examines questions of democracy and leadership. All its layers of meaning cohere in Melville's powerfully
written masterpiece.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Pb)
When Hemingway contended that all modern literature began with Huck Finn, he was thinking of its vernacular language, its
antiromantic realism and episodic structure. The language is wonderful—and funny—and very evocative historically. Perhaps I
especially like this one because I'm from Missouri.

William Faulkner. Absalom! Absalom! (1936). New York: Random House, 1972. (Pb)
Faulkner is arguably our greatest American writer, and this is his magnum opus. The saga of Sutpen and his family, and
Quentin Compson's attempt to come to terms with it, embody all the tensions in Southern and indeed American history—race,
sex, regionalism, the individual and community, etc.—as well as basic epistemological questions. A powerful, epic work.

Eudora Welty. Thirteen Stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. (Pb)
These perfect gems evoke a particular Southern rural culture—the "sense of place" that Welty has said is so important to her
work—at the same time that they reveal mythic, universal human themes and longings. Welty's mastery of language,
storytelling, power and form is infused with an extraordinary warmth and humor. Here is a shrewd and realistic but affirmative
vision.

Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
Janice's self-knowledge, tenacity and humor, as well as her story, make her one of the more memorable characters in American
fiction. A window on a very particular time and place and social segment of American culture—the rural black South in the
1920s and 1930s—Their Eyes is also beautifully written. In its zest for life and love and its iconoclasm it is an earlier version
of (and direct source for) Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

AMERICAN LITERATURE: INTRODUCTION

Malcolm Bradbury

American literature really emerged from the sheer novelty of the New World. The wonders of landscape, the vast tracts of the
continent, the ancient settlements, civilizations, and myths that were mistakenly thought of as `Indian', the mythological
expectations that were then brought over the Atlantic by settlers from Europe, and the new lives and experiences they
encountered - all these combined to make the narratives told on the continent very different from those elsewhere. Then, in the
20th century, America became a world emblem of the spirit of modernity itself, and this too became part of the great American
myth. American writing became dominant, American writers became world-famous, and American stories and narratives
became pan of the experience of people right across the globe. Though the phrase 'American literature' generally applies to the
writings of the USA, it could and should, in these multicultural times, fairly include the `other' American literatures. That
means Canadian and Latin American literature, Native American literature, and African-American literature. Here is a list of
some of the most useful, informative, and classic general studies.

Two bodies of modern literature seem to me to come to the real verge: the Russian
and the American ... The furtherest frenzies of French modernism or futurism have
not yet reached the pitch of extreme consciousness that Poe, Melville, Hawthorne,
Whitman reached. The Europeans were all trying to be extreme. The great
Americans I mentioned just were it.
D H LAWRENCE

The Literature of the United States (1954) by Marcus Cunliffe. A straightforward and excellently told narrative history for
the general reader, with a strong sense of the historical importance of American experience and culture, written for Penguin
books by a leading British historian and critic.

The Continuity of American Poetry (1961) by Roy Harvey. Pearce Outstanding analysis of the development of American
verse from the Puritan poets through to the era of Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and the `Beat' movement.

Frontier: American Literature and the American West (1965) by Edwin Fussell. A powerful study reminding us how
central the American West was to the formation of the classic American literary imagination.
Modern Latin American Literature (1973) by D P Gallagher. A fine general survey of literature in Latin America, with
special emphasis on the writers of the 20th century, when Latin American writing was seen to be of world importance.

A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers (1975) by Hugh Kenner. A lively and idiosyncratic portrait of the
power of the Modern movement in American literature, including the work of Gertrude Stein, Pound, Stevens, Faulkner, and
Hemingway, by an enthusiastic and deeply informed American critic.

Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (1979) edited by Daniel Hoffman. Essays by leading critics on
American literature from the end of World War II to the end of the 1970s, showing the wide variety of trends and movements in
fiction, poetry, and drama.

The Cambridge Handbook of American Literature (1986) by Jack Salzman. An invaluable reference work on American
literature, with detailed and informative entries.

Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988) edited by Emory Elliott. A collection of modem and up-to-date
essays by many expert contributors, following the history of American literature from the prehistoric cave narratives to the
literary trends and movements of the present.

Literature in America: An Illustrated History (1989) by Peter Conn. A lively and learned history of American literature from
early days to the present, told in narrative form, with good social background and plentiful illustrations.

From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature (1991) by Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury.
An up-to-date narrative history, in Penguin paperback, of American literature from the 17th century to the immediate present,
co-written by an American and a British critic. Including detailed study of many major texts, it shows the ways American
literature has always been seen as distinctively `modem', and also sees it in the context of world literature.

THE AMERICAN NOVEL

Malcolm Bradbury

Though the novel started off late in America (the Puritans disapproved of it), it began to flourish after the American
Revolution, and became one of the most powerful forms of American narrative. To this day its nature seems shaped by its early
subject matter: the encounter with nature, the wilderness, and the vast scale of the American continent; the meeting of cultures
and races; the ever-shifting nature of society and civilization; the Gothic strangeness of American experience. In the 19th
century, writers like James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne established the
distinctive flavour of American fiction. Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Edith Wharton
followed. By the 20th century, the American novel was to enter a major period, and play a dominant part in the future of
fiction, under the influence of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, and many more. Today, among the
novelists who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the dominant number are Americans, and include Saul Bellow and Toni
Morrison. These are some of the basic studies dealing with the history and development of American fiction.

Between the novel and America there are peculiar and intimate connections.
A new literary form and a new society, their beginnings coincide with the
beginnings of the modern era and, indeed, help to define it. We are living not
only in the Age of America but also in the Age of the Novel, at a moment
when the literature of a country without a first-rate epic or a memorable verse
tragedy has become the model of half the world.
LESLIE FIEDLER

The American Novel and Its Tradition (1957) by Richard Chase. This is a classic study, establishing the difference between
the traditions of the European 'novel' and the American `romance', and giving some excellent readings of major authors from
Cooper through to Faulkner.
Love and Death in the American Novel (1960) by Leslie Fiedler. Brilliant, very thorough study of the rise and development of
the novel in North America, from its beginnings after the Revolution through to the period after World War H. It distils the
distinctive themes and `Gothic' qualities that made it so different from European writing.
On Native Grounds: A Study of American Prose Literature from 1890 to the Present (1942) by Alfred Kazin. This is
another classic (and very influential) study, a little dated now, looking at the development of the realistic and social aspects of
American fiction and its treatment of American life `on native grounds'.

Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (1971) by Ihab Hassan. An important, analytical
interpretation of the development of American fiction after World War II, emphasizing its concern with innocence and
extremity, and its sense of experiment. By a noted critic.

City of Words: American Fiction 1935-1970 (1971) by Tony Tanner. A wonderful study of the experiments, in form and
language, of American fiction in one of its most exciting and innovative periods, by a British critic who has been a major
interpreter of American literature.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983) by Alice Walker. This strongly personal book - by the author of The Color Purple
- emphasizes and explores her double inheritance, black and female, as a novelist, and shows the importance of both traditions
to the contemporary American novel.

American Fiction, 1865-1940 (1987) by Brian Lee. A fine general survey of the overall development of American fiction by a
British critic, writing with a strong sense of the social developments taking place at the time.

Columbia History of the American Novel (1991) edited by Emory Elliott. A thorough, large-scale historical study of
American fiction from the beginnings to the present by various experts with a contemporary standpoint.

Oddfobs: Essays and Criticism (1992) by John Updike. Not all these highly read-able essays - 160 of them, by a major writer
who is also a warm and wonderful critic - are about American fiction. But the many that are illuminate it with a vivid humanity
and understanding.

The Modern American Novel (1995) by Malcolm Bradbury. An extended survey of the American novel from the time of
Henry James, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells through to the immediate present, covering the many movements and
trends - including modernism, postmodernism, `dirty realism', and black and feminist fiction. Extensive bibliography.

THE 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL

Malcolm Bradbury

Nineteenth-century American fiction followed a very different course from that of the novel in Europe at the same time. The
wonder of American nature, the drama of exploring and settling the great continent, and the fascination of recent American
history took its writers into new and original materials. And then, between 1861 and 1865, came the Civil War, which
threatened to break up the Union. American fought American in a period of national agony, changing the nature of American
culture. After 1865, the USA set out on a period of massive modernization - partly helped by the industrialization the war had
required. Its railroads spanned the continent, its cities rose high, and immigration multiplied. By the end of the century America
was no longer a `virgin land' but a great modem industrial power. American fiction changed to respond to these new conditions:
romance and stories of history and nature gave way to a new spirit of reportage and literary naturalism. This is the story that
lies behind some of the great American novels of the 19th century; here are my ten favourites - five from each half of America's
divided century.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no

longer wholly guided by instinct, scarcely human, in that it is not yet
wholly guided by reason.
THEODORE DREISER

The Prairie (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper was the first real novelist of the American wilderness, and in The
Prairie he takes his famous hero of the five novels of the Leatherstocking saga, Natty Bumppo, to the flat prairies west of the
Mississippi River. He's now an old man, and America is quickly expanding west, away from the New York frontier where
Leatherstocking started his adventures. Again he meets Indians, and makes his final peace with nature. A classic work of the
American imagination.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) by Edgar Allan Poe. This is Poe's one novel (most of his work
was in short story and poetry), and shows his famous, Gothic extremity of imagination. It's about a shipboard mutiny which
ends in a formidable journey to the Antarctic, and the blank whiteness of experience, and is written with all Poe's sense of
poetry - and horror.

The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Set in Puritan Boston in the 1650s, this is the story of a woman, Hester
Prynne, who affronts the `iron law' of church and state by committing adultery with a minister. She is forced to wear a badge of
shame, the scarlet letter A, but insists on the `natural' law of her actions. Hawthorne called the novel a `romance', meaning not
just that it is a story of adulterous love but of the conflict between the claims of fact and imagination.

Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851) by Herman Melville. Melville said he wrote this book `in the name of the devil', and it is a
classic tragedy, the story of the obsessed Captain Ahab, who, sailing on the whaler Pequod, determines to avenge himself
against the 'diabolic' white whale that has injured him. The book, filled with learning and parody, is a vivid. moving seaborne
adventure, but also a profound work of modern experiment.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. For the 19th century, this was America's most famous novel, a world
best seller. Abraham Lincoln once suggested it started the Civil War. Sentimentally written, it still remains nonetheless a
remarkable portrait of slave experience, portraying the cruelties and sufferings inflicted on the black slaves on the Southern
plantations, and their basic humanity.

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry James. It's hard to have a preference among the novels of James; not only do his
novels mark the refinement of the modem art of fiction, but they change and develop decade by decade, through to the great
last works of the early 20th century. But this is his fast great novel, displaying his mature art. And the story of Isabel Archer,
the strong, free, young American girl come to her 'wondrous' Europe to encounter experience, and finding it grimly in her
unhappy marriage to Gilbert Osmond, is one of the most remarkable character portrayals James ever achieved.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. This was the book with which, Ernest Hemingway said, all
American literature began. And if James is the novelist of modern fictional artistry, Twain was the novelist of the modem
vernacular voice. Huck Finn, the poor boy from Hannibal, Mississippi, who sets out on a raft down a great river with his black
friend, Nigger Jim, each of them looking for freedom, tells his own story, with childish truth, innocence, and clarity. Like the
river, the book seemed to take charge of Twain as he wrote it, producing his most profound as well as vivid novel.

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane. This shoe novel about a young man, Henry Fleming, as he goes into
battle during the American Civil War, was a tour de force. Crane was too young to have known the Civil War; he said he
imagined it from the football field. at makes the book so remarkable is that it is a portrait of instantaneous consciousness. We
are not concerned with why the war is fought, or how Henry got there, just with every moment of experience in the line or in
flight from it. Henry wants to win his red badge of courage, and in the end he does so, in one of the great stories of initiation.

McTeague, A Story of San Francisco (1899) by Frank Norris. Later filmed as Greed, Norris's remarkable story of an
untrained, brutish San Francisco dentist who lives for his beer and his concertina until he falls in love with Trina, the greedy
Swiss girl whom he finally murders, is a classic work of naturalism and the bete humaine, the human animal. Norris brilliantly,
and fatalistically, captures the urban atmosphere of San Francisco and its ordinary lives, and contrasts it with the life in nature
and the desert beyond.

Norris, Frank, American, 1870-1902.

The Octopus. Rec: Bloom

Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser. By the end of the 19th century, America was becoming an urban society, and the
typical `shock-city' was Chicago, which had turned from village to second city in 50 years, its skyscrapers, stockyards and
department stores typifying modem America. Carrie Meeber, the poor girl who goes to Chicago and becomes rich by any
means to hand, shocked the first readers, just as Dreiser's method - naturalism again - dismayed them by its apparent lack of
morality. But Dreiser, a writer from German immigrant stock, brought raw new America to the page, and told its story
unsparingly.

THE 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL

Malcolm Bradbury
At the start of the 20th century, American fiction was still thought of as a provincial relation of European, especially British
fiction. By the 1930s the balance was changing, thanks to the emergence of novelists like Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald,
William Faulkner, and Sinclair Lewis. And by the 1950s it had become clear that the American writers of the next generation -
Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, John Updike, and many more - were among the leading novelists of the world. The change came
from many things: the vast development of the nation, in its industrial capacity, economic strength, and influence; the powerful
energies of modernity, which changed American lives and made them seem among the most advanced in the world; the
American fascination with style and personal consciousness; and eventually the emergence of America, after World War II, as a
global superpower, affecting the lives and shaping the cultural experience of people right across the world. But it also came
from the cultural complexity of American experience. American writers came from many places - from recent European
immigrant stock, and from the established American tradition; from great sky-scraper cities and distant regions; from varied
ethnic mixtures and origins. Jewish-American fiction, African- American fiction, Native American fiction, and feminist fiction
all added to the cultural variety and the scale of the drama that unfolded in the American novel. With such riches, choice is
almost impossible, and major omissions inevitable. But here are my ten favourite works of modem American fiction.

How does one in the novel (the novel which is a work of an and not a disguised
piece of sociology) persuade the American reader to identify that which is basic in
man beyond all differences of class, race, wealth, or formal education?
RALPH ELLISON

The Custom of the Country (1913) by Edith Wharton. Wharton was very much a social novelist, who lived much of her life
in Paris. Her novels possess a vigorous irony about the collapse of social relations, and none is more ironic than this. The
`custom' in question is the American habit of social self-advancement through divorce. The book's heroine, Undine Spragg, is
essentially an opportunist who uses sexuality for advantage, and both succeeds and morally fails in the end.

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F Scott Fitzgerald. Not all Fitzgerald's books are care-fully written, but The Great Gatsby is the
masterpiece, a classic modern American novel. Jay Gatz, the poor boy who becomes rich and is known as the `great Gatsby',
still retains an American innocence amid the glitter, corruption and waste of the 1920s. His love for Daisy Buchanan leads to
disaster, but it remains a version of the American dream - carefully observed by the narrator Nick Carraway.

The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner. Faulkner is the great novelist of the American South, and with this
book he broke loose from the form of historical fiction to try a complex experiment with history, time, and language. The book
contains four stories and several time-schemes; part of the story is indeed a tale of sound and fury, told by an `idiot'. The book's
theme is the stained, incestuous, corrupted world of the American South, and the agony of its modem survivors. Hard to read,
it's worth it, as a work of cunning modernism.

A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway had been wounded on the Italian front in World War I, and this
story of Lt Frederic Henry, who is similarly wounded while serving with the Italian forces, and falls in love with the English
nurse, Catherine Barkley, who looks after him, has a strong autobiographical quality. But this is a classic tragedy of wartime
experience. Henry leaves the war to make a 'separate peace', and tries to create a life of his own with Catherine. But she dies in
childbirth, and the sense of a universal modern tragedy pervades the book, told in Hemingway's tight, tough, economical style.

Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison. One of the founding novels of African-American fiction, this work about a black man
rendered invisible by his colour in the chaos and white exclusiveness of American life is a story of mental and then actual
revolt. It's a serious exploration of the moral price that is paid when identity is revoked, and hence a work of great existential
power.

Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov was an emigre for most of his life, displaced from Russia by the Bolshevik
Revolution. This is his one true American novel, the story of another emigre, Humbert Humbert, whose sexual taste is for
'nymphets', young girls on the cusp of puberty. The erotic aspects of the book made it sensational at the time; but it is
fundamentally a myth about the supposedly `experienced' European observing the supposedly 'innocent' America, and finding
the tables constantly turned: an ironic love affair with America and with the English language, which in Nabokov's hands turns
into a formidable instrument.

Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller. If A Farewell to Arms was the decisive war novel to emerge from World War I, Catch-22
was the book that captured for its generation the ironic and bitter implications of World War II. Set among flyers on the Italian
front, it's an epic of extreme absurdity. The military machine is a system of illogical orders; so is the disaster that is being
created for humanity. A work of black humour, a g eat modern comic classic, the novel also evidently applied to Heller's
contemporary America, as it developed ever more absurd systems of human management and new forms of Cold War fever.
V (1963) by Thomas Pynchon. Perhaps the ultimate work of what became known at the time as `postmodern fiction' or
`metafiction', V is the wonderfully elaborate story of a quest into history conducted in a time of late modem chaos, where no
order falls into place and information is in excess of human comprehension. Herbert Stencil is engaged in a quest for a
mysterious figure, V, who seems to have some significant role in the making of modem history, though her story dissolves each
time it's approached. Meantime a contemporary figure, Benny Profane, is seen attempting to surf the mod-em chaos. A work of
dense historical research as well as technical cunning, it's no easy read, but is of undoubted importance.

Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow. Bellow, a Jewish-American writer, has been the con-science and consciousness of much in
American fiction after World War II, as was acknowledged when he won the Nobel prize in 1976. Moses Herzog, a `suffering
joker', is an intellectual who attempts to come to terms with the heritage of romantic expectation in modem life, addressing
letters to the illustrious dead of modem thought; at the same time he has great trouble in living one. As in other Bellow novels,
it's the mixture of high intellectual energy with superb social observation of life in modem Chicago and New York that makes
this a work of formidable wit and power.

Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison. By another Nobel prizewinner, the African-American author of Song of Solomon 1977 and
Tar Baby 1981. Beloved is about an escaped former slave who has killed her baby girl in the age of slavery, to protect it from
being returned to the plantation, and then is haunted by its ghost in the time of freedom after the Civil War. A powerful and
poetic myth, written in a lyrical prose, it is a work both of haunting realism and strange fantasy, revealing the current strength
of African-American fiction.

AMERICAN PROSE (NONFICTION)

Ian F A Bell

While American poetry and prose have been acknowledged and celebrated as arguably the most innovative and experimental of
all Western cultures (the mod-ern novel begins with Henry James, while modern poetry derives its impetus from Ezra Pound),
American nonfiction has tended to remain in the shadow of these more glamorous colleagues. To leave it thus is to lose out on
a remarkable body of donatively energetic writing. Founded by a declaration of opposition to British colonial rule, the
American nation has found in the voices of its essayists a persistent polemical strain which maintains the world as open to
debate: founded on invention, the nation has held true to a discourse of change where constructivity and alterability are the key
notes. Openness, a resistance to closure, a constant interrogation of the seeming given of things - these are the hallmarks of a
tradition of writing from the 18th century onwards which refuses settlement and finish of all kinds and which testifies to
existence itself, both national and personal, as a process of becoming, never merely the stasis of being.

Existing likes and powers are to be treated as possibilities, as starting points, that
are absolutely necessary for any healthy development. But development involves a
point towards which as well as one from which; it involves constant movement in
a given direction. Then when the point that is for the time being the goal and end
is reached, it is in its turn but the starting-point for further reconstruction.
JOHN DEWEY

The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959) edited by Lester J Cappon. A marvellously wide-ranging discussion of politics, culture,
and science between two of the leading formers of the early republic. As Ezra Pound acknowledged in the 20th century,
`nothing surpasses the evidence that CIVILISATION WAS in America, than the series of letters exchanged between Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams'.

Selected Writings of Emerson (1981) edited by Donald McQuade. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the major American thinker of
the 19th century whose essays on just about everything not only had a profound influence upon contemporaries such as Henry
David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, but also remained a vital imaginative resource for the cultural activities of the 20th century,
ranging from the architect Frank Lloyd Wright to the poetry of the Beat Generation.

Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Letters (1993) edited by Peter Parish. Unlike the prose of Jefferson or Adams, coloured and
structured by great learning, that of Lincoln is relatively untutored and stands as a wonderful example of the kind of voice
always applauded in America - straight, simple, uncluttered, and direct.
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890) by James McNeill Whistler. Witty, iconoclastic, and abrasive, Whistler here
inaugurates Modernism in painting and diagnoses the responsibilities and fate of an in a commercial and philistine age.

The Education of Henry Adams (1973) by Henry Adams. First published privately in 1906, and subtitled A Study of
Twentieth-Century Multiplicity, this remarkable cojoining of genres (part history, part autobiography, and taking as its models
the Confessions of St Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) attempts to work through the crisis of preparing for life in the
new century•.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1970) by Thorstein Veblen. Written at the turn of the century, Veblen's brilliant analysis of
America's new bourgeoisie presents an encyclopedia of the signs whereby status Was to be measured, most notably through the
tokens of what he called `conspicuous consumption'.

Look at Me Now and Here I Am - Writings and Lectures 1911-45 (1967) by Gertrude Stein. `Why don't you read the way I
write?' was a question posed by this most radical of modern linguistic experimenters, and her efforts to teach new freshness and
new ways of reading are more appropriately found in this diverse collection on diverse subjects than in the more familiar
single-lensed projects such as The Making of Americans (1906-08) and The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (1932).

Guide to Kulchur (1938) by Ezra Pound. Analogous to the project of his epic poem The Cantos, Pound's `Guide' offers an
inflammatory curriculum for civilization at midcentury: eccentric, wise, foolish, and eclectic, his Baedeker to cultural mores
achieves the true pedagogical aim of annoyance into action.

Advertisements for Myself (1961) by Norman Mailer. How to be hip while not writing the Great American Novel.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by Tom Wolfe. How to be cool while attempting to go further.

THIRD WORLD LITERATURE: FICTION

Kadiatu Kanneh

The rubric `Third World literature' immediately ushers in a range of difficulties. To designate the field already involves a range
of political questions around the term `Third World'. Other alternatives are `postcolonial' or `black'. To write an introduction to
this vast field is necessarily limiting and will involve a biased and individual choice. I include here texts that allow for insights
into major preoccupations of the `field' (such as colonialism, nationalism, racial identities, feminist issues, and independence).
The texts chosen have great literary and imaginative value, and can be seen as classics.

He had done nothing shameful, it was the way they had forced him to live, forced all of them to live, which was shameful.
Their intrigues and hatreds and vengeful acquisitiveness had forced even simple virtues into tokens of exchange and barter.
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH

Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe. A classic of African literatures, depicting the advent of colonialism on a Nigerian
Ibo community. Its analysis of the transforming and traumatizing effects of colonialism, as well as its moving portrayal of
family relationships, honour, love, and death, make it an enduring and often witty novel.

Petals of Blood (1977) by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. A novel from independent Kenya, again depicting the transformation of a
community. Its weaving together of lives, narratives, and histories into a geography of modem African sensibility make it an
illuminating and unforgettable novel.

Our Sister Killjoy (1977) by Ama Ata Aidoo. A novel which beautifully satirizes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Set in
Ghana and Europe, the novel blends narrative with poetry, confronting the choices available to African women, and dealing
with histories of racism and oppression.

Idu (1970) by Flora Nwapa. A novel set in Ghana and centred on the life of one woman. The narrative is about love, fertility,
communal life, and joy.

A Bend in the River (1979) by V S Naipaul. This novel is set in postcolonial central Africa (Zaire), written by an Indo-
Caribbean author, and narrated by an East Indian African. A fascinating evocation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, revealing the
complexities of racial and national identity, the constant insurgence of history, and the problems of cultural dialogue.
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A novel set in Latin America using magic realist techniques.
It engages with the powers of time, memory, love, and pain and uses language as a poetic tool. Translated from Spanish.

The Arrivants (1973) by Edward Kamau Brathwaite. Set in Afitica, the Caribbean, Europe, and the USA, this trilogy of poetic
volumes traces a modem understanding of black migrant identities. Written by a Barbadian poet, this collection of powerfully
connected poems covers an imagining of black consciousness and histories to create a poem of the diaspora.

Song of Lawino (1966) and Song of Ocol (1967) by Okot p'Bitek. Written by a Ugandan poet, these two long poems represent
a dialogue between a traditional African woman and a man with modern, western tastes. Brilliantly witty and metaphoric
poetry, pitting the values of traditional and modern Africa against each other, with female anger winning the day.

Season of Migration to the North (1969) by Tayeb Salih. Translated from the Arabic, this novel, set in Sudan, Cairo, and
England, presents a humorous, traumatic, and complex illustration of inter-racial sexual desire, exploring the psychopathology
of colonialism and migration.

Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga. This novel, set in Zimbabwe, discusses the effects of language loss, exile,
and cultural dislocation on the body and psyche of a young African woman.

Science Fiction

Adams, Douglas, English, 1952-2001.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Rec: Harvard Radcliffe

Aldiss, Brian Hothouse (1962)

Interesting dramatization of major science fiction theme; what happens when elements that man takes for granted are turned
topsy-turvy. In this case the earth's atmosphere becomes overheated and mankind has to sweat it out. Also: Billion Year Spree
(history of the genre); Frankenstein Unbound; The Malacia Tapestry, etc

Asimov, Isaac The Foundation Trilogy (1951)

Asimov is one of the great names in modern science fiction; his enormous output tends to slapdash chatter in later books, but
here he was at full stretch. Also: Nightfall and Other Stories; The Gods Themselves; The Caves of Steel, etc. See
MATHEMATICS

Ballard, J. G. The Terminal Beach (1964)

These stories, by Britain's master of SF alienation and disaster, have the clarity of obsession which is more diluted in his other
work. Also: The Atrocity Exhibition; The Drowned World; Vermilion Sands, etc

Ballard, J. G., English, 1930- .

The Unlimited Dream Company. Rec: Burgess

Bester, Alfred Tiger! Tiger! (1957)

Also known as The Stars My Destination. One of the cult books of the field. Lurid adventures and vengeance of Gully Foyle,
bane of the 24th century. Ingenious, surrealist fun. Also: The Demolished Man

Blish, James A Case of Conscience (1958)

Sense of morality perfectly matches SF ideas: Blish invents an alien race with no sense of good or evil and therefore
considered "in a state of sin" by religious zealot, very disturbing. Also: And All the Stars a Stage; The Day after Judgement;
Cities in Flight, etc

Bradbury, Ray The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Although Bradbury's prose sometimes seems empurpled, his consistent sense of the poetry of man's search for new frontiers,
both inside and outside himself, has attracted many who might not consider themselves SF readers. Also: Fahrenheit 451; The
Golden Apples of the Sun; The Illustrated Man, etc

Bradbury, Ray, American, 1920- .

Fahrenheit 451. Rec: NYPL

Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood's End (1953)

Clarke's vision of humanity eventually becoming godlike reached its ultimate in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But
Childhood's End expresses this view with even more coherence; it is remarkable for its compassion. Also: Imperial Earth;
Rendezvous with Rama; Fountains of Paradise, etc. See MATHEMATICS Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle ( 1962)
Beautifully organized novel postulating an alternative world in which the Axis powers won World War II. One of modern SF's
great books. Also: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; Martian Time-slip; A Scanner Darkly, etc

Clarke, Arthur C., English, 1917- .

2001: A Space Odyssey. Rec: Boston PL

Crowley, John, American, 1942- .

Little, Big. Rec: Bloom
Aegypt. Rec: Bloom
Love and Sleep. Rec: Bloom

Delany, Samuel R., American, 1942- .

Babel 17. Rec: Harvard (sci fi)

Dick, Philip K., American, 1928-1982.

Ubik. Rec: Time

Gibson, William, Canadian, 1948- .

Neuromancer. Rec: Time

Harrison, Harry Make Room! Make Room! (1966)

Prolific (and variable) author's best if not funniest novel, later filmed as Soylent Green. Set in a teeming New York, where
people, regardless of the pressure of space, will not stop reproducing. Also: Bill: The Galactic Hero: The Technicolor Time
Machine; The Stainless Steel Rat. etc

Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Heinlein is the guru of SF conservatism, yet this book (preaching what appeared to be free-choice and free-love) was adopted
by the hippies of the 1960s, even becoming a "bible" for killer Charles Manson and his family. The message, though, was much
more rigorous than they thought. Also: Starship Troopers, etc

Herbert, Frank Dune (1965)

Dune is a planet in a far off time and a far off system on the extreme edge of aridity—water is more precious than diamonds; an
entire culture is based on water scarcity rather than on water plenty. Technically superb in its details, the book is also a
masterful thriller.

Heinlein, Robert, American, 1907-1988.

Stranger in a Strange Land. Rec: LAT NYPL

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) a

Le Guin has a poetic sensibility; this study of a world called "Winter" and the sexual life of its inhabitants is a stunning
creation. Also: The Lathe of Heaven; Planet of Exile; The Dispossessed. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Lem, Stanislaw Solaris (1971) a

Story of a planet which is a sentient creature, capable of creating duplicates from the memories of the earth people who visit it;
made into a haunting film. Also: The Cyberiad; The Invincible

Lem, Stanislaw, Polish, 1921- .

The Investigation. Rec: Bloom
Solaris. Rec: Bloom Good Reading

Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet(1938)

One of Lewis's attempts to charge SF ideas with Christian principles. Not always liked by SF buffs, its popularity has
nevertheless brought many readers into the fold (of the genre). Also: Perelandra; ThatHideous Strength. See CHILDREN'S
BOOKS; RELIGION

Lindsay, David, English, 1876-1945.

A Voyage to Arcturus. Rec: Bloom

Miller, Walter M., Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

Awesome account of post-apocalypse world and the Second Coming, immaculately conceived in SF terms; postulates the
Church as a repository of technological secrets from a past civilization now regarded as sacred writings. Also: Conditionally
Human

Moorcock, Michael The Final Programme (1968)

The "wild man" of British science fiction, claims that the apocalypse is now. One of many novels starring Moorcock's anti-hero
Jerry Cornelius. Also: The English Assassin; A Cure for Cancer; Gloriana, etc

Pohl, F. and Kornbluth, C. M. The Space Merchants (1953) The authors were exercised about how consumers are
manipulated by conglomerates. In this novel, Venus is being carved up by advertising agents. Madison Avenue lives—out
there! Also: Slave Ship; Drunkard's Walk; Gateway (all by Pohl)

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, English, 1797-1851.

Frankenstein. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Stapledon, Olaf Last and First Men (1930) * Stapledon had vast ideas; this account of the human species swings through
millennia as though they were skittles. Also: Sirius: Odd John; Star Maker. etc

Stephenson, Neal, American, 1959- .

Snow Crash. Rec: Time

Stoker, Bram, Irish, 1847-1912.

Dracula. Rec: Bloom Harvard NYPL Smiley

Tolkien, J. R. R., English, 1892-1973.

The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy). Rec: Harvard Radcliffe Time
The Hobbit. Rec: NYPL

Van Vogt, A. E. The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950)

Van Vogt's apocalyptic prose is easily parodied; but his ideas, as in this episodic story of a space ship threading through space,
are fascinating. Also: The Weapon Shops of Isher, The World of Null-A

Verne, Jules Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864)

One of the great precursors of modern SF takes one of the great precursory themes, despatching his explorers on a trip which
includes Atlantis, Iceland, prehistory and a packet of lecturing. Also: From the Earth to the Moon; 20,000 Leagues under the
Sea; Around the World in Eighty Days

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Cascade of elegantly loony invention, set on more than one heavenly body. Cynical explanations for just about everything
(including Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China) well-wrapped in a neat plot. Hellishly funny—Vonnegut before he was
taken up by everyone and went soft. Also: Player Piano; Cat's Cradle; Slaughterhouse 5, etc

Wells, H. G. The Time Machine (1895)

This marvellous story contains much of Wells' genius; science made plausible and shaped to the needs of mankind. Also: The
Invisible Man; The Shape of Things to Come; The First Men in the Moon. See FICTION/NOVELS; HISTORY/WORLD

Wells, H. G., English, 1866-1946.

The Time Machine. Rec: NYPL
Works. Rec: Rexmo
Science Fiction Novels. Rec: Bloom
The War of the Worlds. Rec: Radcliffe
Wrede, Patricia C., American, 1953- .
Dealing with Dragons. Rec: Harvard

Wyndham, John The Day of the Triffids (1951)

Through mankind's negligence—not to mention sudden world-wide blindness—large perambulating hunks of vegetation take
over the British Isles. Fine example of the English Cosy Catastrophe School. Also: The Kraken Wakes; The Midwich Cuckoos;
The Crysalids

Fred R. Whipple

Fred R. Whipple arrived at Harvard in 1931 "with his bright and shining Ph.D. and a position of observer at the observatory."
In the ensuing fifty-five years, he has brought more than distinction to Harvard's astronomy reputation. He was responsible for
the Smithsonian astrophysical observatory's coming to Harvard. The Collected Contribution of Fred R. Whipple (2 vols.)
describes much of his work. The Phillips Professor of Astronomy Emeritus, he retired from teaching in the late 1970s and
continues research and prolific writing. He will spend much of 1986 observing Halley's Comet from Paris, Moscow and West
Germany.

When I think of books that have influenced me, I can only think of those books I selected so eagerly from the library in Red
Oak, Iowa as a very young man. I was a very independent only child. I read much more than other children—I read much more
than my parents, who spent most of their lives working very hard, too tired to read.

Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45). New York: Bantam. 1981. (Pb)
. The Three Musketeers (1844). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)

Sir H. Rider Haggard. She (1887). New York: Airmont, n.d. (Pb)
The first books I picked out of the library were fairy tales in all the different colors. I remember the Thousand and One Nights
—the expurgated version for a nice Presbyterian boy. After reading everything that amused me. I moved on to Greek legends. I
considered them mediocre, second-rate fairy tales. It wasn't until college that I realized that Greek legends had a value far
beyond fairy tales.

My next pursuit was science fiction—which continued for years. I read by author, not title. All of H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan
Poe, Sir H. Rider Haggard. Everyone should remember She. Science-fiction magazines allowed me to live in another world
with visual circumstances so different from mine. Hugh Germsbach's Electrical Experimenter and, later, Amazing Stories
were particular favorite magazines. So was my friend Isaac Asimov's science fiction.
I perfected my French with amusing French novels. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers stick in my mind.
My parents' only suggestion to this reading were Zane Grey and Edgar A. Guest. I think I must have read them all. I found
Mark Twain on my own and know I read all of his wonderful work.

SCIENCE FICTION
Brian Aldiss

Since the days of Jules Verne and H G Wells, whose books have been translated into most of the languages on Earth, science
fiction has been perennially popular. Its zenith of popularity may have been reached in the 1960s and early 1970s, when
investigation of alternative lifestyles was at its height. As the blithe 19th-century belief in Progress with a capital P has
dwindled, so sections of science fiction have appeared to merge at least temporarily with fantasy, essentially a more
conservative mode of fiction. This shift can be seen in movies, computer games, and similar, as well as in the written word. An
invaluable reference work to the entire field is The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979, revised 1993) edited by John Clute
and Peter Nicholls.

Almost any novel set in the future is classifiable as science fiction. Tomorrow is the
plimsoll line between science fiction and the ordinary novel.
MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH
The Foundation Trilogy (1951-53) by Isaac Asimov. Despite wafer-thin characterization, this trilogy remains the most
enduring of the popular SF works. Its theory of `psychohistory', worked out against a panorama of a long galactic future,
remains compelling. Later `Foundation' novels have less to recommend them.

The Drowned World (1962) by J G Ballard. This was the first of Ballard's apocalyptic novels, depicting London under flood,
and a hero who finds disaster not unwelcome, in an elegant holistic prose. Published in the early 1960s, when London was
under the flood of New Wave SF, The Drowned World established Ballard as a major stylist, and contained many themes to
which he was later to revert.

Blood Music (1985) by Greg Bear. A startling example of hard SF by a writer who rose to eminence in the mid-1980s. His
central character creates microchip computers from biological material and, in smuggling them from the laboratory in his body,
creates conditions in which the new intelligences overwhelm the world. A strongly poetic legend.

Mission of Gravity (1954) by Hal Clement. This wonderful story, dating from the 1950s, is archetypal SF, set on a radically
strange world. Human explorers, landing on the planet Mesklin, must cooperate with the local centipede-like inhabitants to
effect a rescue. Mesklin is a heavy-gravity world with a rapid rotation. Physical details well worked out, characters engaging,
scenery compulsive.

Martian Time-Slip (1964) by Philip K Dick. Dick is a kind of model Californian SF writer, into the 1960s drug culture,
mentally strange, dying fairly young. Martian Time-Slip, set on a desolate world occupied by the United Nations, contains
anguishing flaws of consciousness involving several characters, including an autistic boy. As in many of Dick's excellently
eccentric novels, the real and unreal are confused.

Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. When this book appeared Gibson was hailed as the apostle of cyberpunk. Fast action
accounts in part for its wide popularity, and for the young computer generation it was irresistible; all longed to negotiate
Gibson's grey, nonphysical cyberspace, despite its perils. Grim but amusing.

Mythago Wood (1981) by Robert Holdstock. This remarkable novel, together with its sequel, Lavondyss, forms a unique saga
of great beauty and darkness, poised between fantasy and SF. A rich prose style informs a tale of an ancient English wood
wherein archetypes or 'mythagoes' exist, acting out primordial roles upon those who venture into their thickets. That rare thing:
new subject matter, highly metaphorical and - as the well-wrought prose reveals - deeply felt.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Shelley. This pro-found novel has been badly treated as mere
horror by the movie industry. It is a penetrating study of pained human relationships, transfused by wonder and melancholy.
Written by a young woman still in her teens, it is the first novel to employ the theme of man usurping nature by scientific
means, and thus may be regarded as the first - and in many ways most famous - SF novel.

Star Maker (1937) by Olaf Stapledon. Of all SF novels, this is the grandest and most austere. A human soul ventures out into
the galaxy and eventually meets the Supreme Being, conjuror of universes. Philosophical in intent - Stapledon was a
philosopher - Star Maker is full of poetry and wonder. Its sheer scale outclasses even Stapledon's earlier and better known Last
and First Men

The Time Machine (1895) by H G Wells. `The Great General of Dreamland', as Wells styled himself, wrote many famous
scientific romances, but none more grand and enduring than this, his first. The time traveller ventures into a near future, the
world of Eloi and Morlocks, and then into the distant future, where the Sun has cooled and Earth is empty of all life.
Evolutionary; and astronomical theories fuel a mood which is mainly of tender regret.

HORROR
Roz Kaveney

The great precursors of the modern horror genre are mythopoeic novels of the 19th century, whose principal direct influence on
culture was to be through Hollywood. There is a sense in which Boris Karloff's Monster or Bela Lugosi's Dracula are far more
the thing conceived than any passage in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stoker's Dracula ever manages quite to be. The
genre horror fiction that came to fruition in the last two decades deals in the first place with sheer sensation and surprise; the
best honor also deals, usually, in human emotion, not least, but not only, because we have been made to care who gets eaten.
Horror fiction speaks to our condition, which is a worrying statement about the state we are in; there has been a tendency to
underrate good writing in the genre as a way of avoiding noticing that that writing tells us some uncomfortable truths about
ourselves.

Every body is a book of blood. Wherever you open us, we're red. CLNE BARKER

The Collected Ghost Stories of M R James (1931) by Montague Rhodes James. A Warning to the Curious, the tide of one of
the earlier collections of these tales, might serve as a useful summary for all of them; James specialized in the antiquarian back
story that lends authority to his horrors. Later genre horror learned from him the art of explanation, which is not the same thing
as explaining away.

The Outsiders and Others (1939) by H P Lovecraft. Lovecraft is a special case, a recluse obsessed with maggoty theories of
racial degeneration and class hatred, who created, most =seriously, an elaborate mythos of sinister gods and other beings to
whom humanity were no more than prey. The intermittent awfulness of his overwriting should not blind us to the sheer passion
of his best work and its sense of the abysses of deep time that surround our fragile lives; Jorge Luis Borges admired him.

The Shining (1977) by Stephen King. King's sense of the small-town life and perpetual empathy with children are the light
side of what has made him the richest horror writer in history; his empathy with men on the brink of madness, led by their own
faults and a little supernatural prompting, into acts unforgivable even by themselves is what makes him, at his best, remarkable.
The Shining has perhaps the best of these damned-viewpoint characters and, in the Overlook Hotel, one of the most concretely
imagined Bad Places in fiction.

The Land of Laughs (1980) by Jonathan Carroll. Carroil's gloomy tales of prayers answered in ways not dreamed of find their
most typical example in his first ingenious book. at could be more innocent than the desire to write a biography of one's
favourite children's author? The odd metamorphosis of the dead writer's fellow towns-people into the phantasmagoric creatures
he based on them is surely just an illusion, not a cause for concern? And so it goes, on to hell through good intentions, to
perhaps the best last-line logical plot twist in modern fiction.

The Arabian Nightmare (1983) by Robert Irwin. There are few good, and many bad, books about dreams and dreamers, and
Irwin's endless chamber of mirrored horrors is one of the very best. An expert on The Thousand and One Nights and author of
the best study of it in English, he takes medieval Cairo and turns it into a hell of repetition from which his protagonist is trying
to awake; he also, in passing, makes some elegant comments on the myth of Orientalism and the bad faith in which the West
has dreamed it.

The Books of Blood (1984-85) by Clive Barker. These six slim volumes of short stories kick started a whole approach to the
job of tenor and disgust; they finished for ever the convention that you don't show the monster or the blood, but rely on delicate
suggestions. Barker's strong visual sense dictated that fiction was a stepping stone from his paintings to his films and his novels
have been disappointing; the imagery of the body and its vulnerability to distortion and destruction which pervades these books
haunts the mind like a stain.

Hawksmoor (1985) by Peter Ackroyd. Biographer and novelist Ackroyd wrote by far his best novel under the joint influence
of James and Lovecraft, as well as of the poems of Ian Sinclair and various strange theories about the occult geography of
London. An architect and occultist of the early 18th century creates towers and crypts which write the script for murders in the
late 20th century; the investigating detective comes to feel merely a puppet. This is one of the most atmospheric of books about
London's near East End, a gloomily splendid recreation of a real place as a malign geography.

Koko (1988) by Peter Straub. A cultural obsession with serial killers and child abuse and Vietnam found one of its headier
results in this dreamlike thriller from Straub, author of several of the most poetic of horror and ghost novels, but here perhaps
at his best. The honor here is partly the horror of atrocity, but partly too an almost Calvinist sense of consequences - those to
whom evil is done, do things in return that it is almost impossible to imagine.

The Stress of Her Regard (1989) by Tim Powers. Powers is obsessed with fantasies of history, with explanations; here we
learn why the Romantic poets were obsessed with mountains and vampires and why Keats and Shelley died young. His doctor
hero, on the run after his wife dies horribly on their wedding night, finds out more than he wishes to know and suffers for his
knowledge; his sister-in-law nemesis is dragged into madness and self mutilation and out the other side. This is an inventive
book full of the shabbiness in which the horrid manifests itself.

Use of Weapons (1990) by Ian M Banks. Banks, in his pseudonymous space-operatic mode, managed to combine a technical
tour de force of narrative structure, a galaxy-spanning tale of intrigue and mayhem, and perhaps one of the grimmest studies of
brutality and guilt in recent fiction. Some books are genre honor by endless playing with its tropes; this belongs to a list
because it works so insidiously to the awful revelation at the heart of darkness.

Lost Souls (1992) by Poppy Z Brite. The absence of women from this list partly reflects the boys in the dark obsessions of the
genre, partly the extent to which women writers tended to be off at a tangent to genre horror, writing Gothic romances in which
vampires were the ultimately good, or the ultimately dangerous, version of male sexuality. For Brite, whose interest in male
subjects is so all consuming as to leave women out of her books almost altogether, vampires are cool and hip and deadly, and a
threat to her nice young male lovers in peril; this is tosh, in a sense, but tosh with a generational sensibility that makes it a key
text of 1990s subcultures.

Süskind, Patrick, German, 1949- .

Perfume. Rec: Harvard (horror)

FANTASY
Roz Kaveney

Strictly speaking, of course, fantasy is a term that includes both horror and science fiction in that both are ultimately non-
realistic genres whose refusal of more than surface mimesis is a conscious choice. There is a large body of work, most of it
overtly generic, which falls into neither category; much of it is set in a medieval-cum-archaiccum-Oriental Fantasyland with
diction to match; some of it is set in our own time and place into which incursions are made from Outside. Some of it deals
with cures for the world's pain, or the reconciliation of the mundane and faerie, or with ultimate apocalypses of good versus
evil - but some of it is just about people making their way in trying circumstances. As with other genre literature, any list has to
include forgotten works from the mainstream that only the genre has kept alive and works which only devotees have read, to
the loss of the average reader.

Fairy stories may invent monsters that fly the air or dwell in the deep, but at least
they do not try to escape from heaven or the sea.
J R R TOLx1EN

Jurgen (1919) by James Branch Cabell. This almost forgotten satire on human aspiration was, in its time, both frighteningly
hip and the subject of a major obscenity trial. Its mild bawdy has not dated well, but its sense of the absurd and its touches of
the wildly romantic have lasted better. Jurgen, poet turns pawnbroker, searches for his lost youth, and the women of his ideals
and finds neither Elysium, Hell, nor the Heaven of his grandmother remotely to his satisfaction.

Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) by Hope Mirrlees. A small bourgeois town which has sat comprehensively on its dark history of mad
dukes and wild rebellion find that what goes out one door will come in at another; the world of faerie finds that intervention in
human affairs has its consequences in the bringing of human law. This neglected, warm, humane book is perhaps still the best
fantasy of fmding balance.

The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) by J R R Tolkien. The one genre fantasy that most people have actually read, this created
most of the preconceptions that dominate readers and writers of fantasy. To read it again, forget all that has followed on from it,
and think of it as a book about Tolkien's experiences in World War I or about the needs for limits as a creator of ethical context;
it is a book of real invention, high romance, grimness, wit, and charm, and what more needs be said for anything?

The Swords of Lankhmar (1968) by Fritz Leiber. There was always a pulp genre of capers and mayhem in Fantasyland, much
of which can be forgotten. Leiber's template series about the sensitive barbarian hunk Fafhrd and the streetwise vain urchin
Gray Mouser ran for decades, and brought wit and sophistication and irony to the whole enterprise. One of its culminations was
this novel of conspiracy, urban depravity, and sword-wielding rats, which demonstrated that Leiber could not only write action
adventure, he could also write sexually charged farce.

A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) by Ursula K LeGuin. This first of the trilogy, later expanded into a quartet, which made LeGuin
a children's cult as well as the writer of SF and fantasy for people who don't usually like that sort of thing, is still one of the
most intellectually satisfying of explorations of magic. Ged, apprenticed as a wizard, tests limits and nearly destroys himself
and those around him; this is a book about the getting of wisdom, and, appropriately, is itself wise.

Peace (1975) by Gene Wolfe. An early novel by the trickster writer of The Book of the New Sun, this is complicatedly not
what it seems. An old man muses on mortality and his family history and on stories, none of which ever quite manages to reach
completion ... This is a novel, but it is also a riddle to which there are no wholly satisfactory answers; it is a book which
stretches form and comprehension to breaking point without ever raising its voice or doing anything radical with prose.

Little, Big (1981) by John Crowley. This and two other novels by Crowley are the only genre fantasies to make it into Harold
Bloom's Canon. Little, Big, a novel where even the comma in the title is important, takes the sleeper under the hill, the
conditions imposed on a lover, the animal adviser, the quest for a lost love, and the place that is bigger than it seems, and mixes
them into a story of change and transfiguration, where what seemed twee becomes almost unbearably moving with a change of
perspective.

The Anubis Gates (1983) by Tim Powers .Brendan Doyle, a widower and Coleridge expert, this he knows about the Regency
London in which he is marooned. He knows only rumours, though, about the body- jumping werewolf, the Egyptian
magicians, and the malignant clown, and vivisectionist Horrabin ... Powers is remorselessly inventive here, but Doyle's
predicament, and those of the lives he touches, is emotionally real even when the events surrounding it are at their most bizarre.

Rats and Gargoyles (1990) by Mary Gentle. A city where anything is possible, particularly the nastier things; a city sustained
by the imagination of its gods, yet constantly undermined by memories of its past incarnations - Mary Gentle took ideas from
Gnosticism and elsewhere in the mystical tradition and made of them an adventure playground. Swashbuckling and
metaphysics go oddly well together here - and a problem is solved according to the rules in whose language it has been set.

Waking the Moon (1994) by Elizabeth Hand. We almost think we know where we are here, as crabbed old patriarchal
conspirators use magic to blast out of life a feminist archaeologist and a young disciple takes up her work ... Restoring the rule
of the Goddess is not a task without its own moral implications, though, and this vividly peopled book turns a lot of cliches on
their head as its central characters find themselves rejecting the human consequences of things to which in abstract they might
assent. Fantasy is never allegory, at its best, but it is often a device for representing, in heightened phantasmagorical form,
genuine moral choices.

ROMANTIC FICTION
Marina Oliver

Almost any novel that contains a strong love story and has a happy or optimistic ending can be described as a romantic novel.
That encompasses a lot, from Jane Austen to the Brontes, the present-day short genre romance, through historical settings
including fictionalized biographies and rip-roaring adventure, the popular family sagas, Aga sagas, glitz, modem problem
novels, and literary prizewinners. Serious critical analysis is meagre, and what there is tends to be American. The
TwentietCentury Romance and Historical Writers (third edition 1994) is the most comprehensive reference book for details of
writers, lists of their books, and a critical view of each author's work.

As the world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic, it needs to be

reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value,
that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that can make
an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.
ELIZABETH GOUDGE

Advances (1992) by Anita Burgh. This is a wickedly funny look at the world of publishing, by a writer with the ability to carry
along her readers by the sheer power of her storytelling, whether set in the present day or past times.

The Lymond Series (1961-75) by Dorothy Dunnett. Six huge books with an attractive hero and an unlikely heroine, set against
a masterly, vast panorama of 16th-century Europe. These books are full of detailed knowledge, totally absorbing, intense, and
brilliant.

The Unknown Ajax (1959) by Georgette Heyer. The Regency novel was `invented' by Georgette Heyer, and the deliciously
frothy, eminently easy-to-read style conceals formidable research and superb technical skill. This title has a serious theme of
smuggling, combined with wit, humour, and deep emotion.

A Better World than This (1986) by Marie Joseph. The heroine is searching for a dream, away from the tedium of a
Lancashire mill to. This heartwarming novel won the Major Award of the Romantic Novelists' Association in 1987.
The Suffolk Trilogy (1959-62) by Norah Lofts. Set, like many of her novels, in East Anglia, these books feature one house
through several centuries. She can convey time and place impeccably, and her characters are intensely real.

The Chatelaine (1981) by Claire Lorrimer. A family novel, set in the 1900s, it is a powerful story of a girl's early love,
disillusionment, and final triumph over adversity. It is superbly plotted and compelling.

Mango Walk (1981) by Rhona Martin. She won the first Georgette Heyer Prize with Gallows Wedding, a historical novel, but
this is set in the 20th century, equally uncompromising and powerful, the story of an unlikely love that endures despite almost
unbearable pressures.

Csardas (1975) by Diane Pearson. Both editor and author, Pearson is president of the Romantic Novelists' Association. She
achieved immense acclaim with this epic story of Hungary during half a century of travail.

Nine Coaches Waiting (1958) by Mary Stewart. This book can be called a Gothic novel or a suspense novel, but is above all a
compelling story involving hard decisions and firm values.

The Native Air (1990) by Sarah Woodhouse. The author can take unlikely characters and charm her readers into utter
fascination. This is the last in a trilogy set around 1800, where love eventually triumphs. The writing is delightful, almost fey,
but conveys with a sure touch the sometimes bleak realities of Norfolk life.

Hong Sheng (Hung Sheng), Chinese, 1646-1704.

Palace of Eternal Youth. Rec: Ward (romance)

Short Stories

See HUMOUR (Daudet, Lardner, O'Brien, Runyon): MUSIC (Wagner); MYTHOLOGY (Feldman. Gantz, Hatto, Malory,
Sandars, Thomas); SEX (Boccaccio, Nefzawi)

Aesop Fables (6th century Esc)

Aesop was a slave on the Greek island of Samos; either as moral metaphors or as "absurdities" his fables are unsurpassed.

Aesop, Greek, 620-560 BCE.

Fables. Rec: Bloom Good Reading

Agnon, S. Y. The Bridal Canopy (1922)

Bleak, dark visions: purgation of emotions by pity and despair. Nonetheless, fine, springing prose. Also: Two Tales; And the
Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, In the Heart of the Seas, etc

Agnon, S. Y., Israeli, 1888-1970. Nobel Laureate

In the Heart of the Seas. Rec: Bloom
Twenty-One Stories. Rec: Bloom

Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Japanese, 1892-1927.

Rashomon, and Other Stories. Rec: Ward

Anderson, Sherwood Winesburg. Ohio (1919)

Anderson, one-time manager of an Ohio paint factory, knew his material inside out. These 23 stories present, in
straightforward, intense style, moments in the lives of inhabitants of the kind of small town in which he grew up. Also: Poor
White; Death in the Woods; The Memoirs of Sherwood Anderson

Anderson, Sherwood, American, 1876-1941.

Winesburg, Ohio. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind ML Novels
Death in the Woods and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom

Andreyev, Leonid, Russian, 1871-1919.

Selected Tales. Rec: Bloom
Ansky, S., Russian writing in Yiddish, 1863-1920.
The Dybbuk. Rec: Bloom
The title work, for example, evokes the mystical underpinnings of shtetl life, with its rituals of possession and exorcism.

Arreola, Juan Jose, Mexican, 1918- .

Confabulario and Other Inventions. Rec: Ward

Babel, Isaak Collected Stories (1957)

Babel, born in the Odessa ghetto, died in one of Stalin's concentration camps. His stories are brief and vivid, his viewpoint that
of a Jew "with spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart".

Babel, Isaac Emmanuelovich, Russian, 1894-ca. 1940 .

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom Ward

Barthelme, Donald, American, 1931-1989.

Forty Stories. Rec: Bloom

Beckett, Samuel More Pricks than Kicks (1934)

Beckett's first work of fiction consists of ten stories. Most are laboriously overwritten, as early work by important writers often
is, but Dante and the Lobsteris brilliant, and there is grim humour in several of the others. See DRAMA; FICTION/NOVELS;
LITERARY CRITICISM

Beerbohm, Max, English, 1872-1956.

Seven Men and Two Others. Rec: Bloom

Bierce, Ambrose Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

Bierce disappeared into Mexico in 1913—in search, he said, of "the good, kind darkness". Reasons for such a wish can be
found here: sardonic wit barely conceals despair. Also: Can Such Things Be?

Bierce, Ambrose, American, 1842-1914? .

Collected Writings. Rec: Bloom

Borges, Jorge Luis Fictions (1944) 9 *

Terse, teasing, sometimes intriguing jeux d'esprit by a writer whose favourite joke is the reader. Also: Labyrinths; Dreamtigers;
Selected Poems, 1923-1967

Borges, Jorge Luis, Argentinian, 1899-1986.

A Personal Anthology. Rec: Bloom
Collected Fictions. Rec: Meaningful
Other Inquisitions. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Ficciones (Fictions). Rec: Bloom Harvard NYPL Ward
Labyrinths. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Ward
The Aleph and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom Ward
Dreamtigers. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Bowles, John Collected Short Stories (1980)

Unnerving, mannered but savagely effective tales of violence at the boundary between civilization and its discontented
neighbours. The interface of love and lust, impotence and insolence, exhaustion and delirium is charted with a terrible relish
and conviction.

Brodkey, Harold, American, 1930-1996.

Stories in an Almost Classical Mode. Rec: Bloom

Bunin, Ivan, Russian, 1870-1953. Nobel Laureate

Selected Stories. Rec: Bloom

Carver, Raymond, American, 1938-1988.

Cathedral. Rec: Hungry Mind
Where I'm Calling From. Rec: Bloom
Cheever, John The Stories of John Cheever (1978)
Evocative stories about quietly desperate New York commuters: wives meeting the train with a double Martini in the hand;
children, all-knowing, concocting fiendish plots. Somehow the stories have coloured everyone's concept of the suburban life of
all America, even though most Americans don't live that way.

Cheever, John, American, 1912-1982.

The Stories. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind
Bullet Park. Rec: Bloom
The Wapshot Chronicles. Rec: BOMC ML Novels
Falconer. Rec: Time

Chekhov, Anton The Schoolmistress and Other Stories (1894)0

Chekhov wrote over 1,000 stories. Mood, atmosphere, "the unforgettable flash of life in its perpetual flow"—no short story
writer ever caught these things better. See DRAMA

Chekhov, Anton, Russian, 1860-1904.

Plays. Rec: Good Reading Rex Ward
Major Plays. Rec: Bloom
Uncle Vanya. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
Three Sisters. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 NYPL
The Cherry Orchard. Rec: Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Selected Short Stories, Tales. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Good Reading Meaningful

Chesnutt, Charles W., American, 1858-1932.

Short Fiction. Rec: Bloom

Chesterton, G. K. The Father Brown Stories (1947)

Chesterton's Father Brown stories are outstanding in an uneven oeuvre—his one escape from being what Wyndham Lewis
(justly) called him, "the dogmatic Toby-jug". Also: The Man Who Was Thursday

Chesterton, G. K., English, 1874-1936.

The Innocence of Father Brown. Rec: NYPL
The Everlasting Man. Rec: National Review
Orthodoxy. Rec: National Review
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Father Brown Stories. Rec: Ward
The Man Who Was Thursday. Rec: Bloom

Conrad, Joseph The Heart of Darkness (1902)

Conrad's most compelling short story, flawed by melodramatic adjectives but still alive and horrifying. See
FICTION/NOVELS

Crane, Stephen, American, 1871-1900.

The Red Badge of Courage. Rec: Bloom
Stories. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Davenport, Guy, American, 1927- .

Tatlin!. Rec: Bloom

Dinesen, Isak Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

Sophisticated entertainments, with appealing irony implicit in deliberately old-fashioned narrative method. Also: Out of Africa;
Winter's Tales; The Angelic Avengers, etc

Faulkner, William Collected Stories (1950) *

There is a story that Sherwood Anderson, having read some would-be sophisticated dialogue in one of Faulkner's earliest
novels, told him to forget all that smart stuff and concentrate on cultivating his own garden, the little patch of Mississippi he
knew to the bone. The result was the major novels, and the best stories in this book, The Bearand The Barn Burning. See
FICTION/NOVELS

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1951)

Fitzgerald himself once commented (looking sideways at his friend and rival, Hemingway): "I talk with the authority of
failure." He wrote good stories all his life—along with many bad ones for magazines, to pay debts. Among lesser-known
stories, Outside the Cabinet-Maker's is well worth seeking out. See BIOGRAPHY (Milford); DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS;
FILM (Latham)

Flaubert, Gustave Three Tales (1877) a

Twenty years after Madame Bovary, Flaubert published these stories. The Legend of St Julian Hospitator is the most
remarkable—an exploration of the medieval mind, inspired by a stained-glass window in Rouen Cathedral. See DIARIES
(Flaubert, Goncourt); FICTION/NOVELS

Gordimer, Nadine, South African, 1923- . Nobel Laureate

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Late Bourgeois World. Rec: Burgess

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Household Tales (1812-15) *

The brothers Grimm were a well-matched pair; from their two heads came the right balance to make sense of something in the
German character that takes in The Bremen Town Musicians, The Twelve Dancing Princesses and the glorious ghastly death of
Rumpelstiltskin. Best collection for adults: Penguin Classics. Best for children: The Juniper Tree and Other Tales (Segal and
Sendak, 1973).

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, German, 1785-1863 and 1786-1859.

Fairy Tales. Rec: Bloom

Hawthorne, Nathaniel Twice-told Tales (1837) a

Thirty-nine early stories, some mannered and boring, but the best— The Ambitious Guest and Howe's Masquerade—
foreshadowing The Scarlet Letter in their preoccupation with guilt and secrecy and in their obsession with the effects of New
England Puritanism. Also: House of the Seven Gables; Tanglewood Tales, etc. See FICTION/NOVELS

Hemingway, Ernest In Our Time (1925)

Hemingway's first book—fifteen stories with linking vignettes. The stories describe life in the American Middle West;
vignettes describe war in Europe and bullfights. Hemingway before the rot set in. Also: Men without Women; Winner Takes
Nothing, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Baker); FICTION/NOVELS

Henry, O. Cabbages and Kings (1904)

O. Henry started writing the "trick" stories for which he is famous while in prison on a charge of embezzlement.His characters
are simple; his plots always depend on surprise endings; but within his range he is skilled at ringing the changes. Also: O.
Henry Encore; The Four Million, etc

Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm The Serapion Brethren (1819-21)

The best of his supernatural stories. Urbane, Gallic Poetry. Also: The Devil's Elixir

Various Authors, Hungarian, 19th-20th C.

Hungarian Short Stories. Rec: Ward

Irving, Washington, American, 1783-1859.

The Sketch Book. Rec: Bloom

Isherwood, Christopher Goodbye to Berlin (1939) * Herr Issyvoo in his best "I am a camera" phase: decay of a civilization
(Germany under the Nazis) in the form of seemingly casual sketches of Berlin life. Also: All the Conspirators: Mr Norris
Changes Trains, etc. See DRAMA (Auden)

Isherwood, Christopher, English, 1904-1986.

The Berlin Stories. Rec: Bloom Time
A Single Man. Rec: Burgess
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw (1898)
One of the finest ghost stories in English, all the better for containing no explicit ghosts. See BIOGRAPHY (Edel, James);
DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; LITERARY CRITICISM

James, M. R. Collected Ghost Stories (1931) dl

Elegant, civilized shudders—not the melodramas of Poe (qv), but reality showing tiny, devastating cracks. Best read by
candlelight, wind nibbling at the windows.

Jewett, Sarah Orne, American, 1849-1909.

The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom NYPL

Joyce, James Dubliners (1914)

One story, The Dead, is a masterpiece. The rest would perhaps not seem so interesting now, had Joyce not gone on to write
Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. All the same, a remarkable dissection of turn-of-the-century Irish life. See BIOGRAPHY
(Ellmann); DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS

Kafka, Franz Metamorphosis (1916)

Kafka's most haunting story, in which he found a perfect image for his pervasive sense of alienation. Also: In the Penal Colony,
etc. See DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS

Kafka, Franz, Czech writing in German, 1883-1924.

Collected Works. Rec: Ward
The Trial. Rec: Adler Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful Rexmo Seymour-Smith Smiley
The Castle. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Meaningful TLS
Metamorphosis. Rec: GBWW NYPL SJC
Penal Colony. Rec: SJC
Short Stories. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 (Selections) Fadiman 4 (Selections) Meaningful
Amerika. Rec: Bloom
The Blue Octavo Notebook. Rec: Bloom
Diaries. Rec: Bloom
Parables, Fragments, Aphorisms. Rec: Bloom

Kipling, Rudyard Limits and Renewals (1932)

The Kipling to value—estranged, embittered and burnt-out. This last collection of stories contains his most complex, self-
gnawing work. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS; POETRY

Kleist, Heinrich von, German, 1777-1811.

Stories. Rec: Bloom

Landolfi, Tommaso, Italian, 1908-1979.

Gogol's Wife and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom

Lardner, Ring Collected Short Stories(1941)

Edmund Wilson once said, "What bell might not Lardner ring if he set out to give us the works?" Lardner did give us the
works. In the vernacular. There must have been something wrong with Wilson's bell. See HUMOUR

Lawrence, D. H. Tales (1934)

Lawrence at his finest. Odour of Chrysanthemums and The Rocking-Horse Winnerare the most memorable; but all are
interesting, surprisingly relaxed, even amusing. See DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; HISTORY/EUROPEAN; LITERARY
CRITICISM; POETRY; TRAVEL

London, Jack The Star Rover (1914)

How to define London's gift? "The passing thing done in the eternal way" was his own (not bad) definition of it. Also: The Call
of the Wild; White Fang. See TRAVEL

Lowry, Malcolm Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961)
Lowry's gift was for loading every rift with ore, or at least tequila; this posthumously published collection contains two stories
— Through the Panama and The Forest Path to the Spring. See FICTION/NOVELS
Lu Xun (Lu Hsün), Chinese, 1881-1936.
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. Rec: Meaningful
Collected Short Stories. Rec: Fadiman 4 MW Asian Ward

Mann, Thomas Death in Venice ( 1911) 1' Masterly novella of a civilized artist at the end of his genteel tether. Also:
Stories of a Lifetime. See FICTION/NOVELS

Mansfield, Katherine Collected Stories (1945)

Mansfield's best stories, many about her childhood in New Zealand. See DIARIES

Mansfield, Katherine, New Zealander, 1888-1923.

The Short Stories. Rec: Bloom

Marguerite de Navarre, French, 1492-1549.

Heptameron. Rec: Bloom Smiley
The Heptameron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549).

Maugham, W. Somerset Complete Stories (1951)

Maugham is the nearest thing to an English Maupassant (qv). Man-of-the-world stuff, cynical and anecdotal. Edmund Wilson
compared his stories to oysters (for the ease with which they slip down). See AUTOBIOGRAPHY; DRAMA;
FICTION/CRIME; FICTION/NOVELS

Maupassant, Guy de Boule de Suif (1880)

Maupassant contributed this masterly story while still unknown to the Soirees de Medan, a collection of short stories by such as
Zola and Huysmans. It made his reputation overnight. He is, with Chekhov (qv) and Singer (qv) one of the supreme masters in
the genre. Also: Mademoiselle Fifi; A Woman's Life; Bel-A etc

Maupassant, Guy de, French, 1850-1893.

Short Stories. Rec: Bloom Ward

Mitchell, Joseph, American, 1908-1996.

Up in the Old Hotel. Rec: Bloom National Review (stories)

Moore, George Celibate Lives (1924)

Five stories, one of which, Albert Nobbs, a study of transvestism, was recently ranked "in the first dozen short stories of world
literature". This overstates the case, but then Moore is an undervalued writer. Also: Heloise and Abelard; Evelyn Jones; The
Brook Kerith, etc

Murasaki-Shildbu, Lady The Tale of Genji (c. 1004)

This collection of stories is sometimes spoken of as a novel, but is nearer to The Arabian Nights than to War and Peace. Prince
Genji is the character; the country, Japan. Delicate, obliquely civilised; a masterpiece.

Murasaki Shikibu, Japanese, ca. 976-1015.

Tale of Genji. Rec: App Fadiman 4 Meaningful MW Asian Oriental Rex Smiley StJE Utne Ward

O'Brien, Edna, Irish, 1932- .

A Fanatic Heart. Rec: Bloom

O'Connor, Flannery, American, 1925-1964.

Everything That Rises Must Converge. Rec: SJC
The Complete Stories. Rec: Bloom Harvard
The Violent Bear It Away. Rec: Bloom
Wise Blood. Rec: Bloom Burgess
A Good Man is Hard to Find. Rec: Aquinas Hungry Mind Radcliffe
The Enduring Chill. Rec: Aquinas

O'Connor, Frank, Irish, 1903-1966.

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
O'Hara, John The Hat on the Bed (1964)
O'Hara's stories are legion, and despite the flaws and cheapness, provide a panoramic view of East Coast American society
which is proving more and more truthful as the lid comes off the USA. Ephemera, possibly; compelling, certainly. See
FICTION/NOVELS

O'Hara, John, American, 1905-1970.

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
Appointment in Samarra. Rec: Bloom BOMC ML Novels Time
The Lockwood Concern. Rec: Burgess

Paley, Grace, American, 1922- .

The Little Disturbances of Man. Rec: Bloom
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories. Rec: Harvard LAT
Collected Stories. Rec: Hungry Mind

Peretz, I. L., Pole writing in Yiddish, 1851-1915.

Selected Stories. Rec: Bloom

Pirandello, Luigi Better Think Twice about It (1933)

Pirandello was once called "the greatest short-story writer of the century". If his plays did not exist, we might value his stories
more highly, for their worth is considerable. See DRAMA

Poe, Edgar Allan Tales of the Grotesque and Macabre (1840) Twenty-five tales include The Fall of the House of Usher,
William Wilson, Ligeia, Berenice and Manuscript Found in a Bottle. Also: The Narrative of ArthurGordon Pym of Nantucket;
Poems; Eureka, etc. See FICTION/CRIME

Poe, Edgar Allan, American, 1809-1849.

Complete Tales. Rec: Good Reading Meaningful
Stories and Poems. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Harvard Ward
Essays and Reviews. Rec: Bloom
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Rec: Bloom
Eureka. Rec: Bloom

Porter, Katherine Anne, American, 1890-1980.

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
Flowering Judas and Other Stories. Rec: Hungry Mind

Premchand, Indian writing in Urdu and Hindi, 1880-1936.

Gift of a Cow. Rec: Ward
Short Stories. Rec: MW Asian Ward

Pritchett, V. S., English, 1900-1997.

Collected Stories. Rec: Harvard

Prose, Francine, American, 1947- .

Guided Tours of Hell. Rec: Smiley

Pu Songling (P'u Sung-Ling), Chinese, 1640-1715.

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Rec: Ward

Runyon, Damon Guys and Dolls (1932) it Runyon perfected the use of a certain kind of invented slang in these stories
about New York hoods, their mommas and their molls. His stories seem slight and forgettable, but aren't. Also: Take It Easy;
My Wife Ethel; Runyon d la Carte. See HUMOUR

Saki The Best of Saki (1976) it H. H. Munro called himself "Saki" after a South African monkey characterized by a long bushy
tail, delicacy and silence. His stories send up everything in sight. Bushy tales? Also: The Unbearable Bassington

Saki (H. H. Munro), Scottish, 1870-1916.

The Short Stories. Rec: Bloom
Saroyan, William The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934) it
Saroyan's first book, an astonishing outpouring by a young man in love with life and language.

Schnitzler, Arthur, Austrian, 1862-1931.

Plays and Stories. Rec: Bloom

Sciascia, Leonardo, Italian, 1921- .

Day of the Owl. Rec: Bloom
Equal Danger. Rec: Bloom
The Wine-Dark Sea: Thirteen Stories. Rec: Bloom

Sholem Aleichem, Russian-American writing in Yiddish, 1859-1916.

Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories. Rec: Bloom
The Nightingale. Rec: Bloom

Singer, Isaac Bashevis Gimpel the Fool (1957)

Marvellous, timeless blend of medieval and modern imagination: the human condition defined and described by a master story-
teller, delighted by the teeming detail which makes up a moment. Also: A Crown of Feathers; A Friend of Kafka, etc. See
FICTION/NOVELS

Singer, Isaac Bashevis, Polish-American writing in Yiddish, 1904-1980. Nobel Laureate

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind
In My Father's Court. Rec: Bloom
The Manor and The Estate. Rec: Bloom
Family Moskat. Rec: Bloom Ward
Satan in Goray. Rec: Bloom

Söderberg, Hjalmar, Swedish, 1869-1941.

Doctor Glas. Rec: Ward
Selected Short Stories. Rec: Ward

Stein, Gertrude Three Lives (1908) 9 In Melanctha, about a black woman, Stein showed for the first (and last?) time
just how well she could write fiction. Her prose rhythms admirably follow the movements of Melanctha's mind. After this,
Stein concentrated on the movement of her own mind—and turned into Old Mother Hubbard.

Stein, Gertrude, American, 1874-1946.

Three Lives. Rec: Bloom

Stevenson, Robert Louis The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Stevenson's wife Fanny read this tale in draft and complained that he had sensationalized a good allegory. Stevenson enraged,
stormed out; then he returned, said she was right and set to work to produce this classic story of split personality. See
CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Stifter, Adalbert, Austrian, 1805-1868.

Indian Summer. Rec: Bloom
Tales. Rec: Bloom

Swift, Jonathan, Irish, 1667-1745.

Gulliver's Travels. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful
Rexmo SJC Ward
A Modest Proposal. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3
Meditations Upon a Broomstick. Rec: Fadiman 3
Resolutions When I Come to Be Old. Rec: Fadiman 3
A Tale of a Tub. Rec: Adler Bloom
Journal to Stella. Rec: Adler
Shorter Prose Works. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom
Anonymous, Arab, ca. 1500.
The Thousand and One Nights. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful Oriental Ward

Toomer, Jean, American, 1894-1967.

Cane. Rec: Bloom Hungry Mind

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich A Sportsman's Sketches (1852) Sketches of 19th-century Russian peasant life characterized by
what V. S. Pritchett called "their simple feeling and transparency". Also: The House of Gentlefolk; On the Eve; Virgin Soil, etc

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich, Russian, 1818-1883.

A Sportsman's Notebook. Rec: Bloom
A Month in the Country. Rec: Bloom
Fathers and Sons. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rexmo Smiley Ward
On the Eve. Rec: Bloom
First Love. Rec: Bloom

Tutuola, Amos, Nigerian writing in English, 1920- .

Palm-Wine Drinkard. Rec: Bloom Ward
"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" and "The Palm Wine Drinkard" are African tales in their pure unadulterated form. And they're
not something you'd want to hear before bedtime! Amos Tutuola writes an English which lends the narration a wide-eyed,
almost childlike voice--yet in the face of wild, horrific imagery (eg. armies of dead babies) the words are unflinching. (amazon)

Twain, Mark The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1865)
Interesting mostly for the way it foreshadows Twain's superb use of the vernacular in The Adventures of Tom Sa wyerand The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Title piece, based on an old Californian folk tale, still has charm. See FICTION/NOVELS;
HISTORY/AMERICAN; HUMOUR; TRAVEL

Ueda Akinari, Japanese, 1734-1809.

Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain). Rec: Ward

Verga, Giovanni, Italian, 1840-1922.

The House by the Medlar Tree. Rec: Bloom Ward
Little Novels of Sicily. Rec: Bloom Ward
Mastro Don Gesualdo. Rec: Bloom Ward
The She-Wolf and Other Stories. Rec: Bloom

Vesaas, Tarjei, Norwegian, 1897-1970.

Boat in the Evening. Rec: Ward

Walser, Robert, German, 1927- .

Selected Stories. Rec: Bloom

Welty, Eudora, American, 1909-2001.

Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
Delta Wedding. Rec: Bloom BOMC
The Robber Bridegroom. Rec: Bloom
The Ponder Heart. Rec: Bloom

Wilson, Angus Such Darling Dodos (1950)

Splendid trifles of 1940s-1950s British life. The world of the sensitive middle class and genteel England were never the same
again. Nor was Wilson, to our loss.

Zoshchenko, Mikhail Scenes from the Bathhouse (1961)

Zoshchenko was the (unofficial) satirist-in-chief to the court of the second most terrible utopia in history. This collection of
stories is a grin full of teeth.

Zoshchenko, Mikhail, Russian, 1895-1958.

Nervous People and Other Satires. Rec: Bloom
D. Quinn Mills

D. Quinn Mills is the .principal faculty member at the • Harvard Business School keeping the study of labor relations alive. The
impact of economic and managerial systems on people has been his continuing professional interest. He is noted for
maintaining a strong emphasis on the general management aspects of people relationships, tying case research and discussion
to the problems of operating-line executives, and avoiding the functional perspectives and responsibilities of personnel
managers.
A member of the Harvard Business School faculty since 1976, he is the author of ten books and was appointed the Albert J.
Weatherhead Professor of Business Administration in 1978.

Winston S. Churchill. The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
I was twelve years old and living in Houston, Texas when an aunt gave me a copy of the first volume of Winston Churchill's
six-volume history of the Second World War, entitled The Gathering Storm. I read the book and found it fascinating. It opened
to me the wide world of nonfiction literature. It permitted me to learn about great events as they were viewed by participants,
including authors like Churchill who possessed insightful and powerful personalities. Reading Churchill also gave me a respect
for our language and for rhetoric—cadences, the crashing thunder of strong words, the rhythmic sequence of sentences. In a
short time I had read the remaining five volumes of the series and went on to histories composed by other authors.

William Faulkner. Intruder in the Dust (1948). New York: Random House, 1967. (Pb)
. The Sound and the Fury (1929). New York: Random House, 1967. (Pb)
During high school I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. Perhaps because I had moved to Memphis and found the attitudes and
opinions of my classmates somewhat different from my own, I began to read in search of explanations of what it meant to be a
person from the deep South in the United States. William Faulkner's writings revealed to me the complexity of the Southern
tradition—of guilt, revenge and repentance. The most powerful of the books was The Sound and the Fury, but the line I most
remember came from a less well-known novel entitled Intruder in the Dust. "Some things you must always be unable to bear,"
Faulkner wrote; "injustice, prejudice, and despair ... not for kudos and not for cash, just refuse to bear them."
Another Southern writer taught me a lesson I've benefited from enormously over my lifetime, a lesson about tolerance.
"Nothing human disgusts me," wrote Tennessee Williams in Night of the Iguana, "unless it is unkind or violent."

William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
College was for me as for many young people a time of questioning and doubts. I had been raised in a Protestant church but
during college became profoundly uncertain about the significance of religious faith. Was religion a positive or a negative
influence in mankind's experience?
At this time I happened upon William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. From James's book I learned how
hazardous it is to generalize about something as complex as religion. This insight reopened to me the search for a religious
faith with which I was comfortable. But James also helped me to avoid easy generalizations and conclusions in other complex
areas of human life.

The Bible.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship (1948). R. H. Fuller, trans. Magnolia, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1983.
In the years since I have read widely in Eastern religious works, and in the writings of the ancient Western world. Marcus
Aurelius particularly impressed me. I recall one of his observations about self-restraint: "be careful that you do not feel toward
the inhuman as they feel toward men." I also read extensively in the mainstream of Christian writings. I was particularly
influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, since the author later gave his life in the struggle within
Germany against the Hitler regime.
I have also nibbled at the Bible continually for many years, especially enjoying comparing different translations. The Bible
remains the central form of transmission of the Western heritage, and is the foundation of our moral standards—to my mind far
more important than laws. The biblical text that returns most often to my mind is from the Book of Micah: "He has showed
you, oh man, what is good—and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with
your God?" I have over many years rendered many decisions in arbitration hearings, and these words have never been far from
my thoughts as I pondered what decision to make.

Milovan Djilas. The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (1957). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949). New York: Signet, 1984. (Pb)
In graduate school I studied economics and political science. There is implicit, and sometimes explicit for that matter, criticism
of our economic and political systems in much that is written in those disciplines. Two books that definitely shaped my
perspective were Milovan Djilas's study of Stalinist communism, The New Class, and George Orwell's 1984. The two books
constituted a vision of a totalitarian hell, created in this century by people who spoke publicly of their commitment to the
improvement of human life. These books helped me to preserve a deep appreciation for our own society, without, I hope,
causing me intentionally to ignore its limitations. In particular, I recognized again the value of individual human freedom
which Western society affords its members.

Isaac Bashevis Singer. Stories for Children. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1984.
Years later I became a parent. One of the greatest joys parenting offers is to try to see the world as children see it. I_ read the
classics of children's literature, and enjoyed them more than I did the first time. Also I discovered Isaac Bashevis Singer's
Stories for Children. It was helpful to me in my own writing to see that simplicity of theme and treatment could contain great
depth of understanding of the human character and of human institutions. In particular I was influenced by Singer's comment at
the end of Stories that today the only serious literature is that written for children. Popular adult literature is lost in
sensationalism and the effort to shock.

Margaret Murie and Olaus Murie. Wapiti Wilderness: The Life of Olaus and Margaret Murie in Jackson Hole, Wyoming
(1966). Jackson Hole, Wyo.: Teton Bookshop, n.d. (Pb)
Now in middle age, I think about what things are of great value in life, and what I should try to experience in the time left to
me. I am more aware than ever before of the natural richness of this continent. Recently I have been much impressed by the
account that Margaret and Olaus Murie left of their years working for the Forest Service in the Tetons (Wapiti Wilderness).
Olaus was a founder of the Wilderness Society, which today attempts to preserve what remains of the American wilderness
from unreasonable development. Partly under the influence of their book I am putting aside more of my time for trips into the
natural wilderness. This is also, I think, an important spiritual dimension in life.

Martha Minow

Martha Minow is a professor of law at Harvard Law School. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Professor
Minow is also a member of the faculty of the Doing Justice Program at Brandeis University and a member of the board of
directors of the American Bar Foundation. Her primary interests and her best-known courses are "Children and the Law" and
"Family Law."

I asked myself, what books on my shelf are so worn from rereading—or missing from the shelf altogether because I keep
insisting that someone else read them? The list is too long, but here are some that come immediately to mind.

Robert M. Cover. Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (1975). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
(Pb)
It asks, why did judges who opposed slavery nonetheless enforce the laws governing slavery before the Civil War? Its answers
move through debates about whether law is natural or socially constructed, through biography and analyses of the interplay
between personality and social role, into psychology and the persistent human desire to avoid personal choice and
responsibility, and through the power of language in expressing and shaping what people think is possible.

Isaac Bashevis Singer. In My Father's Court (1966). New York: Fawcett, 1979. (Pb)
A memoir of the author's childhood days in the home where his father, as rabbi, heard disputes and struggled for resolutions
amid the daily lives of his community in Warsaw. The disputes become windows into the virtues and vices of individuals, the
traumas solved by arbitrary rules, and the traumas created by them.

Adrienne Rich. The Dream of a Common Language: Poems. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. (Pb)
A collection of poems that explore the difficulties of speaking about women's experiences and, in so doing, create the
possibility of saying things that haven't before been said.

Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine, eds. The Future of Difference (1980). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1985. (Pb)
A collection of essays that connects the contemporary women's movement with scholarly work. In these connections,
breathtaking precision in analysis and careful explosions of disciplinary boundaries appear and reappear. The sustained offering
of insights uses and at the same time challenges psychoanalytic thought about the formation of the self and gender identity,
epistemological debates over the impossibility of objectivity, and current inquiries into literary analysis and political theory.
Andre Lorde's essay, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury," shows so powerfully how there are only new ways of making old ideas, and yet
the future of our words, and ourselves, depends on our "need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly and
through promise."

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations, 1953). G. E. Anscome, trans. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1967.
How amazing to find out that a philosopher could have a voice, a playful, personal voice; that reading philosophy could feel
like a fun and puzzling conversation; and that things look differently after reading? listening? arguing? with this book.

Norton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Epstein & Carroll, 1961. (Pb)
A children's book about the meaning of life, it takes puns seriously so that language and experience both become fresh, and it
reminds us that we might well be able to do things that people say could never be done.

Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot. Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools. New York: Basic Books, 1978. (Pb)
Subtle, vivid depictions of the lives of children, teachers and families that mutually implicate each other even through their
separations, boundaries and conflicts. The book gently incorporates insights from social theory while exposing the workings of
power, cultural and racial differences, and personal hopes and pain. It makes possible knowledge about what we don't see by
exposing what others don't see about us in the gaps between classrooms and homes, and, indeed, the gaps between all the
places we may dwell.

Avis C. Vidal

Avis Vidal is an associate professor of city and regional planning at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and
specializes in urban economic development, housing and urban policy. Her current research focuses on the effectiveness of
public–private partnerships formed to promote urban development by supporting the activities of community-based
organizations.

J. D. Salinger. Franny and Zooey: Two Novellas (1961). New York: Bantam, 1969. (Pb)
Buddy's letter to Zooey is the best and most enduring reminder I have had of the importance of discovering the things that
really matter to you, and then doing them with zest because that's the way they deserve to be done.

Chaim Potok. My Name Is Asher Lev (1972). New York: Fawcett, 1978. (Pb)
A powerful exploration of the clarity of purpose that a natural gift or calling makes possible, and of the anguish that comes
with being forced to choose between two highly valued claims on one's identity.

Anthony Lewis. Gideon's Trumpet. New York: Random House, 1964. (Pb)
Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. The Brethren (1979). New York: Avon, 1980. (Pb)
Two very different accounts of the wonder and power of the law and the people who make it work—when it works.

Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847). New York: Putnam, 1982.

My former husband and I read this book aloud. When we finished I asked him whether he liked it. "It's good . . . okay. . . but it
gets a little tiresome because it's all from her point of view."

Chaim Potok. The Book of Lights. New York: Fawcett, 1981. (Pb)
A book that illustrates the potential power of religious and cultural tradition in helping one come to terms with the inescapable
presence of death and evil.

Willa Cather. My Antonia (1918). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926. (Pb)

The only thing I ever read that helped me understand why people like the Midwest.
Film

From the start, cinema established itself as not just another medium, but as one of the great popular art forms, as wide-ranging
as literature, music or painting themselves. Like those arts, it contains masterpieces and rubbish, timeless works and ephemera
—and a huge range of good-quality journeyman work, popular entertainment which can, at its best, transcend its own modest
aspirations. Nowadays, thanks to television showings, films (of all qualities) are accessible as never before, and there is a wide
popular knowledge of film styles and techniques; television has not, however, resulted (as was predicted) in the death of
creativity, but in a remarkable upsurge of new styles, new talents, new excellence. This list avoids the more arcane areas of film
criticism (addicts writing in code for addicts) and also the more fleeting of fan-journalism. We have chosen good serious guides
to the medium and to the industry, and biographies, studies and reminiscences of some of the most enjoyable (not to say
enjoyably literate) practitioners of film.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Chaplin): BIOGRAPHY (Mailer); DRAMA (McCrindle); HUMOUR (Allen)

Armes, Roy A Critical History of the British Cinema (1978) 10 Detailed and informative, if at times rather conventional and
opinionated. Avoids chauvinism; covers important ground.

Barnouw, Erik Documentary: A History of Nonfiction Film (1974) 9 Standard work for students, fans and creators of
documentary films. Historycum-theory-cum-criticism adds up to an extremely useful compendium. Bawden, Liz-Anne (ed)
The Oxford Companion to Film (1976) 10 * Authoritative entries, alphabetically arranged, on every aspect of film from "AA
certificate" to "Zvoboda, Andre". Articles on national styles particularly good (Italy and Japan outstanding). Not as jolly or
personal as Halliwell (qv), but far more reliable.

Bayer, William The Great Movies (1973) &if Thoughtful critical assessments of sixty films which in Bayer's view represent
the medium at its best and most characteristic. Covers "trash masterpieces" (eg Gone with the Wind; Singin' in the Rain) as
well as films with grander pretensions (La Grande Illusion; Citizen Kane).

Bazin, Andre, French, 1918-1958.

Orson Welles: A Critical View. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Brown, Karl Adventures with D. W. Griffith (1974)

As a young man of immense technical ingenuity, Brown contributed much to D. W. Griffith's revolutionary discoveries.
Interesting to read in conjunction with Mrs D. W. Griffith's (qv) When the Movies were Young.

Brownlow, Kevin The Parade's Gone By (1968) 10a*.f

Riveting, classic collection of interview portraits of surviving Hollywood pioneers.

Buñuel. Luis, Spanish, 1900-1983.

My Last Sigh. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Burch, Noel To a Distant Observer(1939) 91/ Japanese film: outstanding study of a "national cinema". Emphasis is on
"formal" differences with Western cinema, but shows a strong sense of the political and cultural history that determined these
differences. Also: Theory of Film Practice

Clarens, Carlos Horror Movies (1968)

Useful survey of a uniquely fascinating genre.

Durgnat, Raymond A Mirror for England (1971)

Eccentric, sometimes brilliant historical/sociological work on British cinema.

Eames, John D. The MGM Story (1975)

Sumptuously produced account of every film (1,705 of them) made by this major studio.

Eisenstein, Sergei The Film Sense (1942) 011_, Chiefly important for theories behind Eisenstein's own films—long section
on Alexander Nevsky—but has profound implications for cinema as a whole. Also: Film Form. See Montagu; Septon.

Eisenstein, Sergei, Russian, 1898-1948.

Film Form. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Eisner, Lotte The Haunted Screen(1969)
Classic exploration of German Expressionist cinema, before and after The Cabinet of DrCaligari (1919).

Fields, W. C. W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography (1973)

Letters; articles; notes towards an autobiography: beguiling chronicle of an often troubled human being, a dedicated
professional and a wonderfully caustic writer, particularly on censors, studio bosses, babies, complaining wives or other health
hazards. See Taylor.

Griffith, Mrs D. W. When the Movies Were Young (1925)

A wide-eyed, wickedly scandalous account of movie-making in the 1910s. Rubbish? Fun. See Brown.

Halliday, Jon Sirk on Sirk (1972)

Important journeyman director interviewed at length. Fascinating insights into studio production conditions in Hollywood.

Halliwell, Leslie The Filmgoer's Companion (1965) a a ic./

Cheerful reference book (regularly updated), unreliable in details but readier with information on personalities and such
questions as who was the first Tarzan than any other source.

Kael, Pauline I Lost It at the Movies (1966)

Useful collection of reviews and articles by one of America's most effective, not to say raucous, film critics. Kael is
challenging, abrasive and personal—a welcome antidote to stuffiness or picayune blandness. (But avoid The Citizen Kane
Book: a piece of nonsense claiming that Welles didn't create Kane, subsequently discredited by Peter Bogdanovitch among
others.) These pieces show her at her perceptive/irritating best.

Kael, Pauline, American, 1919-2001.

For Keeps. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Knight, Arthur The Liveliest Art (1957)

This informal history of the movies. with emphasis on the early days in Hollywood, is a splendid introduction to the subject.
Easy reading, lots of fun. Latham, Aaron Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1972)
Terrible case history of Hollywood's ability to humiliate a creative artist (compare with Tom Dardis: Some Time in the Sun).
See BIOGRAPHY (Milford); DIARIES (Fitzgerald); FICTION/NOVELS (Fitzgerald, West); FICTION/SHORT STORIES
(Fitzgerald)

Leyda, Jay Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (1960) Pi' Excellent, comprehensive record of the troubled history
of cinema in the Soviet Union. Essential background reading to Eisenstein (qv); the story continues in Liehm (qv).

Liehm, A. J. and M. The Most Important Art: East European Cinema after 1945(1977) 9J'
The only account of the—often Orwellian—mechanisms of film industries in the Sovietist east. Also: The Milos Forman
Stories (1976)

Love, Bessie From Hollywood with Love (1977)

Funny, unpretentious memoirs of 65 years in movies. Love is reliable, and sharp: she remembers, for example, how the
orthodox Jews who played in Intolerance found their box lunches full of ham sandwiches.

McCabe, John Charlie Chaplin (1978)

Writings on Chaplin are legion; this is one of the few (and first) objective, critical biographies. Also: Laurel and Hardy(1975), a
sumptuous picture book, with stills from every film. See Mast; AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Chaplin)

Mast, Gerald The Comic Mind (1973) 41110*./

Accessible, outstanding study of creativity in comic films. Fine contribution to a neglected field. Bonus for readers is the lively,
enthusiastic style: Mast blends description with analysis, relives each scene, each routine, as he discusses it.

Mellen, Joan Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the American Film (1977) 0
Serious—but hugely entertaining—study of the Hollywood myth-machine at work on great romantic male stars, and on the
sometimes limp reality behind the macho mask. A model of how to make a movie book: it's well researched, well written, and
beautifully salts gossip with objective criticism.
Milne, Tom (ed) Godard on Godard (1972) 9 Collection of French director Jean Luc Godard's important reviews and articles
from the 1950s and 1960s.

Monaco, J. F. The New Wave: Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette (1976)

Also: How to Read a Film

Montagu, Ivor With Eisenstein in Hollywood (1963) Montagu—film-maker, zoologist, world class table-tennis player, self-
publicizing raconteur—accompanied Eisenstein and his Soviet colleagues during their often comically disastrous sojourn in
Hollywood. A self-regarding, funny book: Ninotchka, in a way, starts here. See Eisenstein; Septon.

Niven, David The Moon's a Balloon (1971)

By and large, Hollywood memoirs are little more than pimples on the bottom of literature. Of late, however, the form has
perked up considerably: the memoirs of Bogarde, Bacall, Maclaine and Love (qv)—and above all those of the urbanely
scurrilous Niven—should easily counter the (directors') view that actors are a species of cattle. Dinner-table anecdote, it's true
—but served as the driest of dry white wine. Also: Bring on the Empty Horses

Parrish, Robert Growing Up in Hollywood (1976)

Good, direct account of working in Hollywood by film editor and later director. Excellent on John Ford, in particular. Gossip,
but superior brand.

Perkins, V. F. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (1972)

Pickard, Roy The Hollywood Studios (1978)

Well, here it is, folks, Hollywood with the lid off and rarin' to go. It's a large, expensive and gossipy "history", full of names,
titles, apocryphal sayings and even the occasional fact. Fun for fans. Also: The Oscar Movies

Pudovkin, V. I. Film Technique and Film Acting(1958)

A classic study of the aesthetics of film (by one of the great Russian directors), somewhat more accessible than Eisenstein (qv).

Pye, M. and Myles, L. The Movie Generation: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (1979)
The coup d'etatwhen young men with beards and passion for movies moved in on Hollywood. But for how long will Coppola
(Apocalypse Now), Spielberg (Jaws), Lucas (Star Wars) et alresist becoming their own establishment? Watch for sequels:
coming soon.

Ramsaye, Terry A Million and One Nights (1926)

Partial and overcoloured, but still the best, most readable history of early American cinema.

Reisz, K. and Millar, G. The Technique of Film Editing (1953)

Standard work on this key facet of film making. Some sort of editing is important in all arts, but in none so crucial as cinema,
where the editor—often the director—can make the difference between nonsense and genius. Difficult; but for the committed
layman, a revelation.

Rhode, Eric A History of the Cinema (1976)

Rosenbaum, Jonathan, American, 1943- .

Movie Wars. Rec: Harvard

Rotha, P. and Griffith, R. The Film Till Now (1930) 0 An early classic of film scholarship; still worth reading. Regularly
updated. Also: Documentary Film (Rotha)

Sarris, Andrew The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-68(1968)

In this book Sarris presents an eloquent case for the so-called "auteur" theory, holding that the director and/or screen writer are
the true creators of the final product and that actors, even if stars, are decidedly secondary. (More recent studies by others have
tended to seek a mean between this theory and the earlier one that the star makes the movie.)

Scheuer, Steven (ed) Movies on TV(1958) 0 a *

Reliable critical guide (regularly updated) to 10,000 English-language films. Septon, Marie Sergei M. Eisenstein (1952)
Fat, authoritative biography (revised 1978). See Eisenstein; Montagu.
Shavelson, Melville How to Make a Jewish Movie (1971) A
A very funny book: the story of the making of Cast a Giant Shadow on location in Israel. Biopic of General "Mickey" Marcus,
who helped to win the 1948 war, starring those well-known Jewish actors Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner and John Wayne—plus
the entire population of Israel. Hollywood jokes, Jewish jokes, Israeli jokes—what a time they had.

Sklar, Robert Movie-made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (1975)

Engagingly written history attempts to show—what is only partly true—that just as America has shaped its movies, so movies
have shaped America. An interesting thesis, and relevant by extension to other nations and cultures as well.

Taylor, Robert Lewis W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (1950) Funny book about a funny man. Should be taken with a
ton of salt and read in conjunction with W. C. Fields by Himself(qv).

Thomson, David, English, 1941- .

A Biographical Dictionary of Film. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Truffaut, Francois, French, 1932-1984.

The Films in My Life. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Walker, Alexander The Shattered Silents (1978) & Blow-by-blow account of the coming of talkies, 1926-29. Exemplary
use of first-hand sources; a mine of information and a lively read. Also: Rudolph Valentino; Double Takes; Notes and
Afterthoughts on the Movies

Wesimore, F. and Davidson, M. The Westmores of Hollywood(1976) Who works quietly and unobtrusively behind every
Hollywood scene, sees everything, hears everything, says nothing—till now? The makeup man. There have been seven
Westmores (father and six sons), each heading the makeup department of a major studio. And what tales they have to tell!
Delicious gossip—and the makeup details are fascinating too.

Wolf, W. and L. Landmark Films (1979)

Brilliant critical analyses of thirty-four films (from The Birth of a Nation, 1915, to Seven Beauties, 1975), placing them in
historical and social context (eg Modern Times and the Depression; Deep Throatand the permissive 70s). Choice of films is
excellent; critical tone is serious but not ponderous; the book is challenging on film as a programmatic 20th-century art form.

Ziebold, Norman The Hollywood Tycoons (1969)

Amiably tart look at the men who made the movies: Mayer, Laemmle, Goldwyn, Selznick, Cohn, and a dozen more. If this was
fiction, who'd believe it?

CINEMA
Stanley Kauffmann

Film books in the English language were relatively scarce until around 1960 when the so-called Film Generation burst forth. To
accommodate this phenomenon, publishers began pouring out books. That generation's energy has decreased some-what as
serious consideration of film became less of a novelty and assumed a place in our lives more or less like that accorded older
arts. With that settling-down, publication of film books has also declined. The great wave of the 1960s and 1970s produced
predictably many inferior books, some of them catchpenny even in their arty pretentiousness, but some valuable works
appeared. Now that the very idea of a film literature is established, we can anticipate a steady flow of books - biographies,
histories, and criticism, which will always include the theoretical vogue of the moment. Since the cultivated person no longer
ignores the treasury of film that is part of our artistic legacy, such a person can increase his or her appreciation of that treasury
by judicious reading. Here are some primary suggestions.

On the screen man is no longer the focus of the drama, but will become eventually the centre of the universe.
Ai rn E BAZ1N

What is Cinema? (1967) by Andre Bazin and others. Exceptional perception and exceptional commitment to the artistic and
spiritual possibilities of film.
Bergman on Bergman (1973) by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manus, and Jonas Sima. Three Swedish film critics interview Ingmar
Bergman on his entire career to date. The result is more than a director's biography, it is the summation of a life in an.

Notes on Cinematography (1977) by Robert Bresson. A great director's wisdom, enlightening and, quite often, thrilling.
Film Form and Film Sense (1957) by Sergei Eisenstein. These two books, here in one volume, are cornerstone works in any
serious study of the subject.

The Movies as Medium (1970) edited by Lewis Jacobs. A highly useful conspectus of practical and aesthetic problems.
The Film Encyclopedia (1994) by Ephraim Katz. By far the best one-volume job. Imperfect, like all one-volume encyclopedias
on any subject, but still inexhaustibly useful.

American Film Criticism: From the Beginnings to Citizen Kane (1972) edited by Stanley Kauffmann and Bruce Henstell.
Reviews of significant American and foreign films at the time of their first appearance in the USA. A chronicle and a
commentary.

The Phantom Empire (1993) by Geoffrey O'Brien. A poetic exploration of our conscious and unconscious, our waking lives
and our dreams, after the first 100 years of film's existence.

Film History: An Introduction (1994) by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell. The best one-volume world history. See my
comments on Katz.

Stage to Screen (1949) by A Nicholas Vardac. A vivid account of the growth of the cinematic impulse through the 19th-century
popular theatre until the flowering of the film itself.
Food and Drink

The literature of food and drink is extensive, often excellent, and notable for its relaxed, unflurried tone: the rhythms of the
kitchen, the maturing pace of the cellar, blended in prose. This list includes technical manuals, historical and sociological
monographs, works of philosophy and even ethics—but all of them (perhaps because their subject is of universal interest,
universal experience) have an openhanded accessibility not present in the specialist literature of other subjects. Food and drink
may be complex matters; but they are also, these books tell us, first and foremost fun. Censors beware! Even Plato approved of
the "drinking-bout" as a social lubricant.
See HOME (Grieve)

Adams, Leon D. The Wines of America (1973) 0a

Comprehensive; erudite; readable. Adams is the "dean" of American wine writers.

Amerine, M. A. and Singleton, V. S. Wine: An Introduction for Atnericans (1965)

Something missing from English wine literature: the academic approach. An important reference book for serious students not
frightened by a drop or two of chemistry. Also: Table Wines: The Technology of Their Production; Wines: Their Sensory
Evaluation, etc

Apicius The Art of Cooking (1 st century AD)

Apicius was a millionaire gourmet at the time of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. His book is a complete guide to Roman cuisine,
with recipes for everything from omelettes to stuffed dormice, pancakes to pine-kernel soup. Good translation (with modern
quantities and equivalents, if you want to try recipes): Flower and Rosenbaum: The Roman Cookery Book (1958).

Arora, David, American, fl. 1979.

Mushrooms Demystified. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Ayrton, Elisabeth The Cookery of England (1974)

Fascinating overview of traditional English food, more scholarly than Hartley (qv), more practical than Wilson (qv). Attractive
recipes. Also: English Provincial Cooking

Beard, James Beard on Bread (1973) a

Excellent, thorough study of breadmaking, together with scores of recipes for different kinds of bread, by a famous US cook
whose corpulent figure and smile-wreathed face sell many books. Also: Beard's American Cookery; James Beard's Cookbook,
etc

Beck, Simone, French, 1904-1991.

Art of French Cooking. Rec: Boston PL

Beeton, Isabella The Book of Household Management

(1859-61) Oa*?
Probably the most influential British cookery book ever published. The huge 1906 edition is recommended above later ones,
more worthy but more dull.

Better Homes and Gardens The Heritage Cookbook (1975) *

A beautiful book about the history of America's culinary melting pot, with illustrations and over 700 recipes. From the Indians
who taught the early settlers how to plant and eat corn to the immigrants who brought their national foods; from how
Americans "made do" in the Depression to the bountiful tables of plenty, this is a rich delicious book.

Boxer, Arabella Garden Cookbook (1974)

Almost every available herb and vegetable tackled in a lovely collection of recipes emphasizing the infinite possibilities of
plants. Also: First Slice Your Cookbook; A Second Slice. See Conran; Lappe; Stobart; HOME (Grieve)

Bradford, Sarah The Englishman's Wine (1969)

Outstanding book on port, its history, nature and quality. Recently (1978) revised, updated and retitled The Story of Port.

Bramah, Edward Tea and Coffee (1972)

Thorough social history, from coffee-houses to vending machines. Where the plants are—and were—grown, harvested,
shipped, distributed. How the drinks were prepared and served in the past, and how best to serve them now. An enthusiast on
his passion: engaging, buttonholing style.

Brillat-Sayarin, Jean-Anthelme de The Physiology of Taste (1826) World-famous dissertation on gastronomy by non-
practising cook. Mouthwatering entertainment. Good translation by M. F. K. Fisher (qv).

Broadbent, Michael Wine Tasting/Enjoying/Understanding (1979)

Polished but never snobbish. Common sense in a tricky area.

Carrier, Robert Great Dishes of the World (1963) .1/ Cooking as show-biz. Carrier's sensuous delight in food is the book's
main charm. Also: The Robert Carrier Cookbook; Cooking for You; Entertaining

Chang, Kwang-Chih (ed) Food in Chinese Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives(1 977) 9
Scholarly, academic survey of one of the world's greatest cuisines. A long way from the barbecued spare ribs or the bland chop-
suey of the West See ARCHAEOLOGY

Child, Julia Julia Child and Company (1978) *

"Company recipes", drawn largely from the famous US television series by "the French chef" (Julia Child), all in her ineffable
style—if a chicken falls on the kitchen floor, pick it up, dust it off, and serve it all the same, but with great style and panache.
Also: Mastering the Art of French Cooking; The French Chef Cookbook, etc

Conran, T. and Krell, M. The Vegetable Book (1976)

Sensible book on how to grow and cook all manner of vegetables. See HOME

Crewe, Quentin Great Chefs of France (1978) A a* 5

Nobody remotely interested in food and cooking should miss this one. A dozen leading chefs are interviewed, and their style,
experience, specialities and creations examined. Recipes and kitchen advice included for those tempted to compete. Also:
International Pocket Food Book

David, Elizabeth French Provincial Cooking (1960) a Perhaps the most influential cookery book published in Britain since
World War II. Careful historical reference enlivened by anecdote and literary references and strengthened by clear personal
experience. Fine clear recipes, though timings and liquid contents are sometimes idiosyncratic. Also: Italian Food; English
Bread and Yeast Cookery; Summer Cooking, etc

David, Elizabeth, American, 1913-1992.

French Provincial Cooking. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Davidson, Alan Mediterranean Seafood (1972) 1$ a lir Catalogue of all edible Mediterranean fish, illustrated and
described with alternative names in up to eight languages. Splendid recipes. Also: North Atlantic Seafood

Duff, Gail The Vegetarian Cookbook (1978)*

Too many vegetarian cookery books are polemical or defensive tracts. This one isn't: it's a fat, matter-of-fact fact compendium
of tasty recipes. No fuss, no flab. Also: Fresh All the Year. See Boxer; Conran; Lappe; Stobart; HOME (Grieve)

Eekhof-Stork, Nancy The World Atlas of Cheese (1976)

Mouthwatering: not only a comprehensive introduction to a scholarly subject, but a gorgeous kitchen coffee-table book as well.

Escoffier, Auguste Ma Cuisine (1934) *

Escoffier (1847-1935), regarded as one of greatest chefs, worked for sixty-two years in the top hotels of London. In this book
he describes his dishes, creations and experience.

Evans, Len The Complete Book of Australian Wine (1973) Oa

Every country needs its Evans; only Australia has him.

Faith, Nicholas The Winemasters (1978)

A superb piece of reporting inspired by the Bordeaux scandal of 1973. It takes you further behind the scenes of the wine trade
than any other book. Farmer, Fannie The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (1896) The most influential cookbook in
American history started with directions on how to lay a fire, chop wood, bring in water—and other essentials of contemporary
New England life. The book is now in its 11th edition (1965), although it has latterly assumed running water in the kitchen. The
most recent reincarnation is Fannie Farmer's New Cookbook (1979), a complete update of all recipes and revamping of advice,
which lacks the true flavour but still gives sound nourishment.

Fisher, M. F. K. The Art of Eating (1954) *

Auden once wrote. "this is a book which Colette would have loved and wished she had written". Five of Fisher's books are
collected in one volume and include an eclectic collection of recipes as well as some of the tastiest writing on food in English.

Forbes, Patrick Champagne (1967)

Massive, exhaustive. Author after publication entered the trade, and became managing director of Moet Chandon, London.

Guerard, Michel Cuisine Minceur(1976) 0 * Top French chef is overweight; grated carrot makes him cry; so he evolves a
method of cooking which rejects fat and carbohydrates but embraces the discipline and style of haute cuisine. Result: a
fashionable classic, neither economical nor austere. Also: Cuisine Gourmande

Hartley, Dorothy Food in England (1954) i4i *_1

Social history, mainly through popular English food and recipes. Dating (of quotes and recipes), bibliography, index all
hopeless; but still an indispensable book. Also: The Countryin an's England; Water in England; The Land of England, etc

Hazan, Marcella The Classic Italian Cookbook (1978) a

Just what its title says: a thorough grounding in the arts of Italian cooking—and eating. Also: More Classic Italian Cooking

Herter, George Leonard, American, 1911- .

Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices (With Berthe Herter). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Hutchinson, Peggy Old English Cookery (1939)

Lovely, easygoing book; recipes and background preponderantly Yorkshire and the north of England. Also: Homemade Wine
Secrets

Jackson, Michael The World Guide to Beer (1977)

Jeffs, Julian Sherry (1961)

Meticulous; well-researched; authoritative. Also: The Little Dictionary of Drink; The Wines of Europe

Johnson, Hugh The World Atlas of Wine (1971) &Walk./

Magnificent, essential. Also: Wine; Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book. See
HOME

Lappe, Francis Moore Diet fora Small Planet (1971)&ad'

Ecological movements have inspired dozens of dull books; this one by contrast, sets out its case for high-protein, meatless food
with care and well-documented argument. Recipes are good, practical and often luscious. See Boxer; Conran; Stobart; HOME
(Grieve)

La Place, Viana, American, 1951- .

Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style. Rec: Utne

Leonard, Leah W. Jewish Cookery (1949) a .1(

Splendid 600-page collection of (very clear) recipes, ordered by meals of day, days of week, weeks of year. Ideal for beginners;
more experienced cooks will also want Florence Greenberg's Jewish Cookery Book (1947 ; 7th revised edition especially
recommended).

Lichine, Alexis Encyclopaedia of Wines and Spirits (1967) 0*

Formidable; essential. Latest edition, 1979. Also: The Wines of France

Montague, Prosper (ed) Larousse Gastronomique (1938) (Ia * 5 Outstanding alphabetical encyclopaedia of world food, drink
and everything to do with the kitchen, kitchen-garden or dining-room.

Murphy, B. The World Book of Whisky (1979)

Penning-Rowsell, Edmund The Wines of Bordeaux (1969)

Poupon, P. and Forgeot, P. The Wines of Burgundy (1952)

Ray, Elizabeth (ed) The Best of Eliz a Acton (1968)i*f Acton's Modern Cookery (1845) was one of the most important early
British cookery books, looted by her contemporaries and successors including Isabella Beeton (qv). This selection distils its
essence.

Roden, Claudia A Book of Middle Eastern Food (1968) 0a

More than 500 recipes, with variations, from Greece, Turkey, Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Morocco,
Tunisia, etc. Also: Coffee

Rombauer, I. S. and Becker, M. R. The Joy of Cooking (1931) One of the best-selling cookery books of all time, and
deservedly so. Organized by general categories of food preparation, with basic advice followed by specific recipes—mostly
good. Excellent for the beginner but also of value to experienced cooks as well, who appreciate its no-nonsense approach. If
you buy only one book, this should be it.

Rombauer, Irma, American, 1877-1962.

The Joy of Cooking. Rec: National Review NYPL

Shand, P. Morton A Book of French Wines (1928)

Grand tour of French wine in scholarly company, with enough personal opinion to be lively and provoking.

Simon, Andre L. The Noble Grapes and the Great Wines of France (1960) _I
One of the first "coffee-table" wine books, and also first to stress the importance of grape varieties. Also: Bottlescrew Days;
Table of Content, Dictionary of Gastronomy, etc

Soyer, Alexis The Pantropheon (1853)

Witty, well-annotated history of food and its preparation in ancient times. Not to be taken for gospel though: those who seek
scholarly facts see Tannahill. Also: The Gastronomic Regenerator

Stobart, Tom Herbs, Spices and Flavourings (1970) f%1/

Excellent reference book (for cooks, not botanists). Good on Indian, Far Eastern and Mediterranean ingredients. Also: The
Cook's Encyclopaedia. See HOME (Grieve)

Tannahill, Reay Food in History (1973)

Where Soyer (qv) goes in for chatty anecdote, Tannahill prefers anthropological, sociological, historical facts—authoritative,
and no less fun. She also gives recipes, and her notes and bibliography are outstanding. Also: The Fine Art of Food. See SEX

Veronelli, Luigi Catalog° dei Vini d'Italia (1972)

Veronelli is the most respected, authoritative wine writer in Italy. In Italian, but its charts and quality guides are clear and
understandable.

Warner, Allen H. A History of Wine (1956)

Interesting glimpse into the manners and methods of the past.
Wilson, Constance Anne Food and Drink in Britain (1973) * 1/ Superb history of British cookery, its ingredients, the social
circumstances under which it developed.
Geography and the Environment

Geography is a definitive and descriptive discipline, with procedures as precise and objective as those of any other science, and
a specialist literature to match. But it is also, in its critical and speculative form, of crucial relevance to our whole view of the
world around us—a wide subject, shading into anthropology, history, politics and sociology. This aspect (concern for our world
and what we make of it) is of urgent interest today—and this list, therefore, includes books on the "new" geography as well as
those reflecting the older, more segmented scientific discipline.
See ARCHITECTURE (Clifton-Taylor, Giedion, Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mumford, Newman, Venturi); MATHEMATICS
(Moore, R., Pough); NATURAL HISTORY (Dorst, Huth, Sears); OCCULT (Jenkins); SOCIOLOGY (Raban, Willmott)

Abrams, C. Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World (1964) Searching examination of housing problems in the
Third World; pulls no punches.

Arvill, R. Man and Environment: Crisis and the Strategy of Choice (1967) 9 I'

Baker, J. N. L. A History of Geographical Discovery and Exploration (1937)

Essential work for anyone interested in the geographical ideas of people of other ages. This excellent book can replace many
more specialized tomes; its bibliography points to some of them.

Banfield, Edward C., American, 1916-1999.

The Unheavenly City. Rec: National Review

Banham, Reyner, English, 1922-1988.

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Barry, R. G. and Chorley, R. J. Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (1972)

Berry. B. J. L. The Human Consequences of Urbanization (1973) Global survey, highlighting the contrast in experience
between Western and Third Worlds. See ARCHITECTURE (Mumford)

Burton, I. The Environment as Hazard(1978)

The environment is often no kinder to man than man to the environment, and its dangers and threats must be analysed in terms
of our perception of them: that is, they must be monitored and forecast, if we are to plan relief and reconstruction. Difficult but
important book.

Carson, Rachel Silent Spring (1962) 1ilOa..0

One of the first and most influential works written on the pollution of the natural landscape by man's activities ("DDT equals
RIP"); the basic thesis is still of crucial relevance. For up-to-date assessment, see F. Graham: Since Silent Spring (1970). See
NATURAL HISTORY (Durst)

Carson, Rachel, American, 1907-1964.

Silent Spring. Rec: Boston PL LAT ML Nonfiction National Review NYPL Utne

Chisholm, Michael Human Geography: Evolution or Revolution? (1975) Pa

Concise summary: population, settlement and the use of natural resources. Chorley, R. J. and Haggett, P. Models in Geography
(1967)

Cole, J. P. A Geography of World Affairs (1979) Oa World "political geography" showing the distributional aspects of man's
political activity and the constraints of location and environment.

Cronon, William, American, 1954- .

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Davies, W. K. D. The Conceptual Revolution in Geography (1972) a Excellent essays on new directions in geography.

Dillard, Annie, American, 1945- .

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Fisher, C. A. South East Asia (1964)

Forde, C. Daryll Habitat, Economy and Society (1934) Oa

Classic account of the interplay of environmental and social factors in simple cultures—those of food gatherers and hunters,
herdsmen and farmers.

Freeman, T. W. A Hundred Years of Geography (1961) ✓

Readable account of the main contributions and contributors in the field.

Fuller, R. Buckminster, American, 1895-1983.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Rec: LAT

Guttman, Jean Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States (1961)
Classic study helped to popularize a new word as well as a new idea—that it was, or shortly would be, but one city all the way
from Portland, Maine, to Newport News, Virginia. See Tunnard.

Gould, P. and White, R. Mental Maps (1974) P./

Landmark study in geography-by-perception, argues that what we think is there is often more significant than what actually is.

Haggett, Peter Geography: A Modern Synthesis (1972) P

Comprehensive coverage of the new ideas of the 1960s.

Hall, Peter Urban and Regional Planning(1974)

Systematic account, with historical introduction, of planning, particularly in Britain and America. Also: World Cities

Hartshorne, Richard Perspective on the Nature of Geography (1959) Concise and readable account of the classical
idiographic and regional approach (temporarily?) set aside by contemporary ideas. Highly recommended.

Harvey, David Explanation in Geography (1969) 1$

One of the first and still the best account of the positivist approach to human geography. Also: Social Justice and the City
(influential, self-conscious account of his personal swing to the academic left)

Hoskins, W. G. The Making of the English Landscape (1955) A a!

Fascinating account of how man's activities over the centuries have created the English landscape of today. Later publication
English Landscapes (1975) is more profusely illustrated, but this book has more meat. Thomas (qv) provides a wider view of
the same subject.

Jacobs, Jane The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) Non-statistical, common-sense approach to urban problems
and planning; the author believes that living in cities should be fun—and can be again, given the right approach. See Morgan;
ARCHITECTURE (Banham)

James, E. Preston All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas (1972) P Jordan, Terry The European Culture Area
(1973)
Systematic approach to the human geography of Western Europe; emphasis on demographic, economic and cultural elements.

Kasperson, R. K. and Minghi, J. V. (eds) The Structure of Political Geography (1970) OP 4

Storehouse of many of the most important contributions to political geography since classical times. Updated second edition
needed: but indispensable.

King, L. C. Morphology of the Earth (1967)

It is probably an impossible task to write a concise survey of the land features of the entire earth, but King's valiant attempt
makes a worthy start.

Leavitt, Helen, American, 1932- .

Superhighway-Super Hoax. Rec: NYPL (geography)
Written in 1970, this book is about how the interstate highway system grew out of all proportion to its original purpose and is
strangling the country with concrete and traffic jams.
Leopold, Aldo, American, 1913-1983.
A Sand County Almanac. Rec: NYPL
It is considered to be a landmark book in the conservation movement, describing the lands around Leopold's home in Sauk
County, Wisconsin, and his thoughts on developing a 'Land Ethic'.

Manners, Gerald The Geography of Energy (1971)

Excellent, short survey of the whole field of energy and policy-making.

Morgan, Elaine Falling Apart: The Rise and Decline of Urban Civilization (1976)
English equivalent of Jacobs (qv); but more entertaining and of wider scope.

Næss, Arne, Norwegian, 1912- .

Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Nicholson, Max The Environmental Revolution (1969)

Important text heralded new concern with quality of environment; couched in general terms, but nevertheless acute.

Pahl, R. E. Patterns of Urban Life (1970)

Lively discussion of some of the basic problems of urban geography and sociology.

Paterson, J. H. North America (1979)

Patmore, J. A. Land and Leisure (1977)

Looks at the demands being made on environmental resources by increasing leisure.

Reisner, Marc, American, 1948-2000.

Cadillac Desert: the American West and its Disappearing Water. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Sauer, Carl O. Agricultural Origins and Dispersals: The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs (1.952)
Lively, challenging book, worldwide in scope, on the overlap of geology with anthropology, history and archaeology.

Scientific American Cities: Their Origin, Growth and Human Impact (1973)
Succinct essays on city origins, health, transport, squatting, etc.

Simmons, I. G. The Ecology of Natural Resources (1974)

Comprehensive look at all the resources in the environment. Deals not only with the ecological implications of use, but also
with the way in which resources are regarded by society.

Stamp, Dudley Britain's Structure and Scenery (1946)

The way in which the geological structure of the country has contributed to the landscape. A fascinating complement to
Hoskins' (qv) account of human influence on the environment.

Stein, Gertrude, American, 1874-1946.

The Geographical History of America. Rec: Bloom
The Geographical History of America is a culminating work... the stylized presentation of the process of meditation itself, with
many critical asides. It demonstrates far more than it proves, and although it is in no sense a volume of philosophy (Gertrude
Stein never 'argues' anything), it is, philosophically, the most important of her texts." -- William H. Gass

Thomas, W. L. (ed) Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (1956)
Essays on the interaction of culture and environment. Book covers immense historical and regional field. See Hoskins.

Tunnard, C. and Pnshkarev, B. Man-Made America: Chaos or Control (1963)

Apprehensive lest America (and then the world) becomes nothing more than one sprawling uncontrollable megalopolis, the
authors suggest controlled design of the artefacts with which man shapes his environment—from suburbs, commercial and
recreation areas to historic sites and the roads and freeways which link them all. See Gottman.

Ward, Barbara The Home of Man (1976)

Comprehensive look at the problems of human settlements in an over-populated world. Also: Spaceship Earth
Watts, David Principles of Biogeography (1971) if
This book, already a standard text, supersedes the great old (1936) Plan t and Animal Geography of M. I. Newbigin.

Williams, Terry Tempest, American, 1955- .

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Rec: Counterpunch NF

GEOGRAPHY
Simon Ross

Geography is all around us, whether it be the built world of cities, motorways, and industry or the natural world of deserts,
beaches, and tropical forests. With the recent growth of the environmental movement and concerns about global poverty and
famine, natural disasters and climate change, geography has become much more issue-based than it used to be, although it still
retains the important qualities of inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and sheer wonder and excitement which are at the heart of
geographical study. The Earth is a fascinating, diverse, yet very vulnerable and fragile place and only through the careful
understanding and management of its peoples and resources will it retain its character and support the generations to come.
This is the very essence of geography and it therefore comes as no surprise that the subject has witnessed a tremendous boom
in popularity and status in both school and university.

My journey around the world gave me a sense of global scale, of the size and
variety of this great planet, and of the relation of one country and one culture to
another which few people experience and many ought to.
MICHAEL PALIN

The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management (1985; new edition 1994) by Norman Myers. There are many atlases and reference
books on the market today but there are few that are as informative and lavishly illustrated as this. It is intelligent and thought-
provoking and there are many excellent thematic maps and colour photographs. It is divided into several sections including the
land, the oceans, the elements, evolution, and civilization. I strongly recommend this book for all those with an interest and
concern for the issues affecting the future of our planet.

Around the World in 80 Days (1989) by Michael Palin. An extremely readable, amusing, and, in places, poignant account of
the author's attempt to follow in the foot-steps of Phileas Fogg. Superbly illustrated and divided into bite-size pieces, it makes
an excellent escapist's bedtime read for dark winter nights.

Quest for Adventure (1981) by Chris Bonington. This wonderful book, dedicated to some of the world's greatest adventurers,
is superbly written and well illustrated. It trans-ports the reader into territories that the ordinary person can only dream about
and sets the imagination racing. Among the adventures described are the Kon-Tiki voyage, the flight of Apollo 11, the scaling
of Mount Everest, and the crossing of Antarctica.

Maps and Map-Makers (1987) by R V Tooley. Maps have always been at the heart of geography and they are also extremely
collectable antiques, being attractive to look at and holding their value well. This book forms an excellent introduction to maps
and the cartographers that painstakingly produced them and it will probably whet the appetite for seeking out some originals in
second-hand bookshops.

How to Shit in the Woods (1989) by Kathleen Meyer, This is an extremely amusing paperback which will bring a wry smile to
all those who have been camping or back-packing in the bush. There is, however, a serious side to this American book: `No
longer can we drink even a drop [of mountain water] before purifying it without running the risk of getting sick.'

Restless Earth (1972) by Nigel Calder. This book represented something of a land-mark in being one of the fast general
readers (it accompanied a television series) to examine the role of the newly forming concept of plate tectonics in accounting
for the major physical features of the Earth's surface. It is superbly illustrated and is still highly regarded today.

Human Geography: Evolution or Revolution? (1975) by Michael Chisholm. In the 1960s and 1970s there were a number of
important developments and innovations in the nature of geography and Professor Michael Chisholm attempted to make some
sense of the changes. `The primary purpose in writing is to convey an account of the direction and purpose of recent changes in
human geography as conceived by some-one fairly close to the scene.' Chisholm's book is a fascinating read for it traces the
history of the subject to the mid-1970s and attempts to look ahead into what was then regarded as a very uncertain future.

Discovering Landscape (1985) by Andrew Goudie and Rita Gardner. This book aims to 'discover and try to explain some of
the most appealing features of the natural landscape'. It is a splendid book for all those with an inquisitive mind who want to
know a bit more about the history and geology of well-known British sites such as Helvellyn, Lulworth Cove, and Cheddar
Gorge.

Disasters (1980) by John Whittow. This fascinating book looks at the causes and effects of the major natural hazards such as
earthquakes, landslides, and floods, writ-ten by a very well-respected author. It contains some amazing and often chilling eye-
witness accounts.

Geology and Scenery in England and Wales (1971) by A E Trueman. For those with an interest in the geological
development of particular landscapes in England and Wales such as the West Country moors, the Cotswolds, or the Lake
District, this is a must for it is both informative and highly readable.

Inside the Third World (1979) by Paul Harrison. This powerful and thought-provoking book is highly recommended for all
those who have an interest in the Third World. As a freelance journalist Paul Harrison travelled extensively, particularly in
Africa, and this book describes his many experiences in the general field of development. It contains some marvellous and
often highly moving descriptive passages of landscapes and people.
History

History is an important branch of belles lettres, offering a writer the combined attractions of freedom of interpretation and a
supposedly factual armature. When the balance between these elements is right, the results for the reader can be thrilling and
compelling—for by taking in the parcelled past we take in something of ourselves as well. History cannot teach us prescriptive
lessons about action, since each conjunction of character and circumstance is unique; its function is rather a moral one, offering
us a mirror in which to see ourselves. To do this, we need a clear presentation of the facts combined with a critical overview
which takes account of the writer's and reader's present as well as of the delineated past. The books in this list (a necessarily
brief selection with no attempt at chronological completeness) have been chosen for just these qualities—and because, in many
cases, they offer the pleasures of wit and style as well.

Bloch, Marc, French, 1886-1944.

The Historian's Craft. Rec: TLS

Febvre, Lucien, French, 1878-1956.

The Struggle for History. Rec: TLS (history)

American History
There are two notable characteristics of these books—perhaps they reflect characteristics of the American nation at large. The
first is an urgent, philosophical, ideological approach to the creation of a just society; the second is a powerful antithesis
between town and country, with its corollary, a species of romantic nostalgia for rural innocence.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Agee); ARCHAEOLOGY (Hume); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Adams, Franklin. Grant, Malcolm X,
Miller): BIOGRAPHY (Flexner, Freeman, Parkman, Sandburg, Van Doren, Wall); DIARIES (Lincoln); FEMINISM (Flexner);
HISTORY/ASIAN (Fitzgerald); POLITICS (Acheson. Piven. Woodward. B.. Woodward, C. Vann): SOCIOLOGY (Lewis,
Lynd, Riesman)
Aaron, Daniel Men of Good Hope: A Story of American Progressives (1950)
Graceful biographical essays on assorted radicals, reformers and utopians (Henry George, Thorstein Veblen, Teddy Roosevelt,
etc) by a literary historian with no discernible axe to erind. Also: Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary
Communism; The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War

Adams, Henry History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (4 vols, 1889-
91)
Comparable in every respect to Macaulay's great Whig history of England in the later 17th century, this is possibly the best
single work by an American historian. Its vast scope is too much for many people; the fascinating first six chapters of volume I
are separately collected in The United States in 1800. Also: The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; HISTORY/BRITISH (Macaulay); RELIGION

Aztecs, Aztecs (Mexico), 12th-15th C.

Works on the Aztecs. (See also Broken Spears) Rec: Ward

Bailyn, Bernard Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967)

Stresses the role of ideas—about constitutionalism and corruptions thereof—in both Britain and pre-Revolutionary America.
Also: New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century; The Origins of American Politics, etc

Beard. C., M. and W. The Beards' New Basic History of the United States (1960) it a Beards'-eye view of North
American history, from the arrival of the Norsemen in the 11th century to the launching of the first US spy satellite in 1960.
Quick-moving, sometimes glib (and a settlers' view: indigenous Americans systematically ignored); but a useful general
perspective of the flow of events.

Berger, Raoul Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (1973) To many observers, the events culminating in the
impeachment of Richard M. Nixon are some of the most crucial in American post-war constitutional history. This book (date of
publication uncannily apt) is a judicious examination of the historical and legal issues. Also: Executive Privilege: A
Constitutional Myth

Black Elk, Native American, 1863-1950.

Black Elk Speaks (With William G. Neihardt (1881-1973)). Rec: Counterpunch Trans Hungry Mind Utne (history)
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans (3 vols, 1958- 73)
This trilogy ( The Colonial Experience; The National Experience; The Democratic Experience) has little in common with the
usual plodding textbook. Boorstin celebrates American vitality, adaptability and know-how. Lively, affectionate tribute to the
American dream made flesh. Also: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson; The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America

Boorstin, Daniel, American, 1914-2004.

The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream. Rec: LAT

Bridenbaugh, Carl The Beginnings of the American People: Vexed and Troubled Englishmen. 1590- 1642(1968)
Brilliant portraits of life in late Tudor and Stuart England, with emphasis on the reasons—economic, religious, political—why
emigration to North America became a powerfully attractive prospect. Also: Mitre and Sceptre, etc

Brown, Dee Alexander, American, 1908-2002.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. Rec: NYPL (history)

Various authors, Aztecs (Mexico), 1519 ff..

Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Ed. by Miguel León-Portillo). Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Brown, Dee Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971) * The near-annihilation of the American Indian. A shaming
book: white behaviour depicted as almost uniformly dark. Also: Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow

Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South (1941)

Earnest revealing study by a Southern newspaperman of the narrow, twisted mind (as he saw it) of his beloved region. The
South Cash described is now largely gone, but many still remember it—with more pain than pleasure.

Catton, Bruce This Hallowed Ground (1956)

American Civil War from the North (Union) side. Style sometimes purplish; interpretations sometimes superficial; but steeped
in period, readable, often memorable. See Wilson for literary images from the Civil War. Also: The Coming Fury; Terrible
Swift Sword: Never Call Retreat

Chernow, Ron, American, 1949- .

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Finance. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Cockburn, Andrew, American, 1947- .

The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Coleman, Terry Passage to America (1972)

In the second half of the 19th century, over two million ordinary British people embarked on a journey as terrifying and
unpredictable as any traveller's to Cathay or Arabia Deserta: from the slums and famine of Ireland and northern England they
took ship for America. Swindled, robbed, plundered by diseases, insulted and terrorized, they eventually arrived. This book
describes their incredible journey, mainly in the words of contemporary documents.

Commager, Henry Steele Britain through American Eyes (1974) i * Acerbic anthology of American reactions to the mother
country from 1778 to 1948. What an arrogant, stuffy lot the British were! Also: The American Mind

Demos, John A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (1970)

17th-century Puritans, the history of the family.

De Voto, Bernard Across the Wide Missouri (1947)

De Voto was a popular historian of many facets of American life, but especially good about the West. Also: The Course of
Empire

Dewey, John Democracy and Education (1916)

Dewey was one of America's most respected philosophers; this book was perhaps his most influential. Richly thought-
provoking, it enunciates propositions that have since become dogmas. See PHILOSOPHY

Douglass, Frederick, American, ca. 1817-1895 .

My Bondage and My Freedom. Rec: Good Reading
Selected Essays. Rec: SJC
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Rec: Bloom Rexmo
The Constitution and Slavery. Rec: SJC

Fischer, David H. Growing Old in America (1977)

The young country is growing old. Ingenious, personal and polemical theories on the transition from gerontocracy, via
filiocracy to senility. No solutions. Also: The Revolution of American Conservatism; Historians' Fallacies

Foote, Shelby, American, 1916- .

The Civil War. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind (1971) White attitudes—callous, condescending, sometimes
philanthropic, occasionally admirable—to black Americans, 1814-1917. Written in excellent clean prose. See Genovese;
Jordan.

Genovese, Eugene Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1975) 1$
Huge, imaginative study not of what was done for or to slaves but of their own efforts to preserve sanity and dignity, and of
slaveowners who were not always monsters. Also: The World the Slaveholders Made. See Fredrickson; Jordan.

Genovese, Eugene D., American, 1930- .

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Rec: National Review

George, Henry Progress and Poverty (1879)

A fine book about the perennial conflict between rich and poor, this famous work proposed a method of resolving all economic
problems—so-called "single tax"—and led to Single Tax candidates all over the country for a generation. See Aaron.

Halberstam, D. The Best and the Brightest (1972)

Power in America: how the best and brightest brains were called to be knights in JFK's Camelot, and how their light sputtered
out in the mud and slime of the Vietnam War. Halberstam's scalpel prose and clear-eyed conscience (especially on US
involvement in Asia) make him one of the most readable, as well as one of the sharpest, commentators on US affairs. See
MEDIA

Haley, Alex, American, 1921-1992.

(See also X, Malcolm)
Roots. Rec: Boston PL Hungry Mind

Handlin, Oscar The Uprooted (1951)

Excellent book on the American immigrant, that maker of a civilization who has latterly come in for so much study. Handlin is
a sympathetic and dependable observer; his story is compelling. See Coleman.

Hartz, Louis The Liberal Tradition in America (1955)

Ingenious development of an appealingly simple thesis: that the US, being a post-feudal creation, has lacked both the pain and
the profundity of older, European nations. Also: The Founding of New Societies

Higham, John Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860- 1925 (1955)
Dispassionate analysis of the resentments and misgivings of native-born Americans in the face of large-scale immigration.

Hofstadter, Richard The Age of Reform from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955)

Hofstadter was one of the most gifted American historians of the
century—elegant in style, broad in scope, able to borrow from other disciplines without going overboard. This book, an
analysis of Populists and Progressives up to New Dealers, is characteristically clear and crisp. Also: The American Political
Tradition; Anti-Intellectualism in American Life; The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington, etc

Howe, Irving The Immigrant Jews of New York, 1880-1922 (1976)

Also: The American Communist Party (with Lewis Coser); Steady Work; World of Our Fathers. See Handlin.
Jones, Howard Mmnford 0 Strange New World: American Culture, the Formative Years (1964) 0 Wide-ranging, rambling,
stimulating discussion of the New World's image, or images, from Columbus to the early 19th century. Also: The Age of
Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865 —1915
Jones, Maldwyn Destination America (1976)
Concise, expert account of "push and pull" factors that induced so many millions to leave their own land and come to the US.
Also: American Immigration. See Bridenbaugh; Coleman; Handlin.

Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black (1968) 0P

How Americans, absorbing some of the assumptions of Europe, came to visualize black peoples of the past as—variously—
innocent and depraved, docile and dangerous, human and subhuman, in need of civilizing yet incapable of passing beyond
savagery. An erudite, perceptive book. (Compare Fiedler: Life and Death in the American Novel.) See Fredrickson; Genovese.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Indian Heritage of America (1968) * 1 f Comprehensive survey of the Indian cultures of North and
South America; brief, savage final chapters on the arrival of the whites. Essential background to Brown (qv). See
MYTHOLOGY (Burland)

Kammen, Michael People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (1972) * f Kammen, a
colonial historian, argues that from the outset the Americans were confronted with dual systems of authority and belief—those
of the Old World and the New. He carries the theme toward our own time, maintaining that Americans have become addicted to
dualisms. Witty, resourceful and provocative. Also: A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics and the American
Revolution; A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination

Kennedy, John F., American, 1917-1963.

Profiles in Courage. Rec: LAT

King, Martin Luther, Jr., American, 1929-1968.

Why We Can't Wait. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Kofsky, Frank, American, 1935-1997.

Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Kolko, Gabriel Main Currents in Modern American History (1976) 9* Occasionally doctrinaire, but very good on class,
economic structure and foreign policy since about 1870. Also: The Triumph of Conservatism. 1900-1916; Railroads and
Regulation, 1877-1916

Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1890- 1920(1965)
Also: Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism. See FEMINISM (Flexner)

Lasch, Christopher The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963 (1965)

Opinionated assessments of various opinionated Americans, from Jane Addams and Randolph Bourne to Norman Mailer. Also:
The Agony of the American Left; Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged

Le Sueur, Meridel, American, 1900-1996.

North Star Country (history of Minnesota). Rec: Counterpunch NF

McCullough, David, American, 1933- .

The Great Bridge. Rec: ML Nonfiction (history)

McNaught, K. The History of Canada (1970)

McPherson, James M., American, 1936- .

Battle Cry of Freedom. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

Mencken, H. L. The American Language (1936)

Serious, thorough study by the enfant terrible of US journalism of the language that he loved and studied all his life. Nothing
escaped his quick eye and ear and all of it is here.

Mencken, H. L., American, 1880-1956.

The American Language. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Meyers, Marvin The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (1957) Political rhetoric, economic and reformist ideas,
Tocqueville, the social novels of James Fenimore Cooper—out of such materials Meyers evokes the mood of mid-19th-century
USA.

Miller, Perry The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953) 0 9*
Miller did as much as anyone to rescue Puritanism from the caricatures of Mencken and others. A historian of ideas, he
revealed the power and profundity of Puritan theology—and in this book, the retreat of the Church (up to about 1730) in the
face of New England secularism. Also: The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century; Errand into the Wilderness: The
Life of the Mind in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War, etc

Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (1958)
Economical, vivid biography of the Suffolk gentleman-lawyer and Puritan churchman who sailed for the New World in 1630 to
become the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Also: The Stamp Act Crisis; The Puritan Family Morison, S. E.
Oxford History of the American People (1965) Controversial, idiosyncratic, fascinating history of America by the dean of New
England historians. One of the two or three best single-volume histories—much more fun than Beard's (qv) for example. See
BIOGRAPHY; TRAVEL

Morison, Samuel Eliot, American, 1887-1976.

The Oxford History of the American People. Rec: Fadiman 3

Morris, Edmund, American, 1940- .

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Rec: ML Nonfiction

New York Times (publisher), American, Pub. 1971.

The Pentagon Papers (Investigative reporting by Neil Sheehan et al.). Rec: LAT

Parkman, Francis The Oregon Trail (1847)

Parkman, a frail Harvard graduate, followed the track of Lewis and Clark and in the process became a man—and a great
historian. Also: The Conspiracy of Pontiac, etc. See BIOGRAPHY; TRAVEL (Lewis)

Parkman, Francis, American, 1823-1893.

France and England in North America. Rec: Bloom Rexmo
The California and Oregon Trail. Rec: Bloom

Parrington, Vernon Louis, American, 1871-1929.

Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920. Rec: National
Review

Peterson, Merrill The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960) This book traces the ups and downs of the great man's
reputation since his death in 1826.

Philby, Kim, English, 1912-1988.

My Silent War. Rec: Counterpunch NF (history – cia)

Washington Post (publisher), American, Pub. 1974.

The Presidential Transcripts (Ed. By Carl Bernstein, et al.). Rec: LAT

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Imperial Presidency (1973) 9 Tends to blame Republican incumbents for creating the
"runaway" presidency, and to be kinder to Democrats. Yet abundantly documented, lucid and incisive. Also: The Age of
Jackson; The Age of Roosevelt; Robert Kennedy and His Times

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., American, 1917- .

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Rec: LAT
The Age of Jackson. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Sheehan, Neil, American, 1936- .

A Bright Shining Lie. Rec: ML Nonfiction (history – Vietnam)

Sinclair, Andrew Prohibition: The Era of Excess (1962) _I/

High-spirited, boldly argued social history held together by a clear thesis: that rural and small-town America has kept on
fighting last-ditch battles against the city slickers. Also: The Betted-fait The Emancipation of American Women Slotkin,
Richard Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600– 1860 (1973)
The rich and complex function of the American wilderness in the European and then the American imagination: solitude,
savagery (noble and ignoble), Davy Crocketts and Daniel Boones. Eloquent, analytical follow-up to the work of Turner (qv);
especially interesting to read in conjunction with Thoreau's Walden. See Smith.

Smith, Henry Nash Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950) *
Still one of the best attempts to portray America, and the West in particular, as a state of mind or set of ideas (a passage to
India, a desert, a land for farmers, a back-drop for dime-novel heroics). Excellent use of imaginative literature. See Slotkin;
Turner.

Smith, Page, American, 1917- .

A People's History of the United States. Rec: Fadiman 3 (history)

Tarbell, Ida, American, 1857-1944.

The History of the Standard Oil Company. Rec: Boston PL Counterpunch NF

Thompson, Hunter S., American, 1937-2005.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Rec: LAT
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Turner, Frederick Jackson The Frontier in American History (1920) 4*

The key essay in this collection, "The Significance of the Frontier", dates back to 1893. It brought fame to Turner and started
off decades of argument as to whether—Turner's argument—American democracy was truly and wholly a product of the
frontier West. See Slotkin; Smith.

Turner, Frederick Jackson, American, 1861-1932.

The Frontier in American History. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Twain, Mark Life on the Mississippi (1883)*

There are those, not a few, who feel this was Twain's greatest book. Trenchant, uproarious revelations of the American
character—a wise and marvellous book. See FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HUMOUR; TRAVEL

Valentine, Douglas, American, 1949- .

The Phoenix Program. Rec: Counterpunch NF (history – Vietnam)

Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese, 1912- .

How We Won the War. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Williams, William Appleman, American, 1921-1990.

The Contours of American History. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Wilson, Edmund Patriotic Gore (1962) dti *

Literary history in Wilson's special vein: relaxed, ruminative; good on personality as well as on style and social context.
Essays, beginning with "Uncle Tom's Cabin", on North-South antagonism, the Civil War and its aftermath. Also: The Triple
Thinkers; The Shock of Recognition; The American Earthquake, etc. See DIARIES; LITERARY CRITICISM; POLITICS

Woodward, C. Vann Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (1938)

Watson was a Georgia demagogue, veering between sincere radicalism and the politics of resentment. Splendid introduction to
the Dixie mentality. Also: Reunion and Reaction; The Compromise of 1877. See POLITICS

Worster, Donald, American, 1941- .

Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Zinn, Howard, American, 1922- .

A People's History of the United States. Rec: Harvard Utne
Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn, whose historical work centers on the history of the colonies, the American Revolution and the Anglo-
American world in the preindustrial era, is the Adams University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Charles
Warren Center for Studies in American History. He has written extensively in his field and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
1968 for The Ideological Origin of the American Revolution. He has taught at Harvard since 1949.

Wonderful books to read:

David Thomson. Woodbrook (1974). New York: Irish Book Center, 1981. (Pb)
A profoundly moving memoir of a young English historian's love affair with Ireland and with his young Irish tutee. It is a
perfect merging of personal experience and historical awareness, beautifully written. It explains the Anglo-Irish tragedy better
than any book I know, and shows history to be a living force.

Thomas Mann. Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkahn, as Told by a Friend (1947).
H. T. Lowe-Porter, trans. New York: Random House, 1971.
A brilliant commentary, in fictional form, on German culture—its great achievements and deadly disease. Beyond all the
learning and speculation in the book, it is wonderfully inventive, simply as fiction.

Ernest Jones. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953-57). 3 vols. New York: Basic Books, 1961. (Pb)
I read this as something of a morality tale of the heroic achievements of one of the most creative minds in the history of
Western culture. It is told as a triumph of sheer genius and creativity over all sorts of adversity. And it happens to be true.

William Faulkner. Absalom! Absalom! (1936). New York: Random House, 1972. (Pb)
This dark, multigenerational saga of Southern life, woven in an elaborate narrative structure, swept me along by its wildly
imaginative storytelling. And then I discovered that there are real historical models for most of the major figures, especially the
mysterious Colonel Sutpen. It is soaring fiction and weirdly perceptive history at the same time.

William Trevor. The Stories of William Trevor. New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
These are the best contemporary short stories I know: deadly bullets, all of them, piercing some sensitive area of common
experience.

Trevor, William, Irish, 1928- .

The Love Department. Rec: Ward
The Children of Dynmouth. Rec: Ward

Virginia Woolf. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Nigel Nicolson, ed. 6 vols. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 197580.
The sheer verbal skill in these dashed-off letters is superb —and they are marvelously perceptive and penetrating. So are her
Diaries.

Alan Brinkley

Alan Brinkley is the Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History at Harvard, specializing in twentieth-century
American history. His attention focuses on the Depression, the Neu) Deal, and the American South, His work Voices of Protest:
Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression won the American Book Award in 1982. He will soon publish The
Transformation of New Deal Liberalism.

William Faulkner. Absalom! Absalom! (1936). New York: Random House, 1972. (Pb)
When I try to think of books that have given me particular pleasure and that have affected me in particularly important ways, I
think first of William Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! (1936), which I have always considered one of the greatest of all
American novels, a work I've read and reread with constantly increasing admiration. Long before I became a historian, I loved
this book for its remarkable depth and complexity and its enormous passion and excitement. Eventually, however, I came to see
in this novel some compelling justifications for my own interest in the past. It succeeds better than any work I know in
revealing how history can operate as a living force in the lives of men and women.

Robert Penn Warren. All the King's Men (1946). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
For many of the same reasons, I'm greatly attached to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. It's a novel principally
concerned with individuals and their pasts; and it too reveals how history defines (and often burdens) us in dealing with the
present. But it's also a novel about politics, and few works of literature convey as clearly the elemental forces that politics can
at times unleash.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Pb)
For somewhat different reasons, I think of Huckleberry Finn, the greatest of Twain's works and in my opinion the greatest
American literary achievement of its, and perhaps any, era. Huckleberry Finn reveals more about nineteenth-century America
than any work I know. And yet it also displays a moral sensibility that resonates clearly with the values and beliefs of our own
era.

George F. Kennan. Memoirs (1967). 2 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1983.

George Kennan's Memoirs, especially the first volume (1925-1950), have always seemed to me a work of special importance.
It's an account of an indisputably important public life, and yet it reveals as well the private world of a man of enormous
sensitivity and reflectiveness. I know of few pictures of the public world so deftly and contemplatively drawn.

Richard Hofstadter. The Age of Reform; From Bryan to F.D.R. New York: Knopf, 1955.
Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform is a work with which I for the most part profoundly disagree. But it has also always
been a model to me of literate, bold, and imaginative historical inquiry. It's a reminder to professional historians of how
scholarship can move beyond the narrow, specialized bounds we impose on ourselves and make itself of interest and
importance to a larger world.

Graham Swift. Waterland: A Novel (1983). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.
Among very recent works, I'm particularly fond of Waterland, a novel by a young English writer named Graham Swift. Like
Absalom! Absalom! and All the King's Men, Waterland is not only a "story," but a "history," an exploration of how families
struggle with the burdens of their own pasts. It's also a wonderfully entertaining and absorbing mystery of great sophistication
and complexity.

John R. Stilgoe

Author of Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845, Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene and a
forthcoming book on American suburbs, John R. Stilgoe teaches the analysis of landscapes at Harvard's Graduate School of
Design. He farms as an avocation.

These five books introduce five scales of space—from the Mediterranean basin to an obscure New England farm—and offer a
feast of perceptual biases and techniques: whatever the challenges of the next century, the delight that so often accompanies
disciplined scrutiny of the physical environment will continue to hearten alert travelers and readers, and perhaps make the
challenges less daunting.

Fernand Braudel. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949). Sian Reynolds, trans. New
York: Harper & Row, 1976. (Pb)
One of the few genuinely masterful works of modern geographical-historical writing, Braudel's fourteen-hundred-page
Mediterranean defines a region ecologically (from the southern limits of the date palm to the northern limits of the olive tree)
and culturally (from the Arab east and south to the Catholic north and west), demonstrating in intricate detail the complex and
fragile interaction of physical environment and human effort in one moment of time past. No recent work better displays the
sumptuous richness of meanings implicit in the word region.

Henry James. The American Scene (1907). Leon Edel, ed. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1968. (Pb)
Written after a self-imposed absence of some two decades, The American Scene is James's nonfiction account of stupendous
change in the landscape and life of the eastern United States, change best designated as "modernization" perhaps, but certainly
change that no participant—and no foreign visitor—perceived so crisply. James left an essentially agricultural nation and
returned to one urban, industrialized, and ensnared in mechanized haste; high-speed trains, rural trolley cars and motorcars had
changed forever the traveler's perception of landscape, foreshortening distances, twisting angles of vision and blurring detail,
making the whole visual environment a sort of scene.

Timothy Dwight. Travels in New England and New-York (1821-22). 4 vols.. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the president of Yale College began riding horseback (and later by chaise) through the
northeastern part of the new Republic. His Travels details not only thousands of landscape constituents—everything from the
texture of soil to the shape of bridges to the color of meetinghouses—along his winding routes, but interprets the landscape
emerging from wilderness as the emblem of distinctly American virtues—order, simplicity, individualism, self-reliance. His
volumes offer a glimpse of slow, self-paced, methodical wandering and a wealth of insight into the cultural baggage any
observer of landscape and customs brings to a region, and particularly to his own.

Henry David Thoreau. Cape Cod (1865). New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972. (Pb)
As Thoreau walked the edge of the land, he found real wilderness, a spray-soaked zone of eroding sand, shipwreck, packs of
wild dogs, sharks and people inured to assaults by wind, tide and surf, a zone that disconcerted the lover of Concord woodlots
and fields. Cape Cod grapples with the concept of the margin, the amorphous zone neither wholly landscape nor wholly sea.
There Thoreau encountered the edge of fear, the awesome recognition that tiny Cape Cod thrusts into an alien element, an
element so powerful that it shapes not only Cape Cod landscape, but Cape Cod life, Cape Cod unmasks the Thoreau disguised
in Walden, reveals the incredible fragility of a small land continuously besieged, and rams home the terrible intimacy of the
walker exploring alien space.

Donald Hall. String Too Short to Be Saved (1961). Boston: David R. Godine, 1979. (Pb)
A New Hampshire hill farm in the Depression and the early years of World War II forms the setting for autobiographical
memory. But more than memory suffuses this brilliant book. Hall inquires deeply into the love of a farmer for his farm and its
neighborhood, the love for individual rocks and blueberry plantings, for old cellar holes and hay fields, for neighbors as
individuals; and he scrutinizes the survival of nineteenth-century (and earlier) agricultural techniques and attitudes into the
twentieth century. On the slopes of Ragged Mountain endure an earlier landscape and an earlier way of living almost wholly
isolated from the world-shaking events far off in cities, in Europe, in the Pacific. Stewardship. simplicity, forbearance,
compassion—such are the virtues manifested in the fields and buildings city folk scorn as scrubby, rundown, or old-fashioned
as their automobiles race past.

The Worlds of Christopher Columbus W.D. and C.R. Phillips Small Earth
Columbus F. Fernandez-Armesto Small Earth
The Invention of America E. O'Gorman Small Earth
The Columbian Exchange A.W. Crosby Small Earth
Ancient History

The predominance of Greek and especially Roman topics reflects, perhaps, a consistent Western preoccupation with cultural
and social origins. But there are good representative books on the other principal ancient civilizations too.
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Chadwick, Clark, Cottrell, Hume. Mackendrick); ARCHITECTURE (Boethius, Lawrence, Vitruvius);
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Caesar); BIOGRAPHY (Plutarch); DIARIES (Cicero, Pliny, Seneca); FEMINISM (Pomeroy); FOOD
(Apicius): HISTORY/ASIAN (Barham, Eberhard, Hall. Hambly); HISTORY/LATIN AMERICAN (Katz); LITERARY
CRITICISM (High-et); MATHEMATICS (Lindsay); MYTHOLOGY (Harrison, Kirk); POLITICS (Aristotle, Plato); TRAVEL
(Pausanias)

Arrian, Greek, ca. 100-180 CE.

Anabasis. Rec: Ward

Georg Gerster, The Past from Above Rec: cooltools

2005, 415 pages
$41

Gibbon, Edward Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) P

Certainly the wittiest and possibly the greatest of all European historical works; should be read in its "damned thick" entirety—
but for the faint-hearted there is D. M. Low's excellent one-volume abridgement.

Gibbon, Edward, English, 1737-1794.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Rex Rexmo Seymour-
Smith Ward
Autobiography. Rec: Adler

Grant, Michael The Ancient Mediterranean(1969)

Grant is one of the great modern popularizers of ancient history. He takes short cuts, makes quick assessments; but he is
persuasive and generally reliable. This book discusses the interplay between all the civilizations round the Mediterranean—a
vast amount of disparate erudition encapsulated in 300 readable pages. Also: A History of Rome; Nero. etc

Various Authors, Greek, 7th C BCE-10th C CE.

Greek Anthology. Rec: Rex

Grote, George, English, 1794-1871.

A History of Greece. Rec: Lubbock

Herodotus Histories (5th century ac)

The "father of history" ranges far and wide to analyse and describe the confrontation between East and West with which the 5th
century BC began. Discursive, anecdotal, personal: one of the most enjoyable books of the ancient world.

Herodotus, Greek, ca. 484-425 BCE.

The Histories. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Lubbock Rex Seymour-Smith
SJC (Selections) Ward

Heyden, A. A. M. and Scullard, H. II. Atlas of the Ancient World (1955) a*J
Not just maps, but hundreds of splendid photographs and a well-written, informative text. Introduces classical history and
culture as well as geography.

Huart, C. Ancient Persia and Iranian Civilization (1972)

Crisp, clear and informative on the culture, society and military achievements of the ancient Medes and Persians. See
HISTORY/ASIAN (Irving)

Johnson, P. The Civilization of Ancient Egypt (1978)

For the beginner, a useful guide: enthusiastic, well-written (in attractively breathless style), reasonably accurate. Readers whose
interest Johnson whets will go elsewhere for more objective, authoritative views (his bibliography points the way); but there is
no better starting-point than here.

Jones, A. H. M. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602(1964)

"This book is not a history of the later Roman empire. It is a social, economic and administrative survey of the empire,
historically treated"—and all you are ever likely to want to know about it can be found herein. Also: The Greek City; The
Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces

Josephus A History of the Jewish War (AD 75-79)

Jewish history, until Masada, recounted in choice vocabulary and high literary style by ex-combatant Jewish turncoat. Of
particular interest to those who seek illumination on the Jewish character (or characters) at the time of Christ. Also: Jewish
Antiquities

Lehmann, J. The Hittites (1977)

If you can stomach its relentlessly jolly, journalistic style, this book sheds fascinating light on a very dark corner of Old
Testament history.

Lempriere, Jean Bibliotheca Classica (1788) Oa*

Also called Classical Dictionary; an absorbing alphabetical account of personalities, themes and structures of classical works,
as quirky and personal as Dr Johnson's Dictionary. Avoid all modern editions, which soften the delights in favour of academic
accuracy.

Lewis, N. and Reinhold, M. Roman Civilization: A Sourcebook (2 vols, 1955) 111

Anthology of translated extracts covering all aspects of Roman life: volume I the republic, volume li the empire. Authors range
from the grandest of historical figures to humble soldiers writing home from barracks far overseas; translations are excellent,
notes, bibliography and index are unobtrusive, helpful.

Livy History (1st century AD) Oa*

The remains of Livy's vast history of Rome (originally in 142 volumes, now reduced to something like 700 pages) have, more
than any other works, formed later views of the Roman character. Moralistic historiography in its finest flowering.

Livy, Roman, 59 BCE-17 CE .

History of Rome. Rec: Adler Aquinas Lubbock
Early Rome. Rec: Rex

Mellersh, H. E. L. Chronology of the Ancient World (1976) Magnificently simple: chronology of events from 10,000 BC to
AD 799. Covers every available area of civilization; endlessly fascinating cross-parallels.

Procopius The History of the Wars (c. 565)

The reign of Justinian and the achievements of Belisarius (about whom Robert Graves wrote a famous novel), recorded by a
contemporary. The A necdota (Secret History) forms an appendix not to be missed by those whose taste is (in the author's
words) for "wanton crime and shameless debauchery, intrigue and scandal". Good English translation: Loeb Library. See
FICTION/NOVELS (Graves)

Procopius, Byzantine Greek, ca. 498-ca. 560 .

Works. Rec: Ward

Radice, Betty Who's Who in the Ancient World (1971) a

Pocket reference to Greece and Rome. Mythological and historical characters presented with essential details and useful
reference to their place in later art, music and literature. Good introduction on the classical tradition in the Western world, and
its relevance today. See LITERARY CRITICISM (Highet)

Rostovtzeff, M. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (1941)
Planned originally as a "short survey", this monumental work is the classic treatment of one of the most important periods of
Greek history. Also: Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

Saggs, H. W. F. The Greatness That Was Babylon (1962)

A thick book (560 pages) on a neglected subject. Comprehensive; accessible. Sallust The Conspiracy of Catiline (c. 35 BC)
Analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman republic by a perverse, morose but not unintelligent contemporary. Vivid,
stylized portrait of Catiline as a species of half-mad revolutionary mobster; much information on political and social conditions
and attitudes as the republic rocked towards its end.

Selzer, M. Caesar, Politician and Statesman (1968)

Standard scholarly biography of the "bald-headed adulterer" (as his soldiers, marching behind his triumph, sang of him). For a
cooler, less authoritative view, see Michael Grant's (qv) Julius Caesar, for a fictional gloss, see Rex Warner's Young Caesar. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Caesar); DIARIES (Cicero)

Suetonius Lives of the Twelve Caesars (c. 121) ia

Suetonius was the arch gossip columnist of the Roman world: his book is full of scurrilous gossip, damaging innuendo,
distortion and over-emphasis. Hugely entertaining. Good English translation by Graves (who also plundered Suetonius for
many of the juicier details in his I Claudius and Claudius the God). See FICTION/NOVELS (Graves)

Suetonius, Roman, ca. 69-ca. 150 CE.

Twelve Caesars. Rec: Ward

Syme, R. The Roman Revolution (1939)

The modern classic work in ancient history. The subject is the establishment of the imperial autocracy by Augustus; the style is
wilful and self-pleasing, demanding several readings; the rewards are great.

Tacitus, Roman, ca. 55-ca. 117 CE .

Annals. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
Histories. Rec: Adler GBWW Rex Ward
Agricola. Rec: Adler
Germania. Rec: Adler Lubbock

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) Thucydides' work (perhaps the first-ever "scientific history")
is idiosyncratic in its selection and treatment of material, and in style. Fascinating chiefly for intelligent discussion of some of
the philosophical problems thrown up by history: the purpose of historiography itself, the sources of political power, the
problems of empire, and the reasons for decline and defeat. Good translation: Crawley.

Thucydides, Greek, 470/460-ca.400 BCE.

History of the Peloponnesian War. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Colcc91 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
Good Reading Harvard Lubbock Rex Seymour-Smith SJC Utne Ward

Toynbee, A. J. Hannibal's Legacy (2 vols, 1965)

Exhaustive and perhaps the best account of the effects of Hannibal on Italy and the Mediterranean world. See
HISTORY/WORLD

Veyne, Paul, French, 1930- .

The Roman Empire. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Xenophon Anabasis (4th century Bc) it

Fascinating memoir of the extrication of 10,000 Greek mercenaries from Persia by the general who led them. Xenophon's
appeal is largely in his relaxed unaffected style. Without literary aspirations, he has an interesting, human tale to tell, and tells it
well. Also: Hellenica: Memorabilia

Xenophon, Greek, ca. 429-ca. 354 BCE.

Cyropaedia. Rec: Ward
Memorabilia. Rec: Lubbock
Anabasis. Rec: Lubbock

Franklin Ford
Franklin Ford is Harvard's McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, respected for his work in modern French and
German history. His research interest in the history of murder and tyrannicide culminated in the recent book Political Murder.
He is a former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

My selection, as you will see, is highly personal. They are all favorites of mine, in part because each of them has helped me to
think in the present, about the past, with some hope of making more sense of the rest of the time continuum: the part that still
stretches ahead.
A fuller understanding of humanity, including its gropings and errors, but also its achievements and flashes of greatness, is
what I take to be one of the historian's primary goals. It must also be a goal of anyone who thinks seriously about dangers and
opportunities, some of which are already urgent realities while others require imagination to discern even as serious
possibilities. My choice of works that seem "historical" in the best, because extended, sense will no doubt surprise some
readers; but so may the contents of the works themselves, when seen in that light.

Garrett Mattingly. The Armada (1959). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. (Pb)
Mark Twain. The Comic Mark Twain Reader. Charles Neider, ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977.
George Otto Trevelyan. The Early History of Charles James Fox (1880). New York: AMS Press, 1971.
Max Weber. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946). H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979. (Pb)
Anatole France. The Gods Will Have Blood (Les dieux ont soy) (1912). Frederick Davies, trans. New York: Penguin, 1979.
(Pb)
Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation (1944). Boston: Beacon, 1985.
Michael Shaara. The Killer Angels (1974). New York: Ballantine, 1975. (Pb)
Sybille Bedford. A Legacy (1956). New York: Echo Press, 1976. (Pb)
Felix Gilbert. Machiavelli and Guicciardini (1965). New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. (Pb)
T. H. White. The Once and Future King (1958). New York: Putnam, 1958.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431-404 B.C.). Richard Livingstone, ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1960. (Pb)
Robert Nisbet. Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (1982). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE
Graham Ley

Classical literature now commands greater attention than ever before, with good-quality translations of a large number of
ancient authors prompting a wide readership to explore the origins of a European tradition. Recent approaches to epic, drama,
lyric poetry, the novel, and the prose genres of historiography and rhetoric have drawn on developments in contemporary
literary criticism and theory, and have tended to integrate social with purely formal considerations. Partly as a result of this
expansion in interest, it is now easier to find accessible works on individual authors than the kind of broad introduction that
was popular a generation or so ago. But most translations now include an up-to-date introduction and some useful suggestions
for further, critical reading.

A poet is a light, winged, holy creature, and cannot compose until he is possessed
and out of his mind, and his reason is no longer in him; no man can
compose or prophesy so long as he has his reason.
PLATO ION

The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1983) edited by E J Kenney and. W V Clauseh. A series of introductions by
literary specialists to the full range of Greek and Latin literature in antiquity. Available in sections devoted to particular genres
and subjects.

The Oxford History of the Classical World (1988) edited by John Boardman. An illustrated compendium of introductions to
ancient literature, an, history, and culture by specialist authors, with each chapter carrying suggestions for further reading.

The Pelican History of Greek Literature (1985) by Peter Levi. A good general introduction by a Greek scholar who is also a
poet.
A Short History of Greek Literature (1985) by Jacqueline de Romilly. A translation of an introduction by one of the most
sensitive critics of Greek tragedy.

Ancient Greek Literature (1981) edited by Kenneth Dover. A selection of helpful introductions to major genres and authors.

Roman Literature and Society (1980) by Robert Ogilvie. A good, contextual introduction for the student or general reader.

The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Ovid (1980) by R Lyne. An outstanding study of a major tradition in Latin poetry of
the later republic and early principate.
Virgil (1986) by Jasper Griffin. An accessible introduction to the leading national and ideological poet of the Augustan era.

The series of translations in Penguin Classics offers many of the ancient authors in separate volumes. Two anthologies of
translated selections, Greek Literature (1977) and Latin Literature (1979), both prepared by Michael Grant, may be helpful in
providing an impression of the range available.
Asian, African and Middle Eastern History

Many areas of the world are sparsely represented on library shelves—West Africa and Australasia, for example, offer few
satisfactory comprehensive histories. Other areas, especially in the Third World, are evolving so quickly that modern histories
are obsolete before they even reach the shelves. The books suggested here, therefore, are a very broad sweep: without claims to
comprehensive or final coverage, they make at least a start.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Gandhi); BIOGRAPHY (Howarth); DIARIES (Stanley); ECONOMICS (Myrdal); POLITICS
(Cabral, Hinton); RELIGION (Guillaume); TRAVEL (Kingsley, Lawrence, T. E., Maclean, Polo, Ronay, Roy)
Ajayi, J. F. Ade A Thousand Years of West African History (1966) MI Serious, dependable synoptic history of Africa; important
and eye-opening. Allen, Charles (ed) Plain Tales from the Raj (1975) fi a * Book originated in a series of radio interviews
with fifty surviving administrators of colonial India. Extraordinary detail of extraordinary daily lives: coping with high collars,
rigid etiquette, recalcitrant natives, the Edwardian British at their dotty, pragmatic best.
Anene, J. C. and Brown, G. (eds) Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1966)
Collection of research findings and other scholarly writings; bitty and unsystematic; but individual papers are illuminating,
authoritative. See Ajayi; Thompson.

Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India (1954) it a* Catchpenny title; magnificent book. Fat (600 pages),
comprehensive, badged in every sentence with the author's zest for his subject. Covers the ancient history of India from 3000
BC to the coming of Muslims in AD 1565. Particularly strong on culture and social life. Usefully read in connection with
Nehru (qv).

Batatu, Hanna, Palestinian writing in English, 1926-2000.

The Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi Revolutions. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Beasley, W. G. The Modern History of Japan (1963) 0 Excellent volume in recommended Asia-Africa series. Traces Japanese
affairs from its opening to the West in the mid 19th century to the amazing first fruits of the economic boom after World War II.
Annotated bibliography particularly useful. Also: Great Britain and the Opening of Japan. See Bergamini.

Bergamini, David Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (1971)

Compendious political indictment of Hirohito and his faction; disputable interpretations, but a readable, extraordinary book.
See Beasley.

Boulnois, L. The Silk Road (1963)

Brilliant history of the silk trade, from Roman times to the Boxer Rebellion. Caroe, Olaf The Pathans, 550 BC-AD 1957(1958)
Northwest frontiersmen withstood Greeks, Arabs, Moguls, British Raj, and (more recently) Russian tanks. Exhaustive,
illuminating study.

Eberhard, W. A History of China (1948)

Admirable introductory survey. Use fourth English edition and supplement (for the 20th century) with McAleavy (qv) and
especially Suyin (qv). See ARCHAEOLOGY (Chang)

Edwardes, M. The Last Years of British India (1963)

Sympathetic historical study, seeking to place politics in a wider perspective. Objectivity at times leads to opaqueness; but is
otherwise admirable. See Nehru.

Elvin, Mark The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973) Ji

Outstanding examination of technological and social forces in pre-modern China; essential analysis of causes and effects in
Chinese imperial history. Particularly good on agriculture and printing—and on the reasons for China's technological
stagnation after 1350.

Farrell, J. G., English, 1935-1979.

The Siege of Krishnapur. Rec: Bloom

Fitzgerald, C. P. A Concise History of East Asia (1966) ✓

Divided into three sections (China; Japan and Korea; South-East Asia); outstanding for style, precision of information, clear-
sightedness of historical judgement.
FitzGerald, Frances Fire in the Lake( 1972)
First-hand journalistic analysis of the modern history of Vietnam, a tragi-comedy (if you can't see the blood or smell the
corpses) of East-West misunderstanding and mismanagement. Definitive answer to those who believe "we" were right to be in
Vietnam.

Gabrielli, Francesco The Arabs: A Compact History (1963) a -1

Also published as A Short History of the Arabs. Compared to Glubb (qv) a sparrow beside an eagle; but ideal for those who
want a brief, clear survey of the facts. Particularly good on the early spread of Islam.

Glubb, John The Course of Empire (1965) * I .1

Third volume of a monumental, recommended history of the Arabs. Offers, among other pleasures, a unique study of the First
Crusade and Moorish Spain from the Arabian point of view.

Hall, D. G. E. A History of South East Asia (1965) 0 a * .1

Marvellous 1000-page survey. Modern section has been updated to 1968 (3rd edition), but the volatility of the area outstrips
even Hall's dexterous pen. For the first 10,000 years, however, a prescriptive read.

Hambly, Gavin (ed) Central Asia (1969) 0 ✓_I

Historical survey from 500 BC to the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. Excellent on the Mongols, Uzbeks and Turks; a grim
overview of a ruthless colonizing process, continuously bloody, from all directions, over 2500 years. Also: Cities of Mughal
India

Hersey, John, American, 1914-1993.

The Wall. Rec: BOMC
Hiroshima. Rec: NYPL (history)

Hibbed, Christopher The Dragon Wakes (1970)

Excellent popular account of China's relations with the West between 1793 and 1911. The section on the Boxers is particularly
good. Also: The Great Mutiny, etc. See HISTORY/BRITISH

Various authors, Japanese, Pub. 1986.

Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Trans. by Gaynor Sekimori). Rec: Counterpunch Trans (history)

Hinton, William, American, 1919-2004.

Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. Rec: Counterpunch NF (sociology)

Ibn Khaldun, 'Abd Ar-Rahman bin Muhammad, Arab, 1332-1406.

Prolegomena (Muqaddimah). Rec: App Oriental Ward

Ingham, K. A History of East Africa (1962) 01 J

Inglis, Brian The Opium War( 1976) fi 1 3

Opium trade between British India and the Chinese—urbane account of one of the most bizarre 19th-century encounters
between inscrutable East and imperious West. Also: Roger Casement; The Forbidden Game

Irving, Clive Crossroads of Civilization (1979) a ./ Journalistic survey of Persian history from earliest times to 1939.
Continuing, blood-soaked saga of modern Iran starts here. See HISTORY/ANCIENT (Huart)

James, C. L. R., Trinidadian, 1901-1989.

The Black Jacobins. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch NF (Jamaica)
The Future in the Present. Rec: Bloom

Judd, Denis The Boer War (1977) di a *

Good use of first-hand documents. Popular historiography at its best. Also: Someone Has Blundered: Calamities of the British
Army in the Victorian Age

Kapuscinski, Ryszard, Polish, 1932- .

The Emperor. Rec: NYPL (history of africa)
Kinross, Lord Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation (1964) 9✓
Breakup of the Ottoman Empire during World War I seen as the starting-point for the modern Middle East and its problems.

Lockhart, J. G. and Woodhouse, C. M. Rhodes (1963)

Access to Cecil Rhodes' private papers makes this a definitive biography of the seminal figure for 19th- and 20th-century
southern Africa.

Ludowyk, E. F. C. The Story of Ceylon (1962) 46 1

Discursive; informative; better on events after the Portuguese arrival in the 16th century than on earlier history. Second edition
(1967) best. Usefully read in conjunction with Silva (qv).

McAleavy, Henry The Modern History of China (1967) aJ

19th- and 20th-century China, set forthwith sense and style. In conjunction with Elvin (qv) and Suyin (qv), will supply all the
necessary basic information. McCoy, Wilfred W. The Politics of Heroin in South-East Asia (1972) Fully documented account
of the unsung anti-heroes of the whole Indo-Chinese adventure between 1945 and 1972—the poppy-growers and their
customers, including the governments of South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc, who pushed narcotics in order to finance the
cause of freedom, and turned the US army in Vietnam on to a nearly 10 per cent addiction to hard drugs. The fine print of
history, blown up.

McEwan, P. 3. M. and Sutcliffe, R. B. (eds) The Story of Africa (1965)

Comprehensive account of social, economic and political issues in modern Africa, linked to historical causes.
Morris, Donald R. The Washing of the Spears(1965) * Rise and fall of the Zulu nation. Unblinking, objective, devastating
account of bravery, repression and genocide.

Nehru, Jawaharlal The Discovery of India (1951) * Passionate, partisan, personal; "history" of India written "in Ahmadnagar
Fort prison during the five months April to September 1944". History as advertising copy: the nation pulses with life before
your eyes. Those who prefer a more objective view—and those whom Nehru excites to read further—are referred to Basham
(qv).

Phillips, Wendell Unknown Oman (1966) 4' _I

South-eastern tip of the Arabian peninsula, explored by the first Western historian and archaeologist to make a systematic
study. Some of the book is an account of his travels; but the second half is a valuable historical survey. Also: Quataban and
Sheba

Preble, George H. The Opening of Japan (1962) s _1

Preble was a US naval lieutenant in the fleet of Commodore Perry, which first opened Japan to Western commerce in 1853.
This diary of the voyage (ed Szczesniak) is witty, detailed, and full of delightfully wide-eyed accounts of the wonders and
customs of the fabled East. Interesting, too, for sidelights on 19th-century naval life. See TRAVEL (Dana)

Ransforcl, Oliver The Great Trek (1972)

History outstrips legend. Well told, thoroughly documented account of one of the great epic stories of the whites in Africa.
Also: The Rulers of Rhodesia; The Battle of Spion Kop

Sadler, A. H. L. A Short History of Japan (1963) a Earliest times to 1951; the flow of events is charted with brisk clarity.
Usefully read in conjunction with Beasley (qv).

Salih, Tayeb, Sudanese writing in Arabic, 1929- .

A Season of Migration to the North. Rec: Meaningful NYPL

Severin, Timothy The African Adventure (1973) di a 3

Popular account of 400 years of African exploration. Standard names like Stanley are given good coverage; but the book is
chiefly interesting for lesser-known Portuguese and Belgian figures. Illustrated from contemporary drawings, many by the
explorers themselves.

Silva, K. M. da (ed) Sri Lanka: A Survey (1977) Pa

Geography, history, politics, culture. Comprehensive; objective. See Ludowyk.

Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch'ien), Chinese, 145-86 BCE.

Records of the Grand Historian. Rec: Fadiman 4 MW Asian Rexmo StJE Ward

Sinuhe, Egyptian, Ancient, ca. 2000 BCE.

The Story of Sinuhe. Rec: Ward

Snow, Edgar Red Star over China (1937)

Influential account of the Chinese Revolution based on Snow's encounters with Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai and others on the
1936 Long March. See Suyin.

Spence, Jonathan, English, 1936- .

The Death of Woman Wang. Rec: Bloom
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Rec: Bloom
The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Stanley, R. and Neame, A. (eds) The Exploration Diaries of H. M. Stanley (1961) 4*f

Suyin, Han The Morning Deluge (1972): The Wind in the Tower (1976)
Massive two-volume biography of Mao; subtitle (Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution, 1893 - 1975) tells all. See Snow.

Thompson, E. B. Africa, Past and Present(1966) a -If

An attempt, for the general reader, to set modern Africa in its historical context. At its best when discussing the multifarious
Western exploitation of Africa—a sordid, riveting tale.

Vatlidotis, P. J. The Modern History of Egypt (1969) .1 _I

Egyptian history, 1800-1969. Good on political and ideological struggles between independence in 1922 and the establishment
of the republic in 1956.

Wilson, M. and Thompson, L. (eds) The Oxford History of South Africa (2 vols, 1969-71) P
Exhaustive account, particularly good on indigenous cultures. Donnish objectivity is a welcome corrective to the partisan
approach of many writers on this subject.

BOOKS ON THIRD WORLD LITERATURE

Kadiatu Kanneh

This collection of texts problematizes and engages with the category of `Third World' writing, allowing for an informed critical
focus. The texts vary from a direct analysis of a range of Third World literatures to a more theoretical or political discussion of
prevalent themes, issues, histories. The texts examine debates around language, history, gender, often exploring how issues of
self-determination and independence affect the analyses of literary criticism.

Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I

couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice
the voice of the heroines in my sleep.
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

Myth, Literature and the African World (1976) by Wole Soyinka. This text interrogates the definition, both of African
literature and of Africa, engaging directly with a range of literary texts from Africa and contextualizing their meanings and
aesthetic value within a conception of Africa as a distinct mythic and philosophical whole.

Decolonising the Mind (1986) by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. This text presents a polemic against colonial domination and the
prevalence of colonial languages in African literatures. A major touchstone for political readings of African literatures.

The Empire Writes Back (1989) by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin. This text defines the field of `Third World literature' as
`postcolonial', and presents a survey of the major issues and complexities which currently dominate literary critical analysis in
this area.
The Wretched of the Earth (1961; translated 1963) by Frantz Fanon. This French text is rightly called an enduring classic.
Dealing with the effects of colonialism on the identity and economics of the Third World, Fanon's argument insists on the
relevance of political resistance to literature and its criticism.

African Literature and African Critics (1988) by Rand Bishop. This text discusses a history of African literary criticism,
dealing with contested issues of cultural appropriation, linguistic determination, and literary value.

Chinua Achebe (1990) by C L Inns. This careful analysis of Achebe's novels and their significance usefully contextualizes his
work and provides thorough readings of the narratives.

Reading the African Novel (1987) by Simon Gikandi. A very useful reading of African literatures, both anglophone and
francophone, with close analysis, comparative work, and insightful argument.

Manichean Aesthetics (1983) by Abdul R Janmohamed. A well-argued and interesting polemic on the theory and analysis of
African literatures, examining a range of African literatures and literatures about Africa.

Motherlands (1991) edited by Nasta Susheila. A collection of essays on women's writing from the Caribbean, Africa, and S
Asia.

Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (1993) edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrismas. This collection of
critical essays designates the field as `post-colonial'. The introduction addresses the politics of this designation, and the text
provides a very useful collection of major essays.

Resistance and Caribbean Literature (1980) by Selwyn R Cudjoe. A critical survey of Caribbean novels, drawing from the
English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking traditions in the Caribbean.
British History

Books about breeding and taste, not least in royal circles, stud this list—and tell us, some will say, something of the British
character itself. There is marked insularity too: often, it seems, the British went out into the world only to conquer, to govern or
to disapprove.
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Frere); ART (Conrad); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Bamford. Brittain, Graves, Hervey, Macmillan):
BIOGRAPHY (Cecil, Donaldson, Longford, Nicolson, WoodhamSmith); DIARIES (Carlyle, Chesterfield, Evelyn. Greville,
Montagu, Pepys): FEMINISM (Hiley, Norris): HISTORY/AMERICAN (Bridenbaugh); POLITICS (Bagehot, Clarke,
Cowling); SOCIOLOGY (Chesney, Reeves, Roberts): TRAVEL (London)

Bacon, Francis Essays (1597) 0 Pungent observations on his own changing world, on man and society, on politics, ambition,
marriage, youth and age, education: all the major issues which concern Bacon as much as they do us.

Bede The Ecclesiastical History of England (731)

King Alfred thought this one of the books "most necessary for all men to know", and it's still fascinating. The history of Britain
from the landing of St Augustine in 597 to the year 731, discussed in elegant, quiet prose.

Blythe, Ronald The Age of Illusion (1963) ti „1

Emotive, with essays on the England of the 1920s-1930s: covers such topics as the General Strike. the Jarrow March. and
Munich. Also: The Aspirin Age

Blythe, Ronald Aketzfield(1969)

First-hand accounts of life in a Suffolk village at the beginning of the 20th century. Pastoral idyll in parts—but poverty,
accident and illness are there as well. People talking about their own lives: the red meat of history. Also: The View in Winter(on
old age). See Bragg; Thompson; SOCIOLOGY (Terkel)

Bragg, Melvyn Speak for England (1976) &If

Oral history of the author's home town of Wigton, Cumbria, in the 20th century. Vivid recollections by ordinary people of their
lives and experiences. Parallel to Thompson (qv). See Blythe; Briggs.

Briggs, Asa (ed) They Saw It Happen, 1897-1940(1960) a

Last of four volumes (all recommended) covering British history 55 BC–AD 1940. Anthology of first-hand documents,
thematically arranged. The series strongly reinforces the view that history is collective memory, is people not events. Also:
Victorian People; Victorian Cities, etc. See MEDIA

Brown, R. Allen English Castles (1954) 1t J

Castles, the most emblematic of medieval buildings, are an essential study for anyone hoping to understand feudal society; this
book (preferably use the 3rd edition) is the most comprehensive account in English. Also: The Normans and the Norman
Conquest; The Origins of English Feudalism; The Origins of Modern Europe

Burn, W. L. The Age of Equipoise (1964)

Admirable general introduction to the Victorian era; covers social and artistic matters as well as historical events.

Burnet, Gilbert A History of My Own Titne (1723)

Cocky, garrulous, unpopular Scot, who went into exile under James II, came back with William of Orange, ended up Bishop of
Salisbury. Pungent style, excellent information, shrewd insights, obviously prejudiced. An invaluable eye-witness account of
the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and their turbulent aftermath.

Burton, Elizabeth The Georgians at Home, 1714-1830(1966) &

Daily life in Georgian England: homes and gardens, furniture and artefacts, food, medicine, diversions and amusements. Also:
The Elizabethans at Home; The Jacobeans at Home

Cruickshanks, Eveline Political Untouchables: The Tories and the '45 (1979)
The author tackles the subject of England at the time of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion with aplomb, makes full use of the French
archive material without which the story makes no sense. For specialists, essential; for those interested in the politics of
rebellion, fascinating.
Dillon. M. and Chadwick, N. The Celtic Realms (1967) DTI
Useful study of pre-Norman British society, essential for understanding the independent cultures of Ireland, Scotland and
Wales, as well as the Celtic underlay of later English culture. Particularly good on religion, literature and art. The History of
Civilization series (from which this comes) is patchy; this volume is excellent.

Elton, G. R. Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government (2 vols, 1974)
Important collection of articles, mainly on the government of Tudor England, by an influential British historian. Also: The
Tudor Constitution, etc

Ensor, R. C. K. England, 1870– 1914(1936) 10 By far the best of the volumes on modern history in the Oxford History of
England series. Detailed, accurate, sensible.

Feiling, Keith A History of England (1966) A a-1

Basic one-volume history from pre-Roman times to World War II. Clear, readable text gives a swift but not unreliable view of
the flow of events. Superb index; helpful bibliography; useful maps and charts. A model, in short, of what such a book should
be. Also: The Life of Neville Chamberlain; The Second Tory Party, 1714-1832

Fitzgibbon, Constantine Red Hand: The Ulster Colony (1971) Good historical survey of the relations between Ireland and
(particularly) England from the time of Elizabeth Ito the troubled end of the 1960s. Clear-eyed, dismaying read. Also: Out of
the Lion's Paw: Ireland Wins Her Freedom. See Woodham-Smith.

George, M. Dorothy English Political Caricature (2 vols, 1959) A IS

Historians ignore political caricature at their peril; the general reader will be amused as well as informed by this excellent two-
volume survey of the great age of caricature, 1700-1832. No subject is sacred: ministers, taxation, the loss of the American
colonies, the French Revolution, Napoleon—all are here.

Glover, Janet R. The Story of Scotland (1960)

Revised 2nd edition best. Series, The Story of . . , generally recommended: crisp, authoritative, concise.

Green, John Richard, English, 1837-1883.

A Short History of the English People. Rec: Lubbock

Harrisson, Tom Living through the Blitz (1975)

The London Blitz, recorded through the war-time reports of Mass Observation. Fascinating record of civilian morale, the
hardships of the home front, and hopes for a better future. (Compare C. Perry: Boy in the Blitz.)

Hibbert, Christopher George IV (2 vols, 1972 - 73)

Fascinating; satisfying. Plumb's dictum on George IV, "never, never a dull moment", is fully justified. Also: The Court at
Windsor, The Grand Tour, London: The Biography of a City. See Plumb; HISTORY/ASIAN

Hill, Christopher The World Turned Upside Down (1972) it *

Study of radical groups (scientific, religious, political, sexual) during the English Revolution. Essential reading for anyone who
believes that England during the 1640s and 1650s was "Puritan". Also: The Century of Revolution, 1603 - 1714; Milton and the
English Revolution; The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution

Laslett, Peter The World We Have Lost (1965)

A grass roots—or rather parish register—enquiry in depth into the lives of the ordinary people of 16th- and 17th-century
England. Does for Britain what Demos did for 17th-century America. See HISTORY/AMERICAN (Demos)

Longford, Elizabeth Victoria R. L (1964) A Easy to read, well researched biography, in a different class to Lytton Strachey's
Queen Victoria, which is for those who are looking for imaginative literature, not history. See BIOGRAPHY

Macaulay, T. B. The History of England (4 vols. 1848– 55) A

Old hat, of course; the quintessential Whig historian. Make allowance for his prejudices, and—pace T. S. Eliot—enjoy the
superb narrative style. Famous, long Chapter 3 still gives an unrivalled picture of 17th-century English society. Also: The Lays
of Ancient Rome. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Magnus, Philip King Edward the Seventh (1964) .1

Workmanlike combination of essential facts with a reasonable ration of titbits. Biographies of Edward VII are a crowded field;
this is one of the very best. Also: Kitchener, William Ewart Gladstone, etc

Mathew, Gervase The Court of Richard II(1968) A *If

Mathew's study of the literature, art and way of life of Richard and his courtiers uncovers the origins of Renaissance court
culture and of the cult of sensibility. Also: Byzantine Aesthetics

Mattingly, Garrett The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1959) a Absorbing account based entirely on contemporary record;
more exciting than any fiction. Also: Catherine of Aragon; Renaissance Diplomacy

More, Thomas Utopia (1516) *RA

Ironic commentary on early Tudor England; the wit and wisdom of the "man for all seasons" and his vision of a new society
won him admirers as diverse as High Tory Anglicans and Russian Leninists.

More, St./Sir Thomas, English writing in Latin, ca. 1477-1535.

Utopia. Rec: Adler Bloom Good Reading Rex Ward
Morgan, Robin, See Sisterhood is Powerful

Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth (1934) A _1 Brilliant mingling of scholarship with humane and compassionate understanding of a
woman in high politics. Its only weakness is the somewhat pervasive view that the queen could do no wrong. Also: The
Elizabethan House of Cornrnons; Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments. See Read: Rowse.

Orwell, George The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) a*

Perceptive, harrowing account of "life on the dole" in the 1930s; helped influence a generation's attitude to the spectre of mass
unemployment. See FICTION/NOVELS; LITERARY CRITICISM; POLITICS

Plumb, J. H. The First Four Georges (1956) *1/ Plumb was the first scholar to stress the complexity of George I; here he
surveys the following three Georges with a similarly unjaundiced eye. Compulsive. Also: Sir Robert Walpole; The Growth of
Political Stability, 1675 – 1725; Chatham, etc. See Hibbert.

Power, Eileen The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (1941) Unlikely-sounding subject; but fascinating and of far more
than parochial interest. Economic history at its elegant best.

Priestley, J. B. English Journey (1934)

Sensitive evocation of England during the early 1930s by famous author and broadcaster.

Read, Conyers Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (1925)
M., jor study of Elizabethan foreign policy and elucidation of the intelligence system built up and operated by the spiritual
ancestor of MI5 and the CIA. Also: Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth; Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth. See Neale;
Rowse.

Rowse, A. L. The England of Elizabeth (1950) a*

First and best of a series of studies of the Elizabethan age. Better on aristocrats than on what he calls "the idiot people",
especially the Puritans. Furious fun. See Neale: Read.

Rude, George Hanoverian London, 1714– 1808(1971) 3

Marvellous evocation of Georgian London; when and why the churches were built and the squares laid out; shows how the
1715 rebellion affected the capital with its Jacobite versus Hanoverian protagonists. Also: Wilkes and Liberty; A Social Study
of 1763-1774

Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII(1968)

Scarisbrick sees Henry's reign as fractured by the break with the papacy, and portrays the king as a complex, Renaissance ruler,
cruel and cultivated, foolishly intent on war with France, against all reason. Authoritative, accessible.

Stenton, F. M. Anglo-Saxon England (1943) 111

Master-work on the subject; another outstanding volume from the Oxford History of England series. Also: The First Century of
English Feudalism Strong, Roy Splendour at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion (1973)
The politics of spectacle. Fascinating illustrations.
Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) 1$
Classic which finally destroyed the concept of "the Puritan Revolution" by showing the connections between Puritanism and
the needs of developing capitalism. Also: History and Society; Equality, etc

Taylor, A. J. P. English History, 1914- 1945 (1965) *

Invigorating survey of 20th-century Britain. Taylor's occasionally idiosyncratic evaluations of people and events only add to
the liveliness of the narrative. Also: The Origins of the Second World War, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918;
The Habsburg Monarchy, 1815 - 1918. etc. See BIOGRAPHY

Thomas, Keith Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971)

Anthropological and sociological techniques uncover the life and thought of ordinary people in 17th-century England. Book
that transformed its subject: essential reading.

Thomas, Keith, Welsh, 1933- .

Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. Rec:
Counterpunch NF TLS

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class (1963) Superb book by one of this century's leading British
historians. Also: Protest and Survive (crucial polemic on need for disarmament). See BIOGRAPHY

Thompson, E. P., English, 1924-1993.

The Making of the English Working Class. Rec: Counterpunch NF ML Nonfiction TLS

Thompson, Paul The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (1975) -1

Based largely on interview material; vividly conveys the texture of grass-roots Edwardian society.

Trevelyan, G. M. England under Queen Anne (1930-34) di II

Charts the rise, through war and peace, of England as mistress of the seas, an equal of France on land and the cradle of the
Golden Age. Fluent, authoritative style. Also: England under the Stuarts; English Social History British History in the
Nineteenth Century, etc

Wilson, David Harris King James VI arid /(1956)

Fascinating account of the baffling character who united the crowns of England and Scotland and who was a combinationof wit
and pedantry, learning and folly. Woodham-Smith, Cecil The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845 – 49 (1962) 111 One of the best
books on Irish history. If you are English it should make you blush with shame. Also: The Reason Why; Queen Victoria, etc.
See Fitzgibbon; BIOGRAPHY
European History
This list concentrates, in the main, on the most useful and accessible surveys of this vast subject (the history, in part, of the
whole modern civilization of the West). A few books on specific topics are included (usually where the subject is neglected or
the treatment unique); but for the multitude of specific topics we recommend browsing in the bibliographies of Cantor (qv).
Fisher (qv) and Lichtheim (qv).
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Piggott, Sandars); ARCHITECTURE (Clark, Conant. Harvey, Murray); AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(Kropotkin, Saint Simon, Speer); BIOGRAPHY (Bainton. Bullock, Huizinga, Lachouque, Taylor); DIARIES (Frank);
FEMINISM (Porter, Thomas); MATHEMATICS (Irving, Mendelssohn); MEDICINE (McNeill); POLITICS (Carr, Orwell,
Stern, Trotsky); RELIGION (Deanesly); SOCIOLOGY (Blok, Elias); TRAVEL (Ley, Michener, Polo)

Barraclough, Geoffrey The Medieval Papacy (1968)

Fine study of what many regard as the single most important institution in the history of Western Europe. Brisk; short;
complete. See HISTORY/WORLD

Bloch, Marc, French, 1886-1944.

Feudal Society. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS
Strange Defeat. Rec: National Review

Boussard, Jacques The Civilization of Charlemagne ( 1968) _I

Good account of the first unifier of Europe—salutary reading for those illiterati who try to use history as an argument against
European solidarity. If it worked for Charlemagne ...

Braudel, Fernand The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip 11(1973) *
Dextrously interweaves public with private affairs; makes more sense out of the tangled events of this turbulent time than
might have been thought possible.

Braudel, Fernand, French, 1902-1985.

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Fadiman 3 TLS
Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century. Rec: Fadiman 3

Calmette, Joseph The Golden Age of Burgundy (1949)

Cantor, Norman F. Medieval History (1963) a ✓ Accessible, authoritative study of Europe in the 2nd-15th centuries.
Particularly good on Church and State; Carolingian section outstanding.

Chandler, David The Campaigns of Napoleon (1967) II a *

Outstanding; essential companion to the biography by Lachouque. Also: The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough, etc.
See Geyl; BIOGRAPHY (Lachouque)

Churchill, Winston, English, 1874-1965. Nobel Laureate

The Second World War. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review TLS
The Gathering Storm (Volume 1 of The Second World War). Rec: NYPL

Cohn, Norman Europe's Inner Demons (1975) 0

Scathing, scholarly attack on supposed Devil-worship leading to the witch hunts of the Middle Ages and later. Also: Warrant
for Genocide; The Pursuit of the Millennium

Cohn, Norman, English, 1915- .

The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Rec: National Review
TLS

Conquest, Robert, English, 1917- .

The Great Terror. Rec: National Review (history)

Derry, T. K. A History of Scandinavia (1979) II ✓

Fawtier, Robert The Capetian Kings of France (1960) *

Fisher, H. A. L. A History of Europe (1936) a ✓

If European history can be covered at all in 1200 pages this book does so.

Froissart, Jean, French, ca. 1337-ca. 1410.

Chronicles. Rec: Bloom

Fussell, Paul, American, 1924- .

The Great War and Modern Memory. Rec: LAT ML Nonfiction

Geyl, Pieter Napoleon. For and Against (1965) *

Exactly what the title says: the arguments lucidly and elegantly marshalled.

Gilmore, Myron P. The World of Humanism, 1453-1517(1952) a

Characteristic volume from (recommended) The Rise of Modern Europe series.

Grey, Ian Catherine the Great (1961) it a

Grierson, Edward The Fatal Inheritance (1969) ✓

Urbane account of bloodthirsty, terrible events: Philip II and the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands. Slips down as easily as milk
—but what an aftertaste! See Braudel.

Guicciardini, Francesco, Italian, 1483-1540.

History of Italy. Rec: Ward

Hale, J., Highfield, R. and Smalley, B. (eds) Europe in the Late Middle Ages (1970)

Hart, Basil Liddell History of the First World War(1935) at a

Authoritative one-volume history of the "war to end wars". Also: History of the Second World War; The Other Side of the Hill.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY Haskins, Charles H. The Normans in European History (1915) There were few more formative
influences on Europe than the Normans. This unpretentious, well-written survey of their manifold achievements is the best
introduction. Also: Norman Institutions; The Twelfth-century Renaissance

Hole, Edwyn Andalus: Spain under the Muslims (1958) MI a _I

Readable, popular treatment of an important subject. Fascinating to compare with the Arabian view in Glubb
(HISTORY/ASIAN).

Huizinga, Johan Men and Ideas (1969) *

Luminous essays by a leading 20th-century scholar and humanist. "The Task of Cultural History-; "Patriotism and
Nationalism"; "Chivalric Ideals"; biographical studies of John of Salisbury, Abelard, St Joan, Erasmus and Grotius. Contains
famous, influential pieces on "The Problem of the Renaissance" and "Renaissance and Realism". See BIOGRAPHY

Huizinga, Johan, Dutch, 1872-1945.

The Waning of the Middle Ages. Rec: Counterpunch Trans GBWW National Review TLS

Jones, Gwyn A History of the Vikings (1969) &Oaf

Keegan, John The Face of Battle (1976) *4

The uncharted (perhaps unpalatable) face of much history: an anatomy of the soldiers who stood in line, who did the work.
Their conditions, feelings, reactions. Disturbing, unforgettable book, despite weak conclusions. See Middlebrook.

Keegan, John, English, 1934- .

The Face of Battle. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Second World War. Rec: National Review

Ladurie, E. le Roy Montaillou(1975) P*

Pyrenean village, 1294-1324, caught between Albigensian heretics and the Inquisition, brilliantly reconstructed from
contemporary documents. Ordinary community is laid bare as authentically as in a novel. Also: Carnival, etc

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, French, 1929- .

Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
The Peasants of Languedoc. Rec: TLS (history)

Larkin, Maurice Gathering Pace (1969) a

Excellent textbook on continental Europe, 1870-1945. Readable, objective.

Lawrence, D. H. Movements in European History (1921)

Conceived as a school textbook, for money, this "series of vivid sketches of movements and people" encapsulates some of
Lawrence's most idiosyncratic views of the historical process, leadership, political morality. 1971 edition (recommended)
includes later Epilogue on fascism, Russian communism and British democracy post-1918. Rare, fascinating oddity. See
DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS ; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; LITERARY CRITICISM ; POETRY ; TRAVEL

Lefebvre, Georges, French, 1874-1959.

The Coming of the French Revolution. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Lewis, Peter Later Medieval France (1968)

Lichtheim, George Europe in the 20th Century (1972) ;

Cultural survey, seeking to place political, social and artistic movements in philosophical/historical context. Good on the
decline of bourgeois liberalism, and on the effect of supra-national organizations on the nation state.

Macartney, C. A. and Palrner, A. W. Independent Eastern Europe (1962) P✓

Authors believe that Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1939 presented a unity, posing an identity of problems and playing a
single crucial role in the development of subsequent political attitudes. This view, persuasively argued, underlies a good
general survey of the area and the period.

Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra (1968) it a * ✓ _I

Dispassionate account of moving, tragic events, often more like Dostoyevsky than real life. Good use of diaries, letters and
other first-hand evidence.

Maurois, Andre A History of France (1949) it Is a *

Personal, discursive, engrossing—a great polymath in full control. Third edition (1960) revised (and extended to cover the rise
of de Gaulle).

Middlebrook, Martin The First Day on the Sorrune (1971) a *

Compilation based on hundreds of first-hand accounts. Like Keegan (qv) essential reading for anyone who believes in the glory
and nobility of war. Fine maps and appendices. Also: The Kaiser's Battle; Battleship, etc

Moss, H. L. B. The Birth of the Middle Ages, 395– 814(1935)

Finely written account of the decline of the Roman empire, barbarian settlements in the West, Byzantium, Muslim conquests,
the history of the Franks to Charlemagne, and the early history of the papacy. No Dark Ages here: a luminous, exciting book.

Mundy, J. H. Europe in the High Middle Ages, 1150- 1309(1973) 0

Nelson, W. H. The Soldier Kings (1970)

The house of Hohenzollern, from its shabby 15th-century origins to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II after World War I. Best
read with the pinch of salt provided by E. J. Feuchtwangler in Prussia, Myth and Reality (1970).

Origo, Iris The Merchant of Prato (1957) *

Evocative study of the archives of the Datini family, makes it possible to revive an individual 14th-century merchant in all
facets of his commercial and social life. Pares, Bernard A History of Russia (1926)
Marvellous account to the Revolution, and good on the politics of the succeeding Bolshevik years. Second edition (1947)
extends the story to include Russia under Stalin, by an old man out of sympathy with communism. This dying fall should not
obscure the book's general objectivity and excellence.
Pemoud, G. and Flaissier, S. The French Revolution (1959) *
Story of aristocrats and ordinary people, told entirely in eye-witness accounts.

Psellus, Michael Fourteen Byzantine Rulers (1063-75) r4 *

Contemporary statesman on emperors and empresses of the Byzantine golden age. Extravagant lives; extravagant, splendid
telling.

Runchnan, Steven A History of the Crusades (3 vols. 1951 -54) * One of the best, most thrilling historical books of the
20th century, engrossing for specialists, accessible for all. Also: The Sicilian Vespers; The Fall of Constantinople; The Last
Byzantine Renaissance

Ryder, A. J. Twentieth-century Germany: From Bismarck to Brandt (1973) a -1

Snorri Sturluson, Icelandic, 1178-1241.

Egil's Saga. Rec: Smiley
Heimskringla. Rec: Ward
Prose Edda. Rec: Bloom

Solzhenitsyn, A. I. The Gulag Archipelago (1973) *

Extraordinary, heart-rending report on the lives—and deaths—of the victims of Stalin's repression. The Gulag was the system
of prison camps through which millions of Russians passed in the years before and after World War II. Solzhenitsyn's account
is fervently biased—but how could it be otherwise? As a writer, he has here found his great theme; beside this book his fiction
(worthy enough but grossly overpraised— political rawness is no guarantee of literary quality) pales into its proper subordinate
place.

Southern, R. W. The Making of the Middle Ages (1953) a*.f

Begins more or less where Moss (qv) leaves off, and ends in 1200. This is the period of the founding of our civilization, and the
author, steeped in every aspect of it, writes quite beyond the range of most historians. Simply outstanding. Also: Western
Society and the Church in the Middle Ages

Sukhanov, N. N., Russian, 1882-1940.

The Russian Revolution, 1917. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Taylor, A. J. P., English, 1906-1990.

The Struggle for Mastery in Europe. Rec: TLS

Thompson, David Europe since Napoleon (1957) 1$ Fat (800 pages), comprehensive, smoothly written. Weaker on culture
than on politics and military history; notably good on 19th-century colonialism.

Tuchman, Barbara The Guns of August (1962) *

To be compared with Middlebrook (qv), Tuchman's book reminds us again that never in human history was so much folly
manifested by so many as in World War 1—the "Great War", as we ironically call it. Also: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous
14th Century; The Proud Tower

Tuchman, Barbara, American, 1912-1989.

The Guns of August. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Tyng, Sewell, American, 1895-1946.

The Campaign of the Marne, 1914. Rec: National Review

Tyler, Royall The Emperor Charles the Fifth (1956) 01 -If

Wilmot, Chester The Struggle for Europe (1952)

Outstanding first-hand account of World War II.

Wilmot, Chester, Australian, 1911-1954.

The Struggle for Europe. Rec: National Review
Yates, Frances, English, 1899-1981.
The Art of Memory. Rec: Counterpunch NF ML Nonfiction
This book “drew attention to the key role played by magic in early modern science and philosophy” (Wikipedia)

Walter Jackson Bate

Walter Jackson Bate is the Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard and a distinguished scholar of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century English literature. Among his many books are From Classic to Romantic (1946). The Burden of the Past
(1969) and two biographies, John Keats (1964) and Samuel Johnson (1977), each of which won the Pulitzer Prize for
biography.

Great books are the most valuable means of deepening us as "experiencing natures"; and it is only as experiencing natures that
we can prepare for new challenges.

Benjamin P. Thomas. Abraham Lincoln (1952). New York: Knopf, 1974. (Pb)
The most succinct of the many biographies of one of humanity's greatest heroes.

The Bible. King James version (1611).

Often called the "noblest monument of English prose," the King James version is interwoven with the texture of our speech,
and remains a supreme beacon for the spiritual and moral life of mankind.

James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). New York: Random House, 1964. (Pb)
The most fascinating of all biographies, and one of universal appeal because its subject shared so deeply almost every aspect of
the experience we all share.

Werner W. Jaeger. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (1934). Gilbert Highet, trans. New York: Oxford University Press,
1965. (Pb)
A profound study of what permitted a small people to create the basis of Western culture.

Alfred North Whitehead. Science and the Modern World (1925). New York: Free Press, 1967. (Pb)
Unrivaled in showing what, from the ancient world to the twentieth century, permitted and encouraged the giant adventures of
the mind that have formed our world.

William Shakespeare. Shakespeare: Complete Works (1592-1611). Alfred Harbage, ed. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.
The most searching example in literature of the interplay of human action presented in language no other writer has equaled.

Stanley Hoffmann

Stanley Hoffmann is a professor of government and the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France at Harvard
University. Professor Hoffmann has been teaching and writing both about international affairs and about France for thirty
years. Educated in France, he came to Harvard as a teacher in 1955.
All of these books (1) deal with the most fundamental choices—often tragic—individuals are called upon to make, particularly
as citizens, and (2) are works of art and not merely of instruction.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Social Contract (1762). Maurice Cranston, trans. New York: Penguin, 1968. (Pb)
The most powerful attempt to reconcile freedom and authority, self-fulfillment and community. It fails, I think—but what an
impressive and instructive failure.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1966.
The greatest novel ever written and the most probing attempt to show the effects of war on a diverse group of individuals.

Jean-Baptiste Racine. Andromaque (1667). John Cairncross, trans. New York: Penguin, 1976. (Pb)
Love, revenge, lust, motherhood and the aftermath of the Trojan War, in the perfect poetic mix of passion and formality that is
Racine's genius.
Roger Martin du Gard. Les Thibault (1922-40). New York: Larousse, n.d. (Pb)
Even longer than, albeit not as rich as War and Peace, this is another fresco about individuals and war (the First World War) and
a humane, wise, compassionate and deeply pessimistic study of lives.

Charles de Gaulle. The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle (1954-59). J. Griffin and R. Howard, trans. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1964.
The epic story of France's fall and liberation, written by the chief actor in the drama, a leader of genius who was also a
magnificent writer.

Raymond Aron. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (1962). Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox, trans.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
The most comprehensive study of international politics, which tells us both about the limits and about the possibilities of
empirical theory and explores the dilemma of ethical action in world affairs.

John V. Kelleher

John Kelleher is about to retire as professor of Irish studies at Harvard University. where he is acting chairman of the Celtic
Department. His connection with Harvard began in 1940 as a member of the Society of Fellows—in his words, "to paraphrase
an old joke: the first in the field and the first to leave it.-
I wrote sketches for recommended readings several times, but they were in lame prose and besides I was put off by the
realization that it wasn't particular books but individual authors that had significantly influenced me. I hope the resulting
compromises may be of use.

Sean O'Faolain. The Finest Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957.

I put down this title because I must record my debt to O'Faolain and because he is best known here for his short stories, but I
could as properly cite his biographies of Irish figures, or his editorials in The Bell (1939-45), or his many studies of the Irish
people and the nation they have been creating. He is supremely the writer as citizen. I know of none so sensitively perceptive
and sane.

James Joyce. Ulysses (1918-20). New York: Random House, 1976. (Pb)
For years I wondered why the book continued to appeal despite the steadily rising barrier of interpretation that surrounds it.
Finally it dawned on me that Ulysses is about the only upbeat masterpiece of this century—and immensely funny too. In its
own artfully tangled way it records the heartening adventures of people of quiet courage.

John Millington Synge. The Playboy of the Western World (1907). New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968.
I think Synge was the greatest of all modern Irish writers. His work is all of a piece, rammed with vitality, and, for all of
Synge's own iron reserve, it has extraordinary emotional range. In this play he also shows that he is a wonderful comic writer
—probably the more so for his basic sense of tragedy.

Eoin MacNeill. Celtic Ireland (1921). Dublin: University Press of Ireland, 1981.
Again one title to indicate my debt to a man's entire work. MacNeill would be happy to know that much of what he wrote is
now outdated. He was that rare type, a great innovative scholar quite without vanity. Almost alone he transformed the study of
early Irish history from apology or polemic to true historiography, and did that happily.

Maria Edgeworth. Castle Rackrent (1800). New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. (Pb)
An extraordinarily seminal work by a woman of genius. It is not only the first true Irish novel, but the first regional novel,
immensely admired in its day and imitated everywhere. Raised in England, brought to Ireland as a young girl, she somehow
learned more about Ireland, present and past, than I am sure she was aware of knowing. The result is a work of vivid realism.

William Butler Yeats. The Poems of W B. Yeats (1887-1939). Richard Finneran, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. (Pb)
I cite the latest and most complete edition. Yeats parlayed the damnedest combination of natural gifts, spasmodic learning,
native shrewdness, indomitable dedication, some willful half-beliefs, and a few deep insights—parlayed these into memorable,
powerful poetry. Useful poetry, too, that sticks to the ribs.

Europe: the Emergence of an Idea D. Hay Europe

Europe: a HistoryN. Davies Europe
The Times Illustrated History of Europe F. Fernandez-Armesto Europe
Latin American History

These books catalogue the (continuing) collisions between the Old World and the New, and, less obviously, the progress of one
of the last and bloodiest confrontations between Christianity and ordered pagan civilization. The ideological conflicts of the
wider world are galvanized by technological overkill; but they yield nothing in violent dogma, dogmatic violence, to the death-
throes of the old.
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Deuel); BIOGRAPHY (Madariaga, Morison); MEDICINE (McNeill): MYTHOLOGY (Burland);
SOCIOLOGY (Lewis): TRAVEL (Chadwick)

Boxer, C. R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415 - 1825

(1969) Oaf
Portuguese expansion in Asia and in the Americas; stylish general his ,ory of colonial Brazil. Useful background to Freyre (qv)
and Hemming (qv). Also: The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695 - 1750; The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600- 1800

Collier, Simon From Cortes to Castro (1974) a

General history of Latin America to 1973, combined with chapters of social, economic and political analysis. Also: Ideas and
Politics of Chilean Independence, 1808-33

Cunha, Euclides da, Brazilian, 1866-1909.

Rebellion in the Backlands. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Freyre, Gilberto The Masters and the Slaves (1933) P* *

According to one critic (Tannenbaum), the creation of national identity and pride, which in Mexico required "a bloody
revolution, untold suffering and the loss of a million lives", was achieved in Brazil "by this one man and this one book". Also:
The Mansions and the Shanties-, Order and Progress

Gerbi, Antonello The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750- 1900 (1973) p
Masterpiece of intellectual history traces in witty, learned style the origins and development of the great debate on the alleged
inferiority of both man and environment in the Americas.

Gibson, Charles The Aztecs underSpanish Rule (1964) 0P

History of Mexico from the Spanish conquest to 19th-century independence, reconstructed with scholarly care and told with
sympathy and objectivity. Also: The Inca Concept of Sovereignty and the Spanish Administration in Pent; Spain in America

Hennaing, J. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500 - 1800(1976)
Well-researched, readable corrective to Freyre's (qv) somewhat roseate view of Brazilian racial integration; powerful case
study of this central, if grim, theme in Latin American history. Also: The Conquest of the Incas

Hennessy, Alistair The Frontier in Latin American History (1978) 9

Something of a misnomer. Sees the frontier (political, military, economic, racial) as a central theme of Latin American history
from the Conquest to the present; this allows coverage of a wealth of topics (some neglected in conventional narrative
histories). Difficult, but worthwhile.

Katz, Friederich The Ancient American Civilizations (1972) ita-1 Stimulating analysis of pre-Columbian civilizations,
particularly good on social and economic structures (less so on art and literature); usefully points the way to further reading.
Also: a major study of Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution, in preparation and should be worth waiting for.

Lynch, John The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808 –26 (1973) Good general study of the independence movements which
liberated Latin America from Spanish colonial rule, concentrates on Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico. Also: Spain
under the Habsburgs

Meyer, Jean A. The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People between Church and State, 1926-29(1976) Pa./
A brilliant account by French historian of the "alternative" Mexican Revolution, focusing on the Catholic peasant revolt of the
1920s but illuminating wider aspects of religion and politics in modern Mexico. Also: The A merican Revolution, 1910-40

Parry, J. H. The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966) &a/

Probably the best general account in English of the Spanish empire in the New World. Also: The Age of Reconnaissance;
Europe and a Wider World

Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) 109

One of those monumental narrative histories which (rightly or wrongly) historians seldom now attempt; describes Cortés's
conquest of the Aztec empire in grandiloquent style and with immense local detail—even though Prescott never once himself
set foot in Mexico. Also: History of the Conquest of Peru

Thomas, Hugh Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (1971) Pa J

Comprehensive history of Cuba from the Spanish conquest to Castro (concentrating attention on the modern period). Prolix,
chaotic. Also: The Spanish Civil War

Wachtel, Nathan The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530-1570(1976)
Poignant contrast to Prescott's (qv) account; draws on Indian sources to give Indian perspective.

Womack, John Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (1968)

Pedants cavil at the book's colloquial style, and the social scientists at its dearth of sociological analysis; it remains the best
work in English on the Mexican Revolution.
World History

A convincing, definitive synthesis of world history remains to be written. For future master-masons, these books may offer
guidelines; for the rest of us, interested visitors to the quarry. they are intriguing, rough-hewn blocks announcing a potential
they cannot yet fulfil.

Barnes, Harry Elmer, American, 1889-1968.

A History of Historical Writing. Rec: Ward

Barraclough, Geoffrey The Times Atlas of World History (1978) v * Geographical, historical, cultural and military
information clearly and concisely displayed. Essential reference book, and a model of its kind. See HISTORY/EUROPEAN

Bowra, M. et al Golden Ages of the Great Cities (1952)

Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Paris, Venice, Vienna, London, New York—each described at a moment of cultural or historical
supremacy by one of a galaxy of respected historians.

Cambridge Modern History (1957)

Fourteen-volume standard history of the world since the Renaissance. Essential work of reference, flawed only by excessive
concentration on Europe.

Carr, E. H., English, 1892-1982.

What is History?. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Collingwood, R. G., English, 1889-1943.

The Idea of History. Rec: National Review TLS

Durant, Will The Story of Civilization (1935) &RI Multi-volume one-man's view of human history and achievement. Durant's
style is lucid and elegant. His judgements can seem selective and glib; but this remains a monumental work, at once stimulating
and unique.

Durant, Will and Ariel, American, 1885-1981 and 1898-1981.

The Story of Philosophy. Rec: Good Reading
The Story of Civilization. Rec: Fadiman 3

Fukuyama, Francis, American, 1952- .

The End of History and the Last Man. Rec: National Review

Grenville, J. A. S. A World History, 1900– 1945 (1979) 09 Wide-ranging, authoritative study by a leading scholar. Also: Lord
Salisbury and Foreign Policy; Europe Reshaped, 1848 -1878

Grun, B. The Timetables of History: A Chronology of World Events (1975)

Fascinating compendium of dates and events.

Herzl, Theodor, Austrian, 1860-1904.

The Jewish State. Rec: NYPL

Johnson, Paul, English, 1928- .

Modern Times. Rec: National Review (history)

Kennedy, Paul, English, 1945- .

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Rec: TLS

Roberts, J. M. The Hutchinson History of the World (1976) a * /

Ambitious attempt at a full history of the world from earliest times to the present day. Compression; judgement—an impressive
achievement. Also: Europe, 1880-1945; The Mythology of the Secret Societies

Spengler, Oswald, German, 1880-1936.

The Decline of the West. Rec: Boston PL

Toynbee, A. J. Cities of Destiny ( 1967)

Magnificent history of the city—its origins, development and ultimate domination of the civilized world. See
HISTORY/ANCIENT

Toynbee, Arnold, English, 1889-1975.

Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation. Rec: NYPL
A Study of History. Rec: Adler ML Nonfiction TLS
Civilization on Trial. Rec: Adler

Vico, Giovanni Battista, Italian, 1668-1744.

New Science of Giambattista Vico. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Seymour-Smith Ward

Wells, H. G. A Short History of the World (1922)

Still the most accessible brief world history. Displays many of Wells' prejudices, but is coherent and perceptive. See
FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SF

Ernest R. May

Ernest May is a Texan, educated in California, who has been a professor of history at Harvard since the 1950s. A former dean
of Harvard College, he is currently the Charles Warren Professor of History and teaches at the Kennedy School of Government.
He is author, coauthor and editor of works on the history of the United States, modern international relations and the uses of
history for decision nicking.

My choices offer the reader the opportunity to extend his own range of experience five hundred years back and across a variety
of political systems.

William H. Prescott. History of the Conquest of Mexico (1839). Abridgment, Gardiner C. Harvey, ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1966. (Pb)
Prescott's account of Cortez' expedition is the first history I read that held me as much in thrall as any novel. He made me see
that almost incredible adventure.

Harold G. Nicolson. Peacemaking 1919 (1933). New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965.
Part reminiscence, part history, part spleen, part analysis, this is the best case study of an international conference ever written
in English. It still helps me understand better how outcomes in negotiation can be affected by factors of personality,
temperament, age, comparative fatigue, staging, and the like, which do not necessarily surface in documentary records.

Eckart Kehr. Schlachtflottenbau and Partei-Politik 1894-1901. Berlin: E. Ebering, 1930.

This monograph on the German naval building program of 1898-1902 is justifiably renowned among historians of Germany
and of international relations. It is a finely crafted analysis of how domestic parliamentary politics influenced a national policy
supposedly "above politics." I read it as a graduate student, and it has continuously influenced my own research and teaching—
much of which has dealt with the same theme, played in a number of other settings.

Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications
(1955). New York: Free Press, 1964. (Pb)
This pioneering study of the ways "opinion leaders" shape public opinion was to me enormously enlightening. No other book
has helped me so much to understand democratic processes.

Richard E. Neustadt. Alliance Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. (Pb)
For my mind, this study of the Suez and "Skybolt" crises of 1956 and 1962 plays counterpoint to Eckart Kehr's. It explores the
ways court and organizational politics influence outcomes consciously (and conscientiously) designed to be "nonpolitical."
Bernard Bailyn. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1965). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. (Pb)
This book argues compellingly that Americans and Englishmen of the 1770s saw issues differently in part because they had
different histories in their heads. They read differently the lessons of the English seventeenth-century revolution which was
their common heritage, and they respected different authorities and traditions. As so graphically developed by Bailyn, the
example of the American Revolution has helped to keep in my own mind—I hope—awareness not only of the varieties of
perception possible among seemingly similar individuals but also of what a German philosopher labeled (with uncharacteris-
tic elegance) the Gleichzeitigkeit der Ungleichzeitigkeiten—the contemporaneous existence of things noncontemporaneous.

Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History at Harvard and has been a member of the Harvard faculty since
1950. From 1981 to 1982, Professor Pipes was director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs on the National Security
Council. His many works include: Survival Is Not Enough (1984): U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente (1981): and
Formation of the Soviet Union (1954).

I did not provide a list of the most important books but only of those which have had a strong personal influence on me. They
may do nothing for others.

Friedrich Nietzsche. The Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1872-95). Walter Kaufman, ed. and trans. New York: Modern Library,
1968.
The first author to make a great impression on me was Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I "discovered" at the age of fifteen. I
devoured all he wrote (in the original German). He suited well my adolescent sense of rebellion. Once I reached seventeen I
found him less and less palatable, and I have not been able to read him since.

Rainer Maria Rilke. Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1897-1923). Stephen Mitchell, ed. New York: Random House,
1982.
The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke I first read at the age of nineteen or twenty. Its profound lyricism, its serenity have affected
me more than any other poetry and do so to this day.

Francois P. Guizot. The History of Civilization in Europe (1828). William Hazlitt, trans. Darby, Penn.: Arden Library, 1983.
I discovered this book while I was a soldier and it showed me that history can be a form of philosophy and literature. It
persuaded me to become a professional historian.

The Bible (so-called "Old Testament").

I first read it late, at the age of twenty-eight or so, in connection with tutoring in history and literature, where it was obligatory.
I was overwhelmed by nearly all of it, but especially the Book of Job and the Psalms.

Michel de Montaigne. Selections from the Essays (1595). Donald M. Frame, ed. and trans. Arlington Heights, III.: Harlan
Davidson, 1973. (Pb)
I tried to read the Essays (in the Florio translation) at the age of twenty-five but it bored me. Then I read it again at the age of
forty-seven and found it the wisest book ever written. I never fail to be impressed and influenced by Montaigne's outlook.

Sir Max Beerbohm. Works and More (1930). St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1969.
Max Beerbohm has had a much smaller influence on me and yet I love reading him: his quiet elegance, detachment, serenity
appeal to me greatly, as does his exquisite humor. I first read him when I was fifty or so.

Thomas C. Schelling

Thomas Schelling is the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of
Government and a professor in the Department of Economics. He is the author of numerous works including The Strategy of
Conflict (1961), Arms and Influence (1966), Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978), and Choice and Consequence (1984).
In addition to teaching at Harvard since 1958, he is director of Harvard's Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and
Policy, which fulfills his research interest in addictive and habitual behaviors and other issues in self-management. His other
research interests include national security and climate changes.

These books give readers a taste of the best in natural science, social science, classical and modern history and literary style.

Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species (1859). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
I have had a fascination with evolutionary biology, provoked by such beautiful books as George Gaylord Simpson's This View
of Life, but had never picked up a copy of Darwin's original work until ten years ago. I have rarely had such pleasure and
excitement in reading a sustained piece of scientific reasoning and presentation of evidence. It is technically accessible to any
intelligent reader. It is a genuinely participatory experience.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431-404 B.C.). Richard Livingstone, ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1960.
I knew that classical Greece produced people at least as smart as people anywhere today, but until I read this I had no idea how
modern they were in their thinking. Nothing written in this century can touch Thucydides (or the people he quotes) for subtlety
of political and diplomatic discourse and strategy. I like Rex Warner's translation in the Penguin edition, but some readers may
need large print. If you like it go on to Herodotus and Xenophon.

Erving Goffman. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior (1967). New York: Pantheon, 1982. (Pb)
I was hooked on Goffman from the time I read "On Face Work," the first essay in this collection. If you like this try "Stigma,"
"Forms of Talk," and "Asylums." He looks at the same people we look at doing the same things we see them doing, and he sees
things we can't see without his help. He once pointed out to me that a woman can be naked with her husband without
embarrassment, naked with her sister without embarrassment, but not naked without embarrassment in the presence of both.

Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy (1759-67). New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. (Pb)
I bought a copy in 1943 because it fit in my pocket and I was vaguely aware that it was a classic. I read it for an hour on a
streetcar and was captivated by the story, the style and the purported author. It is an endlessly digressive autobiography that
begins with his conception and barely gets up to his birth. Sterne writes a lovely, leisurely sentence that can wind on for three
hundred words and you never lose your way or have to look back.

John Keegan. The Face of Battle (1976). New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
I have a book on baseball that says fear is the fundamental factor in hitting, and hitting with the bat is the fundamental act of
baseball. For John Keegan, a distinguished military historian, fear is the fundamental factor in exposing oneself to enemy
weapons, and exposing oneself is the fundamental act of corn-bat, as he vividly describes, at the level of the individual soldier,
the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. A superbly thoughtful history of military combat.

Lloyd Weinreb

Lloyd Weinreb has been a professor of law at the Harvard Law School since 1965. His specialties are criminal law and legal
philosophy. In addition to his textbook, Leading Constitutional Cases on Criminal Justice, he has published Denial of Justice
and Law of Criminal Investigation.

Homer. The Iliad (ca. 800 B.C.). Robert Fitzgerald, trans. New York: Doubleday, 1975. (Pb)
The great epic, full of the grandeur and pain of the human condition.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colon us (ca. 441-401 B.c.). New York:
Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
The unlimited tragic vision. The meaning of human freedom is laid bare.

William Shakespeare. King Lear (1605). New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
Everyone must choose which of Shakespeare's plays is closest to him. In this end, I return most often to Lear. The Tempest is a
close second.

Michel de Montaigne. Selections from the Essays (1595). Donald M. Frame, ed. and trans. Arlington Heights, Harlan
Davidson, 1973. (Pb)
Montaigne is a wise, compassionate friend to accompany one throughout life, ready to converse about every important subject,
whatever one's mood.

James Joyce. Dubliners (1914). New York: Penguin, 1976. (Pb)

Small lives seen closely enough to disclose eternal truths. Ulysses is as good for the same reason.
William H. McNeill. The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963). Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970. (Pb)
Truly great history.

McNeill, William H., American, 1917- .

The Rise of the West. Rec: Fadiman 3 ML Nonfiction

HISTORY: INTRODUCTION
John Stewart

The study of the past is something that has fascinated human societies from at least the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans,
and before this in certain eastern cultures. This does not mean, however, that those who study the human past in a scholarly
way, that is professional historians, can necessarily agree on the usefulness or otherwise of such a pursuit. For some, history
can provide a guide, albeit an imprecise one, to an understanding of the present and, more problematically, the future. Others
see this as an unrealistic or pretentious claim for history, arguing instead that its virtues lie in such matters as evaluating
evidence and in beginning to understand the complexities of human existence. The latter group tend to be `conservative' in their
historical practice, and are unhappy about any alliances between history and other disciplines such as sociology. Such debates
go to the heart of what we mean by `history', and the books listed below provide an introduction to these debates from a
number of different standpoints.

Not to know what took place before you were born is to remain for ever a child.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

History and Social Theory (1992) by Peter Burke. This work argues for a closer relationship between history and the social
sciences, and for the use of appropriate'theory' in historical study. A number of case studies are also provided suggesting how
such a relationship might work in practice. Burke is a distinguished historian in this field, and his arguments therefore come
right from the heart of the debate.

What is History? (1961) by E H Carr. A controversial figure, Carr claimed a 'scientific' basis to historical study, while
acknowledging, in a famous phrase, that history was an `unending dialogue between past and present'. Of particular concern to
his critics, however, was his definition of historical `facts'. Although difficult to defend nowadays as a whole, this work was
significant not least in provoking other historians to try and describe and analyse exactly what it was they did when
undertaking research and writing.

The Practice of History (1967) by Geoffrey Elton. The late Geoffrey Elton was one of the most articulate exponents of the
more `traditional' approach to history. In this work he reveals, clearly and lucidly, the kind of painstaking procedures a historian
has to go through in order to produce a useful piece of historical research. Elton also makes clear his scepticism about any
predictive or `scientific' qualities which might, mistakenly, be attributed to history. In part, this work is a response to Carr.

Return to Essentials (1991) by Geoffrey Elton. In a sense, the title says it all. Elton attacks those who would distort history by
seeking to force historical evidence into pre-determined theoretical patterns. Instead, Elton seeks to emphasize the traditional
historical practices of which he himself was such an admirable exponent. This book is worth reading alongside Marwick, Tosh,
and, especially, Burke.

What Is History Today? (1988) edited by Juliet Gardiner. This is a collection of essays on the different branches of history -
political history, economic history, and so on - by experts in the various fields. Clearly written and with a useful introduction,
this work brings out both the diversity of historical study and the range of opinions about its value.

The Nature of History (1989) Arthur Marwick. Writing in a witty and provocative style, Marwick seeks to show the 'necessity
of history', by which he means the need for societies to study and attempt to understand the past in order to be able to make
sense of present-day society. The book also deals with such topics as the development of historical studies and the problematic
nature of primary sources.

Introduction to History (1986) by the Open University. Designed for an Open University distance-learning course, and
written by Arthur Marwick, this is one of the best places for any newcomer interested in the nature of historical study to start.
Marwick carefully takes readers through various meanings of the word `history', and again argues the case for the necessity of
society's understanding its historical origins. There are a number of video recordings also associated with this course which, if
access can be gained to them, further illustrate the points being made.

The Pursuit of History (1991) by John Tosh. Like Marwick, Tosh sees a necessity for historical study. His work is particularly
useful in alerting readers to some of the main types of historical study, and to recent developments such as the use of
quantitative methods.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HISTORY

Geraldine Pinch

The birth of Egyptology is usually dated to Jean Francois Champollion's decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script in
1822. Egyptologists are concerned with every aspect of the civilization of ancient Egypt; not just with those topics, such as
pyramids and mummies, that have caught the popular imagination. Egypt is important in the history of humanity as the first
large state to be ruled by a central government. The `pharaonic' culture created in the late 4th millennium BC lasted for over
3,000 years and produced some of the world's most impressive art and architecture. In spite of the huge quantity of surviving
remains, and frequent new discoveries, many aspects of life in ancient Egypt remain mysterious.

I now proceed to give a more particular account of Egypt; it possesses

more wonders than any other country, and exhibits works greater than
can be described, in comparison with all other regions; therefore more must
be said about it. The Egyptians, besides having a climate peculiar to themselves,
and a river differing in its nature from all other rivers, have adopted customs
and usages in almost every respect different from the rest of mankind.
HERODOTUS

Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Atlas (1980) by John Baines and Jaromir Malek. A reliable introduction to ancient Egyptian
history and culture. It includes a guide to all the main ancient sites with many excellent maps and plans.

Ancient Egypt: The Land and Its Legacy (1988) by T G H James. A journey through Egypt describing the surviving towns,
temples, and tombs. A beautifully illustrated book that combines impeccable scholarship with sensitivity to the atmosphere of
ancient sites.

Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization (1989) by Barry J Kemp. A thought-provoking study of the political, social, and
economic life of the ancient Egyptians written by a leading archaeologist.

Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt (1982) by Erik Hornung (translated by John Baines). A challenging book for anyone
seriously interested in understanding the complex world of ancient Egyptian religion.

Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry (1991) by Dieter Arnold. A detailed, technical book that answers every
conceivable question about how the pyramids, and all the other great monuments, were built.

Egyptian Painting and Relief (1986) by Gay Robins. An essential, brief guide to understanding and enjoying Egyptian
paintings and sculptured reliefs. It explains the materials, methods, and unique conventions of ancient Egyptian art.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs (1987) by W V Davies. The best short introduction to the languages and scripts of ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian Literature volumes 1-3 (1973, 1976, 1980) by Miriam Lichtheim. These books allow the ancient Egyptians to
speak for themselves. They include translations of stories, love poems, royal inscriptions, and passages from the famous Book
of the Dead
Akhenaten, King of Egypt (1988) by Cyril Aldred. A comprehensive study of a ruler who has been called `the first individual
in history'. It explores the religious reforms of the `heretic pharaoh' and his wife Nefertiti, and the troubled history of the
controversial Amarna period.

The Complete Tutankhamun (1990) by Nicholas Reeves. A full, and magnificently illustrated, account of the reign of the boy
pharaoh Tutankhamen, and of the astounding contents of his tomb.

GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORY

Graham Ley

There is an abundance of general histories of both Greece and Rome, which vary from the lavishly illustrated to detailed
studies of the available archaeological and literary evidence about events and personalities. I have included in this list primarily
books that provide a reliable overview of extensive periods, and that incorporate in an accessible form the results of continuing
scholarship. The Greek and Roman historians, of whom the most important for general study are Herodotus and Thucydides
(for classical Greece) and Livy and Tacitus (for republican Rome and the early Roman Empire), have been translated in the
Penguin Classics series. Also fascinating, for their suggestive portraits of individuals, are the biographies written by Plutarch
(of Greek and Roman military and political leaders) and by Suetonius (of the early Roman emperors).

It will be enough for me if these words of mine are judged useful by

those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the
past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or
other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.
THUCYDIDES

The Routledge Atlas of Classical History (1971; revised edition 1994) by Michael Grant. A graphic presentation of the major
historical events and eras.

The Historians of Greece and Rome (1969) by S Usher. An informative and accessible introduction to the major ancient
writers themselves.

The Fontana History of the Ancient World (1976 onwards) by various authors. A comprehensive and accessible multivolume
account by specialists, which pays attention to social and cultural history as well as to economics, military affairs, and politics.
The volumes are: Early Greece by O Murray, Democracy and Classical Greece by J Davies, The Hellenistic World by F
Wallbank, Early Rome and the Etruscans by R Ogilvie, The Roman Republic by M Crawford, The Roman Empire by C Wells,
The Later Roman Empire by A Cameron.

The Early Greeks (1976) by R J Hopper. A clear and interesting survey of Greek history from the Minoan period to the
emergence of the classical Greek city-state.

The Greek World 479-323 BC (1983) by Simon Hornblower. Probably the best short survey of a crucial period in Greek
history, which saw the rise and decline of classical Athens.

The Miracle That Was Macedonia (1991) by N Hammond. A recent account of the growth and apogee of Macedonian power
under Philip and his son Alexander the Great by a leading historian.

Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (1990) by Peter Green. A detailed picture of the
changing historical and cultural relations in the Mediterranean in the period of the gradual decline of Greek power, and of the
growth of Rome.

A History of the Roman World 753-144 BC (1980) by H Scullard. A continually revised, authoritative history of the first six
centuries of the Roman republic.

The Roman Revolution (1939) by Ronald Syme. The classic study of the transformation of the Roman republic into a
principate under Augustus.
For up-to-date studies of the Roman Empire, in its earlier and later periods, I should recommend the books by Wells and
Cameron in the Fontana series.

Three other books deal with areas that may be of particular interest to readers: The Roman Invasion of Britain (1980) by
Graham Webster;
Greeks, Romans and Barbarians (1988) by Barry Cunliffe; The Ancient Economy (1984) by M Finley.

ANCIENT MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY

Stephanie Dailey

The civilizations that once flourished in the Middle East have been uncovered gradually during the past 150 years. Their
numerous and varied writings on stone and clay are still being excavated and are mostly deciphered, so that we can reconstruct
very ancient life and literature in astonishing detail. Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites, Elamites, and
Persians are all linked together by their use of cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing, by trade and empire, and by splendid cities.
They made extraordinary progress in are, architecture, astronomy, and technology, and we are only just beginning to appreciate
the true extent of their achievements.

It is indeed one of the most remarkable facts in history, that the

records of an empire, so renowned for its power and civilisation, should have
been entirely lost; and that the site of a city (Nineveh) as eminent for its extent
as its splendour, should for ages have been a matter of doubt; it is not perhaps
less curious that an accidental discovery should suddenly lead us to hope that
these records may be recovered, and this site satisfactorily identified.
AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD

Ancient Iraq (1980) by George Roux. A beautifully constructed account which introduces Mesopotamian history and culture
to the nonspecialist.

The Greatness That Was Babylon: A Survey of the Ancient Civilization of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (1988) by Harry W F
Saggs. An excellent overview showing clearly why this civilization ranks among the foremost in world history.

Mesopotamia (1991) by Julian Reade. A brief, elegant account containing brilliant illustrations taken mainly from the superb
collections in the British Museum.

Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (1990) by Michael Roof. This fine book gives an overview of the
whole subject, beginning with the remarkable prehistoric cultures. It is lavishly illustrated throughout the text.

Ancient Near Eastern Art (1995) by Dominique Collon. If you ever got the impression that the Egyptians and Greeks
invented fine architecture or freestanding statues, carving in very hard stone or narrative sculpture with lifelike scenes to take
your breath away, read this and think again.

Myths from Mesopotamia (1991) by Stephanie Dailey. Even earlier than the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Mahabharata, the
ancient Mesopotamians were writing epics and myths that still have power to compel modern man. These translations are
eminently readable, and show how scholars have pieced together the oldest stories in the world.

Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History (1992) by J Nicholas Postgate. An original and fascinating
book which combines archaeology and texts to give new insights into the development of ancient civilization. Beautifully
illustrated too.

From the Omens of Babylon: Astrology and Ancient Mesopotamia (1994) by Michael Baigent_ This remarkable book, by a
nonspecialist who has taken great care with the scholarly material to write an account that is highly readable, is the envy of
specialists. It shows that Chaldaean astrologers did not become famous worldwide without good cause, and how their learning
contributed to humanism in the Renaissance.

The Hittites (1990) by Oliver R Gurney. This remains one of the best books to describe the ancient Indo-European people of
Anatolia who took over much of the learning of Mesopotamia and helped to transmit it to Hebrews and Greeks.
The Bible and Recent Archaeology (1987) by P Roger and S Moorey. An extensive revision of Kathleen Kenyon's book of
1978. It relates with great clarity and fine photographs how the tricky linkage between archaeology and the Bible continues to
excite furious debate.

MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN HISTORY

Simon Hall

Since World War II, medieval historians have pioneered alternatives to the traditional, event-based study of history. Today,
most medievalists attempt either to present a snapshot recreation of medieval culture as a whole - intellectual, economic, and
material - from as wide as possible a selection of its surviving records, or to trace long-term changes in the ideas, economic
trends, technology, demography, and even environment of the medieval world. The following selection offers an introduction to
both traditional and new medieval history.

These may seem small things ... but taken together they build up a complicated sense of the past, which must always be made
up of small things vividly perceived.
R W SOUTHERN

The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe (1992) edited by George Holmes. A superbly illustrated, modern,
thematic introduction which combines both traditional and new approaches.

Cambridge Medieval History 8 volumes (1923-36) by various authors. A multi-volume series offering the most authoritative
traditional account of the Middle Ages.

Feudal Society (1965) by Marc Bloch. A ground-breaking analysis by an extraordinary historian and Resistance hero that
helped to create the new approach to history.

The Making of the Middle Ages (1953) by R W Southern. The best short introduction to the medieval world, transcending the
division between traditional and new history, by possibly the greatest British medievalist of all.

The World of Late Antiquity (1971) by Peter Brown. An outstanding short, illustrated introduction to the early medieval
period, from AD 200 to about 800, packed with thematic insights.

The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (1978) by Georges Duby. The most influential book by the most celebrated
modern French medievalist, tracing the emergence, importance, and disappearance of a concept fundamental to medieval social
thought.

Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (1978) by Alexander Murray. An exploration of all aspects of the interaction between
the mental and real worlds of medieval Europe.

Medieval Monasticism (1984) by C H Lawrence. A straightforward factual introduction to one of the most complex and
important features of medieval culture, and one of the most alien to modem readers.

Medieval Civilization (1988) by Jacques Le Goff. A unique combination of narrative history with an analysis of time and
space, material culture, Christian society, and mentalities, sensibilities, and attitudes in medieval Europe.

THE RENAISSANCE
Martyn Rady

The Renaissance is commonly considered to extend from the 14th to the 16th century. The Renaissance was a cultural
movement which sought to restore the forms of classical Roman and Greek civilization which had been lost during the period
of the Middle Ages. This restoration involved not only an, architecture, and sculpture, but also a renewal of interest in Latin
and Greek texts, poetry, and drama. The Renaissance had its place of birth in Italy, in particular in the courts of the north Italian
princes who acted as patrons of the arts. Italy was also the home of the earliest humanists, so called because of their interest in
`human letters' (hierae hurnaniores): poetry, literature, and history. The humanists edited classical works, the original texts of
which had been corrupted during the Middle Ages, and sought to perfect the Latin and Greek languages used in their own day.
The Renaissance spread out from its Italian birthplace during the 15th century and affected an, architecture, and literature
across most of Europe.

The 16th century ... runs from Columbus to Copernicus, from

Copernicus to Galileo, from the discovery of the earth to the discovery
of the heavens. That as when man found himself.
JULES MICHELET

Cultural Atlas of the Renaissance (1993) by C F Black and others. A very well-illustrated volume which covers the principal
trends of the period.

The Art of the Renaissance (1963) by Peter Murray and Linda Murray. Another well-illustrated book which concentrates
primarily on developments in an and architecture in Italy.

The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background (1961) by Denys Hay. The author investigates not only the values and
meaning of the Renaissance in Italy but also its political background and subsequent dissemination north of the Alps.

The Renaissance in National Context (1992) edited by Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich. Although the volume includes several
chapters on the Renaissance in Italy, the bulk of the work is devoted to the Renaissance in northern Europe. It thus provides a
valuable counterweight to the `Italianocentric' approach of most books on the Renaissance.

The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe (1990) by Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay. Provides a thorough
survey of the humanist 'programme' and includes discussion of the relations between humanism and the Reformation, court
patronage, and magic.

Renaissance Europe 1480-1520 (1971) by J R Hale. Provides valuable and entertaining social, religious, economic, and
cultural background.
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550; several translations) by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari records the biographies of
the leading Italian artists from Cimabue and Giotto in the late 13th century to Leonardo and Michelangelo in his own day.

The Prince (1513) by Niccolo Machiavelli. By separating politics and government from theology and ethics, The Prince may
be considered one of the first works of political science.

PROTESTANT REFORMATION
Martyn Rady

The Protestant Reformation began as a reaction to the theology and practices of the Catholic church. It is frequently considered
to have commenced in 1517 when the German monk Martin Luther launched a public attack on the Catholic practice of selling
indulgences, which were documents absolving the purchaser from sin. Luther's protest and his desire to `purify' and reform the
church won him immediate and wide-spread support in Germany. The success of Protestantism in Germany owed much,
however, to the backing of the princes who protected Luther and established churches of their own independent of the pope.
The movement of religious protest and renewal begun by Luther was given clarity and coherence by the Swiss reformer John
Calvin, who composed his seminal theological text The Institutes of the Christian Religion in Geneva during the 1530s. By the
middle years of the 16th century, Germany, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, the Low Countries, and large parts of France and
central and eastern Europe had been won over to the Protestant Reformation. The reaction of the Catholic church (known as the
Counter-Reformation) was to define its theology more closely, to eliminate abuses, and to urge the persecution of Protestants.

All the strength, all the weakness of the German character was
reflected and magnified in his [Luther's] passionate temperament, its
tenderness and violence, its coarseness in vituperation and old-fashioned
Biblical piety ... its conviviality and asceticism, its homely common sense and
morbid self-scrutiny, its paroxysms of contrition and heady self confidence.
H A L FIsR
Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (1963) by G R Elton. Provides a thorough historical account of the origins and early
development of the Reformation in Europe.

Reformation and Society (1966) by A G Dickens. A well-illustrated text which covers the principal themes of the period. The
author explains the popular appeal of the Reformation with reference to the social conditions of the period and the role of the
printing press in the dissemination of ideas.

Luther: His Life and Work (1963) by Gerhard Ritter. A leading German scholar explains not only the life and theology but
also the popular appeal of Martin Luther.

Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings (1961) edited by John Dillenberger. Luther's writings still retain, even in
translation, a strong and emotive power.

John Calvin (1975) by T H L Parker. An introduction to Calvin's life and work which explains his theology in simple and
straightforward terms.

Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (1987) by R W Scribner. A collection of essays which
analyse the progress and impact of the Reformation from the point of view of popular belief, hierarchy, and social
anthropology.

The Catholic Reformation (1971) by Pierre Janelle. A Catholic scholar traces the history of the Catholic or Counter-
Reformation and discerns its origins in a movement for reform within the Catholic church which actually predates
Protestantism.

The Dutch Revolt (1977) by Geoffrey Parker. From the middle of the 16th century onwards, the conflict between
Protestantism and the revived Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation led to military contests in Germany, France, and the
Low Countries. This book traces the history of the most violent of these confrontations.

MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY

Glyn Redworth

The transformation of Europe between the Reformation and the 20th century is impossible to contain in one list. The period is
characterized by the growth of powerful nation-states, whose antagonism had bloody consequences. It is also the age when
capitalism came of age, and was too often unrestrained by notions of the common good. The democratic liberties championed
during the French Revolution were not to be matched by economic and social liberties until this century.

And which is the first of these rights? That of existence. The first
social law is, therefore, that which assures every member of society of
the means of existence; all other laws are subordinate to it.
MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE

The Perspective of the World (1979) by F Braudel. The third volume of this monumental work deals with the 15th to 18th
centuries, and is no means confined to Europe. A masterpiece, it sets the scene for the economic and global setting of the rise of
modern Europe.

The Thirty Years' War (1987) by Geoffrey Parker. Well illustrated, especially with maps, this gives an account of a conflict
which still can claim to herald the beginning of a new phase in European politics. After 1648, wars are fought for secular rather
than religious reasons.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987) by Simon Schama. A
breathtaking essay on an and representation in the first affluent culture of modem Europe.

Origins of the French Revolution (1980) by William Doyle. Recognized as the best introduction to the epoch of liberty,
fraternity, and equality.
Spain: 1808-1975 (1982) by Raymond Can. More wide-ranging than it appears. Liberalism was invented in early-19th-century
Spain, and this account is an excellent introduction to efforts, in vain in Spain's case, to face the challenge of modernization.
The Russian Empire 1801-1917 (1967) by H Seton-Watson. A classic account of Russia's expansion of influence both in the
Balkans and, territorially, into Asia. Its readability and authority make it a classic.

The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918 (1969) by C A Macartney This period is examined in detail, though the poignancy of the
Dual Monarchy is nowhere more vividly brought alive than in the novels of Joseph Roth.

Selected Writings of Karl Marx (1977) edited by David McLellan. This makes the works of the father of communism
accessible. After all, Harold Wilson claimed he could never get beyond the first page of Das Kapital. A close study of Marx's
own works reveals a more humane and sympathetic figure than the pronouncements of latter followers might suggest.

20TH-CENTURY EUROPE
M R D Foot

By the beginning of this century, Europe was the world's dominating continent; by the end of it, it had been displaced by North
America, of which the predominance in turn was under threat from east Asia. Two European civil wars each spread into a
world war, in 1914-18 and 1939-45, with catastrophic effects within Europe and out-side it. From World War II, the part-
European colossus of the USSR emerged strengthened, till its own internal contradictions destroyed it later in the century. At
the western end of the continent, the French and the Germans, long opposed as enemies, formed the core of a European
common market of which the principal aim was to prevent any more major European civil wars. Minor national differences can
still make fierce trouble, as the current crisis in Bosnia shows: the catastrophe of 1914 began at Sarajevo, and it is unclear
whether more such catastrophes can ever be stopped. At least European powers no longer own many colonies.

Other regions' claims to displace Europe in the centre of our world picture are impressive. Africa, despised and disordered,
boasts antiquity of human settlement; Asia encloses mature civilizations; North America is commercial by its economic might,
South America by its rapid development; the Pacific rim by economic promise and achievement alike. All this competition has
shrunk
Europe's share of the map but has also forced Europeans into an increased dependence on each other and an enhanced
European solidarity. They can no longer afford the internecine squabbles of the era of European world hegemony.
FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO

Millenium (1995) by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Explains how Europe secured its temporary predominance over the other
continents; it ranges far back in history - so much the better.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (1988) by Paul Kennedy. Also goes back, though only half as far as Fernandez-Armesto,
before the 20th century; more diplomatic and less cultural in its coverage.

Europe 1880-1945 (1967) by John Roberts. An unusually lucid account of the diplomatic and political wrangles that attended
the turn of the century and the two world wars.

The Myriad Faces of War (1986) by Trevor Wilson. Outstanding among the shelves-full of books that cover the Great War of
1914-18, which brought down four European empires and precipitated two revolutions in Russia.

A History of the Modern World (1983) by Paul Johnson. Begins with Lenin's revolution in Russia, and runs on into the early
1980s: Europe in these years cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of the world.

Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994) by Dmitri Volkogonov. Turns three generations of belief and misbelief upside down: a
masterpiece of revisionist history.

The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995) edited by I C B Dear. Presents current scholarship on its formative
subject.

The Age of Terrorism (1987) by Walter Laqueur. May well make its readers' hair stand on end: perils remain around us.

The Century of Warfare (1995) by Charles Messenger. Not confined to Europe, this is nevertheless Eurocentric.
THE HOLOCAUST
David Cesarani

The Holocaust was the first and only time that a state set out to annihilate every man, woman, and child of a designated group,
wherever they lived, and however long it took. No other genocide has approached the intensity of the genocide against the
Jews. Yet Nazi racial thinking had terrible consequences for other groups, too. There are varying explanations of why it
happened, and why the Jews and the free world responded as they did. These are issues that haunt us today since genocide is
clearly not a thing of the past. The Holocaust also lives on in the experiences of the survivors and has become a subject for
artists, filmmakers, and novelists.

I could understand the desire to dissect history, the strong urge to close in
on the past and the forces shaping it; nothing is more natural. No question is
more important for our generation which is the generation of Auschwitz,
or of Hiroshima, tomorrow's Hiroshima. The future frightens us, the past fills
us with shame: and these two feelings, like those two events, are closely linked,
like cause to effect. It is Auschwitz that will produce Hiroshima, and if
the human race should perish by the nuclear bomb, this will be the punishment
for Auschwitz, where, in the ashes, the hope of man was extinguished.
ELIE WIESEL

The Racial State - Germany, 1939-1945 (1991) by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman. A superb dissection of Nazi
racial policy and practice, revealing how Jews, black people, Gypsies, gays, as well as other German men, women, and youth,
were all adversely affected by Nazi race-thinking.

The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry (1990) by Leni Yahil. The most comprehensive one-volume account. Rich in
detail, yet easy to read.

The Holocaust in History (1989) by Michael Marcus. A concise work that effortlessly blends an outline of the Holocaust with
a discussion of how the study of the subject has evolved, including accounts of the main controversies.

Atlas of the Holocaust (1988) by Martin Gilbert. A valuable work of reference which, like his epic chronicle The Holocaust
(1987), draws on survivor testimony to give a shocking blow-by-blow record of the catastrophe.

The Terrible Secret (1982) by Walter Laqueur. A precise and damning examination of how much the free world knew about
the `final solution' and how politicians, the press, and public opinion responded to the news.

The War Against the Jews (1975) by Lucy Dawidowicz. Although the account of Nazi policy is dated, this classic short
history sympathetically explained Jewish responses for the first time and has hardly been bettered.

Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (1994) edited by Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum. The latest scholarship
gathered together to unravel the complex history of the largest concentration camp and killing centre which has come to
symbolize the Holocaust.

Out of the Whirlwind - A Reader of Holocaust Literature (1976) edited by Albert Friedlander. A fine collection of stories,
extracts from novels, memoirs, and poetry by survivors that takes us as close as possible to the `heart of darkness'. It includes
extracts from the writing of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.

One by One by One. Facing the Holocaust (1990) by Judith Miller. For the survivors the Holocaust did not end in 1945: it
echoed on in their lives, touching their children, too. Every country involved in World War H had to confront its role in the
`final solution', a much delayed and painful process that is explored in perceptive essays on six different countries.

FRANCE
M R D Foot
France emerged gradually from the wreck of Charlemagne's empire. It was threatened by the Viking dukes of Normandy, who
became lungs of England, and at one stage of the Hundred Years' War owned about half of France's present territory, but were
expelled by force of arms. Another threat came from the dukes of Burgundy, with whom the French crown eventually secured a
marriage alliance. Religious wars in the 16th century were succeeded by a strong monarchy, run in turn by Cardinal Richelieu,
Jules Mazarin, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert; which, late in the 18th century, ran out of cash. Revolution followed; so did terror;
resolved by Napoleon Bonaparte's empire, which died of military overextension in 1814-15. The 19th century saw seven
different regimes in France; for the last quarter of it, the Third Republic was relatively stable, as industrial development began.
An immense historical literature, most of it in French.

The Princess [Mathilde] was a portly little lady, with a startling

resemblance to her uncle Napoleon. `If it weren't for him, I'd rather be
selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio,' she would say, in the gruff,
plebeian voice of the Bonapartes. She sat, wearing a string of black pearls,
in a humble armchair to which her presence somehow gave the air of a
throne. She liked to feel that she was no stickler for etiquette, and would
allow the ladies only to begin the movements of a curtsey before pulling
them up by main force for an embrace; while the gentlemen, once they had
shown their intention of kissing her hand, would receive an informal handshake.
GEORGE D PAINTER

The Earliest Times (1927) by F Funck-Brentano (translated by E F Buckley). Provides an old-fashioned medievalist's guide.

The Middle Ages (1922) by F Funck-Brentano (translated by E O'Neill). Does the same.

France, Mediaeval and Modern (1918) by Arthur Hassell. Also has an old-fashioned ring today.

The Ancien Regime and the Revolution (1856, several recent translations) by Alexis de Tocqueville. Though much older, has
a much more modem ring - the author fore-saw the growth and the perils of democracy - and is still well worth reading.

France (1898) by J E C Bodley. Long the standard work. Begins at the revolution of 1789.

France (1969) by Douglas Johnson. A much more modem treatment, but also deals mainly with events since 1789.

Marcel Proust (1959) by George D Painter. Though it runs over from the 19th century to the next, this is one of the best of
biographies, and gives a splendidly complete picture of the society of its day.

The Development of Modern France 1874-1959 (1940; revised edition 1967) by D W Brogan_ Remains much the best
account of its subject; affectionate, sometimes wayward, always interesting.

Grandeur and Misery of Victory (1930) by Georges Clemenceau. Covers the virtual dictatorship that saved France from
Germany in 1917-18.

De Gaulle (1992) by Jean Lacouture. In two volumes, a life of France's saviour in the following world war.

GERMANY
Bob Moore

The study of 19th-century German history really began to flourish in the 1970s and 1980s when historians began to look for the
origins of the country's turbulence in the 20th century. The amount of literature is enormous and the choices inevitably highly
selective, but the following do represent a cross-section of the best standard works in the period and its leading personalities.

Germany is a queer country: one can't regard it dispassionately. I alternate

between hating it thoroughly, stick stock and stone, and yearning for it fit to break
my heart. I can't help feeling it a young and adorable country - adolescent - with
the faults of adolescence.
D H LAWRENCE

German History 1770-1866 (1989) by James Sheehan. On the history of Germany before unification, one cannot do better
than this book which surveys the development of the Germanic states through the final years of the Holy Roman Empire and
through the Napoleonic period into the 19th century, charting both the successes and the failures. Essential if one is to
understand the federal nature of the post-1871 German Empire and the role of Prussia within it.

A History of Germany 1815-1985 (1987) by William Carr; Germany 1866-1945 (1981) by Gordon Craig. Overlapping or
adjoining the previous book are two other survey histories. Both have long timespans and have their own particular strengths.
Again, one of these two should be considered essential reading.

Origins of the Wars of German Unification (1991) by William Can. Provides a comprehensive account of the political and
military circumstances which brought the German Empire into being. It includes all the debates, including the role of Otto von
Bismarck and the fiendishly complex Schleswig-Holstein question which so bedevilled statesmen of the period.

Imperial Germany 1871-1914: Economy, Society, Culture and Politics (1994) by Volker Berghahn. This is exactly what the
title suggests, namely an all-embracing survey of the `Second Empire'.

Bismarck: The White Revolutionary (1990) by Lothar Gall. No reading list on 19th-century Germany would be complete
without a biography of its leading statesman, Otto von Bismarck. There are many available, but the outstanding one of the
present era is undoubtedly Gall's. Similarly one cannot ignore the Emperor Wilhelm II. As one of the key figures in late-19th-
century Germany, both his life and times demand attention. The following two titles are recommended: The Kaiser and His
Times (1964) by Michael Balfour, and The Kaiser and his Court (1994) by John Rohl.

The Peculiarities of German History (1984) by David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley. This gives a more detailed insight into the
debates on late-19th-century German history and beyond.

ITALY
Glyn Redworth

The geographical or cultural idea of Italy has existed since classical times, but it was only at the end of the 19th century that
Italy became a political reality as well. Italian history is a series of invasions and betrayals, and it is perhaps little wonder that
Italy gave birth to Machiavellianism.

There is, in fact, no law or government at all,

and it is wonderful how well things go on without them.
LORD BYRON

Italy and her Invaders ten volumes (I880s) by T Hodgkin. This work has not been superseded as an enthralling account of the
various barbarian invasions which followed the decline of Rome.

History of the Popes (1886-89; translated 1891) by Ludwig Pastor. Another 19th-century masterpiece. Not easy to find, but a
good library will be able to help. This work cannot fail to be readable owing to the colourful lives of many of the Roman
pontiffs.
Kingdom of the Sun (1970) by John Julius Norwich. A lovingly penned account of some of Italy's less well-known invaders,
the Normans, whose empire based on Sicily was one of the most fascinating of medieval societies.

The Prince (1513; translation by G BW1 1970) by Niccolo Machiavelli. Available in Penguin, as well as many other editions.
His Discourses (1531) on Roman history are possibly even more shocking to the 20th-century moralist, but it is worth
remembering that Machiavelli himself was a remarkably unconventional civil servant who was chastised by his superiors for
being long-winded.

The Bourbons of Naples (1956) by Harold Acton. A fascinating account of one of Europe's most hedonistic dynasties.

Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790-1870 (1983) by Harry Hearder. Deals with the period in which Italian nationalism
led to the creation of a united and independent state.
Mussolini (1981) by Denis Mack Smith. A well-written life of II Duce by Britain's leading historian of modern Italy.

A Political History of Italy: The Post-War Years (1983) by N Kogan. Bravely tackles the almost impossible.

RUSSIA TO THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Martyn Rady

A Russian principality, with its capital in Kiev, reached during the early Middle Ages from the Baltic Sea almost to the Black
Sea. Kievan Russia was destroyed. how-ever, by the Mongol-Tatars in the 13th century. In the 15th century, petty princelings
from Moscow (Muscovy) began to extend their power across northern and central Russia, defeating other Russian princes and
eventually overcoming the Mongol-Tatars themselves. Ivan III (1462-1505) is commonly considered the fast ruler of Muscovy
to have assumed the title of tsar, or emperor. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the tsardom of Muscovy extended its territory
across Siberia and into the Ukraine. It was not until Peter the Great (1682-1725), however, that Muscovite Russia became a
European power. Peter not only engaged in substantial military and diplomatic activity across Europe but sought to reform the
Russian state to make it akin to the states of western Europe. Although Peter built a new, Western looking capital in St
Petersburg and obliged the nobles to shave their beards and dress in European fashions, he did not abolish the institution of
serfdom. Nor did he establish any representative organs which might limit the autocratic powers of the tsar. Despite its major
role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia remained until the end of the 19th century economically backward and with a despotic
system of government.

I have begun to sense what Russian writers have long revealed: that
this is a place where the human spirit is made to struggle, thereby
becoming fuller as well as more repressed.
GEORGE FEIFER

A History of Russia (1993) by Nicholas V Riasanovsky. A comprehensive account of Russian history which includes chapters
on Russian culture, economy, and society.

Russia under the Old Regime (1974) by Richard Pipes. A thematic treatment of Russian history which seeks to explain the
origins of Russian autocracy, serfdom, and economic backwardness.

Pipes, Richard, American, 1923- .

The Russian Revolution. Rec: National Review

The Russian Chronicles: A Thousand Years that Changed the World (1990) edited by Tessa Clark; more than 30
contributors. A survey of Russian history from the earliest times which is supported by extracts from contemporary documents
and by illustrations.

Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850-1700 (1991) by Basil Dmytryshyn. Provides useful extracts from Russian law codes
and chronicles as well as descriptions given by contemporary visitors.

Prince A M Kurbsky's History of Ivan IV (1965) edited by J L I Fennell. A con-temporary account of the life of Ivan IV
(1533-84), reputedly the most brutal and ruthless of the tsars of Muscovy.

Peter the Great: His Life and World (1981) by Robert K Massie. A vivid and comprehensive biography by a leading popular
historian.
The Cossacks (1969) by Philip Longworth. A history of the Cossacks of the steppeland and of the Ukraine, whose freebooting
way of life fell victim to Russian expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Journey for Our Time: The Journals of the Marquis de Custine (1953) by P P Kohler A French account of a journey to
Russia in 1839 with some very telling observations on the nature of the Russian state and society.

Reed, John, American, 1887-1920.

Ten Days That Shook the World. Rec: Boston PL NYPL
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Simon Baskett

The two countries that now make up the Iberian peninsula have experienced a turbulent history, at time overlapping and
intertwining, at others completely separate. The physical diversity of the peninsula has contributed to a many-stranded history,
and its geographical location in Europe has led to an almost unique intermingling of cultures from Europe itself, Africa, and the
Mediterranean. From the time of the first settlers arriving from N France in the early Stone Age, the peninsula has been
exposed to the influence of a whole host of different peoples, from the Greeks and Romans to the Visigoths and the Moors,
each leaving behind a distinct legacy.
In particular the Moorish conquest and subsequent Reconquista left an indelible imprint upon the whole peninsula. Both
countries have experienced imperial grandeur followed by rapid decline, both have laboured under long-lasting dictatorships in
the 20th century, and both have had to undergo the traumatic transition to democracy. The imperial past of the two countries
has meant that they have been a shaping force in the histories of five continents: Africa, North and South America, Asia, and, of
course, Europe. There is little doubt that the subject of Portuguese history has been relatively neglected in terms of English-
language books and this is reflected in the book list.

A dry, barren, impoverished land. A peninsula separated from the continent of Europe by the mountain barrier of the Pyrenees -
isolated and remote. A country divided within itself, broken by a high central table-land that stretches
from the Pyrenees to the southern coast. No natural centre, no easy
routes. Fragmented, disparate, a complex of different races, languages,
and civilizations - this was, and is, Spain.
J H ELL1oTT

For a century and a half, from the mid-15th to the late 16th century,
Portugal was the supreme power across the oceans of the earth. Its wealth,
from its dominions and monopolies across the globe, was dazzling, the
grandiose effect of the grandest of causes: discovery.
MARION KAPLAN

The Quest for El Cid (1989) by Richard Fletcher. An illuminating study of the 11th-century nobleman and soldier-genius. It
provides an essential background to Moorish Spain and paints a vivid picture of Spain at this time.

Islamic Spain 1250-1500 (1992) by L P Harvey. A richly detailed account of this pivotal period in Spain's history from the fall
of Seville to the Reconquista. It covers matters political, social, diplomatic, and cultural. Scholarly and comprehensive.

Spain 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict (1991) by Henry Kamen. An extremely thorough and up-to-date survey of Spanish
history between these dates. It deals with the rise and fall of the imperial greatness of Spain. Kamen highlights the problems
and tensions within Spanish society, and manages to create a fully integrated picture of all aspects of Spain at this time.

Imperial Spain: 1469-1714 (1990) by J H Elliott. The standard work on the Spanish Golden Age. It is elegantly written,
highly readable, and is characterized by thorough research throughout.

Philip II (1995 3rd revised edition) by Geoffrey Parker. Entertaining, accurate, and revealing portrait of the most powerful man
of his age, based upon Philip's personal papers and memoranda. Philip is brought to life in this compelling biography.

The Golden Age of Spain (1971) by Antonio Dominguez Ortiz. Interesting back-ground on the literature, the arts, religion,
economy, and society as well as the politics of Golden Age Spain.

The Spanish Armada (1988) by Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker. A fascinating and impressive book vividly recreating the
story behind the Armada. It makes use of the latest research and lays some of the old myths to rest. Well illustrated and a
thoroughly good read.

The Portuguese Seaborne Empire (1991) by C R Boxer. An entertaining account of the deeds of the pioneers of maritime
expansion, and the missionaries, soldiers, colonists, and merchants involved in the whole enterprise. Alternatively, A World mi
the Move: The Portuguese in

Africa, Asia and America 1415-1808 by A J R Russell-Wood provides an equally fascinating study of the first and one of the
greatest colonial empires.
A Concise History of Portugal (1993) by David Birmingham. Highly accessible and true to its title - concise; running through
Portuguese history up to the 1990s. Includes sections on Brazilian wealth, the wine trade, ties with England, and membership
of the European Community, as well as the more obvious political history of topics such as the era of the liberal monarchy and
the Antonio Salazar dictatorship.

They Went to Portugal Too (1990) by Rose Macaulay. An enduring account of Portugal as it once was; it deals with British
travellers to Portugal, combining some excellent stories and entertaining anecdotes interwoven with the history of the country.

THE LOW COUNTRIES (NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM)

Bob Moore

The history of the Low Countries has not generally been well served by books in the English language. For many years, there
was no great publishing tradition among Dutch academics and even when books did start to appear, publishers seldom saw the
need to produce English editions. As a result, many of the key texts listed here have been written by 'foreigners', with English
and North American authors leading the way. Another distortion has been the immense interest in the Golden Age of the 17th
century and the relative neglect of more recent periods. Obtaining a balance does mean that some of the cited works have been
available for a long time, but this does not detract from their importance or readability.

I know some Persons of good sense and even of Quality that have no
clearer notion of `em tho' they are next door to us, than they have
of the Mandarins in China; and what u worse, think themselves no
more obliged to know the one than the other ...
BERNARD MANDMI.LE

The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477-1806 (1995) by Jonathan Israel. A volume from the Oxford History
of Early Modern Europe. A comprehensive history which incorporates the latest scholarship but with a lightness of touch. An
ideal, if not essential, starting point.

Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856) by John Lothrop Motley. A great book, not so much for the analysis which has been
undermined by subsequent scholarship, but for its descriptions. His account of the siege of Leiden is a real classic. No recent
edition but its early popularity means that copies can still be found in libraries and second-hand bookshops.

The Dutch Revolt (1979) by Geoffrey Parker. Just to set the record straight. The best recent scholarship on this colourful and
turbulent period.

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1988) by Simon Schama. How does
one begin to provide reading on the Golden Age? Schama has his own inimitable style and a particular way of examining his
subject which is always entertaining and often thought-provoking.

Culture and Society in the Dutch Republic During the 17th Century (1974) by J L Price. A more straightforward analysis
of the period but a work which has stood the test of time.

Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holland (1962) by Paul Zumthor. Delivers some solid detail on everyday Dutch society in the
Golden Age.
Plain Lives in a Golden Age (1990) by Adriaan van Duersen. A more recent work covering some of the same ground, and
widely recommended by specialist historians and art historians of the period.

The Dutch Seaborne Empire (1965) by C R Boxer. A series of essays on maritime expansion, which was an essential element
in the history of the Dutch republic.

The Low Countries 1780-1940 (1978) by E H Kossman. By far the best example of a common approach used by many Dutch
and Flemish historians of the 19th and 20th centuries to combine the history of both the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (1968) by Paul R Waibel. A work of political
science, but one which provides an under-standing of how contemporary Dutch politics and society are organized.
Literature of the Low Countries: A Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium (1971) by Reinder P
Meijer. Perhaps the only general survey on Dutch and Flemish literature.

EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE (TO THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

Martyn Rady

East-Central Europe is the term frequently used nowadays to refer to the lands lying between Germany and the historic Russian
(later Soviet) frontier. It thus includes modem Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and the Balkans.
East-Central Europe is mainly Slavonic-speaking, but it also has large pockets of German, Hungarian, Romanian, and Albanian
speakers, as well as Jews and Gypsies (Roma). Although during the Middle Ages, the territory of East-Central Europe included
a number of independent kingdoms, it was dominated from the 14th century onwards by the empires. The Ottoman Turkish
empire occupied the Balkans, while modern-day Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, and parts of Romania and
Serbia were ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs.
At the end of the 18th century, the independent Polish state was partitioned between Prussia, Russia, and Habsburg Austria.
During the 19th century, the peoples of East-Central Europe were strongly affected by the ideology of nationalism and sought
to establish their own independent nation-states. Nationalism led to several abortive uprisings in the region, most notably in
1848. Several independent states were established in the Balkans during the late 19th century, but the rule of empires persisted
in most of East-Central Europe until the end of World War I.

Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (1993) by Paul Robert Magocsi. Contains not only maps and tables but brief
explanations of the principal historical developments in the region.

East Central Europe in the Middle Ages (1994) by Jean Sedlar. A thorough, thematically arranged survey of the region
during the medieval period.

A History of the Habsburg Empire 1273-1700 (1994) by Jean Berenger. Traces the origins and growth of the Austrian
Habsburg monarchy in East-Central Europe.

Eastern Europe, 1740-1985: Feudalism to Communism (1986) by Robin Okey. A valuable and comprehensive introduction
to the more recent history of the region.

The Fall of the House of Habsburg (1963) by Edward Crankshaw. Traces the history of the Habsburg monarchy in the 19th
century with particular reference to the fortune and fate of the ruling dynasty.

Hungary: A Short History (1962) by C A Macartney. A thorough account of Hungarian history from the earliest times.
Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads of European History (1990) by Jaroslav Krejci. Written before the split-up of
Czechoslovakia, this remains the first substantial English-language history of the country to be written since World War II.

God's Playground: A History of Poland (1981) by Norman Davies. A masterful and entertaining account of Polish history.
Arranged chronologically, the volumes are divided by the late-18th-century partition.

History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1983) by Barbara Jelavich. Despite its title, this work
provides substantial historical material on the medieval and early modern periods. The bulk of the text is devoted to the wars of
national liberation fought against the Ottoman Turks in the 19th century.

Danube (1989) by Claudio Magris. A travelogue which by its historical and cultural references yields a mine of observations
and insights into the region.

A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (1995) by David Crowe. Provides the first detailed history of one of
East-Central Europe's largest and most neglected minorities.

The Everyman Companion to East European Literature (1993) by R B Pynsent and S I Kanikova. Gives biographies of
East-Central European authors, and guides to the major literary trends in the region.
The Bridge on the Drina (1959) by No Andric. A historical novel about a bridge in Bosnia, set between the 15th and the 20th
centuries.

BRITAIN: CELTIC HISTORY

Martin Henig

The three lists on early British history (Celtic, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon to Norman) cover a period approximately from the 7th
century BC until the 12th century AD. Nevertheless they cannot be entirely chronological. Celtic languages and an survived the
Iron Age and Celtic culture reached its apogee in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the early Middle Ages. Although the
traditional date for the end of Roman Britain is around AD 410, the provincial population can still be recognized, especially in
western England, long afterwards, and besides traces of political continuity the Christian church seems to have had some
Romano-British roots. The Normans - Vikings who had been settled in northern France for little more than a century - failed to
extirpate the distinctive language and an of the Anglo-Saxons. The books selected here are ones I have found exciting to read
and consult or, in two cases, to write. If there is a bias it is towards the cultural aspects (art, language, and literature) which
define the `souls' of these heterogeneous peoples.
Although people speaking Celtic languages had probably been present in Britain at least from the beginning of the 1st
millennium BC, it is only with the arrival of the La Tene art style in the 5th century with its characteristic and familiar S-
scrolls, and with brief notices by Romans and Greeks from the 1st century BC onwards, especially Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and
Dio Cassius, that they can be said to enter the light of history. Caesar shows us that Britain was fragmented into tribes often at
war with one another and the position had not changed a century later. Nevertheless, despite their bloodthirsty ways and a
religion which included human sacrifice, the abstract art of British smiths had reached a high level of virtuosity and beginnings
had been made in introducing a monetary economy and in founding oppida, the precursors of Roman cities, at such places as
Camulodunum (Colchester), Verulamium (by modem St Albans), and Calleva (Silchester).

All the Bretons dye their bodies with woad, which produces a blue colour, and this gives them a more terrifying appearance in
battle. They wear their hair long, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and the upper lip.
JULIUS CAESAR

Iron Age Communities in Britain (1974) by Barry Cunliffe. This is the standard work on the subject, especially good on
settlement and the economy.

Iron Age Britain (1995) by Barry Cunliffe. A more concise and accessible version of Professor Cunliffe's views, even better
illustrated.

The Celtic World (1995) edited by Miranda J Green. This is a massive compendium by numerous authors discussing all
aspects of the Celts, but very properly with an insular bias. It is, perhaps, an encyclopedia for library use rather than for the
general book buyer but it will be consulted with profit for years ahead.

Exploring the World of the Celts (1993) by Simon James. Although the production is sometimes irritatingly trendy, this is the
best general book on the Celts in all their aspects in Britain and beyond.

The Pagan Celts (1986) by Anne Ross. Dr Ross is a passionate enthusiast for all things Celtic, with a wide knowledge of later
insular literature. Her wide learning is very apparent in this book, originally published in 1970 with the more accurate title of
Everyday Life of the Pagan Celts.

Pagan Celtic Ireland. The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age (1994) by Barry Raftery. Although `Irish' and `Celtic' sometimes
seem to be the same thing today, La Tene culture was evidently an imported phenomenon, confined to the northern half of the
island. Whatever the language of Ireland previously, culture and for the most part the population shows strong continuity from
the Bronze Age past. This is a very important book showing that invasion is not necessary for cultural change.

The Druids (1968) by Stuart Piggott. Here is the classic study of the well-known priestly caste and its place in Iron Age
society, together with the story of the reinvention of the Druids by romantics and mystics in much more recent times.

Celtic Art from Its Beginnings to the Book of Kells (1989) by Ruth Megaw and Vincent Megaw. This is the best book on
Celtic art in general, including insular art. It is superbly illustrated.
`The Work of Angels': Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th-9th Centuries AD (1989) edited by Susan Youngs. This is the
catalogue of one of a series of exhibitions which really brought the past alive. No better proof is needed than this one that the
greatest achievements of the Celts lay in post-Roman times. Included are works of art produced by the Picts of Scotland,
Britons in western England and Wales, and of course Irish artists.

The Roman Conquest of Britain (1993) by Graham Webster. This is a classic trilogy to compare, for example, with that by
Steven Runciman on the Crusades. Dr Webster explores through archaeology and historical sources the epic clash between
Celts and Romans. It comprises revised editions of The Roman Invasion of Britain 1980, Rome against Carataeus 1981, and
Boudica 1978.

ROMAN BRITAIN
Martin Henig

The Roman period begins with the invasion of four legions of the Roman army at the behest of the emperor Claudius, but quite
quickly the leaders of native society were led to see the benefits of being incorporated into an empire which was generous in
granting citizenship and political rights and encouraged the amenities of civilized life, including baths and banquets. With the
exception of a serious outbreak of revolt among the Iceni tribe led by their ferocious queen Boudicca, aimed as much against
other Britons as the Romans themselves, there was little trouble except in the frontier regions. Archaeology has revealed the
prosperity of town and country, the flourishing of the arts, and a vibrant intermixture of Roman and native religion. In the 2nd
century and beyond, virtually everyone thought of him- or herself as a Roman. When, from a combination of external
circumstances, the Roman Empire disintegrated in the early 5th century, the Britons were one of the fragments that considered
themselves heirs to the empire.

They create a desolation and call it peace.

PUBLIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS

The Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain (1993) by Peter Salway. This is the revised and illustrated edition of a
book first published in 1981. This is the fullest and most readable overview of the subject, with many photographs in black and
white and colour, although regrettably these lack scales.

Roman Britain (1995) by Martin Millett. Dr Millett is less concerned with the traditional version of Roman Britain centred on
the doings of the army and more interested in the more subtle processes of cultural change. The book is both thoughtful and
accessible.

Agricola (AD 97) by Cornelius Tacitus (translated 1970 as The Agricola and the Germania). One of the great classics of Latin
literature. Tacitus' encomium on his father-in-law offers a near-contemporary account of one of Roman Britain's most
influential governors.

Hadrian's Wall (1987) by David J Breeze and Brian Dobson. This is a lively account of Britain's most famous Roman
monument. It deals with life on the Wall as well as military topics and should be in the luggage of any visitor.

The Towns of Roman Britain (1974) by John Wacher. Towns were the most characteristic institutions of the Roman Empire.
This book has proved its worth over the years by bringing together all the evidence from place names, topography, inscriptions,
and archaeology.

The People of Roman Britain (1988) by Anthony Birley. By means of a skilled use of inscriptions and other written sources,
Professor Birley introduces us haltingly and fleetingly to the actual inhabitants of the province. This book gives a surprising
insight into social history.

Religion in Roman Britain (1995) by Martin Henig. In this book I have tried to show that Roman tolerance towards and
encouragement of religion was a profound agent of cultural change. Religion reflects both popular beliefs and profound faiths,
some of which struck root in Britain.

Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (1981) by Charles Thomas. In this very important work Charles Thomas assembles
the evidence for Christianity in the province and makes an unassailable case for continuity into the so-called Dark Ages.
The Art of Roman Britain (1995) by Martin Henig. Until recently most scholars were content to disparage or at least ignore
the an of Roman Britain. I have attempted to show that it has the same dynamism and originality as Celtic and Anglo-Saxon an
and that it is one of the best indicators of the pagan, literary culture of the 4th-century British gentry.

The Age of Arthur (1973) by John Morris. Ever since it was published this book has been controversial. The story he tells is
of the resistance of the Britons to the barbarians which crystallized around 'Arthur', and kept alive something of the spirit of
Rome.

ANGLO-SAXON TO NORMAN HISTORY

Martin Henig

The coming of the English was not a single organized act. Groups of settlers from NW Europe (Netherlands to south
Scandinavia) arrived in the 5th century, generally settling in deserted lands but sometimes involved in conflict with Britons or
other Saxon groups_ While large parts of western Britain, including Cumbria, Wales, and Cornwall, remained British-speaking,
culturally England became Anglo-Saxon; however, the church may have kept Latin alive and it was certainly augmented (if not
reintroduced) with the Augustinian mission of AD 597. Thereafter the Anglo-Saxons became highly cultivated, themselves
sending missionaries to convert the heathen. In the late Saxon period there were constant problems of Viking raiding, conquest,
and settlement.
In some respects the Norman Conquest of 1066 may be regarded as the final act of this drama. However, despite the ruthless
suppression of English political freedom, which was made possible through the Norman military and fiscal regimes,
Englishness continued to be apparent in art and ultimately the English language would supplant Norman French.

When we compare the present life of man with that of which we have no
knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a lone sparrow through the hall ...
This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door, and out through another.
BEDE

Civitas to Kingdom: British Political Continuity 300-800 (1994) by K R Dark. Like John Morris's book, this deals with the
Roman inheritance of western Britain and shows the extent to which the Britons of the early Middle Ages were legatees of
Rome.

The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (1989) edited by Steven Bassett. Diverse essays by different authors showing that not
all kingdoms had the same origin, and showing the part played by indigenous elements as well as the Germanic newcomers.

A History of the English Church and People (731; 1955) by Bede (revised 1990 as The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People). Bede, born about AD 673, less than a century after the mission of St Augustine, demonstrates how quickly the Anglo-
Saxons became civilized. This is a warm and moving account of politics and religious conversion by a great and highly
readable historian.

The Making of England. Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900 (1991) edited by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse.
Here, in a catalogue to a British Museum exhibition, is all the visual evidence for Bede's world and beyond, down to the reign
of Alfred. There are excellent introductory essays.

The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966-1066 (1984) by Janet Backhouse, D H Turner, and Leslie Webster. Although the late
Saxon period was troubled, its cultural achievements, partly the legacy of King Alfred, were stupendous. This is another very
important offering from the British Museum.

Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (1982) by C R Dodwell. This book looks at what the Anglo-Saxons achieved in its
European context. It is one of those books that make one marvel at how those barbarian settlers in 5th-century Britain became
(like the Irish) standard-bearers of culture, expressed in the most refined art.

The Anglo-Saxons (1982) by James Campbell, Eric John, and Patrick Wormald. This is a fine, illustrated general study of the
Anglo-Saxons written by three of the leading authorities on the subject.

Alfred the Great. Asser's Lsfe and Other Contemporary Sources (1983) by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. This is a
collection of texts, the most important of which is Asser's Life of Alfred. Here is the story of a king who is unique in being
called `Great' because his subjects loved him, because he fought off military catastrophe rather than because he undertook vast
conquests, and because he educated his countrymen. Very Anglo-Saxon.

Viking Age England (1991) by Julian D Richards. A concise and well-written account of the Northmen who harried and
invaded but also settled and traded in England. Recent excavation notably at York has very much brought them to life.

William the Conqueror (1964) by David C Douglas. This is the classic account of the Conqueror, a great warrior and
administrator who changed the face of England.

English Romanesque Art 1066-1200 (1984) by George Zamecki, Janet Holt, and Tristram Holland. This is the catalogue of an
exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery, London, and still the most succinct account of the Norman artistic achievement.
Introductory essays include one on architecture by Richard Gem, a worthy summary of one of the most obvious Norman
contributions to the face of England.

MEDIEVAL BRITISH HISTORY

Simon Hall

The major questions in conventional British medieval history remain similar today to those which exercised 19th-century
medievalists: whether the Saxon invasion of Britain was peaceful or violent, whether the Norman conquest introduced a new
social order, whether the loss of the Angevin territories in France was a blessing or a disaster, how far the Hundred Years' War
isolated England from the culture of late medieval Europe, how far the Scots, Irish, and Welsh managed to preserve their
distinct identities. Progress, however, has been great, both from the cross-fertilization of history and archaeology and from the
impact of new historical methods.

Here I am destitute of all help; I feel the palpable darkness of ignorance,

and I have no lantern of an earlier history to guide my footsteps.
Wn.t iAnA OF MALMESBURY

The Oxford History of England: The English Settlement (1985) by J N L Myres;

The Oxford History of England: Anglo-Saxon England (1971) by Frank Stenton;
The Oxford History of England: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta (1955) by A L Poole;
The Oxford History of England: The Thirteenth Century (1962) by Maurice Powicke;
The Oxford History of England: The Fourteenth Century (1959) by May McKisack;
The Oxford History of England: The Fifteenth Century (1961) by E F Jacob.
The standard, large-scale, conventional guide to the whole field of English medieval history.

English Historical Documents volumes 1-5 (1953-75) edited by David C Douglas et al. A monumental, accessible and always
fascinating collection of the major (and some minor) primary sources.

The Anglo-Saxons (1982) by James Campbell. A sumptuously illustrated introduction to all aspects of Anglo-Saxon England,
filled with new ideas and insights.

The Norman Empire (1976) by John Le Patourel. The magisterial culmination of the career of the greatest modern authority
on the world of the Normans.

From Memory to Written Record (1979) by M T Clanchy. An analysis of the development of literacy and a literate mentality
which demonstrates that the most exciting new approaches to medieval history are not necessarily French.

Henry II (1973) by W L Warren. An outstanding biography of one of the most important medieval kings of England.

An Age of Ambition (1970) by F R H DuBoulay. An excellent thematic approach to later medieval England.

Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100-1300 (1990) by Rees Davies. A good
starting point for the history of the non-English kingdoms of medieval Britain.
TUDOR AND EARLY STUART ENGLAND
Glyn Redworth

England from the accession of the Tudors in 1485 to the early 17th century witnessed remarkable changes. Not only was unity
in religion broken with the Reformation, but with the doubling of population in the space of 100 years, the stresses and strains
of early modem society grew increasingly evident.
Political disharmony went hand in hand with ideological diversity. The turbulence of the age is reflected in the writing of
history. Older books stress the power of the state, especially over the spread of Protestantism, but more recent `revisionist' work
has stressed the importance of grass-roots movements.

This Realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in

the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity
and royal estate of the Imperial crown of the same.
ACT OF APPEALS 1533

England Under the Tudors (1974) by Geoffrey Elton. This classic textbook first appeared in the 1950s and portrays a Tudor
state which is effectively ruled by, in the main, exceptionally strong monarchs.

Tudor England (1990) by John Guy. Incorporates the latest research and gives a greater insight into the mechanics of Tudor
government.
Peace, Print, and Protestantism (1977) by C S L Davies. A wonderfully succinct account of English history from the Wars of
the Roses to the mid-16th century, which reveals how early Tudor history is best studied with an understanding of the Middle
Ages.

The Crisis of Parliaments (1971) by Conrad Russell. Also takes a less than usual overview of the period, and tackles
developments in English life from the Reformation to the Civil War.

Bosworth Field and the Wars of the Roses (1966) by A L Rowse. A thoroughly well-written account of how, by fair means
and foul, the Tudors seized the English throne.

The English Reformations (1993) by C A Haigh. A so-called revisionist account of the Reformation not as an event but as a
series of processes. This work encapsulates the new consensus.

The Court of Henry VIII (1985) by David Starkey. A well-illustrated and vividly written account of the behind-the-scenes
history of the king's reign. By emphasizing faction and not policy, Starkey brings alive the cut and thrust of the age.

Thomas More (1985) by Richard Marius. A highly controversial account of the martyr's life. Seeing him as much as sinner as
saint, this is one of the more engaging of psychobiographies.

The Causes of the English Civil War (1990) by Conrad Russell. A forensic account of early Stuart history, where this son of
the philosopher Bertrand Russell dissects what we mean by causes.

THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

Glyn Redworth

England's great civil war of the mid-17th century continues to divide modem historians just as much as it did contemporary
observers. Did it have long-term causes, or was it really the result of Charles's political incompetence? Even the Marxist
interpretations of the 1960s were foreshadowed by 17th-century writers, some of whom felt that the transference of land and
power to the gentry after the Dissolution of the Monasteries left the crown at the mercy of its enemies. In the past 20 years,
revisionists have eschewed deep-seated reasons for the conflict, but in recent years a return to old-fashioned `telling the story'
has reasserted the notion of constitutional conflict between the crown and Parliament.

Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high a cost we value our just freedom, and God
having so far owned our caused as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we do hold ourselves bound in mutual duty to
each other to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition and the
disagreable remedy of war.
THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE, 1647

History of England from the Accession of James 1 to the Outbreak of the Civil War (1880s) by S R Gardiner. These ten
volumes remain the best (and best-written) account of the lead-up to the Civil War. Gardiner's stock rises and falls, but
successive generations of historians can never quite escape from his shadow. Not easy to find, but a good library will be able to
help.

The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 (1991) by Conrad Russell. A bold attempt to use narrative detail to explain the
Civil War partly as a short-term failure but also to show how difficult it was for Charles I to rule together an Anglican England,
a Presbyterian Scotland, and a largely Catholic Ireland.

The Reign of King Pyre (1941) by J A Hexter. Remains a powerful account of one of Charles I's most brilliant opponents.
Despite its age, it reveals the complexities of the age.

Charles I and the Popish Plot (1983) by Caroline Hibbard. Details not only the fears of antipopery in England, but also
Charles's somewhat naive attempts to have a diplomatic rapprochement with Rome.

Oliver Cromwell (1991) by B Coward. The most fair-minded and unsensational account of a character who still arouses much
controversy.
The Rise of the New Model Army (1979) by Mark Kishlansky. This is the new military history at its best, explaining how
military studies cannot be divorced from a wider understanding of politics and society.

The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution (1994) by Christopher Hill. A subtle study of the role of
ideology by the greatest Marxist historian of the 1960s.

The Menial World of Stuart Women (1987) by Sara Heller Mendelson. Though not strictly speaking on the Civil War, this
does help us understand how, in any time of historical crisis, women come to the fore in society.

Charles I on Horseback (1972) by Roy Strong. A fascinating account of the image of a king.
Divine Right and Democracy (1986) edited by D Wooton. A comprehensive selection of writings, ranging from James I's views
on kingship to the radical thoughts of the interregnum.

RESTORATION TO HANOVERIAN HISTORY

Glyn Redworth

The period after the return of Charles lI to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 saw England finally transformed from a
rural monarchy to an industrialized democracy. The foundations were laid for the Industrial Revolution as well as for a
worldwide empire overseas. A new national identity was painstakingly, and not wholly successfully, created as the notion of
Britishness' evolved.

In every party there are two sorts of men, the Rigid and the Supple. The
Rigel are an intractable race of mortals, who act upon principle. These are
persons of a stubborn, unpliant morality. The Supple, who pay their homage
to places, are as ready to change their conduct as their fashion.
ABRIDGED FROM THE TATTLER, 1710

Court and Country 1658-1714 (1978) by J R Jones. An excellent introduction to the politics and culture of the age.

The Restoration (1987) by Ron Hutton. A highly intelligent account of the return of the House of Stuart.

Queen Anne (1984) by Edward Gregg. Deals with a much neglected monarch, in whose reign the relative decline of the
monarchy is particularly apparent.

George L Elector and King (1978) by Ragnhild Hatton. Probes how a Hanoverian monarch came to occupy the British throne
and how his distance from the minutiae of English politics was a fillip to the growth of parliamentary government.
Jacobitism and the English People (1989) by P K Monod. Analyses the role of those who never quite came to terms with the
Glorious Revolution and also casts much light on Scotland's absorption into the British kingdom.

English Politics and the American Revolution (1976) by John Derry. Deals with the loss of the American colonies and the
divisions in England which precipitated it.

The Transformation of England (1979) by Peter Mathias. Remains the best introduction into the problems behind the notion
of an industrial revolution.

A Polite and Commercial Society (1989) by P Langford. This has become almost an instant classic, as he deals with the social
transformation of England.

Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator (1982) edited by A Ross. The liveliness of journalistic commentary in its first,
golden, age is apparent on every page of these short extracts from the two leading journals of the 18th century.

19TH-CENTURY BRITISH HISTORY

Peter Martland

Nineteenth-century British history has something of a `bad' reputation, partly because too much of the work achieved by
historians has concentrated on the political aspects of the period. As a result they have succeeded in producing rather dry and
complex accounts. That the 19th century holds considerable interest is clear in the continued popularity of its great writers -
Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy - and good history can only further this. The books that follow are intended
to represent this, providing readable coverage of all facets of a remarkable century of innovation and change.

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too
much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian -
ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with
a placed perfection unattainable by the highest art.
LYTTON STRACHEY

British History 181.-1906 (1991) by N McCord. Another superb work from the exemplary Short Oxford History of the
Modern World series. The frequent use of headings and subheadings makes the narrative very easy to follow and absorb;
couple this with a comprehensive bibliography and useful appendices and one gets the ideal introduction to 19th-century
British history.

The Age of Improvement 1783-1867 (1959) by Asa Briggs. Standing the test of time, this seminal work is still `total history'
at its most accessible. Starting from the premise that the Industrial Revolution initiated an age of progress, Professor Briggs
writes in what can only be described as an optimistic style, touching on fields as diverse as science and literature to produce a
comprehensive overview of the period.

The Crisis of Imperialism 1865-1915 (1974) by Richard T Shannon. A lucid rendering of a period full of imperial
confrontations and complicated diplomacy, helped by a very useful chronology and biographical notes on the major figures in
foreign affairs. In spanning the centuries Shannon is able to show the failure of those involved to adapt their strategies to the
changing situation, thus turning the great game of imperialism into one with consequences as catastrophic as World War I.

Aristocracy and People 1815-65 (1979) by Norman Gash. A very readable account of British political history, going beyond
the major characters to produce a fascinating insight into the working of a political system. Particularly strong on the author's
specialities in this period, notably popular unrest and Robert Peel.

Portrait of an Age: Victorian England (1953) by G M Young. When a historical work begins with `A boy bom in 1810 ...'
one knows that one is in for a treat and Young does not disappoint. Written from an insider's point of view, it charts the rapid
developments in all spheres of life during the Victorian era, creating in the reader's mind a mental picture which only the
greatest of writers can produce.

The Origins of Modern British Society I780-1880 (1969) by Harold Perkin. Thoroughly researched and convincingly argued,
this is an engaging approach to social history and its bearings on political events. Stating that an industrial revolution initiated a
concomitant social one, Perkin expounds the theory that just as technology is one step ahead of industry, so was society ahead
of political action in the 19th century.

Gladstone 1809-74 (1986) by H C G Matthew .Towering like a leviathan over the second half of the century, Gladstone
provided in his copious diaries rich pickings for the biographer. The merit of Matthew's account is his ability to make a
complex man understandable without ever divorcing him from his age.

The Making of Victorian England (1962) by G Kitson Clark. Distilled from a course of lectures, this series of essays retains
the rhetorical flair that made Kitson Clark such a sought-after speaker. At times overscholarly, this is still a stimulating book,
although not one to be tackled without some knowledge of the period.

20TH-CENTURY BRITISH HISTORY

Peter Martland

Historians faced with assessing Britain in the 20th century are liable to be over-come by the wealth of evidence they have to
work with and the plethora of approaches open to them. It is undoubtedly a challenge but one well worth con-fronting, offering
insight into the current state of Britain and even welcoming prediction. Working so close to one's own time does carry the
pitfall of partiality, but in the recommended reading that follows, the emphasis is very much on history and not on current
affairs. It is too early to draw up a definitive list of topics that have shaped Britain in this all too unstable century, but attention
should be directed away from the `high' areas of parliamentary politics towards the growing power of society.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.
DEAN ACHESON

Empire, Welfare, Europe: English History 1906-1992 (1993) by T 0 Lloyd. A well-structured book covering the
predominant historical themes in chronological order. Ideal as an introduction, with a comprehensive bibliography and a very
useful set of factual appendices.

English History 1914-1945 (1976) by A J P Taylor. Taylor's outstanding answer to his critics' accusations of `popularism', a
book to be savoured rather than dismissed. The erudition shines through without ever obscuring a fascinating story of rapid
political change, told in Taylor's always readable style.

The People's Peace: British History 1945-1990 (1992) by K 0 Morgan. A rare example of recent events being treated as
historical occurrences rather than current affairs. Morgan's objectivity never wavers, producing a lucid and entertaining account
of Britain after World War II.

The Development of the British Economy 1914-1980 (1993) by Sidney Pollard. A book which makes economics
understandable without recourse to complicated theories. Very strong on economic data, at times distractingly so, it charts the
relative decline of Britain's economy in all too vivid detail.

Churchill: A Life (1991) by Martin Gilbert. To produce a multivolume biography of Churchill was a labour of love; to mm it
into a comprehensive single edition must rank as a magisterial work of revision. This elegant account throws light both on
Britain's most eminent politician of the century and on the overseas affairs in which he made his reputation.

British Society since 1945 (1982) by Arthur Marwick. A stimulating analysis of Britain's fluctuating social structure, charting
the erosion of social class in the face of economic segregation.

The Eclipse of a Great Power: Modern Britain 1870-1975 (1983) by Keith Robbins. An excellent account of the demise of
the British Empire and the various positions Britain adopted in an attempt to keep its place on the world stage. Major
involvements are described in clear terminology, making the interests of Britain clear at all times.

State and Society: British Political and Social History 1870-1992 (1994) by Martin Pugh. An interesting work which places
the main streams of political and social thought into a chronological framework. A sense of Britai 's inexorable decline
pervades the book, leading to assertions which can best be described as debatable.
USA: FROM THE 17TH CENTURY TO THE CIVIL WAR
Peter Martland

Understanding American history before the dawn of the modem era is fraught with difficulties. The colonial period (between
1607 and 1776) can be seen as a chronicle of settlement, expansion, and exploitation of the eastern hinterland of what became
the USA. Against a background of social and economic development, the great cities of colonial America - Williamsburg,
Philadelphia, and New York - were created, as were the institutions, like the slave trade, that dominated and eventually
consumed the southern USA. Cutting across these developments were political moves - based on an ideology of reason and
enlightenment - that led eventually to independence in 1776. The enduring interest in the Revolution, the founding fathers, and
the first formative decades of the Union continues to inspire historians to research and produce books of both scholarly and
general appeal. Those listed below reflect a tiny proportion of the most interesting, readable, and enjoyable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 1776)

Colonial British America (1984) edited by J Greene and J Pole. A comprehensive set of essays covering both the issues and
the contrasting approaches to them. The editors' introduction and conclusion gives the work a structure often lacking in
collections of essays, while a useful index provides summaries of the major texts cited.

Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early America (1974) by Gary B Nash. An outstanding work in the field of
indigenous culture which has so dominated American history in the last few decades. As the title suggests, this book deals with
issues concerning Native Americans, settlers, and blacks and their all too antagonistic relations without ever resorting to
generalizations or dogma.

The Economy of Colonial America (1980) by Edwin J Perkins. By comparing the English and American economies, Perkins
is able to provide arresting angles on economic development which would be lacking from a more orthodox history of the
economy.

America at 1750 (1971) by Richard Hofstadter. Limiting oneself to a fixed date can often be disastrous in historical analysis
but Hofstadter carries it off with aplomb, catching the American Zeitgeist through a heady mix of primary sources and
anecdotal evidence.

Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (1982) by J Demos. Combining biographical,
psychological, sociological, and historical approaches, this work weaves an inescapable spell, the lure of speculation having
been avoided through concentrated original research.

The Urban Crucible (1979) by Gary B Nash. Good history is often achieved through novel approaches. This is certainly true
in this book. For Nash, by eschewing the agricultural base of early America and concentrating on the significant growth in the
mercantile sector, brilliantly succeeds in presenting detailed argument without losing the reader's attention. At times overtly
Marxist in interpretation, it is nevertheless a work which demands at the very least recognition and partial acceptance from Al
quarters.

The Glorious Cause (1982) by Robert Middlekauff. A superb narrative of the complicated events which together form one of
the most fascinating areas of American historical research: the Revolution. The extraordinary detail within this book never
impinges on the story being told, this asset most apparent in Middlekauff's descriptions of the military encounters.

An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) by Charles Beard. This timeless seminal work
emphasizes the weight given by the founding fathers to economic interests as forces in politics and in the formation of laws and
constitutions.

The Era of Good Feelings (1963) by George Dangerfield. Covering the period from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson,
this is a very well-written account, highlighting the change in both policies and personalities that occurred between their
presidencies.
Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860 (1983) by W J Cooper. Concentrating on the area of `high' politics in the
Southern states, Cooper's account conveys the sense of an enclosed world, a feeling that is instrumental to understanding the
Civil War.

Journey to America (1833; 1959) by Alexis de Tocqueville. This celebrated early 19th century account of American political
and social institutions has successfully weathered the passage of time. It is as relevant to our understanding the America of
today as it is to understanding the times in which it was set.

FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO 1945

Peter Martland

In the 80 years between the outbreak of the US Civil War in 1861 and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 (which brought the
USA into World War II), the nature of the country underwent a fundamental transformation, changing it from a predominantly
rural society with an economy based largely on agriculture, into a mainly urban society underpinned by what had by 1941
become the world's most powerful manufacturing and financial base. These dramatic changes were set against the back-ground
of the Civil War and its aftermath, the opening up of the West and the influx of more than 25 million European immigrants
seeking a better life. In an attempt to under-stand this extraordinary period of dynamic change, historians have over the years
produced a wide array of books aimed at both the academic and general reader. The list below provides merely a small sample
of recent and classic texts of this time.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, ON THE ART OF DIPLOMACY.

The Origins of America's Civil War (1981) by Bruce Collins. Although designed primarily as a guide for students, this is an
instructive work, covering both events and issues in a concise style which never strays into patronizing the general reader. As
well as very helpful biographical notes and chronologies, it also sports a comprehensive reading list.

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War (1988) by J M McPherson. This is an example of that rare kind of history
which transports one back to the age it is describing, so vivid is the picture which McPherson paints. It is `total' history at its
best, covering numerous fields and achieving an almost seamless mix of popular and scholarly style.

Why The South Lost the Civil War (1986) by Richard E Beringer, Herman Hathaway, Archer Jones, and William N Still.
This work demonstrates the relationship between military success, morale, and will and the weakness of Confederate national-
ism when undermined by battlefield defeat.

The Age of Reform (1955) by Richard Hofstadter. This Pulitzer-prizewinning account covers the period from 1880 to 1940
and it makes compulsive reading. Hofstadter's premise is that the prominent political ideology during this half-century of
dramatic change remained a constant one of conservative individualism, a bold statement but one that puts a new perspective
on much of American policy.

Invisible Immigrants (1972) by Charlotte Erickson. The act of emigration led many ordinary working people to record their
actions and attitudes. Charlotte Erickson's meticulous - though highly accessible - scholarship reveals a host of insights into the
greatest movement of people the world has ever seen.

The United States Since 1865 (1960) by John A Krout. This standard college text has inspired two generations of students to
know and understand their country. Structured as a survey of the period between the end of the Civil War and the end of World
War II, this work is highly readable by either students or the general reader.

Theodore Roosevelt: Culture, Diplomacy and Expansion (1985) by Richard H Collins. In this book Collins attempts to re-
evaluate the presidency of America's first larger-than-life imperial president: Theodore Roosevelt. Specifically, the creation of
an American empire to reposition the USA internationally. Collins also chronicles Roosevelt's domestic legacy, from the
creation of the National Park Service to trust-busting.

The Origins of the Second World War: American Foreign Policy and World Politics 1917-f1 (1975) by Arnold A Offner. A
brave book which confronts the widely held view that American foreign policy was isolationist and self-interested. Through a
close analysis of America's relationship with the other world powers, it shows that even the prewar world was a close-knit one
in which America was unable to stand as alone as perhaps it would have liked or tried to make it seem.

The Great Depression: America, 1929-41 (1985) by R S McElvaine. The strength of this work is its appreciation of the
effects that abstract economic concepts have on the lives of all those who work for a living. It manages to transfer figures into
feelings and provides a sobering read without ever straying into wild accusation.

FROM WORLD WAR II TO THE PRESENT

Peter Martland

It seems almost as if the USA, during the past 60 years, has been on a fast-moving roller coaster. It began with the triumph of
World War II, continued through an age of boundless self-confidence which collapsed in the agonies of the fight for civil rights,
political assassinations, the searing trauma of the war in Vietnam, the political scandal of Watergate and the politics of Ronald
Reagan and beyond. To encapsulate this period of dramatic events and other equally rapid changes in American society is
enough to tax the skills of even the greatest of historians. Below are some of the best and most readable works of this period.
As a bibliography it is designed primarily to stimulate the reader into looking anew at the nation which more than any other
defines the society we live in today.

Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what
you can do for your country.
JOHN F KENNEDY

In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan (1983) by William E Leuchtenburg. Although he died in
1945, the legacy Franklin Delano Roosevelt left behind has dominated the American political landscape. In this highly readable
book, William Leuchtenburg assesses and analyses that legacy in terms of Roosevelt's successors.

Since 1900: A History of the United States in Our Times (1959) by Oscar Theodore Barch Jr and Nelson Manfred Blake. By
describing America's political, economic, social, diplomatic, and military history, this narrative succeeds in explaining the
American experience of the first six decades of the 20th century.

The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order America 1930-1980 (1991) edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gersthe. In the wake
of Ronald Reagan's watershed triumph in 1980, Fraser and Gersthe intended this work as an historical autopsy. In fact they
attempt to identify and account for two generations of political thought and activity in the USA. However, in the end, the focus
of the work has to be the decline and fall of the New Deal order.

A History of Our Time: Readings in Post War America (1983) edited by William H Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff. Arguing that
contemporary America arose as a result ofchanges that have taken place since the beginning of World War II, the contributors
of this scholarly work chronicle and interpret various aspects of modern American history. The themes evaluated include the
sources of the Cold War, McCarthyism, the civil-rights movement, and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II (1986) by William H Chafe. Set against the background of the
_USA's emergence as the world superpower at the end of World War II, Chafe's book charts in a highly distinctive manner the
radical changes in American society after 1945, the Cold War, the movement towards civil rights, and the agony of Vietnam.

American High: The Year of Confidence: 1945-1960 (1986) by William L O'Neill. By using the novel - though controversial
- device of juxtapositioning US national policy with social developments between 1945 and 1960, O'Neill succeeds in
reinterpreting American history and placing it in a fresh perspective.

The Struggle for Black Equality: 1954-1980 (1980) by Harvard Sitkoff. This book is concerned with one of the most
significant developments in American history: the struggle for racial equality and justice waged between 1954 and 1980. A
highly read-able narrative, placing as it does the civil-rights movement into a clear perspective. An excellent bibliographical
essay at the end of the book provides a helpful jumping-off point for further reading.
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
David Lowe and Ruth Brown

Histories of Australia and New Zealand after the white settlement have in common the themes of British peoples exploring,
landing, carrying out ever-expanding economic activity, and developing political systems, and all this with consequences for
the respective indigenous populations. For a short time late in the 19th century, when New Zealanders took part in discussions
leading to the federation of Australia's separate states, it seemed that their destinies would be more closely entwined, but New
Zealand did not, in the end, join. In the 20th century the two countries have had very different experiences of immigration, of
indigene-white relations, and relations with other states within the Asica-Pacific region.

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

IN THE 19TH CENTURY

How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with
their heads downwards! The Antipathies, I think ... Please, Ma'am,
is this New Zealand or Australia?
LEWIS CARROLL

Pastiche I: Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Australia (1994) edited by Penny Russell and Richard White. An excellent
collection of essays on early Aboriginal-colonial, social, cultural, political, and economic history of Australia, which also
delves deep into the whole exercise of constructing histories of this period.

A Land Half Won (1980) by Geoffrey Blainey. A classic and influential account of the expansion and (imitations of Australain
capitalist endeavour, especially in the 19th century.

The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History 1788-1870 (1974) by K S Inglis. A very good, readable survey
of Australian social history in the 19th century, charting the development of the colonies and the changes to white Australian
society after its convict origins.

The Australian Legend (1958) by Russel Ward. The classic and much debated account of the bush-worker inspired
egalitarianism and mateship in Australian society, the legacy of which remains today.

The Oxford History of Australia volume 2 1770-1860: Possessions (1992) by Jan Kocumbas. The first volume in the Oxford
series after white settlement is a good introduction to a thematic but integrated account of Australia's convicts' and colonizers'
founding years and directions of expansion.

The Oxford History of Australia volume 3 1860-1900: Glad, Confident Morning (1992) by Beverly Kingston. Kingston
sees the second half of the century as one of the most creative periods for the building of Australian institutions and beliefs.
Her chapters on beliefs and the nature of politics are especially good.

Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land (1981) by Henry Reynolds. A pioneering attempt to reconstruct the Aboriginal
perspective of Aboriginal-European contact. Reynolds has also written on other dimensions of this contact, and is the most
influential historian in this field.

Old New Zealand (1863) by F E Manning. A personal account by a timber trader who lived among the Maoris in the early
days of white settlement, who wrote with an affection for the time and the people with whom he lived.

The Long White Cloud (1898) by W P Reeves. A highly readable account by a prominent politician and historian who wrote
with classical 19th-century Whiggish optimism. New Zealand is proclaimed to be God's Own Country and a working man's
paradise.
The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (1986) by James Belich. In lively style, Belich
dismantles the Victorian conviction that Britain always won its battles against `savages' in the Maori wars. He shows that only
overwhelming numbers enabled the British to defeat the tactically superior Maoris.

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Australia is not very exclusive ... On the visa application they still
cask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to
give you a visa even if you haven't been.
P J O'RouRttE.

When I was there, it seemed to be shut.

CLEMENT FREUD ON NEW ZEALAND

A Nation at Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism 1888-1988 (1988) by S Alomes. A readable romp
through the meanings and experiments of Australian nationalists who, for most of this century, had to contend with the
formidable norm of the independent Australian Briton'. Alomes finds, perhaps harshly, that much so-called nationalism left a
lot to be desired, or was stifled by Australian imperial cronies.

Australia in Peace and War (1991) by T B Millar. A very digestible history of Australia's overseas relations, including
involvement in both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. The balance is even, if mildly conservative, and this book serves as an
excel-lent introduction for those wishing to explore further in this field.

A Nation for a Continent (1977) by Russel Ward. Three-quarters of 20th-century Australia through the eyes of a nationalist
historian, concerned especially with politics and economics.

Immigration (1991) by James Jupp. The best introduction to one of the greatest themes in 20th-century Australia's history.
This is a well-rounded account, not avoiding the `white Australia' policy nor other hard questions that immigration has posed,
but convincingly optimistic about the consequences of immigration for Australia.

After Mabo: Interpreting Indigenous Traditions (1993) by Tim Rowse. A very important interpretation of the consequences
of the Australian High Court's recent ruling on the validity of Aboriginal legal title to areas of land. Aboriginality, politics, land,
and even sovereignty are discussed.

The Oxford History of Australia volume 4 1901-1942: The Succeeding Age (1986) by S Macintyre. One of the best
volumes in the Oxford history series. Macintyre is especially strong on social and economic themes between federation and the
early years of World War IT.

The Oxford History of Australia volume 5 1942-1988: The Middle Way (1990) by G Bolton. The final instalment in the
Oxford series is very good on expansion and prosperity after World War H, and on the periodization of modem Australian
history.

The End of Certainty: The Story of the 1980s (1992) by Paul Kelly. An account of how Australia's certainties, such as a huge
social welfare net, a `white' immigration policy, protection for local industry, and high fixed wages, were dismantled during the
political-economic revolution of the 1980s. Kelly's `certainty' that the new deregulated direction is the only path for the future
is also challenging.

The Bone People (1984) by Keri Hulme. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1986, and probably the most famous New Zealand
novel. It is a rich mixture of colloquial and mandarin styles, of unreal magic and harrowing violence, but most of all it is
imbued with Maori spirituality.

To the Is-Land (1982) by Janet Frame. The first of a three-part autobiography, this is an evocative and often very funny
account of growing up in New Zealand between the world wars, capturing especially the school fare of Romantic poetry and
empire worship in that period.

HISTORY OF AFRICA
David M Anderson

Since its birth as an academic subject in the early 1960s, the field of African history has blazed pioneering trails in historical
method and inquiry. New sources are constantly being found, unearthed in archaeological excavations, collected as oral
literature and histories, and recovered from libraries and archives, which deepen our knowledge of the African past and raise
yet new questions to be answered. The scope and variety of research and writing is simply breathtaking, as many of the
following titles indicate.

The heroism of African history is to be found not in the deeds of kings but in the struggles of ordinary people against the forces
of nature and the cruelty of men.
JOHN ILIFFE

History of Africa (1989) by Kevin Shillington. A very readable general introduction to the African past. A good starting point.

African Civilisations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa (1987) by Graham Connah. A lucid synthesis of the
many complex societies of precolonial Africa, with plenty of illustrations and good maps.

Paths in the Rainforest (1993) by Jan Vansina. A classic work from one of the founding fathers of the academic study of
African history, which reconstructs the history of political traditions across the vastness of equatorial Africa.

The African Poor: A History (1987) by John Iliffe. This wonderfully engaging book spans medieval to modem Africa to argue
that the nature of poverty has been gradually changing as demographic patterns adjust the balance between land and labour.

Way of Death (1989) by Joseph C Miller. The best account of the Atlantic slave trade, richly textured and beautifully written.
It deals with the history of the trade from Angola.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) by Walter Rodney. This polemical account of European economic pillage
remains essential to any discussion of the impact of colonialism.

The Making of Contemporary Africa (1984) by Bill Freund. A succinct history of Africa since 1800, thematically organized
to emphasize the social changes brought about by colonialism.

Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (1987) by Landeg White. A microhistory of the village where David Livingstone
set up the ill-fated mission to central Africa, this beautifully crafted book brings the experience of Africans to life.

The Scramble for Africa (1991) by Thomas Pakenham. This big, stylishly written book provides a colourful account of the
European conquest of Africa at the end of the 19th century.

Studies in the Economic and Social History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914 (1982) by Charles van Onselen. Essays on the
astonishingly rapid transformations thatshook the Witwatersrand after the discovery of gold. The author is South Africa's
leading historian.

20TH-CENTURY AFRICA
David M Anderson

There is hardly a country in Africa that has not been beset by immense civil traumas of one kind or another in the final quarter
of the 20th century. Among Africans themselves, and in the writings of those in the Western world, it is not surprising that the
search for the causes and the cures of these crises should dominate all else. But alongside the image of modern Africa as a
continent of famine, war, and suffering are other images too: images of rich cultural diversity, of artistic creativity, of
innovation, of astonishing endurance, and of personal and collective dignity.

The question is not whether there is a crisis in rural Africa,

but what its nature really is.
MICHAEL MORT1MORE

Africa (1995) edited by Phyllis Martin and Dan O'Meara. These essays offer an excel-lent introduction to the history and
contemporary society of the African continent.

The Invention of Africa (1989) by V Y Mudimbe. Africa's best-known philosopher here discusses the multiple layers that
form the foundation of contemporary African society. A thoughtful, erudite, and at times very surprising book.
In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992) by K Antony Appian. Another study which ranges widely
through Africa's historical experience and sociological heritage to present an interpretation of the distinctiveness of African
culture.

Siaya (1989) by Atieno Odhiambo and David W Cohen. This highly original book takes cameos of life in a rural district of
western Kenya to reflect upon the wider sociology, politics, and culture of modem Africa.

The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (translated 1993) by jean-Francois Bayart. Originally published in French, this
brilliant and challenging work analyses the dynamics of political culture in modern Africa.

Africa in Crisis: The Causes and Cures of Environmental Bankruptcy (1985) by Lloyd Timberlake. Hard-hitting populist
polemic, published by the pressure group Earthscan, advocating a wholesale reappraisal of economic and environmental
policies in Africa.

More People, Less Erosion: Environmental Recovery in Kenya (1994) by Mary Tiffen, Michael Mortimore, and Francis
Gichuki. An important book which presents significant evidence of innovation in African agriculture to counter the pervasive
view of decay and productive decline.

Conservation in Africa: People, Policies, Practice (1987) edited by David Anderson and Richard Grove. These essays,
mostly written by social scientists, deal with aspects of the conflicts between the conservation of wildlife and habitat and
economic development.

The Anti-Politics Machine (1990) by James Ferguson. This influential and very readable critique of the development process
takes projects in Lesotho as its focus.

Twentieth-Century South Africa (1995) by William Beinart. The best available account of modem South Africa, telling the
story of segregation, apartheid, and liberation struggle up to the elections of 1994.

HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Edward Fox

When we speak of the history of the Middle East, we are almost certainly speaking of the history of Islam, which emerged in
Arabia in the 7th century AD and rapidly expanded through military-political conquest and conversion for the next two
centuries. It is easy to see Islamic history in the form of a tree, which grew from a single stem and then branched out into the
separate histories of the states that emerged as central authority in the Islamic empire weakened, particularly in Turkey and
Iran. Although it is a common error nowadays to speak of Islam as a single thing, like `Christendom', because of its huge
cultural variety, the Islamic tradition and its history give a unity to the Middle East, north and Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and
parts of the Indian subcontinent. To understand the Islamic religion, it is important to have a familiarity with its early history,
and its early political and doctrinal splits.

History is a discipline cultivated widely among nations and races. It is

eagerly sought after. The men in the street, the ordinary people, aspire to
know it. Kings and leaders vie for it. Both the learned and the ignorant are
able to understand it. For on the surface history is no more than information
about political events, dynasties, and occurrences of the remote past, elegantly
presented and spiced with proverbs ... The inner meaning of history, on the
other hand, involves speculation and an attempt to get at the truth.
IBN KHALDOUN

Muhammad (1971) by Maxime Rodinson. Stimulating work by a French Marxist on the Prophet's life and the founding of the
original Islamic state.

The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization three volumes (The Classical Age of Islam, The
Expansion of Islam in the Middle Period, The Gunpowder Empire and Modern Times) by Marshall G S Hodgson. A penetrative
and detailed interpretive history of Islamic civilization, from the time of Muhammad to the Ottoman era.
A History of Medieval Islam (1965) by J J Saunders. Gives a good sweep of the development of Islamic civilization covering
the time of the Prophet, the `rightly guided Caliphs' who succeeded him, the empires of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, the
Fatimid anticaliphate, the Seljuk Turks, the Crusades, and the Mongol invasions, which culminated in the Muslim defeat in the
sack of Baghdad in 1258.

The Crusades through Arab Eyes (1984) by in Maalouf. One of Lebanon's best living writers compiled this account from
contemporary Arabic sources.

The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967) by Bernard Lewis. The best avail-able book on Hassan Sabah, the `Old Man of
the Mountain', and his faction of the Ismaili sect.

The Ottoman Centuries (1977) by Lord Kinross. A good one-volume history of the Ottoman Empire.

Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975) by Annemarie Schimmel. The best single-volume account of Sufism, the mystical
tradition of Islam.

A History of Islamic Philosophy (1983) by Majid Fakhry. A detailed historical survey which discusses the legalism,
rationalism, and mysticism of Islamic thought.

An Anthology of Islamic Literature: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times (1964) edited by James Kritzeck. An
anthology representing a wide range of literary traditions.

THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Edward Barratt

Following the collapse and carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and the abolition of the caliphate - the symbol
of Muslim unity - by Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk, the Arab world was left destabilized. British and French suzerainty between the
World Wars was replaced by Cold War rivalry, with the USA supporting Israel and the USSR the Arab nations. Ethnic conflict
flared between Arabs and Israelis in 1948119 after Israel's foundation as a state in Palestine, and erupted again in 1967 (the Six
Days War) and 1973 (the Yom Kippur War). The economic power of Arab states was demonstrated in the world-wide oil crisis
precipitated after the 1973 war, and Pan-Arabism and Islamic fundamentalism were touted as genuine Arab alter-natives to the
Western-style national structures created after World War I. However, the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980's and the contribution of
most Arab nations to the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War of 1990-91 demonstrated these ideas' limited practical
usefulness. Whether the 1993 PLO-Israeli peace agreement demonstrated a new realism remains to be seen.

The tormenting dilemma of the Middle East is this: either

we have one people too many, or one state too few.
AFIF SAFIEH (PLO REPRESENTATIVE)

The Near East Since the First World War (1991) by M E Yapp. Clear narrative account focussing on individual national
histories and their relation to the international and economic dimensions.
The Longman Companion to the Middle East Since 1914 (1987) by Ritchie Overdale. Short introduction to the major topics
and a comprehensive reference section dealing with economic and social statistics, religion, and politics. In-depth guide to
further reading.

Politics in the Middle East (1992) by Elie Kedourie. Analysis of the different ideological bases of Middle Eastern attitudes.

A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-22 (1989) by David Fromkin. Account of the creation of
the modern states system after World War I.

Into the Labyrinth: The US and the Middle East 1945-1992 (1995) by H W Brands. Examines the role played by US
interest in oil, antipathy towards the USSR, and support for Zionism in influencing events in the Middle East.

The Gulf Conflict 1990-91 (1993) by Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh. Definitive account of the Gulf War, covering its
origins, course, aftermath, and implications.
Visions and Marriages: The Middle East in a New Era (1995) by John Roberts. Discusses the prospects for peace following
the 1993 Israeli-PLO peace agreement; also looks at individual nations with assessments of the wider ideological and economic
situation.

The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (1985) edited by Walter Laquer and Barry
Rubin. Gathers together all the principal documents of the Israeli-Arab conflict, in the framework of a clear and concise
narrative.

INDIAN HISTORY
Burjor Avari

The earliest records of Indian history date back to the Indus Valley culture, about 5000 BC to 1500 BC. India's oldest religion,
Hinduism, originated during that period; but the finest of the Hindu religious literature dates after 1500 BC. A glorious and
enriching Hindu-Buddhist Jain civilization flourished in India between about 500 BC and AD 1000, and it exercised a major
cultural and intellectual influence upon its immediate and distant neighbours. Islamic influences became more marked after AD
1000, and Islamic political power reached its apogee under the great Moguls between 1526 and 1707. The British followed the
Moguls and, through the instrument of their Raj, Western civilization impacted upon India. The modern republics of India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal are therefore heirs to a long and brilliant Asian civilization.

Not by wars and conquest has India influenced the outside world, but in the
subtler and deeper realms of imagination and thought.
PERCNAL SPEAR

The Penguin History of India (1990) by Romila Thapar and Percival Spear. These two short volumes are a useful
introduction for the beginner. Elegantly written by two of the greatest historians of India in the 20th century, they provide a
concise narrative of the entire span of Indian history.

The Wonder That Was India (1954; 1985) by A L Basham. A book that should be compulsory reading for all who are
obsessed with the superiority of European culture. With the help of a rich array of sources, the author explores the social,
cultural, andintellectual history of pre-Islamic India and provides evidence of the depth and width of Indian cultural influence
in the world at that time.

The Arts of India (1981) edited by Basil Gray. A comprehensive survey of the art styles of India, covering sculptures, temples,
and paintings from the earliest period of the Indus Valley culture to the late 20th century. The book examines the richness of the
native tradition and the skill with which foreign influences are blended in that tradition.

Al-Hind: The making of the Indo-Islamic World volume 1 (1990) by Andre Wink. Examines the first encounter of Islam
with India. This fascinating first volume looks at the four centuries between the 7th and the 11th centuries, the period before
the rise of Islamic military and political power in India but during which the commercial and cultural connections were already
beginning to draw India into the Islamic sphere of influence.

The Great Moghuls (1971) by Bamber Gascoigne. A sensitive study of the first six rulers of India's premier Muslim dynasty,
their pride and vanity, wealth and pomp, wisdom and justice, but, above all, their sophisticated culture and horrendous cruel-
ties. Anyone planning a tour of Mogul Indian sites will be well advised to read this book. There is also a TV series in six parts.

The Raj: India and the British 1600-I947 (1990) edited by C A Bayly. Contains valuable essays on a variety of social,
cultural, and intellectual themes that highlight the British presence in India. More than 500 illustrations of paintings,
photographs, furnishings, textiles, and artefacts further help to deepen our understanding of the British connection over nearly
350 years.

The Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660 to 1947 (1985) by Philip Davies. The remarkable
architectural achievement of British India, in the shape of monuments and buildings, bridges and railway stations, military
headquarters and hill stations, gateways and gravestones, is brought to life in this book. The vision and motivation, style and
design, functions and usage, which guided the architects and builders are explained, with the help of numerous original
photographs.
Hobson fobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases and of kindred terms, etymological, historical,
geographical and discursive (1886) by Henry Yule and A C Burnell. Republished 1994 with a brilliant historical perspective by
Nirad Chaudhuri, the highly iconoclastic Indian writer of modern times. This volume of 1,000 pages is a mine of information
on how words of Indian and Oriental origin crept into English and how English words acquired new meanings in the Indian
context.

Divide and it (1964) by Penderel Moon. A first-hand description, by a member of the imperial Indian civil service, of the tragic
catastrophe that engulfed millions of people when British India was partitioned in 1947. A book to be read if we are to
understand the background of hostility between India and Pakistan.

Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma (1983) by Susanne Rudolph and Lloyd Rudolph. There is a vast literature on the
life and works of Mahatma Gandhi, the most influential Indian leader of this century. This slim but thought- provoking volume
argues that through the force of his ideas on courage, self-control, sacrifice, and morality Gandhi not only bequeathed to his
people a sense of worth about themselves but also helped to modernize them.

20TH-CENTURY INDIA
Mark Tully

India is the home of one of world's oldest civilizations, a civilization which still survives. It is the cradle of an ancient family of
religions. It has produced some of the greatest religious thinkers of all times, from the Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi. Its thought
is regarded by many scholars as deeper than European religion and philosophy. India has always been an important trading
centre. It has never been isolated, and has shoum a remarkable ability to absorb the thought of other parts of the world with-out
surrendering its own originality. It has been conquered but its civilization has never been overcome. It is one of the few
countries to emerge from colonization a stable democracy. With their education to freedom of speech and of thought, their
achievements in science and technology, their skills as traders, and their new- found freedom from bureaucratic socialism,
Indians are set to make their nation one of the great economic powers of the 21st century.

India has, more fully than any civilization on earth, past or present, explored, embodied the highest, the most all-embracing
realization of our human scope.
KATHLEEN RAINS

The Wonder That Was India (1954; many editions) by A L Basham. Still the best introduction to the foundations of Indian
civilization.

The Hindu View of We (1927; many editions) by Radhakrishnan. A concise and readable summary of the religion which is so
difficult to understand for those brought up in the tradition of Semitic religions.

The Ramayana (1982) and The Mahabharata (1978) by R K Narayan. Easily accessible retellings of the two great Hindu
epics.

Indian Muslims (1985) by M Mujeeb. A scholarly book on one of the world's largest Muslim communities and its interaction
with Indian thought.

The Men Who Ruled India (1985) by Philip Mason. A sympathetic history of British rule in India by a Briton who served in
the Indian civil service.

The Penguin History of India (1990) by Romila Thapar and Percival Spear. A concise history.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1975 onwards) by Sarvepalli Gopal. A biography in three volumes. Essential for understanding the conflict
that dominated the independence movement between the Indian thought of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru's Western ideologies.
Essential also for understanding why Nehru's dream of an India modernized by European thought, political structures, and
technology failed.
Raag Darbari (1992) by Shrilal Shukla. A satirical novel written originally in Hindi, about the rural Hindi heartland and the
flaws in the political and administrative systems of independent India as they work in practice. Cynical but with the ring of
truth.

Stories about the Partition of India three volmnes (1994) edited by Bhalla Alok. This anthology of writing by Indian and
Pakistani authors looks at the event which still affects the politics of S Asia and the lives of millions of citizens nearly 50 years
after it took place.

Gandhi, Prisoner of Hope (1989) by Judith M Brown. A scholarly biography of one of the outstanding figures of the 20th
century. A useful compendium of Gandhi's thoughts on many subjects is The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (1967), compiled and
edited by R K Prabhu and U R Rao.

CHINA
L B Lewis

European fascination with China began in the 13th century, when the Venetian Marco Polo visited the Far East. Interest is even
more intense today as we watch the developments of the world's most populous country - what will happen as China's
octogenarian leadership dies off, and when Hong Kong is returned to Chinese control in 1997? As a huge land with one of the
oldest continuous cultures in the world, China has much to see and much to understand. Reading Chinese history can become a
numbing procession of dates and dynastic changes, and the political and social chronology of the last 100 years is as complex
as that of any preceding period. Fortunately, it is much better documented. Recent events such as the Cultural Revolution
(1966-76) and the massacre of Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989 provoke heated opinions which colour
most of the contemporary writing about China. Less controversial, Chinese art and literature (chiefly poetry), both dating back
more than 2,000 years, have attracted many Western admirers. Because of the differences between Chinese and European
languages, translation is particularly difficult. The words may be rendered more or less faithfu11y, but the distinctive style of
an author or a genre is often lost, and the economy of expression built into the Chinese language tends to make prose sound
simplified, like children's literature. Poetry may be more rewarding for the reader in translation.

Mao, the emperor, fitted one of the patterns of Chinese history: the leader of a
nationwide peasant uprising who swept away a rotten dynasty and became a
we new emperor exercising absolute authority. ,.. He enabled the Chinese
to feel great and superior again, by blinding them to the world outside.
JUl~'G CHANG

Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China (1988) by Paul Theroux. There are two types of writing about travel in
China: the first cannot praise enough, and the second cannot damn enough. If one travels alone by train in the midst of ordinary
Chinese - as did the author - one is less insulated from sources of complaint than the pampered package tourist. Theroux
complains a great deal without giving the impression of hating every minute. He travelled for a whole year, over tens of thou-
sands of kilometres, when China was in a period of particularly rapid and baffling transition - when mobile phones, discos, and
other trappings of Western commercial culture were just beginning to flood the country. He had the advantage of having made
a previous trip, in 1980, against which to measure change. This comparison blends with his superb general knowledge of
Chinese culture and history in a dryly funny, unsentimental, unsparing narrative, letting readers share the experience of seeing
China with an exceptionally observant and amusing guide.

Ancestors (1988) by Frank Ching. For the Chinese, there is nothing more important than family - not merely the relatives alive
in the present, but also the history of those who lived long in the past. Chinese-American journalist Frank Ching, whose family
fled China when he was five, experienced profound isolation growing up away from his native land and unacquainted with a
large family he had only heard about. In August 1973, as an adult, he entered China in search of his roots. Aided by priceless
family documents, he soon found the grave of his clan's founder, the famous Song dynasty poet Qin Guan, who had lived 34
generations earlier. The story follows the Qin family through 1,000 years of Chinese history and tells the life stories of more
than a dozen of its major figures of different generations.

Chinese Encounters (1979) by Arthur Miller, photographs by Inge Morath. The Pulitzer prizewinning American playwright
and his wife visited China in 1978, when the country was just beginning to open up to the West. In addition to taking official
guided tours, they were able to meet and talk quite freely with Chinese writers, actors, and artists. Thus they were among the
first to publish the bitter feelings of educated Chinese about the years of repression under Mao Zedong's communist regime
(culminating in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 and its wide-scale persecutions), and their hopes for the future. The text is a
stately and sympathetic accompaniment to the photographs, many of them protracts in black and white, which are intimate and
moving.

Dragon Lady (1992) by Sterling Seagraves. The Dowager Empress Ci Xi was long believed in the West to have been the real
power behind the Chinese throne at the end of the last century. She died in 1908, leaving her two-year-old nephew P'u-i, the
last Chinese emperor, in the hands of his weak regent father and a powerful clique of advisers. Within three years the empire
was overthrown and a republic established. Ci Xi has commonly been portrayed as lewd, corrupt, and ruthless, to the extent of
murdering P'u-i's predecessor, her adopted son; she was said to have bankrupted the Chinese navy to build herself a marble
pleasure boat, at a time when the navy desperately needed funds to fight the encroaching Western powers and internal rebels.
Sterling Seagraves presents a very credible and entertaining case in Ci M's defence - including the motives of various parties
for slandering her - while giving a clear account of the power struggles in the disintegrating 2,000-year-old empire that led to
civil war.

Red Star over China (1937; revised edition 1968) by Edgar Snow. The classic con-temporary account of the progress of the
Chinese revolution by an `old China hand' who personally knew many of its leading figures: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, General
Zhu De. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, it is easy to dismiss the Chinese communist regime as
merely bloodthirsty and totalitarian. To understand the faith placed by the Chinese people in the Party - and the extent of the
betrayal at Tiananmen - it is necessary to know something about how the communists came to be in power, and the hope they
offered in the early part of this century, when starvation, extortion by landlords, and terror at the hands of bandits were the
daily lot of China's ordinary people.

Wild Swans (1991) by Jung Chang. The best-selling story of three generations of Chinese women, encompassing all the
upheavals of the 20th century, from the chaotic early days of the new Chinese republic, through civil war and the long years of
Mao Zedong's rule, to economic reform and the Tiananmen Square tragedy. The author was the first mainland Chinese to be
awarded a doctorate at a British university.

Plum Blossom: Poems of Li Qingzhao (1980) translated by James Cryer. Li Qcngzhao (1084-c. 1150) was China's greatest
woman poet and belonged to one of the oldest literary traditions in the world. Her speciality was a form based on old songs,
retaining therhyme, tone, and line length but adding new words. Most classical Chinese poetry was inspired by nature; Li
Qingzhao's poems are also filled with images from the natural world, but she was one of the few poets who wrote what is
clearly love poetry. The delicacy and vividness of her work is captured in this translation. A glossary explains some of the
literary allusions that occur throughout the poems and are unfamiliar to Western readers.

The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1994) by Li Zhisui. As personal physician to the chairman of China's Communist Party
for several decades, Dr Li Zhisui was closer to Mao Zedong than almost anyone else. He knew not only the Great Leader at the
centre of a volatile personality cult, whose portrait decorated millions of Chinese homes from 1950 to 1976; he was also
intimately acquainted with Mao's physical and emotional make-up, his strengths and weaknesses - and the illnesses that these
factors exposed him to. It is to be expected that Li's position - the modem equivalent of court physician to an absolute monarch
- was an uncomfortable one, and that this book could not be written until the cult of Mao worship was truly disbanded.

JAPAN
Toshio Watanabe

Japan is a fascinating but not an enigmatic country. The easiest way to get to know modem Japan is to find a Japanese and
build up a friendly relationship involving the family. In order to get more general or specific information on Japan there are
excel-lent encyclopedias on Japan, such as the Cambridge

Encyclopedia of Japan (1993) edited by R Bowring and P Kornicki, which also has an annotated list of further reading. The
following list is a personal one which aims to stimulate the reader.

It is hard to avoid the cliches about Japan, because both Japanese

and foreigners seem to feel most comfortable with them.
IAN BURUMA
The Japanese Achievement (1990) by Hugh Cortazzi. A wide-ranging and lucid account of the history of Japan from Bronze
Age to the present day. The author looks at all aspects of Japanese life, in particular the arts, literature, and religion. A good
starting point.

Zen in the Art of Archery (1953) by Eugen Herrigel. The best introduction to what satori, the enlightenment', in Zen means. It
has been criticized as hopelessly romantic, but he tries to be concise and avoids the usual abundance of florid adjectives
employed by Western writers. For further exploration of Zen, Daisetsu Suzuki and Alan Watts are the best guides.

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880; 1984) by Isabella Bird. This book tells the story of an incredible journey to northern Japan
by an Englishwoman. It also shows Japan on the verge of modernization and gives a vivid insight into the lack of material
comfort in the Japanese hinterland which was eventually overcome in the 20th century.

Barefoot Gen (1987) and Barefoot Gen: The Day After (1988) by Keiji Nakazawa. Anybody concerned with nuclear
weapons should read this graphic novel depicting how the life of a very lively boy, Gen, is affected by the Hiroshima atom
bomb. The scenes depicted are appalling and not for the squeamish, but it is also an intensely humane story. Anybody still in
doubt should read the novel Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse.

A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture (1984) by Ian Buruma. There are (too) many Western books
trying to explain contemporary Japanese culture, but this one is stimulating, brilliant, and most readable. This is a must for
anybody going to Japan.

Japan, Inc.: An Introduction toJapanese Economy (1988) by Shoaro Ishinomori. A graphic novel full of intrigues and even
love stories, but it gently gives information relating to complex economic jargon and explains specific economic situations.
Business people should find this book interesting. It represents an establishment view of Japan.

Underground in Japan (1992) by Ray Ventura. This is a real-life story of a Filipino illegal immigrant worker in Yokohama. It
shows the darker side of Japan, but is not a negative book. I particularly recommend this book to Japanese readers.

Kitchen (1993) by Banana Yoshimoto. Among the most accessible of the contemporary writers in Japan. As in the film
Tampopo, food and sexuality are intimately related in this novella. Those interested in the `modem classics' should read any
available works by Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki., Kobo Abe, Shusaku Endo, or Kenzaburo Oe.

Oe, Kenzaburo, Japanese, 1935- . Nobel Laureate

Hiroshima Notes. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Points and Lines (1970) by Seicho Matsumoto. Japan has a flourishing crime and detective-story industry, though
unfortunately only a very few are translated into English. Perhaps the most senior figure is Seicho Matsumoto, who combines a
meticulous plot with social critique.

SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA: PRE-COLUMBIAN CIVILIZATIONS

Colin McEwan

The last 30 years have witnessed remarkable breaktroughs in our understanding of the origins and accomplishments of pre-
Columbian civilizations in the Americas. The great riverine networks of the tropical forest lowlands are now known to have
fostered the beginnings of agriculture, settled village life, and ceramic an as early as the 4th millennium BC. Archaeologists, art
historians, epigraphists, anethnohistorians have combined to make inroads into the interpretation of Classic Maya and other
Central American writing systems, documenting fierce dynastic rivalries and the rise and fall of city-states. In South America,
independent cultures evolved successful adaptations to the harsh Andean environment, culminating in the Inca empire with its
distinctive calendar, cosmology, and agricultural know-how from which we still have much to learn today.

There I saw the things brought to the Emperor from the new land of gold ...
and I have never seen anything in my whole life that has cheered my
heart as much as these objects. In them I found wonderful artistic work
and admired the subtle genius of the men from these strange lands.
ALBRECHT DURER, EXAMINING THE OBJECTS SENT BY HERN.4N CORTES FROM
MEXICO TO HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR CHARLES V
General:

The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes (1992) edited by Richard F Townsend. A fascinating and beautifully
illustrated collection of essays ranging from the southwestern USA to Bolivia, addressing the ways in which pre-Columbian art
mediates between man and nature.

Central America:

The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (1993) by Mary Miller and Karl Taube. The beginner's ABC guide
to the Mesoamerican pantheon. This illustrated dictionary is packed full of up-to-date information and makes it easy to cross-
reference subjects and themes.

The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (1986) by Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller. Documents the
breakthroughs made by Mayan epigraphers in interpreting the significance of ritual bloodletting performed to celebrate
dynastic accession. Not for the faint-hearted!

Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path (1993) by David Friedel, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. An
exuberant synthesis of new thinking on many aspects of Maya cosmology and creation myths.

Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient Maya (1991) by William L Fash. Summarizes recent
archaeological work at the site of one of the most powerful Classic Maya cities.

Teotihuacan: City of the Gods (1993) edited by Kathleen Berrin and Esther Pasztory. A well-illustrated, scholarly but
readable introduction to the singular nature of this great highland metropolis - one of the six largest cities in the world in its
hey-day during the early centuries AD.

South America:

The Incas and Their Ancestors (1992) by Michael E Moseley. The best recent introductory survey of the Andean cultures of
Peru for the general reader.

Chan and the Origins of Andean Civilization (1992) by Richard L Burger. A meticulous study of Chavin culture, the first
widespread art style in the Andes, focusing on one of the principal cult centres - Chavin de Huant:ar.

Ceramics of Ancient Peru (1992) by Christopher B Donnan. An attractive and accessible visual guide to the vibrant pottery
styles and technology of the best-known Andean cultures.

Inca Civilization in Cuzco (1990) by R Tom Zuidema. A demanding but rewarding concise guide to fundamental aspects of
Inca social organization.

The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization (1993) by an L Kolata. An overview of the capital and ceremonial centre
lying at the heart of the pre-Inca Tiwanaku Empire, spectacularly located at an altitude of 3,600 m/12,000 ft on the Bolivian
Altiplano.

LATIN AMERICA UNTIL INDEPENDENCE

Joseph Harrison

The `discovery' and conquest of the New World by Spain and Portugal, followed by the destruction of the great pre-Columbian
civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas, has attracted a considerable amount of scholarship. There is a good deal of literature
also on the administration of the two empires and the attempts at `enlightened' reform at the end of the 18th century, as well as
on the nature of the various independence movements. Above all, in recent years The Cambridge History of Latin America
(1984), volumes 1 and 2 edited by Leslie Bethell, offers unrivalled coverage of such topics as the Spanish and Portuguese
conquests of Latin America, the effect of con-quest upon Indian society, Africans in Spanish-American colonial society,
economic organizations, political organization, the church, population, intellectual and cultural life.
I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart
that can be cured only by gold.
HERNAN CORTES

The European Discovery of America (1971,1974) two volumes by Samuel Elliot Morrison. Contains enormous detail on the
early voyages of discovery, ships, crews, methods of navigation, and life at sea. The work is thoroughly researched by a naval
authority.

The Spanish Conquistadores (1963) by F A Kirkpatrick. Provides an excellent overall view of the conquest of Spanish
America.

The Vision of the Vanquished (1976) by Nathan Wachtal. A brilliant polemical account which analyses the ideological impact
of the conquest of Peru and the destruction of Inca society by the Spaniards.

Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (1983) by James Lockhart and Stuart B Schwartz.
An excellent outline account which concentrates on social factors and ethnic relations in the New World.

The Spanish Empire in America (1947) by C H Haring. Remains an invaluable survey of governmental institutions in
Spanish America.

The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil (1967) by Caio Prado Jr. A fascinating survey by a distinguished Marxist
historian.
Masters and Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization (1956) by Gilberto Freyre. A classic work which
looks at the multiracial origins of Brazilian society and the role of slavery.

The Independence of Latin America (1987) edited by Leslie Bethell. Analyses the breakdown and overthrow of Spanish and
Portuguese colonial rule during the first quarter of the 19th century. There are individual chapters on the origins of Spanish
American independence, the independence of Mexico and Central America, the independence of Brazil and international
politics and Latin American independence.

The Spanish-American Revolutions, 1808-26 (1973) by John Lynch. Remains the best outline survey of the various phases of
the independence movement in Spanish America.

LATIN AMERICA SINCE INDEPENDENCE

Joseph Harrison

There is an extensive literature on the history of the subcontinent since its independence from Spain and Portugal during the
early 19th century. Above all readers are referred to the invaluable multivolume Cambridge History of Latin America (1984)
edited by Leslie Bethell. These volumes contain many excellent essays by specialist scholars. The series has now been reissued
in paperback form with volumes on specific countries. The region has acquired great fame for its revolutionary upheavals,
military strongmen, and repressive regimes. US involvement in the subcontinent, particularly since the end of the 19th century,
has also left a bitter legacy of anti-Americanism in many countries, not least in Central America and Cuba.

A people that loves freedom will in the end be free.

SIMON BOLIVAR

Modern Latin America (1992) by Thomas E Smith and Peter E Skidmore. A comprehensive and tidily written volume, strong
on interpretation, aimed mainly at the American undergraduate market.

Dependency and Development in Latin America (1969; translated 1979) by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto.
The classic formulation of dependency analysis which has dominated much of the writing on the subcontinent in recent times.

Spanish America after Independence c. 1820-c 1870 (1987) edited by Leslie Bethell. Offers general surveys on economy,
society, politics and ideology in Spanish America during the half-century after independence, followed by a series of case
studies on individual countries.
Latin America: Economy and Society, 1870-1930 (1989) edited by Leslie Bethell. Outlines the Golden Age of export-led
growth during the period 1870-1914, the arrival of the Great Depression in 1929, population growth, the rise of mass
immigration, especially in Argentina and Brazil, the impact of capitalist penetration in the countryside, urbanization, the
evolution of political and social ideas, and the role of the Catholic church.

Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930 (1989) edited by Leslie Bethell. Includes five chapters on the economic, social and
political history of Brazil from independence in 1822 down to the revolution of 1930. The persistence of slavery until the end
of the 1880s receives ample treatment.

Argentina Since Independence (1993) edited by Leslie Bethell. Deals with the economic, social, and political history of that
country in the period since independence from Spain. Peronismo and the Falklands War of 1982 are well covered.

Mexico Since Independence (1991) edited by Leslie Bethell. Contains six chapters on the economic, social, and political
history of the country, including works on the Porfiriato (1867-1910), the Mexican revolution (1910-20) and the rise and fall of
Cardenismo (1930-46).

Chile Since Independence (1993) edited by Leslie Bethell. Offers four chapters covering the economic, social, and political
history of Chile after 1830. The Allende regime (1970-73) and the military dictatorship of General Pinochet which followed are
nicely set in context.

Central America Since Independence (1991) edited by Leslie Bethell. Provides general chapters on the region covering the
periods 1821-70, 1870-1930, and 1930 to present, followed by chapters on each of the five Central American republics -
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

Cuba: A Short History (1993) edited by Leslie Bethell. Outlines the history of the island since the mid-18th century. It deals
with the persistence of slavery until the end of the 1880s, independence from Spain after the Spanish-American War of 1898,
the growing political and economic dependency of Cuba on the USA, the corrupt Batista regime, and the impact of the
Castroite revolution of 1959.
Home and Garden

Many animals, many insects. make beautiful homes; but there is no evidence that any man derive aesthetic pleasure as well as
practical benefit from home-making, however fine. Despite Bacon's remark "Homes are built to be lived in, not to be looked
at" man is a voracious observer—we smile or shudder at other people's homes as well as at our own; we envy, we aspire, we
imitate. The books on this list, therefore, as well as giving practical advice, offer basking pleasure too: whether they prescribe
or reflect, their subject is comfort, and their tone (almost unique in the lists in this book) is uniformly relaxed and positive.
See ARCHITECTURE (Clifton-Taylor, Lancaster); FOOD (Beeton, Conran, Tannahill)

Berral, Julia J. An Illustrated Guide to the Garden (1966)

Authoritative accessible study of gardens through the ages, from that known as "Eden" to those being designed today for
garden lovers of tomorrow. Also: History of Flower Arrangement. See Crowe.

Bowles, E. A. My Garden in Spring (1914)

Winning combination of light, often funny, writing and botanical scholarship. Also: My Garden in Summer, etc

Bray, Lys de The Wild Garden (1978) a*.f Illustrated guide to weeds, of immense interest. After all, a weed is only a plant in
the wrong place at the wrong time—acceptability has as much to do with fashion as anything else.

Brittain' , J. (ed) Good Housekeeping's Step-by-step Encyclopaedia of Needlecraft (1979) alcf

Sepia line drawings of stitches and techniques for embroidery, needlepoint, patchwork, crochet, macrame, weaving, sewing and
knitting. The "makes" are lively, colourful, well designed and up-to-date.

Bryd-Gnaf, Alfred Exotic Plant Manual (1974) 0 _I

Straightforward reference book of greenhouse and indoor plants.

Coats. Alice M. The Quest for Plants (1969)

Beguiling account of the lives of explorer-botanists of all ages and classes. Also: The Book ofFlowers

Conran, Terence The House Book (1974) 1a9 -I

Lavishly illustrated tome explains and displays Conran's own particular style of interior design as applied to every room in the
house. British orientation, but will enthuse and stimulate US readers too. Full of ideas to suit every type of budget. Also: The
Bed and Bathroom Book; The Kitchen Book. See FOOD

Crowe, Sylvia Garden Design (1958) *J

Concise, thoughtful and beautifully written summary of the whole range and history of garden design. See Berral.

Dixon, Margaret The Wool Book (1979)

Guide to spinning, dyeing and knitting. Readable text; attractive illustrations.

Editors of Apartment Life Magazine The Apartment Book (1979) Useful, helpful information about creating a living space to
suit your lifestyle and your purse, presented with hundreds of photographs, illustrations and step-by-step instructions.

Encyclopaedia of Organic Gardening (1978) af

Weighty, dependable, ingenious reference book compiled by the editors of Organic Gardeningmagazine. Everything is here,
presented in clear pictures and text. Valuable.

Free, Montague All about House Plants (1946) 0

Frewing, Nicholas J. (ed) The Reader's Digest Repair Manual (1972) 0 _I

Step-by-step diagrams for house repairs, decorating, restoring and renovating around the house and garden.

Grieve, Maude A Modern Herbal (1931)

Medicinal, culinary, cosmetic and economic properties, cultivation and folklore of grasses, herbs, fungi, shrubs and trees.

Hay, R. and Beckett, K. A. (eds) Reader's Digest Encyclopedia of Garden Plants and Flowers (1964)
Hay, R., McQuown, F. R. and Beckett, G. and K. The Dictionary of Indoor Plants in Colour (1974)

Hellyer, Arthur The Shell Guide to Gardens (1977)

Concise historical account and guide to the gardens of Britain and Ireland.

Hessayon. D. G. and I. P. The Garden Book of Europe (1973) 1t e

Comparative facts and figures about European gardens, gardening styles.

Hillier, Harold Hillier's Manual of Trees and Shrubs (1971)

Innes, Jocasta The Pauper's Homemaking Book (1976) a

Good drawings; hundreds of lively ideas for making the most of what you have. Jeffs, Angela (ed) Creative Crafts (1977)
Compendium of over 40 crafts ranging from embroidery to pottery, origami to metalwork and glass blowing. Stimulating; full
of sound advice. Also: Rugs from Rags; Wild Knitting

Itoh, Teiji, Japanese, 1922- .

The Gardens of Japan. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Jekyll, Gertrude Wood and Garden (1899)

The first and best of Jekyll's revolutionary books. She looked at plants with a painter's eye, recognized beauty in many new
forms and moulded the thinking of many of the best gardeners of the 20th century.

Jekyll, Gertrude, English, 1843-1932.

Home and Garden. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Johnson, Hugh The Principles of Gardening (1979) a * Described as "the science, practice and history of the gardener's art", a
superb book in every way. Also: The International Book of Trees, etc. See FOOD

Kron, J. and Slezin, S. High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Sourcebook for the Home (1978)
American best seller introduces the concept of high-tech interior design, using industrial products to domestic ends, tells where
to get materials and how to use them to the required effect—visual as well as practical.

Martensson, Aff The Book of Furniture Making(1979)

The author being of Swedish extraction, all the projects in this basically "practical" book show a distinct Scandinavian
influence—clean lines, plain wood or bright clear colours. Designs for every room in the house; emphasis on storage; sturdy
toys; complete guide to tools and how to use them. Also: Making Plywood Furniture; The Woodworker's Bible

Morse, Edward S., American, 1838-1925.

Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Page, Russell The Education of a Gardener(1962)

Fine book on the philosophy of gardeningby one of the best garden designers of our time.

Phillips, C. E. Lucas The Small Garden (1952)

Wide learning and experience worn with ease and delivered with wit. Phillips, Derek Planning Your Lighting (1976)
One of a range of publications (all DesignCentre, UK; all recommended) about interior design and how to plan your home.
Also in series: Planning Your Kitchen; Rooms for Living; Children about the Home, etc

Reader's Digest Book of Sewing (1978) 0 *.., 528 pages of advice, information and guidance on all aspects of home sewing
and dressmaking.

Reader's Digest Practical Guide to Home Landscaping (1972) *..4'* Beautiful, useful, topically organized volume on every
kind of landscaping in every kind of climate and circumstance—from narrow city backyards to expansive suburban acres, from
the bleak north-east (US) to the desert southwest. An essential source.

Robinson, Julian The Penguin Book of Sewing(1973) a Good basic reference book for the not-too-creative. Subjects range
from toys and tailoring to upholstery; anyone with the least practical bent will find it invaluable.
Royal Horticultural Society The Vegetable Garden Displayed (1941) Yale
Useful and popular easy guide to growingvegetables in Britain; regularly updated. Also: The Fruit Garden Displayed;
Dictionary of Gardening Salisbury, E. J. The Living Garden (1935)
The background biology of gardening humanely examined by a Director of Kew Gardens, London.

Seymour, John The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency (1976) II a .1

Seymour and his wife have proved that self-sufficiency can and does work, writing with authority and sensitivity about their
experiences and how their example can be followed. Beautifully illustrated. If you are interested in the countryside, rural life,
growing things and craft skills, an engrossing book. Also: The Gardener's Delight, etc

Sunset Magazine New Western Garden Book (1979) a _Pot Although intended for Californian gardeners, this is such a good
reference book with so much useful background information that it is well worth using, with due allowance for the different
climate, anywhere farther east.

Sunset Books, American, First pub. 1933.

Sunset Western Garden Book (By the Editors of Sunset Books and Sunset Magazine). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Thomas, Graham Stuart Perennial Garden Plants (1976)

A model of observation, conciseness and practical helpfulness.

Wilson, Erica Erica Wilson's Embroidery Book (1973) a *_11

Also: The Craft of Crewel Embroidery; Erica Wilson's Quilts of America; More Needleplay, etc

Wright, Michael (ed) The Complete Indoor Gardener(1974) a f

If you are an aspiring urban gardener with no garden but potentially green fingers, this will guide you to success of jungle-like
proportions. Cacti, window boxes, house plants all excellently covered; good section on growing your own food without access
to the usual basic plot.
Humour

These are all funny books: classics whose funniness has weathered time, more recent books whose excellence seems set to
override topicality. Not a long list; but a merry one.
See ART (Adburgham); ARCHITECTURE (Lancaster); DRAMA (Aristophanes, Coward, Travers, Wilde);
FICTION/NOVELS (Amis, Beerbohm. Firbank, Gogol, Higek, Heller, Jarrell, Peacock, Rabelais, Waugh); FICTION/SHORT
STORIES (Runyon, Saki); FILM (Fields, Mast): HISTORY/BRITISH (George); MEDIA (Fisher); MUSIC (Hoffnung); SEX
(Southern); SOCIOLOGY (Rourke); TRAVEL (Wilson)
Allen, Woody Without Feathers (1972) * Allen's saturnine wit works marvellously on the page, uncluttered by the physical
slapstick which weakens some of his early films. Many of these pieces are from the New Yorker, the book also contains two
plays (Death and God), characteristically neat and sharp. Also: Getting Even

Benchley, Robert The Benchley Roundup (1956)

Benchley was a favourite 1940s actor and after-dinner speaker, a dry, bumbling wit in a long American line (Mark Twain, Will
Rogers, even Thurber). He writes with dry urbanity, and has a wonderful line in domestic fantasy.

Bissell, Richard Say, Darling (1957)

Bissell, secretary and stylist for a Chicago clothes company, wrote The Pajama Game. This book is an account of how it
became a hit Broadway musical. Backstage showbusiness, urbanely sliced.

Bruce, Lenny The Essential Lenny Bruce (1975)

Collection from Bruce's scabrous solo stage performances. Horrid, bilious humour, picking the scabs of Western decadence.

Chevalier, Gabriel Clochemerle (1936)

Saga of village pissoir in the Beaujolais avoids archness by precise characterization (especially of French officialdom), and
fast-moving plot. Subsequent volumes far less good: this one has staying power.

Daudet, Alphonse Lettres de Mon Moulin (1866)

Delightful stories of rural cunning and innocence, in barbed, poetic style. Resists translation; for full flavour, best read in
French. Also: Tartarin of Tarascon; Contes du Lundi, etc

Dennis, Patrick Auntie Mame (1955)

Interesting example of a splendid creation engulfed by its own success. Forget film, stage musical, turgid sequels: this novel of
an unprincipled, elegant dame d'affaires sends up WASP society brilliantly, affectionately.

De Vries, Peter Reuben, Reuben (1956)

De Vries has written wittily and well for the New Yorker (collection No, But I Saw the Movie, 1952); but his enduring fame
will rest on a series of fine novels outlining the comic desperation of Long Island Commuter Man. Elegant stories of the
ordinary aches of life, often (e.g. on crackerbarrel philosophy, picayune journalism and small-town politics) rising to
Juvenalian, galvanic wit. Also: The Mackerel Plaza; Comfort Me with Apples, etc

Frayn, Michael Towards the End of the Morning(1967)

Newspaper Man, Northwest London Man, Almost Middle-aged Man, deftly, sharply characterized. Frayn is a kind of
intellectual's Wodehouse (qv). In his best novel, The Russian Interpreter, he finds depth by writing about real people in a real
love affair. Also: The Tin Men; A Very Private Life

Gómez de la Serna, Ramón, Spanish, 1888-1963.

Greguerías. Rec: Ward
Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially known for "Greguerías" - a short form of poetry that roughly corresponds to the one-
liner in comedy. The Gregueria is especially able to grant a new and often humorous perspective.

Green, Michael The Art of Coarse Acting (1964) _I Documentary study of the problems and triumphs of Thespian life,
subtitled How to Wreck an Amateur Dramatic Society. The book causes strong men to break up on public transport: a painful
read. Also: The Art of Coarse Rugby, etc
Grossmith, G. and W. The Diary of a Nobody (1892) * Fictional diary of humourless, aspiring Pooter, clerk in would-
be-genteel Victorian London. The disasters and humiliations of everyday life (bootscraper; red bath; son Lupin's romance with
Daisy Mutlar) all risen above with sublime unsinkable dignity.

Hollowood, Bernard Pont (1969)

In 1930s Punch Pont captured the Britishness of the British in a set of drawings called "The British Character". Heavy-going
text should be ignored; selection of drawings is excellent.

Jerome, Jerome K. Three Men in a Boat (1889)

Three young men (to say nothing of the dog) take a boating-trip up the Victorian Thames. Quintessentially English humour?
Only if Leacock (qv) is parochially Canadian, Runyon (qv) parochially American. A marvellous, universal book. Also: Three
Men on the Bummel

Juvenal, Roman, ca. 60-ca. 140 CE.

Satires. Rec: Bloom Ward

Langley, Noel There's a Porpoise Close Behind Us (1936)

Gently whimsical story of two innocents on 1930s London stage. Will they lose their dewy eyes, their fresh faces, their ideals?
They will, they will. Also: Cage Me a Peacock (urbane mythological satire); Land of Green G inger (acerbic fantasy)

Lardner, Ring Roundup (1920) *

Lardner's bitter-sweet comedy—finally more bitter than sweet—verges on pungent social satire—a fact largely hidden by his
linguistic jokes. A great comic writer; a useful collection. See FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Larry Larry's Art Collection(1977)

Larry (Terence Parks) was one of the funniest British cartoonists of the 1970s. This tour of the art world is a superbly drawn,
side-splitting collection on a single theme.

Leacock, Stephen Nonsense Novels (1911)

Collection of pieces on dystopian Canadian life, when everything was raw, new and terrifying. Leac.ock's little men are the
ancestors of Thurber's (qv): a special, delightful view of life.

Loos, Anita Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)

Memoirs of a wide-eyed flapper, the Girl Like I who knows just one thing for sure, that Diaminds are a Goil's Best Friend.

Milligan, Spike Rommel? Gunner Who ?(1974)

Sendup war memoirs. Ur-goon Milligan was one of the seminal British humorists of the 1950s and 60s: surreal, slapstick, self-
deflating. These memoirs are a kind of British Catch 22. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Morton, J. B. The Best of Beachcomber (1974) *tit, Morton was one of the best-ever British parodists, one of the few daily
journalists whose pieces look better between hard covers. The naming of names, Mr Justice Cocklecarrot and red-bearded
dwarves start here.

New Yorker Album of Drawings (1975)

Superb. Sample: two men in a bar (stock pose); one says, "Look, Nixon's no dope. If people really wanted moral leadership,
he'd give them moral leadership." Put in whatever name you like, it's funny.

O'Brien, Flann The Best of Myles Na Gopaleen (1968)

Irish whimsy, retailed with flint-eyed, diamond wit.

Perelman, S. J. The Most of S. J. Perelman (1979) *

Perelman wrote some of Marx Brothers' funniest lines, went on to become the world's most complete humorist, a seminal
influence on every comic writer since. He is his own anti-hero; his subject is the Hostility of Things, and none have done it
better. Also: Vinegar Puss; Eastward Ha!, etc

Persius, Roman, 34-62 CE.

Satires. Rec: Bloom

Petronius The Satyricon ( 1 st century AD) *

Marvellous sendup of Homer's Odyssey: Petronius' heroes search hard and unavailingly for sexual utopias in the tumbling,
raucous underworld of Nero's Rome. Good translation: Arrowsmith.

Petronius, Roman, d. 65 CE.

Satyricon. Rec: Bloom Rex Ward

Potter, Stephen Oneupmanship (1952)

Trouble starts in Yeovil, England, when Potter sets up a school for people who want to win life's race without actually cheating.
Also: Lifemanship; Gamesmanship, etc

Powell, Dawn, American, 1896-1965.

The Wicked Pavilion. Rec: Harvard
Two late novels show Powell's interest in the New York art world of the 1950s: The Wicked Pavilion (1954), an ensemble
portrait of the characters orbiting around the Cafe Julien (a fictionalized Hotel Brevoort) and a vanished or deceased painter
named Marius; and The Golden Spur (1962)

Queneau, Raymond Zazie dans le Metro (1959)

Coruscating "experimental" novel, about a wise-cracking, self-willed little girl and the luscious and ludicrous adults who look
after her. Monsieur Hulot stirred with the Dead End Kids. Best read in French (as puns and wordplay resist translation); but
Bray's translation (Zazie, 1960) very nearly comes off.

Rosten, Leo The Education of Hyman Kaplan (1937) rft

New York night-school teacher copes with unusual student. Fractured English is the joke; knowing Middle-European wisdom
the staying quality. Also: The Return of Hyman Kaplan; The Joys of Yiddish

Runyon, Damon The Best of Damon Runyon (1938) *

Hoods, marks, punks, guys and dolls swagger and fret in a fantasy New York. Like Chandler's, Runyon's invented world seems
to create, not reflect, reality. Don't the British think that allNew Yorkers behave and talk like this? See FICTION/SHORT
STORIES

Schulz, Charles Snoopy and It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (1971) One of the many cartoon collections about the lovable
beagle Snoopy, Charlie Brown and other friends.

Searle, Ronald The Penguin Ronald Searle (1960)

Searle is world-famous for one of his lesser works: St Trinians. This collection of drawings shows his true standing—satiric
stance, elegant draughtsmanship. "The Rake's Progress" (in this book) is an outstanding updating of Hogarth.

Saar, W. C. and Yeatman, R. J. 1066 and All That (1930) Ina

Wonderful, English-schoolboy, Punchview of British history. The combination of Mrs Malaprop and Mr Chips works well. One
joke, endlessly varied; but a funny read, not to say a Good Thing.

Smith, Thorne The Bishop's Jaegers (1934)

The novel as Marx Brothers film. Surreal. priapic adventures in a fantasy New York filled with wandering underpants, bishops.
nudists, ferries and fog: Hellzapoppin' captured on the page. Also: Topper Takes a Trip; The Night Life of the Gods, etc

Steadman, Ralph America (1974)

Steadman is regarded by some as a modern Gillray: dyspeptic, spattered anatomies of modern life, writhing figures tortured
with satiric, emblematic force. Grosz, too, comes to mind: but he's not so funny. Also: Alice in Wonderland, etc

Steinberg, Saul Passport (1954)

Endless originality of theme and style, perfect draughtsmanship, humour that is both warm and acerbic. Few cartoonists under
45 are uninfluenced by Steinberg. This early collection shows his work at its most fertile and energetic. Also: All in a Line, etc

Thurber, James My World and Welcome to It (1942)• In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Thurber's typical henpecked hero
daydreams as he dances attendance on his wife, finally refusing a blindfold to face a firing squad. "Erect and motionless, proud
and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last." Thurber is timeless, uniquely lateral—prose poems of the
indignity of man. Also: My Life and Hard Times; Men, Women and Dogs, etc

Thurber, James, American, 1894-1961.

A Thurber Carnival. Rec: Hungry Mind

Tinniswood, Peter A Touch of Daniel (1969)

At first glance, parochial and opaque: glum working-class household in the north of England, flat caps, pork pies and mushy
peas, racing pigeons, temperance bar and trams. But Tinniswood is up to something else: the human condition, no less. It
works. Also: I Didn't Know You Cared; Except You're a Bird, etc

Trudeau, Gary Call Me When You Find America (1973)

Perpetual 60s student attempts to deal with the establishment, and fails. All human life (US) is here.

Twain, Mark Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1903)*

Relatively little known but one of Mark Twain's funniest books. Takeoff of religious pretensions and, in fact, all pretensions—
Captain Stormfield discovers a heaven that makes so much sense it could never be sold to the faithful. Also: Innocents Abroad,
etc. See FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/AMERICAN; TRAVEL

Westlake, Donald A New York Dance (1978)

Caper comedies: bungling, endearing crooks (often lower-echelon Mafia) outfaced by traffic, supermarkets, unopenable
biscuits, the whole never-never-land of daily life. Slick as movie scripts, as pleasurable as ice cream. Also: Up Your Banners;
The Busy Body, etc

White, E. B. and K. S. (eds) A Subtreasury of American Humor

(1941) a Still the best collection of American humour, and a book it is almost impossible to put down. See CHILDREN'S
BOOKS; DIARIES (Garnett, White); REFERENCE (Strunk)

Wodehouse, P. G. The Inimitable Jeeves (1924) * Whether you enter his world with Jeeves, Psmith, Mulliner or the Earl
of Blandings, the self-styled Performing Flea of English letters will charm and delight. Also: Leave It to Psmith; Summer
Lightning, etc

Wodehouse, P. G., English, 1881-1975.

The Inimitable Jeeves. Rec: NYPL
The Return of Jeeves. Rec: Smiley
Bertie Wooster Sees It Through. Rec: Smiley
Spring Fever. Rec: Smiley
The Butler Did It. Rec: Smiley
The Most of P. G. Wodehouse. Rec: Good Reading
Literary Criticism

Literary critics fulfil two main offices: those of commentator and guide. In the first place, they tell us what we have just read,
and what it meant: in the second, they tell us what we ought to read, and why. At his best (and it is for their excellence that
books are listed here) the literary critic has a brave, prescriptive and dynamic role to play, both in our reading of literature and
(often) in its writing. By explaining the recipe, he may just enhance our enjoyment of the dish.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Dodds, Street); BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Coleridge, Edel, Green, Johnson, Nabokov, Starkie, Troyat);
DRAMA (Artaud, Braun, Brook, Esslin, Grotowski, Masefield, Roberts, Van Doren, Williams); FEMINISM (Millet); FILM
(Mast): HISTORY/AMERICAN (Wilson)

Abram, David, American, 1957- .

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Rec: Utne

Abrams, M. H., American, 1912- .

The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Our way of looking at art in the year 2000 is steeped in the Romantic mentality. The idea of the true poet as lone inspired
genius, starving in a garret, creating to express his (and it generally was 'his' in those days) inner turmoil or vision is so
ingrained that there almost seems no other possible standard. Yet as M.H. Abrahms points out in this scholarly, yet readable
work on Romantic poetry and theory, this view of art and the artist is only as old as the age of Coleridge and Wordsworth…
(amazon)

Adler, Mortimer J. and Charles Van Doren, American, 1902-2001 and 1926- .
How to Read a Book. Rec: Fadiman 3

Aristotle Poetics (4th century BC) 09a*

One of the most influential of all works of criticism, especially for its unique eliciting of principles from particular instances
(for example, the principles of tragedy from Sophocles' King Oedipus). All thinking about mimesis (imitation) and about
catharsis (the purging effect of tragedy) starts from here; yet essentially a modest and undogma tic set of notes. See
PHILOSOPHY; POLITICS

Arnold, Matthew On Translating Homer (1861) al P

Penetratingly lucid about the principles of translation, with deft examples and comparisons. Written in "a prose such as we
would all gladly use if only we knew how" (Arnold elsewhere on Dryden). Not just for translators; of importance to all
interested in verbal nuance and resonance, in any literature. Also: Culture and Anarchy. See POETRY (Arnold, Homer)

Artaud, Antonin, French, 1896-1948.

Theater and Its Double. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Selected Writings. Rec: Bloom

Auden, W. H. The Dyer's Hand (1963) a

Auden always had, in strict and sententious eyes, a reputation for technical genius and dubious seriousness; his literary essays
bring his expertise intelligently and practically to bear on other poets, from Shakespeare to Cavafy, and allow his unschematic
wit to play ingeniously and informatively among the great and the fugitive. Also: Forewords and Afterwords. See DRAMA;
POETRY

Auerbach, Erich Mimesis (1953)

Subtitled The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (no less), of massive range (from Homer and the Old Testament
to Virginia Woolf), and masterly presentation. Moves with assured ease from close stylistic analysis to generalizations on
literary and cultural history.

Auerbach, Erich, German, 1892-1957.

Mimesis: Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Barthes, Roland Writing Degree Zero (1953) 9* *

With Gallic urbanity—and to the outrage of some Anglo-American critics—Barthes offers a brusque dismissal of traditional
concepts of criticism: of discovering "the truth" or "meaning" of a work, of the evaluative function of the critic. He was an
influential and eloquent defender of experimental modern literature. Also: S/Z; Mythologies

Barthes, Roland, French, 1915-1980.

Mythologies. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS

Beckett, Samuel Proust (1931)

Indispensable to the study not of Proust, but of Beckett himself. 24-year-old Beckett is haughty, affected, unignorable. See
BIOGRAPHY (Painter, Pickering); DRAMA (Beckett, Johnson); FICTION/NOVELS (Beckett. Proust); FICTION/SHORT
STORIES (Beckett)

Benjamin, Walter Illuminations (1970) P*

Perceptive, enigmatic thoughts on literature (Proust, Baudelaire, Kafka), philosophy and the social context of art from one of
the greatest, most humane writers of the century. Also: One-Way Street, Charles Baudelaire; The Origin of German Tragic
Drama

Benjamin, Walter, German, 1892-1940.

Illuminations. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch Trans

Bloom, Harold, American, 1930- .

The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Rec: LAT

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, French, 1636-1711.

Art of Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Lutrin. Rec: Bloom

Bradley, A. C. Shakespearian Tragedy (1904) m 10 a *

Best single book on Shakespeare's tragedies; written with clarity and passion and by no means limited to its central belief: that
Shakespeare's characters are a supreme aspect of his genius. Also: Oxford Lectures on Poetry. See Johnson; Knight; Stendhal;
DRAMA (Granville-Barker, Masefield, Shakespeare, Van Doren); POETRY (Shakespeare)

Brooks, Cleanth The Well-Wrought Urn ( 1947)

One of the best of the American New Critics, Brooks in this book gathered his finest pieces, several of which are small classics
that will endure as long as metaphysical poetry is read.

Burke, Kenneth A Grammar of Motives (1945) P

Complex, ingenious "new" critic, Marxist maverick whose capacity to see what is going on in a work of literature is enthralling
and revealing; his manner is mannered, but the realization of the interplay between character and "scene" is valuable and
stimulating.

Burke, Kenneth, American, 1897-1993.

Counter-statement. Rec: Bloom
A Rhetoric of Motives. Rec: Bloom (linguistics)

Carlyle, Thomas English and Other Critical Essays (1915)

Acerbic essays (1830-50) by the great Scots critic who seems so far from our life
nowadays—to our loss? See BIOGRAPHY (Froude); DIARIES

Crane, R. S. The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (1953) 9

The dean of the so-called "Chicago school" in his best known work. The odour of the study is always present, but the book is
accessible to perseverance—and the views are stimulating.

Dryden, John Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays (c. 1668) OP
"The father of English criticism" (according to Johnson) offers here the first sustained critical writing in English, continually
illuminated by Dryden's own humane and fluent art. See POETRY

Eliot, T. S. Selected Essays, 1917-32(1932) P9, a* *

Most of the best criticism by a great poet-critic. Radical in its sense of the value of a living tradition; varied (Hamlet,
Baudelaire, Marvell, Dante) and with "the intellect at the tips of the senses". Also: After Strange Gods; The Sacred Wood; The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. See Gardner; DRAMA; POETRY

Empson, William Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) ! 0 9

Work of genius by student in his mid-20s; brilliant for choice of instances and wealth of speculation, all held together by a
fervour for the way in which words can valuably mean many things at once. It changed the course of 20th-century criticism in
English; and profoundly affected the teaching of literature. See POETRY

Empson, William, English, 1906-1984.

Seven Types of Ambiguity. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Fadiman, Clifton Any Number Can Play (1960)

Collection of graceful, highly readable essays by one of the most urbane of modern critics. Towards the end he verges on
despair at our civilization's future—as well he might.

Forster, E. M., English, 1879-1970.

Aspects of the Novel. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Frye, Northrop, Canadian, 1912-1991.

Fables of Identity. Rec: Bloom
Anatomy of Criticism. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Gardner, Helen The Composition of the Four Quartets (1978)

Unique treatment of the wealth and detail of Eliot's manuscript revisions; a fully documented study of the growth of a great
poem. See Eliot; POETRY (Eliot, Gardner)

Greenberg, Clement, American, 1909-1994.

Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Rec: Boston PL

Guillén, Jorge, Spanish, 1893-1984.

Guillén on Guillén: The Poetry and the Poet. Rec: Bloom

Hazlitt, William The Spirit of the Age (1825)

Twenty essays about the great influencers of the early 19th century: from philosophers (Bentham), politicians (Canning) and
economists (Malthus) to writers (Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Cobbett, Crabbe, Lamb, etc). Also: Lectures Chiefly on
the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Lectures on English Poets

Highet, Gilbert The Classical Tradition (1949) P*

Magnificent study of Greek and Roman influence on Western literature. Exhaustive, erudite, endlessly fascinating: a previously
neglected topic, definitively done. Also: Poets in a Landscape

Horace The Art of Poetry (1st century BC) £

Storehouse of admonitions to writers and readers, vastly influential, especially in the Renaissance. You'll never follow his
precepts yourself, but they'll illuminate the many great poets who did. See POETRY

Horace, Roman, 65-8 BCE.

On the Art of Poetry (in Classical Literary Criticism). Rec: Ward

James, Henry Selected Literary Criticism (1865 –1914)

Superb on words and novelists: weighty and witty; reviews from Dickens (1865) to Conrad and Lawrence (1914); central
sanity about Balzac, Flaubert, Hawthorne and Zola. Significant for its influence upon thinking about fiction and Cie narrative.
Also: The Art of the Novel; The House of Fiction, etc. See
BIOGRAPHY (Edel, James); DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Jarrell, Randall Poetry and the Age (1953) *

Fine book on American poetry. Lucid, intelligently unpretentious, and quite without envy. A model, in manner and manners, of
humane criticism. See FICTION/NOVELS; POETRY
Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare (1795)
The scholarship in this monumental edition is less than one might have expected but the preface and the notes to the various
plays are masterly. These were collected soon after their original publication and have appeared in numerous editions down the
years. See Bradley; Knight; Stendhal; BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Boswell, Johnson, Krutch); DRAMA (Granville-Barker, Masefield,
Shakespeare, Van Doren); POETRY (Shakespeare); REFERENCE; TRAVEL

Johnson, Samuel, English, 1709-1784.

Works. Rec: Bloom
Vanity of Human Wishes. Rec: Adler
Dictionary. Rec: Adler Seymour-Smith
Rasselas. Rec: Adler
Lives of the Poets. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler Essays. Rec: Utne

Kazin, Alfred On Native Grounds (1942) a

An American critic writing of American writers with an intensity few bring to the task. Also: Bright Book of Life; New York
Jew, etc

Keats, John Letters of John Keats (1816-20) Ilia* Teems with creative critical excitement; ranges from specific to speculative;
has a magnanimity which can engage with Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, and a comedy of perception shot through
with the tragedy of Keats's life. One of the greatest letter-writers in English. Best edition by Robert Gittings (1970). See
BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Gittings); POETRY

Kermode, Frank, English, 1919- .

The Sense of an Ending. Rec: Bloom

Knight, G. Wilson The Wheel of Fire (1930) II

One of the seminal books on Shakespeare, and the truest in scale since Bradley (qv). Has had huge influence on criticism—and
on production—through its imaginative sense of Shakespearian imagery and of how plays are also poems. Also: The Imperial
Theme; The Shakespearian Tempest, Lord Byron's Marriage, etc. See Bradley; Johnson; Stendhal; DRAMA (Granville-Barker,
Masefield. Shakespeare, Van Doren); POETRY (Shakespeare)

Knight, George Wilson, English, 1897-1985.

The Wheel of Fire, Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy. Rec: Bloom
The Burning Oracle, Studies in the Poetry of Action. Rec: Bloom

Kott, Jan, Polish, 1914-2001.

Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Lawrence, D. H. Selected Literary Criticism (1955) i 9 Raised crucial questions, particularly about great American writers and
the state of the novel. Least cloistered, most directly engaged, of critics, particularly in his principled hostility to academia, to
philosophizing, to professionalizing. Also: Studies in Classic American Literature. See DIARIES: FICTION/NOVELS;
FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/EUROPEAN ; POETRY; TRAVEL

Leavis, F. R. Re valuation(1936) 9 * *
Sub-titled Tradition and Development in English Poetry, a magnificent piece of cartography, indebted to Eliot's (qv) pioneering
work but not slavish to him—or to anyone. Argues with lucidity and passion for a particular view of the clarifies and strengths
of English poetry. Also: The Common Pursuit; The Great Tradition Macaulay, T. B. Critical and Historical Essays (1843)
Often reprinted—although not so often now as formerly—essays by the great critic-historian who reviewed some of the great
books when they first came out (eg Boswell's Life of Johnson). See HISTORY/BRITISH

Leavis, F. R., English, 1895-1978.

Scrutiny. Rec: National Review

Lessing, Gotthold, German, 1729-1781.

Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Manzoni, Alessandro, Italian, 1785-1873.

I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). Rec: Bloom Ward
On the Historical Novel. Rec: Bloom

Marx, Leo, American, 1919- .

The Machine in the Garden. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Morgann, Maurice, English, 1726-1802.

An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff. Rec: Bloom

Orwell, George The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, 1920 – 50 (1968) A*
Orwell never separates literature from life; responds to everything, from comic postcards to Tolstoy, from Swift to Dickens.
Empson called him, with affectionate gruffness, "the eagle-eye with the flat feet". See FICTION/NOVELS;
HISTORY/BRITISH ; POLITICS

Parry, Milman, American, 1902-1935.

The Making of Homeric Verse. Rec: National Review

Pater, Walter, English, 1839-1894.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Rec: Bloom
Appreciations. Rec: Bloom
Imaginary Portraits. Rec: Bloom
Marius the Epicurean. Rec: Bloom

Pope, Alexander An Essay on Criticism ( 1711) No a *

The great English poem on criticism and the art of poetry; sympathetic yet divergent re-creation of Horace (qv). Sly, funny,
endlessly quotable and memorable; a monument of Neo-classicism in England. See POETRY

Pound, Ezra ABC of Reading(1934) 1111

Spoof text-book, in deadly witty earnest; creative anthology with trenchant, poignant comments. Lives up to its own dictum:
"literature is news that stays news". See POETRY

Propp, V. I., Russian, 1895-1970.

Morphology of the Folktale. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Ruskin, John Ruskin as Literary Critic (1928) 10

Art, social, economic and literary criticism—all seen as independent but interdependent. Ruskin was one of the great Victorian
sages imbued with moral fervour, deep interest (even in things which horrified him), and an extraordinary range of knowledge.
See ARCHITECTURE

Saussure, Ferdinand de, Swiss writing in French, 1857-1913.

Course in General Linguistics. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Schiller, Friedrich von, German, 1759-1805.

On the Naïve and Sentimental in Literature. Rec: Bloom

Schlegel, Friedrich, German, 1772-1829.

Criticism and Aphorisms. Rec: Bloom

Shelley, Percy Bysshe The Defence of Poetry (1821) 9

Quivers with indignation at the slights done to poetry; speculative about imagination in general as well as about poetry; grand
but not grandiose paean to the whole poetic enterprise. See B IOGRAPHY (Holmes); POETRY

Steiner, George After Babel (1975)

Masterly, sometimes maddening study of translation in all its aspects. "The 'elements' of language are not elementary in the
mathematical sense. We do not come to them new, from outside, or by postulate. Behind the very concept of the elementary in
language lie pragmatic manoeuvres of problematic and changing authority. I shall return to this point." He does, too—a superb,
obsessed, heterodox critic, serious in a vital and rare way. See Arnold.

Stendhal Racine et Shakespeare (1823) I/

Intelligent comparison of French literature with English. No cramping or warping, and all in Stendhal's incomparable
transparency of style (the French, that is: we know of no translation). See Bradley; Johnson; Knight; DRAMA (Granville-
Barker, Masefield, Racine, Shakespeare. Van Doren); FICTION/NOVELS; POETRY (Shakespeare)

Strunk, William and E. B. White, American, 1869-1946 and 1899-1985.

(See also White, E. B.)
The Elements of Style. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

Theophrastus, Greek, ca. 372-ca. 287 BCE.

Characters. Rec: Ward

Tolstoy, Leo What is Art?( 1898)

Breaks taboos, not only about discussion of whether certain kinds of "high art" are truly valuable but also about particular great
artists: Baudelaire, Monet, Beethoven. Nothing is sacred except the search for the deepest truth, and that means the truth
accessible to millions, not the refinements that coddle the chosen few. See BIOGRAPHY (Troyat); FICTION/NOVELS

Trilling, Lionel The Liberal Imagination( 1950)

Intense, thought-provoking essays mostlyon English novels—and the English novel—by one of America's finest critics.
Though Trilling sometimes stumbles, at his (frequent) best he soars. Also: Beyond Culture, etc. See FICTION/NOVELS

Trilling, Lionel, American, 1905-1975.

The Liberal Imagination. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

Wilde, Oscar, Irish, 1854-1900.

Works. Rec: Ward
Plays. Rec: Bloom
Picture of Dorian Gray. Rec: Bloom Smiley
The Artist as Critic. Rec: Bloom
Letters. Rec: Bloom

Wilson, Edmund Classics and Commercials (1950) 11 !I/ *

Hugely entertaining, informative bumper bundle of articles on contemporary (1920s onwards) literature; puffs and polemics,
always lively and well-argued, in quick succession. Also: Red Black Blond and Olive; etc. See DIARIES;
HISTORY/AMERICAN; POLITICS

Writing Systems G. Sampson Writing

Writing Systems of the World F. Coulmas Writing
Of Grammatology J. Derrida Writing

Derrida, Jacques, French, 1930-2004.

Of Grammatology. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Knowledge of Language N. Chomsky Innate Language

The Chomsky Reader J. Peck Innate Language
The Language Instinct S. Pinker Innate Language

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
David Crystal

The unprecedented growth in the English language since the 1960s presents authors with a new agenda, if they are to provide a
balanced account of the subject.
With over a thousand million people using English to native or near-native levels of fluency, distributed throughout the world,
the traditional accounts of the language - focusing just on Britain or on America - are no longer persuasive. Alongside the
books dealing with traditional topics of interest, therefore - pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary - there is
increasing attention being paid to the diversity of uses which can be encountered within the English-speaking communities
around the world, and to the speed at which the language is changing as it spreads. Each region presents fresh trends and
norms. And even within one country, there is unprecedented variety and change, especially in relation to the media and
electronic communication. How we cope with this diversity, so that we can preserve standards of mutual intelligibility without
losing our local identity, in both spoken and written English, is one of the more intriguing questions which many authors are
now attempting to answer.

Words will not lie down. Even if we left them alone, they would not, for
vocabulary grows, changes, and dies without anyone being in charge. There is no
Minister for the Lexicon, and in countries which do have an Academy with
responsibility for the language, vocabulary rules with a bland disregard for the
pronouncements of academics, politicians, and pedants. It is the most anarchic
area of language. But we do not leave words alone. We do not even let them rest
in peace. There are linguistic resurrectionists, who try to revive words that have
been dead for centuries - such as the Anglo-Saxon enthusiasts. There are
reincarnationists, who recall the previous existence of a word, and let it influence
their lives. There are revolutionaries, who are trying to change the lexical world
today, and even that is too late. There are resuscitators, who assail the letter-
columns of publications with pleas to preserve past usage; redeemers, who believe
that all words can be saved; and retributionists, who believe that, for some words,
hanging's too good for A few, well-intentioned souls think that the
government should legalize lexical euthanasia.
DAVID CRYSTAL

English in Use (1990) by Randolph Quirk and Gabriele Stein. This is the book which replaces The Use of English, Quirk's
introductory account of English variety and style that motivated students of the language over 25 years. The new book provides
some-what greater depth in its approach to contemporary issues of structure and usage.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995) by David Crystal. A full-colour, illustrated guide to the
history, structure, and range of uses of the language, with particular reference to the regional variety of English around the
world.

Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary (1988) by Geoffrey Hughes. An account of the way words have
changed their meaning in association with the changes which have taken place in society, in such fields as economics,
journalism, politics, and advertising. Detailed word-histories are provided, using the files of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Rhetoric: The Wit of Persuasion (1989) by Walter Nash. A book which shows that this ancient and most respected of subjects
has just as much relevance today as it had to Classical authors. Rhetoric is seen as a framework for argument and as a
technique for presenting point of view, important as much for the study of everyday conversation as for the study of literature.

The Dialects of England (1990) by Peter Trudgill. An account of the history and geography of the chief regional dialects of
England, including their pronunciation as well as their grammar and vocabulary. Lots of local examples are presented in a
friendly transcription.

The Oxford Guide to Word Games (1984) by Tony Augarde. An account of the extraordinary things that people do to English
(and other languages) when they begin to play with it. The many topics include anagrams, crosswords, alphabet games, tongue-
twisters, puns, consequences, and spoonerisms.

LINGUISTICS
Frederick J Newmeyer

Linguistics is a field that bridges the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social I !sciences. Studies of metrical patterning
in Old English verse, of the physics of speech sounds, and of turn-taking conventions in conversation all fall within its domain.
Today, the dominant - and most productive - orientation of the field focuses on the cognitive aspects of language; that is, on the
properties of linguistic representations in the mind and on the degree to which these properties point to an innately specified
language faculty.

There are several reasons why language has been and will continue to be of
particular significance for the study of human nature. One is that language
appears to be a true species property, unique to the human species in its essentials
and a common part of our shared biological endowment. Furthermore, language
enters in a crucial way into thought, action, and social relations. Finally, language
is relatively accessible to study. In this respect the topic is quite different from others
that we would hope to address: problem solving, artistic creativity, and other
aspects of human life and activity.
NOAM CHOMSKY

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994) by Steven Pinker. A brilliantly elegant and readable book
that introduces the concerns and results of modem linguistics to the lay reader. This should be everybody's introduction to the
field.

Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (1994) by Ray Jackendoff. Another good introduction to linguistics,
this one focusing especially on the relationship between the language faculty and other cognitive faculties.

The Chomsky Update: Linguistics and Politics (1990) by Raphael Salkie. The next best thing to reading Chomsky himself-
the latter a task not for the faint of heart. Chomsky's approach to language is explained in clear detail as well as, for those who
are interested, how his linguistic theories relate to his radical politics.

Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures (1988) by Noam Chomsky. This is probably Chomsky's
most accessible recent book. It records his lectures on the fundamentals of linguistic theory to students and teachers in
Nicaragua. The transcription of the discussion session at the end is especially useful.

The Politics of Linguistics (1986) by Frederick J Newmeyer. A nontechnical history of the past two centuries of linguistic
theorizing. Special attention is given to the ways in which the social context has influenced the directions that the field has
taken.

The Linguistics Wars (1993) by Randy Allen Harris. A rollicking account of the debates among theoretical linguists in the
1970s over the analysis of the interaction of form and meaning. A little technical in places, but it gives one a feel for how
linguists go about the formal analysis of language.

Language and Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (1994) by Suzanne Romaine. A very readable introduction to
those aspects of language study that fall under the social sciences.

Endangered Languages (1991) edited by R H Robins and E M Uhlenbeck. The sad account of the threat of extinction to more
than half of the languages in the world. The contributors spell out in detail both the human and the scientific cost of minority
languages giving way to socially dominant ones.

You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990) by Deborah Tannen. On how and why men and
women have difficulty communicating with each other. Lots of references to more technical work in the subfield of
conversation analysis.

Language (1921) by Edward Sapir. The fact that this book is still in print after three quarters of a century testifies to its
timelessness. Written by one of the greatest linguist-anthropologists of history, this was the first introduction to the scientific
study of language for several generations of scholars. Fun to read as well.

AMERICAN ENGLISH
Bill Bryson

If you park a car, fly off the handle, stay put, paint the town red or even keep a stiff upper lip, you are using an Americanism.
America has played a more vital and central role in the growth and development of the English language in the last three
centuries than most people, inside or outside America, realize. Because it is such a neglected and finite topic, not all of the
following are expressly about American words, but all shed considerable light on American speech and culture.

The American was good natured, generous, hospitable and sociable, and he reversed
the whole history of language to make the term stranger one of welcome.
HENRY STEELS COMMAGER

The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (1989) by H L Mencken. This is
the classic and still definitive work. Originally issued in three volumes, it has been condensed into a single volume with the
addition of much new and updated material, but Mencken's crusty and endearingly irascible tone still shines through.

The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (1988) by Robert K Bamhart. First of a series of a surprisingly fascinating and
browsable books on new words and where they come from.

The Americans: The Colonial Experience, The Americans: The Democratic Experience, The Americans: The National
Experience (1974) by Daniel Boorstin. Outstanding and accessible social history of the USA, full of interesting sidelights on
the stories behind American inventions and the words they spawned.

The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s (1950) by Henry Steele
Commager. Only indirectly pertaining to American speech, this is none the less an essential work for anyone wishing to
understand the American character.

Our Own Words (1974) by Mary Helen Dohan. An engaging and always readable survey of the development of American
speech over three centuries.

Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth Century America (1990) by Kenneth Cmiel. Earnest but
comprehensive look at American speech during a century that saw the USA go from being an agrarian nation on the periphery
of world affairs to an economic and military colossus.
Mathematics, Science and Technology

This list gathers together books on a vast area of human experience normally splintered into a dozen exclusive, specialist
disciplines. Specialist volumes, in technical language, have been excluded (as they have from music. say, or from literary
criticism). The books chosen introduce and discuss their subjects, often at considerable depth, in terms accessible to everyone
—it is, after all, possible to appreciate and benefit from the study of radio astronomy (or fugues, or Russian literature) without
needing expertise in physics (or counterpoint, or Russian grammar). Above all, they offer a synthesis, they link the various
aspects of man's study of his world to each other, and to his whole perception of himself. They are passionate and absorbed,
exactly because science is a species of empirical philosophy. The subject is man the measurer, and the messenger himself is a
central part of the report he brings.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Hahn): BIOGRAPHY (Rolt); MEDIA (Berry, Steinberg); MEDICINE (Gray, Thomas);
PSYCHOLOGY (Luria); RELIGION (Barbour)

American Chemical Society Chemistry in the Economy (1973) -./

600 pages, covering all aspects of the use of chemicals. As well as dealing with what everyone thinks of as "chemicals", it also
goes into areas such as food processing. Important "fact" book, for reference as much as reading.

Ampère, André Marie, French, 1775-1836.

Papers. Rec: Aquinas

Apollonius of Perga, Greek, fl. 247-205 BCE.

On Conic Sections. Rec: Adler Aquinas Rexmo SJC (Selections)
Apollonius Rhodius, Greek, fl. 220 BCE.
Argonautica. Rec: Ward

Asimov, Isaac The Collapsing Universe (1977) a*

Clear discussion of particles and forces, stellar evolution, neutron stars, black holes, cosmology in general. Asimov, a noted
writer of science fiction, also writes readably, reliably, about every kind of science fact. Also: Asimov on Chemistry; The New
Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, etc. See FICTION/SF

Asimov, Isaac, American, 1920-1992.

Asimov on Numbers. Rec: Good Reading

Archimedes, Greek, ca. 287-212 BCE.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections) GBWW Rexmo
On Floating Bodies. Rec: Aquinas
On Conoids and Spheroids. Rec: Aquinas
Quadrature of the Parabola. Rec: Aquinas

Avogadro, Amadeo, Italian, 1776-1856.

Masses and Proportions of Elementary Molecules. Rec: Aquinas

Barnett, Lincoln The Universe and Dr Einstein (1947) a

This book was a response to the enormous curiosity about modern physical theory evoked by the atomic bomb. Barnett was a
science writer for Life magazine but this is far more than a Time-Life book; in fact it immediately became a classic of its kind
and is still regarded (although events have overtaken many of its facts) as a model of popular science writing.

Behe, Michael J., American, 1952- .

Darwin's Black Box. Rec: National Review (evolution)
Michael J. Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University, presents here a scientific argument for the existence of God.

Bell, E. T. The Development of Mathematics (1945) 0

Standard history of mathematics by a distinguished scholar and president of Cal Tech. Can be read with pleasure by laymen but
if you know any mathematics, so much the better.

Bernal, J. D. The Extension of Man (1972) L a

Compact, anecdotal history of pre-modern physics. Gives a splendid feeling of the great scientists (Archimedes, Galileo.
Franklin) as people with human foibles as well as superhuman abilities. Also: Science in History; Marx and Science

Bernard, Claude Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865)

Bernard's thesis (that life consists in the maintaining of an interior milieu) helped to revolutionize not only the teaching of
medicine but medicine itself; he was a great theoretician in a field largely dominated by practitioners. An essential work for
anyone interested in the history of the subject.

Bohr, Niels, Danish, 1885-1962.

Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature. Rec: GBWW (Selections)
Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics. Rec: GBWW

Bronowski, Jacob The Ascent of Man (1973) &a*/ -47

Popular history of man's inventive and conceptual genius from early times to the present day. Bronowski has never heard of the
two cultures; his easy synthesis of all human knowledge and experience irritates some, enthuses others. The book brilliantly
analyses the problems faced by human ingenuity; the answers are explained in occasionally glib terms. But the zest for
experiment and discovery, the sense of the oneness of human endeavour, have seldom been better communicated. Also: The
Western Intellectual Tradition; Nature and Knowledge

Brown, Hanbury Man and the Stars (1978) La

Effects of celestial bodies on mankind: calendar, navigation, time—and the views we take about the stars.

Bunn, Charles Crystals (1964)

Readable introduction to crystallography. Technical matters successfully explained in non-technical language; admirable
mixture of history, geology and chemistry.

Calvin, Melvin Chemical Evolution (1969) P How life may have arisen on earth through ordinary chemical processes. Able
summary of key research to time of publication.

Chapman, J. M. Basic Electricity (1959) a d

Ideal for older-than-school person seeking to educate himself. Illustrations say more than thousands of words.

Clark, Ronald W. The Scientific Breakthrough ( 1974) 9 The "breakthrough" is not simply E= mc2(or any particular topic), so
much as the breakthrough along the entire frontier of knowledge. For readers with at least some scientific background, though
not aimed at specialists. Also: Einstein: The Life and Times

Clarke, A. C. Profiles of the Future (1963)

One of the best books of prophecy ever published. Clarke is the dean of living SF writers, and something of a scientist in his
own right. In this work he forecasts events and discoveries of the next 200 or 300 years. Many have already come true; the rest
are now seen to be likely. Also: Interplanetary Flight; The Exploration of Space. See Rosen; FICTION/SF

Copernicus, Polish writing in Latin, 1473-1543.

On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections)

Cottrell, T. L. Chemistry (1963)

Covers "difficult" ground in a relatively easy way. Eschews mathematics, but explains the essentials of chemistry as a science.
Interesting chapter on the methodology of scientific research.

Curie, Marie, Polish-French, 1867-1934.

Treatise on Radioactivity. Rec: NYPL

Courant, R. H. What Is Mathernatics?(1941) *

This book has withstood the test of time: one of the really great popular expositions of mathematics.

Dainseth, John (ed) A Dictionary of Physical Science (1976)

Dalton, John, English, 1766-1844.

Proportion of Gases in the Atmosphere. Rec: Aquinas
Darwin, Charles, English, 1809-1882.
Selected Works. Rec: Colcc91 (Selections)
The Voyage of the Beagle (A Naturalist's Voyage. Rec: Fadiman 4 Lubbock
The Origin of Species. Rec: Adler Aquinas Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC Ward
The Descent of Man. Rec: Adler GBWW
Autobiography. Rec: Adler

Davis, Nuel Pharr Lawrence and Oppenheimer(1968) di a ✓

Fascinating account of the meeting (and eventual clash) of representative American and European scientific traditions (that is,
inventor-extraordinary and theoretician), sparked and fuelled by World War II and the development of the atomic bomb.
Provokes a sombre question: what is in charge, man's will, or the progress of events? Well-written, stimulating biography; case
study for the apocalypse?

Dedekind, Richard, German, 1831-1916.

Essay on the Theory of Numbers. Rec: Aquinas SJC

Dobzhansky, Theodosius, Russian-American writing in English, 1900-1975.

Genetics and the Origin of Species. Rec: Boston PL GBWW

Dunn, P. D. Technology with a Human Face(1 978) Ai J

Assumes no prior technical knowledge; full of informed opinion and of facts concerning the state of the world, natural
resources, health, education, economics, etc; eschews the panic writing of the popular press.

Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, English, 1882-1944.

Th Expanding Universe. Rec: GBWW

Various Authors, Indians writing in Tamil, 1st C BCE-3rd C CE.

Eight Anthologies. (See also Kuruntokai, Tamil Poetry) Rec: MW Asian

Einstein, Albert, German-Swiss-American, 1879-1955.

The Meaning of Relativity. Rec: Adler Good Reading NYPL
On the Meaning of Theoretical Physics. Rec: Adler
Evolution of Physics. Rec: Adler
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. Rec: Aquinas Boston PL GBWW National Review Seymour-Smith
Selected Papers. Rec: SJC

Euclid, Greek, fl. ca. 300 BCE.

Elements. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Rexmo Seymour-Smith SJC

Faraday, Michael The Chemical History of a Candle (1860) &a

As director of the Royal Institution in London, Faraday gave popular lectures each year at Christmas, the most famous of
which is the above. The chemical history of a candle took Faraday and his audience—and still takes the modern reader—
through the entire gamut of the chemical and physical sciences of his day; most of what he said then is still true. A delightful
book.

Faraday, Michael, English, 1791-1867.

Chemical History of a Candle. Rec: Adler
Experimental Researches in Electricity. Rec: Adler GBWW

Fishlock, David The New Scientists (1978)

The author is a science journalist of wide experience; the book describes the lives and achievements of many great 20th-
century scientists. Excitingly readable and stimulating.

Feynman, Richard, American, 1918-1988.

Six Easy Pieces. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Rec: National Review

Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph, French, 1768-1830.

Analytical Theory of Heat. Rec: Adler
Frisch, Karl von, Austrian, 1886-1982.
The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Galileo Galilei, Italian, 1574-1642.

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Rec: Adler Fadiman 4 Seymour-Smith
Starry Messenger. Rec: Adler
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. Rec: Aquinas GBWW SJC
Discoveries and Opinions. Rec: Colcc91

Gardner, Martin The Ambidextrous Universe (1964) a*J1

Physics with the lid off. Appraises the work of modern physics with sideswipes where needed and an approach fresh as new-
baked bread. Even better than his Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions (herewith recommended). Attractive style; profound
matters clearly explained in simple, non-technical language. Also: The Annotated Alice

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis, French, 1778-1850.

Combination of Gaseous Substances. Rec: Aquinas

Gilbert, William, English, 1540-1603.

On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW

Gleick, James, American, 1954- .

Chaos. Rec: Utne

Gordon, J. E. Structures, or Why Things Don't Fall Down (1978) a..1 Written in plain language, takes the mystery out of an
aspect of technology which affects the lives of everyone. Subjects range from buildings to balloons, even into physiology.

Gould, Stephen Jay, American, 1941-2002.

The Mismeasure of Man. Rec: Counterpunch NF ML Nonfiction
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. Rec: Good Reading

Griffin, Frank Loxley, American, 1881-1969.

Mathematical Analysis. Rec: Aquinas

Hardy, G. H., English, 1877-1947.

A Mathematician's Apology. Rec: GBWW ML Nonfiction

Harvey, William, English writing in Latin, 1578-1657.

On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC
On the Circulation of the Blood. Rec: Adler GBWW
On the Generation of Animals. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW

Hawking, Stephen, English, 1942- .

A Brief History of Time. Rec: TLS

Heisenberg, Werner Physics and Beyond (1971)

Remarkable "scientific autobiography" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist who remained in Germany during Hitler's regime and
fought to keep German science sane during the war years. Thoughtful, penetrating, revealing of the man, also important for its
insights into the history of physics in the 20th century. Also: Physics and Philosophy

Heisenberg, Werner, German, 1901-1976.

Uncertainty Principle. Rec: Boston PL
Physics and Philosophy. Rec: GBWW

Hey, J. S. The Evolution of Radio Astronomy (1973)

Historical survey of the subject, from its beginnings just before World War II to the present day. Written by one of the great
pioneers.

Hofstadter, Douglas Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

Exciting book by a computer scientist, tying together mathematics with the creative work of painter M. C. Escher and
composer J. S. Bach and the theorems of logician Kurt Goedel. An intellectual gallop—requires concentration, and some
mathematics (no matter how far in the dim past) will help.

Hogben, Lancelot Mathematics for the Million ( 1936) Pa*

What mathematics is, and how to do it, explained in clear, masterly prose. Follow the calculations if you can; even if you can't,
the explanations and historical survey offer a good general introduction. Revised and updated edition (1967) essential. Also:
Science for the Citizen

Hoyle, Fred Ten Faces of the Universe (1977)

The enfant terrible of British astrophysics and the leading light of the "Cambridge school" has published many books including
several excellent SF novels. This book is an interesting attempt to reveal the image of the universe as it appears to physicists,
chemists, biochemists, and other scientific specialists. Also: From Stonehenge to Modern Cosmology

Huygens, Christiaan, Dutch writing in French, 1629-1695.

Treatise on Light. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC (Selections)
On the Movement of Bodies by Impact. Rec: SJC

Georges Ifrah , The Universal History of Numbers, From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer, 2000, 633 pages
$16 (rec: cooltools)

Irving, David The Virus House (1967)

Fully documented account of Germany's atomic research just prior to and during World War H, and of Allied intelligence
operations and counter-measures. Both scientific and political aspects are complicated, but clearly explained. See Davis;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Hahn)

Jeans, James The Universe around Us (1944) a

Jeans was a distinguished scientist who hoped to acquaint the general reading public with some idea of how contemporary
astronomers viewed the universe. He succeeded. See Hoyle.

Kaner, P. and Langdon, N. It Figures (1979) a

Takes the mystery out of mathematics and all related concepts; approximation, fractions, decimals, percentages, statistics—test
questions (and answers) supplied. For the uninitiated, for the bewildered, an essential and useful book.

Kasner, E. and Newman, J. Mathematics and the Imagination (1940) What is a googolplex? What is a klein bottle? These and
hundreds of other aspects of mathematics are described in over 300 pages of easy text and clear diagrams. Puzzles; some
history; optical illusions; speculation and fantasy. Education without tears.

Kaufmann, William Exploration of the Solar System (1977)

First-class survey of all aspects of the solar system. For reading and for reference. Also: Astronomy: The Structure of the
Universe; Black Holes and Warped Space Time

Kepler, Johannes, German writing in Latin, 1571-1630.

Astronomia Nova. Rec: Aquinas
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC (Selections)
Concerning the Harmonies of the World. Rec: Adler GBWW Seymour-Smith

Koestler, Arthur The Sleepwalkers (1959) aha

From earliest times, scientific speculation (particularly about the heavens) has embraced both observation of natural events and
a kind of conceptualizing "philosophy". We are defined by what we think about what we see. Koestler examines the interplay
between empirical and theoretical work, relating the achievements of many great past scientists to the response of their
contemporaries. Usefully read in conjunction with McGlashan (qv) and Stableford (qv), who bring the discussion into the
modern age, and with Ziman (qv), whose approach is more rigorously science-oriented. See
FICTION/NOVELS; NATURAL HISTORY; OCCULT

Kuhn, Thomas The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) P*

Revolutionary study of the character of scientific revolutions in thought and theory, suggesting that science generally is not
entirely inductive and that waves of opinion deeply affect its development.
Kuhn, Thomas, American, 1922-1996.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Rec: Boston PL Fadiman 4 ML Nonfiction National Review Seymour-Smith TLS Utne

Laithwaite, E. R. Exciting Electrical Machines (1973)

Guide for undergraduate students; including special electricity and magnetism projects, but simply written and requiring no
higher mathematics. Describes and explains the action of all types of electric motors from electric clocks to rolling mill motors.
Also: Propulsion with Wheels; Engineer in Wonderland; Why Does a Glow-worm Glow?

Larkin, S. and Bernbaum, L. (eds) The Penguin Book of the Physical World (1976)
Good short encyclopaedia covers natural phenomena and also landmarks of man's technological and scientific progress.
Notably clear style: for children (and adults) who want to know what heat is, how atoms are split, why an engine works as it
does, etc. Also: The Penguin Book of the Natural World

Lewis, John E. (ed) Teaching School Physics (1972)

Despite the narrowing title, this is one of the best books on elementary physics for non-scientists, non-pupils and non-teachers
alike. The start of Chapter 5 is essential reading, for anyone.

Lietzmann, W. Visual Topology (1965)

Mazes, ancient wall-drawings, mysticism, knots, string games, etc, all treated with strict logic but without the awesome
formulae found in more formal maths books.

Lindsay, Jack Blast Power and Ballistics (1974)

Notably lucid account of ancient applied physics: describes how observation of lightning and earthquakes led to ballistics,
catapults, and other war machines. Lindsay is a marvellous exponent of the ancient world, particularly its more arcane areas;
this book is one of his best. Also: The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt(splendid study, despite title, of ancient
scientific theories and methods); The Origins of Astrology. See BIOGRAPHY

Linnaeus, Carolus, Swedish writing in Latin, 1707-1778.

Systema Naturae. Rec: Aquinas

Lobachevsky, Nikolai Ivanovich, Russian, 1792-1856.

Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels. Rec: Aquinas SJC

Lovell, Bernard In the Centre of Immensities (1979)

Survey of the development of man's knowledge of the universe and of the earth's status in it. Discusses the origin of the
universe, and includes a thoughtful section on the potentially destructive activities of mankind. Also: Out of the Zenith; The
Story of Jodrell Bank; Emerging Cosmology

Lyell, Charles, English, 1797-1875.

Principles of Geology. Rec: Adler

McGlashan, Alan Gravity and Levity (1976)

Unique, witty polemic: the discoveries of modern physics treated as a kind of liberating mythology, a conceptual platform for
man's new understanding of himself and the forces which play upon his world. Logic and causality are dead: unconscious
processes are at work, and we lock into them to unlock ourselves. Science? Debatable. Worth reading? Certainly.

Maeterlinck, Maurice, Belgian, 1862-1949. Nobel Laureate

The Life of the Bee. Rec: NYPL

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan, American, 1938- and 1959-.

What is Life?. Rec: Utne

Maxwell, James Clerk, Scottish, 1831-1879.

Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Rec: Aquinas Seymour-Smith

Mendel, Gregor, Austrian, 1822-1884.

Experiments in Plant Hybridization. Rec: Aquinas Seymour-Smith SJC

Mendelssohn, Kurt Science and Western Domination (1976)

Why, in the Middle Ages and subsequently, did Western civilization expand so fast? Mendelssohn's answer is that it had unique
keys: scientific thought and technological ingenuity. Stimulating personal view of science and of history, in witty, non-technical
prose. Also: The Riddle of the Pyramids. For an interesting parallel view of China's technological stagnation at same time, see
HISTORY/ASIAN (Elvin).

Millikan, Robert, American, 1868-1953.

The Electron. Rec: SJC (Selections)

Milton, J. and S. Discovering Astronomy (1979)

Ideal introduction. Also: (for more advanced readers) Astronomy: An Introduction

Moore, Patrick Concise Atlas of the Universe (1970)

Lavishly produced introduction to all branches of astronomical science. Non-mathematical. Also: The Atlas of Mercury; The
Astronomy of Birr Castle, etc

Moore, Ruth The Earth We Live On (1956)

Distinguished history of man's study of the earth: rocks, seas, volcanoes, mountains and deserts. Well-documented, readable.
Avoids scientific jargon: for that see Robson. Also: Man, Time and Fossils; Charles Darwin

Morgan, Thomas Hunt, American, 1866-1945.

A Critique of the Theory of Evolution. Rec: Boston PL

Moszkowski, Alexander Conversations with Einstein (1970)

Einstein tends to slip out of biographers' grasp: this book comes nearer than most to his essential self. His views (aged 40) on
education, literature, scientific creativity, physics, his great predecessors, even the occult, are here shared with a notably wise,
cosmopolitan and cultured man (a Berlin journalist and music critic, 30 years his senior). Among other things, Einstein clearly
explains the Special Theory of Relativity in a single page; it is worth buying the book for that alone.

Murphy, Patrick Applied Mathematics Mode Simple (1971)

Needham, Joseph, English, 1900-1995.

Science and Civilization in China. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Neihardt, William G., See Black Elk

Newton, Sir Isaac, English writing in English and Latin, 1642-1727.

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Prinicipia Mathematica). Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Seymour-Smith SJC
Optics. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW

Nicholson, Iain The Road to the Stars (1978)

Survey of all the possibilities for interstellar travel. Various ideas are scientifically examined; a hand-book for the now voyager.
Also: Simple Astronomy; Astronomy; Black Holes in Space

Nicomachus of Gerasa, Greek, fl. ca. 100 CE.

Introduction to Arithmetic. Rec: Adler GBWW SJC (Selections)

Norton, A. P. Star Atlas and Reference Handbook (1910)

Standard, essential reference work, regularly updated.

Pannell, J. P. M. An Illustrated History of Engineering (1964) a a -I

Brief, brisk text; well-chosen pictures. Roads; rivers and canals; railways; docks and harbours; water supply and public health;
bridges—all in 250 pages. You may want to go deeper and further, but this is an excellent start.

Partington, J. R. A Short History of Chemistry (1937) a

Not "history" as a historian might recognize it, more a compilation of facts, "what happened in chemistry", from prehistoric
times to the present day. Regularly updated.

Pascal, Blaise, French, 1623-1662.

Generation of Conic Sections. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Scientific Treatises. Rec: Adler GBWW
On the Equilibrium of Liquids. Rec: Aquinas
Treatise on the Weight of the Mass of Air. Rec: Aquinas

Pauling, L. and P. Chemistry (1975) 09

Basic text for first-year college students for more than a generation; an excellent basic book for those with some scientific
background. 1975 edition supersedes all others.

Planck, Max, German, 1858-1947.

Origin and Development of Quantum Theory. Rec: Adler
Where is Science Going?. Rec: Adler
Scientific Autobiography. Rec: Adler GBWW
Other Papers. Rec: GBWW

Poincare, Henri The Foundations of Science (1913)

Collection of fundamental essays by the great French mathematician/scientist on mathematics and its relation to the physical
world.

Poincaré, Jules Henri, French, 1854-1912.

Science and Hypothesis. Rec: Adler GBWW
Science and Method. Rec: Adler

Popper, Karl, Austrian-English writing in English, 1902-1994.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Rec: Seymour-Smith TLS

Pough, Frederick H. A Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals (1953) P Excellent handbook, regularly updated, ideal for the
professional and amateur geologist alike. The technical descriptions and illustrations are a model of their kind.

Pyke, Magnus About Chemistry (1959) a

Each brand of the subject is clearly and enthusiastically explained, for absolute beginners. Ideal for the teenager who wants to
know what chemistry is—and many adults will be grateful for Pyke's unassuming, unpatronizing style.

Reid, Robert Marie Curie (1974)

Biography of one of world's best-known chemists, gives a clear picture of how chemical research used to be carried out. Curie's
personal life is included as well as her scientific life; but the book avoids the hero-worship of most other biographies.

Rhodes, Richard, American, 1937- .

The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Ridley, B. K. Time, Space and Things (1976) a*

Book begins: "There are some splendidly bizarre ideas in physics, and it seems a pity to keep them locked up in narrow boxes,
available only to a small esoteric crowd of keyholders"—and lives up to this opening. Non-mathematical.

Robson, D. A. The Science of Geology (1968)

Good introduction to the scientific aspects of geology. Necessary balance to Moore's (qv) more general, historical account.

Rosen, Steven Future Facts( 1976)

Lively piece of futurology, discussing where present trends will lead in the next generation. Not fantasy: these speculations are
rooted in present facts. Imagine the scepticism with which such a book would have been read in 1880s—then read on. For a
comparable view, see Clarke.

Rossotti, Hazel Introducing Chemistry (1975)

More advanced than Pyke (qv), less difficult than Pauling (qv). Some scientific background required to make full use of it.

Sagan, Carl, American, 1934-1996.

Intelligent Life in the Universe. Rec: Boston PL

Schrodinger, Erwin Nature and the Greeks (1954)

Fascinating short book by Nobel physics laureate: its thesis, that science is nothing more nor less than the habit of "looking at
the world in the Greek way." Provocative; not difficult. Also: What Is Life? See Koestler
Schrödinger, Erwin, Austrian, 1887-1961.
What is Life?. Rec: GBWW

Sheldrake, Rupert, English, 1942- .

Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (2nd Edition with Update
on Results). Rec: Utne

Sherwood, Martin New Worlds in Chemistry (1974) P

Developments in chemistry since World War II. Leans heavily towards the applications of chemistry in "glamorous" research
areas (such as studies of the origin of life and molecular biology). Non-technical. but requires concentration. Sperling, A. and
Stuart, M. Mathematics Made Simple (1967) What can be said about most books in this Made Simple series is that they do live
up to their titles. For adult education, for reference, for pleasure. See Murphy.

Singer, Charles, English, 1876-1960.

A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900. Rec: Ward

Snow, C. P., English, 1905-1980.

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Rec: TLS

Stableford, Brian M. The Mysteries of Modern Science (1977) & a

Sensible survey of the history, content and philosophy of science. How scientists mould, and are moulded by, their world; the
need for "conceptual leaps" akin to the leap of religious faith. For the baffled layman, useful and stimulating; for the scientist,
an essential re-establishment of parameters.

Taylor, Dennis Introduction to Radar (1966)

From World War H to radio astronomy. Some mathematics are included, but can be skipped.

Taylor, James M., American, 1843-1930.

Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus. Rec: Aquinas

Taylor, Stuart Ross Lunar Science: A Post-Apollo View (1975) 2 _I

Concise summary of the present state of our knowledge about the moon. For reading and for reference.

Thomas, Lewis, American, 1913-1993.

The Lives of a Cell. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth On Growth and Form (1917)

Cuts across all disciplines, deals with the growth of living and nonliving things (for example, bank accounts under compound
interest), and the forms of plants and animals, mountains, anthills, galaxies—all affected by the bell curve of normal
distribution. Unique, stimulating. Revised edition (1961) recommended.

Thompson, D'Arcy, Scottish, 1860-1948.

On Growth and Form. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Velikovsky, Immanuel, Russian-American writing in English, 1895-1979.

Worlds in Collision. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Viete, Francois, French writing in Latin, 1540-1603.

Introduction to the Analytical Art. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Standard Enumeration of Geometric Results. Rec: Aquinas

Waddams, A. L. Chemicals from Petroleum (1962)

Thorough, regularly-updated introduction to the way in which chemical products are made from crude oil. Fairly technical, but
accessible to the perseverant layman. Because the industry is still changing, avoid any but the latest edition.

Watson, James D. The Double Helix (1968)fait

Subtitled "A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA", this book upset some scientists because its highly
personal account implied that, even when doing research, they behave like human beings, occasionally even losing their
tempers or thinking about sex.

Watson, James D., American, 1928- .

The Double Helix. Rec: Boston PL ML Nonfiction National Review NYPL

Whitehead, A. N. An Introduction to Mathematics (1920) 9*

Whitehead is one of the great mathematician/philosophers of the 20th century; his most famous (although it's almost
unreadable) book being Principia Mathematica, written with his young Cambridge colleague, Bertrand Russell. Whitehead
came to America before World War I and wrote more popular books, notably this one which is exactly what its title says. Also:
Science and the Modern World

Whitehead, Alfred North, English, 1861-1947.

(See also Whitehead, Alfred North and Russell, Bertrand)
Science and the Modern World. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 GBWW
An Introduction to Mathematics. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 GBWW
The Aims of Education and Other Essays. Rec: Adler
Adventures of Ideas. Rec: Adler

Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell, English, 1861-1947 and 1872-1970.
(See also Whitehead, Alfred North and Russell, Bertrand)
Principia Mathematica. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Wiener, Norbert, American, 1894-1964.

Cybernetics. Rec: Boston PL Seymour-Smith

Wright, Lawrence Clockwork Man (1968)

Comprehensive account of man's attempts to tell the time and to order the hours, days and months. Calendars, clocks, sextants,
compasses, from primitive times to the digital present day. Also: Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed, etc

Ziman, John The Force of Knowledge (1976) $ a The author is a professor of physics, but his book is more
philosophical than physical. He paints the history of physics delightfully, and shows how indebted we are to the great thinkers.
Same subject as Koestler (qv), but usefully viewed here from the scientist's "side".

Nicolaas Bloembergen

Nicolaas Bloembergen is professor of physics in the Applied Sciences Division and Harvard's Gerhard Gade University
Professor. He was born and educated in the Netherlands and joined the Harvard faculty in 1949. In 1981, Professor
Bloembergen received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. Physik als Abenteuer der Erkenntnis (The Evolution of Physics, 1938). Simon &
Schuster, 1967. (Pb)
This book I read at the age of eighteen. It convinced me that the study of physics poses some of the most challenging questions
to the human mind. I have not been disappointed in pursuing physics as a lifetime career. The book was published at the same
time in the English language with the less informative title The Evolution of Physics.

Philip Morrison, Phylis Morrison, Charles Eames, and Ray Eames. Powers of Ten. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1982.
Nowadays, there are many excellent books introducing the high school and college student to the human quest in science and
technology. If I had been born fifty years later, I am sure this charmingly illustrated book would have alerted my mind to the
challenges of science. This book is the first in the series of the Scientific American Library. Many of these volumes could be
recommended.

Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front (1928). New York: Fawcett Book Group, 1979. (Pb)
In the 1930s this book opened my eyes to the senselessness of trench warfare in World War I, and the accompanying
degradation of the human spirit. The same theme can, of course, be found in many other more recent books, including Norman
Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, based on episodes from World War II. It is a sad commentary on the human condition, that
each generation produces books of this nature.

William Bossert

William Bossert is an esteemed population biologist with current research interests in computer applications in medicine, the
management of marine fisheries and evolutionary biology. He is the David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard and was
formerly a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows. Former students and his peers praise his pioneering efforts on behalf of
Harvard students to bring the University into the computer age. He is also consistently described as an excellent teacher.

Albert G. Ingalls, ed. Amateur Telescope Making (1926). 3 vols. New York: Munn, 1945.

Shikubu Murasaki. The Tale of Genji (ca. A.D. 1000). Edward G. Seidensticker, trans. New York: Random House, 1985. (Pb)

The Scientific American.

An illness kept me in bed and away from school most of one year when I was very young. I read voraciously, since I could do
little else. My diet included all of the classics in English literature from Shakespeare to Damon Runyon. The result of this
overdose was not entirely positive. I have read very little fiction since then, except for a few works forced on me by their
popularity in dinner conversation or required during my undergraduate education. Most everything in these two categories
proved very unsatisfying, with a few exceptions such as The Lord of the Rings in the former category and one remarkable work
in the latter. That work was The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, which I read in the fine translation by Arthur Waley. Despite
its age, nearly a thousand years, this work is as fresh as a well-written novella from Brazilian television. I had always longed
for the day that I would have sufficient fluency in a foreign language to be able to think in that language. The Tale of Genji
achieved something greater than that for me. It lead me to fantasize in a foreign culture. After reading the book I daydreamed
of piercing through the court intrigue and scheming to glimpse at the harem that Lady Murasaki so vividly portrayed. Because
of it I can never feel distant from another culture despite superficial barriers of language, custom and manner.
Most of the nonfiction I read now is of a technical nature and not likely of interest to a general audience. I would like to
mention, however, a regular reading experience that is important to me and should be more widely read in this country. That is
the monthly journal Scientific American. The journal contains articles on every branch of science, with special concern for the
latest developments in molecular biology and particle physics. Since its beginning over a hundred years ago, Scientific
American has kept its readers abreast of the latest science in articles prepared in a first-rate tutorial style. The publishers have
always been concerned to make the societal implications of scientific developments clear to the reader. For example, the
regular articles on military technology since World War II have been the best available information on that subject. The
question of the accessibility of Scientific American articles to a general audience has been debated. I concede that if a new
reader to the journal attacked a recent article on grand unification theories in modern physics without the preparation of reading
previous articles on this subject in the journal in recent years, not much would be learned. If the general question of
accessibility of Scientific American, however, is correctly answered in the negative then I am very disappointed in the
intellectual state of our society. There are few societal decisions that I would willingly trust to leaders who could not read
Scientific American.
Finally, I must add that I am very fond of the Amateur Telescope Making handbook in three volumes, which was spawned in
the pages of Scientific American. I don't believe that there is any group of hobbyists as fond of talking and writing about their
hobby as amateur telescope-makers. The prose of these volumes, which is often Victorian in style, conveys a sense of the
importance of this hobby in the lives of the authors that is quite seductive. If anyone is looking for a hobby I recommend that
they read these volumes, and they will, as did I. start grinding pieces of glass together.

Paul M. Doty

Paul M. Doty is Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry. In addition to his work on nucleic acids and gene structure, Mr. Doty
has had a long-time interest in arms control, science policy and international affairs. Director emeritus of the Center for Science
and International Affairs, he has been a presidential adviser on arms control. He was an early participant in the Pugwash
Conferences on World and Scientific Affairs, which first brought U.S. and Soviet scientists together informally to discuss the
problems of arms control.
Molecular biology:

Erwin Schrodinger. What Is Life? (1946). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
James D. Watson. The Double Helix (1968). New York: New American Library, 1969. (Pb)
Bruce Alberts et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell. New York: Garland, 1983.
In a very slim volume Schroedinger, a theoretical physicist, focused with remarkable foresight on what the genetic material had
to be like. Watson describes his discovery with Crick and Wilkins of the detailed structure of the genetic material, DNA, by
recounting his view of it as it occurred in his early twenties. Alberts and five other authors, including Watson, put together an
integrated, detailed picture of the molecular basis of life that has flowed from the discovery of the structure of DNA.

The atom, the Russians and ourselves:

Herbert F. York. Race to Oblivion. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.
Andrei D. Sakharov. Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom (1968). New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.
Hedrick Smith. The Russians (1976). New York: New York Times, 1983.
Strobe Talbott. Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
In a small volume York captures the insider's view of the way the nuclear arms race developed and reached the "ultimate
absurdity" with which we now grapple. Sakharov at an early stage analyzes the dangers inherent in the race and the basis for
hopeful outcome. By presenting so clearly the nature of the Russian system Smith shows the difficulties that the two very
different societies of the East and the West face in resolving the dilemma they have created. Talbott dissects a major act in this
unfolding drama in a way that mirrors the complex interactions of politics and technology so as to convey the essence of the
challenge to maintain the chain of human continuity and achievement.

Reaction to challenge:

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1966.
Winston S. Churchill. The Second World War (1948-53). 6 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
Michael Collins. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974.
In quite different ways each book displays on a broad canvas three great human adventures. To share in these even vicariously
from the safety of an armchair nevertheless enlarges the spirit and the sense of belonging to a tough, resourceful and
courageous species.

Howard Hiatt

Howard Hiatt is the former dean of Harvard's School of Public Health and now a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical
School. Earlier in his career he worked on the molecular biology of cancer and was the Department of Medicine chairman at
Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. As a professor he now spends his teaching time trying to bring together in the training of
physicians some of the public-health issues he worked on while at the School of Public Health.
It is misleading to suggest that the books I mention are crucial—they made a difference. If they had been read at a different
time in life they likely would have had a correspondingly different effect.

Paul H. DeKruif. Microbe Hunters (1926). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966. (Pb)
I read this early in high school, and it whetted my appetite for medicine and science. In retrospect, it is an outrageously
romanticized description of important distinguished scientists, written in a familiar style for young and impressionable high-
school students. For me it was an important book in my decision to go into medicine as well as in my considering research
within medicine.

Hans Zinsser. Rats, Lice and History: The Biography of Bacillus (1935). New York: Little, 1984. (Pb)
I read this the summer before college. By then I had settled on a career in medicine. It reinforced my interest in a career in
science. It portrayed in a more scholarly fashion the attraction of medical research. More importantly, it made clear that one
could combine a deep commitment to medicine and science with a continuing interest in arts, in literature. I was an English
major, bound for medical school. That was not too common then, nor is it now.

John Hersey. Hiroshima (1946). New York: Bantam, n.d. (Pb)

This book led me to question more than had the irrationality of the nuclear arms race. Six years ago I was asked by a former
student who organized it to speak at the first meeting on the medical consequences of nuclear war. It happened while
candidates for president in this country were talking about winning a nuclear war. I accepted the invitation to open the meeting
after re-reading Hiroshima, Those who were talking about fighting and winning nuclear war clearly had not read Hersey. They
were thinking in preatomic terms. A sustained portion of my time since has been devoted to efforts to portray what the effects
of nuclear war would be in medical terms.

Gerald Holton

Gerald Holton is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and a professor of the history of science. He has enlivened physics
classes at Harvard for forty years. In addition to his well-deserved reputation as a physicist, he is known for his interest and
work in arms control and Soviet-American relations. Among his works are Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (1973), The
Scientific Imagination (1978), and The Advancement of Science and Its Burdens (1986).

Homer. The Iliad (ca. 800 B.C.). Robert Fitzgerald, trans. New York: Doubleday, 1975. (Pb)
As for many schoolboys in the classical Gymnasium in Vienna—and I can mention here only books from those early years—
this was for me the most terrible and unforgettable encounter. It foretold what writing can be at its best, and mankind at its
worst. After our forced marches through Caesar's wars, the Nibelungenlied, Xenophon's Anabasis, the Eddas, and post-
Versailles diatribes in our history courses, it became clear that a chief purpose of education was the preparation for war. History
would be written by unthinking ate and thumos, with rarely a moment of rational drawing back, as when Achilles, facing
Agamemnon, is made by Athena to sheathe his sword at the last moment.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. (Pb)
Even in German, this and large parts of Huckleberry Finn were indestructible, and I read them avidly, as if they showed the
way to an escape hatch into an innocent world. A curious view of America emerged from reading Twain, James Fenimore
Cooper (Franz Schubert's wish, as he was dying, was for one of his volumes), Karl May's stories of trappers and Indians, and
practically all of Zane Grey (during a bout with diphtheria).
Of course there were also the American films with those magnetic heroes, Clark Gable, Paul Robeson, James Stewart... .

William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet (1595). T. J. Spencer, ed. New York: Penguin, 1981. (Pb)
Finally learning English as the last language at sixteen, I came upon a minor production of Romeo and Juliet, and have never
forgotten the thrill of being transfixed by the poetry of the English language. Perhaps having to recite lines learned by heart
from Goethe, Schiller, Heine and MOrike had spoiled those for me. Let's put volumes of poetry on our children's shelves!

Ernst Mach. The Science of Mechanics (1883). T. J. McCormack. trans. 6th ed. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1960. (Pb)
Here at last was a book that carefully examined scientific concepts, their historical origins, and their philosophical
underpinnings, often showing that these foundations were badly in need of improvement. So science was not closed after all.
Like so many who had been made to believe in textbook science, and in Immanuel Kant's "Thing in Itself," I found here the
antidote. I did not know then that Einstein would echo the memory of thousands when he wrote that Mach's "incorruptible
skepticism and independence" exerted a profound influence on him as a student.

An encyclopedia.
A big, illustrated, honest, multi-volume encyclopedia. Father kept it in his office, but of course that did nothing to stop me from
reading and rereading it, almost volume by volume. So that was how the world was made, what was in it, and how things might
work! These "truths" seemed even more fantastic than the inventions of Wilhelm Busch, Grimm's Tales, and all the treasured
adventure stories of Defoe, Jules Verne and Sven Hedin.

Howard Raiffa

Howard Raiffa has a joint appointment to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School,
where he is the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics. He is the first director of the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna. He has a worldwide reputation as an applied mathematician, statistician, game theorist,
decision analyst and negotiation analyst.

My thesis is that some rather straightforward, simple, systematic, nonesoteric analysis of complex decisions can make a net
positive difference in society. These books collectively contribute to this noble quest.

Kenneth J. Arrow. Social Choice and Individual Values (1951). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. (Pb)
This book profoundly influenced my research agenda. In controversial arenas where one has to choose an alternative and there
are conflicting principles of fairness or of rationality, it is helpful to articulate desiderata of a "good" solution and to investigate
the compatibility and implications of these desiderata (or axioms). Arrow was a pathfinder and deserved his Nobel Prize for
this work.

John G. Kemeny et al. Introduction to Finite Mathematics (1957). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
One of the earliest books written by mathematicians to expose social scientists to the power and beauty of mathematical
thinking in a truly accessible way.

John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944). Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980. (Pb)
A mathematical tour de force. The first really profound mathematical treatise written about a subject at the crossroads of
economics, sociology and psychology.

Von Neumann, John, American, 1903-1957.

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Rec: Boston PL

Thomas C. Schelling. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. (Pb)
One of the first books to exploit game-theoretic thinking, but it breaks away from the overly rigid structures of formal game
theory. Profound and insightful ... and a delight to read.

Robert Schlaifer. Analysis of Decision Under Uncertainty (1965). Huntington, N.Y.: Krieger, 1978,
A first-rate pedagogical contribution that uses exclusively case analysis for instructional purposes. The book is written in a
heavy style that does not appeal to students, but subsequent authors have written follow-on versions that make the subject
matter more enjoyable. The Schlaifer book was the pioneering effort in the teaching of quantitative techniques by the case
method.

David Lax and James Schenius. The Manager as Negotiator. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Though written by mathematically oriented authors, this book should be readily accessible to managers. It should be required
reading for students in public policy and business.

Myron B. Fiering

Myron Fiering is the Gordon McKay Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. A "survivor of
the New York public school system," Professor Fiering has taught water resources and decision theory in the Division of
Applied Sciences since 1961. He has part-time appointments at the Harvard Medical School and the School of Public Health to
continue his research in the fluid mechanics problems associated with burn treatment and his interest in water-borne disease.
He occasionally builds model trains.

I listed books that have been most useful in forming my views and biases—in providing the special set of filters through which
I view the world. They are neither the most useful professional texts nor the books I have enjoyed the most.

John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944). Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980. (Pb)
Theory of Gaines and Economic Behavior taught me always to analyze situations, confficts, negotiations—whateverwithin a
probabilistic framework. A classic, it survives today because of its insights into the ways people perceive and respond to risk,
and it has profoundly influenced my personal and professional lives.

Percy W. Bridgman. Reflections of a Physicist (1950). Bernard I. Cohen, ed. Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1980.
Richard Von Mises. Probability, Statistics, and Truth (1928). Hilda Geiringer, trans. New York: Dover, 1981.
Reflections of a Physicist and Probability. Statistics, and Truth had much the same effect as von Neumann's work—they shaped
a lifelong viewpoint not by inculcation of formulas but by gentle nudging.

Anne Frank. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). New York: Doubleday, 1967. (Pb)
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431-404 B.C.). Richard Livingstone, ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1960. (Pb)
The Diary of Anne Frank helped to teach me who I am and whence I come; Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War
helped to teach me who we all are and whence we all come, as well as that history need not be dull.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. (Pb)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). New York: Crown, 1977.
Twain's Tom Sawyer and Browning's Sonnets are simply too beautiful for words other than their own; they taught me how
fragile are the great works of the mind of man—the Pieta, the Mona Lisa, the Moonlight Sonata, even a great university under
siege.

Erskine Caldwell. God's Little Acre (1933). New York: New American Library, n.d. (Pb)
D. H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). Lawrence Durrell, ed. New York: Bantam, 1983.
Finally, to an adolescent growing through a tightly constrained world, Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and Lawrence's
Lady Chatterley's Lover, my first erotic books, gave the first hints of the joys of love and supplemented street talk as the main
source of information to satisfy my growing curiosity about feeling, loving and sharing.

C. Peter Timmer

C. Peter Timmer is the John D. Black Professor of Agriculture and Business at the Harvard Business School and has an
appointment in the Department of Economics. In addition, he is a faculty fellow at the Harvard Institute for International
Development. He grew up on a farm near Tipp City, Ohio, which his family still operates. An interest in food systems, he
writes, combines his agricultural background with his training as an economist; the major applications are in food policy for
developing countries. Food Policy Analysis is his best-known book.

All of these books deal directly or indirectly with the dynamics of complex systems and the message that intuitive
understanding will provide a richer guide to the future than formal economic models.

Alexander Gerschenkron. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Important for its understanding of the way governments respond to the challenge of underdevelopment as presented by more
developed neighbors and political rivals. Shows clearly that "market forces" were not the driving mechanism in the
development of the latecomers to industrial modernization and provides a powerful sense of the dynamics of economic change
which cannot be captured in simple economic-growth models.

Albert O. Hirschman. Development Projects Observed. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967. (Pb)
Develops the principle of the "hiding hand,- which argues that the difficulties of actually implementing a complex project are
"hidden" from the designers, who then overlook them. But in compensation, the creativity of project managers is often greater
than designers anticipated, so many projects are successful because the two effects offset each other. The book provides, above
all, a sobering picture of the limits of planning and the power of learning by doing.

George L. Clarke. Elements of Ecology (1954). New York: Wiley, 1965.

A comprehensive introduction to the principles of ecology, which provide an essential framework of linkages among biological
systems. Ecology has many parallels with economics, especially the need to explain the functioning of entire systems of
relationships as well as of individual behavior. Much of my own effort to understand the links between the micro- and macro-
levels of economic systems stems from my early training in ecology.
Clifford Geertz. Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1963. (Pb)
This is perhaps the most influential attempt to incorporate ecological factors into an explanation of social change (in rice
cultivation on Java) by one of the world's foremost anthropologists. Although much of Geertz's historical interpretation has
been challenged by recent scholars, the paradigm of interacting social and ecological forces remains.
John K. Fairbank. Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. (Pb)
This is a favorite book for highly personal reasons, as it traces the career of a Midwesterner at Harvard. Fairbank's efforts to
create a new academic field in the form of East Asian Studies has parallels to my own efforts to create a field in food-policy
analysis. The difficulties in crossing academic disciplines and departments, and his eventual success, provide both a model and
a mystery quality to the book.

Yujiro Hayami and Vernon W. Ruttan. Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (1971). Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1985. (Pb)
Without a doubt the most influential and comprehensive analysis of agricultural development. The model of "induced
innovation" removes technological change from the "manna from heaven" category and places it firmly in the hands of
societies and market forces. Because technological change is the primary force driving economic development, an
understanding of its origins and impact is crucial indeed to our efforts to speed the process in the poorer countries.

Edward O. Wilson

Edward Wilson is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard and curator of entomology at the university's Museum
of Comparative Zoology. One of the nation's leading biologists, Professor Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in
1979 for his work entitled On Human Nature. One of the most entrenched biological predispositions Wilson finds among
human beings is biophilia—the love for other forms of life such as plants and animals—which is also the title of his most
recent book (Biophilia, 1984).

I was an adolescent, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, when I encountered the books that were to have the most profound
and lasting influence on my life. Thereafter I read thousands of books, many of equal or superior quality, and put most to good
use; but I have to confess that individually they have had a steadily declining effect on my world view, style and ambition.
Hence I can only offer you works that might, either literally or as examples of a genre, influence a certain kind of young person
to take up a career as a biologist and naturalist. More I cannot promise.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lost World (1912). New York: Random House, 1959.
Even as a small child I dreamed of going on faraway expeditions to collect insects and other animals. This book set my
imagination on fire, and I was thereafter a nesiophile, a lover of islands, the concrete symbols of new worlds awaiting
exploration. The compulsion was one of the mental factors that led me in later years to develop (with Robert H. MacArthur) the
theory of island biogeography, which has become an influential part of ecology.

Trofim D. Lysenko. Heredity and Its Variability (1943). Moscow: Foreign Languages, 1954.
Although I was later to see Lysenkoism for what it was, false in conception, political in aim, and very nearly the death of
Soviet genetics, I was enchanted by this little book when I encountered it at the age of sixteen. It appealed to my mood of
rebelliousness. It seemed to me that Lysenko was offering a radical and effective challenge to conventional science, and that
even the callow and inexperienced might have a chance to proceed directly to new realms of discovery.

Philip Wylie. An Essay on Morals (1947). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978.

. Generation of Vipers (1942). Marietta, Ga.: Larlin, 1979.
When I was a seventeen-year-old college student, these Menckenesque essays broke me out of the fundamentalist Protestant
faith in which I had been raised and moved me toward the secular humanism with which I increasingly identify today. I still
find Wylie a delightful read.

Sinclair Lewis. Arrowsmith (1925). New York: New American Library, 1982. (Pb)
The perfect young man's book: a vision of a pure life devoted to the search for scientific truth, above money grubbing and
hypocrisy. How I longed to be like Arrowsmith, to find my mentor in a real Gottlieb. The feeling was intensified when I
discovered Jack London's Martin Eden shortly afterward.

Erwin Schrodinger. What Is Life? (1946). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
This taut little book, which I encountered as a college freshman, invited biologists to think of life in more purely physical
terms. SchrOdinger was right of course, as witness the rise of molecular biology soon afterward. For me his arguments
suggested delicious mysteries and great challenges. (Later, I was especially pleased when a reviewer likened my own book
Genes, Mind, and Culture, published with C. J. Lumsden in 1981, to What Is Life? saying that it offered a comparable
challenge from biology to the social sciences.)

Ernst Mayr. Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist (1942). New York: Columbia University
Press, 1982. (Pb)
By defining the biological species in strong, vital language and connecting the process of species formation to genetics, Mayr
opened a large part of natural history to a more scientific form of analysis. This is an example of a very heuristic work, which
invited young scientists to join an exciting quest in field research. More than forty years after its publication, I am still wholly
involved in this effort.

Marcus Aurelius. Meditations (ca. A.D. 160). G. M. A. Grube, ed. and trans. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984. (Pb)
I hope that I have not missed the editors' purpose entirely by listing books that affected one rather rebellious adolescent in the
1940s, but I was quite surprised myself when I came up with this list after careful reflection. Let me make partial amends by
citing the work that I pull off the shelf most often, and gives me the greatest pleasure, now that I am in my fifties: Meditations,
by Marcus Aurelius. For this work reflects the point to which I have come, in company with such a magnificent spirit who
"bears in mind that all that is rational is akin, and that it is in man's nature to care for all men, and that we should not embrace
the opinion of all, but of those alone who live in conscious agreement with Nature."

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication C. Darwin Agriculture

Man Makes Himself V.G. Childe Agriculture
Crops and Man J.R. Harlan Agriculture
The Origins of Agriculture D. Rindos Agriculture
Food: A History F. Fernandez-Armesto Agriculture

Time's Arrow S.J. Gould Linear Time

The Story of Time K. Lippincot Linear Time
Time in History G.J. Whitrow Linear Time
Time's Arrow M. Amis Linear Time

Lore and Science in Early Pythagoreanism W. Burkert Realism of Numbers

Philosophy of Mathematics "P. Benacerraf, H. Putnam" Realism of Numbers
The Reality of Numbers J. Bigelow Realism of Numbers

A History of Formal Logic I. Bochenski Logical Proof

Aristotle W.H.C. Guthrie Logical Proof
Aristotle's Syllogistic J. Lukasievic Logical Proof
Science and Civilization in China (Vol. 7) C. Habsmeier Logical Proof
The Sociology of Philosophies R. Collins Logical Proof
The East in the West J. Goody Logical Proof

Styles of Scientific Thinking A. Crombie Science

Science and Civilization in China J. Needham Science
The Turn of the Screw H. James Science

The Double Helix J.D. Watson Code of Life

Rosalind Franklin B. Maddox Code of Life
As the Future Captures You J. Enriquez CabotCode of Life

Sociobiology E.O. Wilson Genetic Determinism

The Bell Curve "R.J. Herrnstein, C. Murray" Genetic Determinism
Inequality C. Jencks Genetic Determinism

Chaos: Making a New Science J. GleickUnpredictability

Strange Beauty G. Johnson Unpredictability
The End of Science J. Horgan Unpredictability
Arcadia T. Stoppard Unpredictability

Relativity Visualized L.C. Epstein Relativity

Spacetime and Electromagnetism "J.R. Lucas, P.E. Hodgson" Relativity
Flatland E.A. Abbott Relativity

"Godel, Escher, Bach" D.R. Hofstadter Artificial Intelligence

Where Wizards Stay Up Late "K. Hafner, M. Lyon" Artificial Intelligence
The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage J.M. Dubbey Artificial Intelligence

Penrose, Roger, English, 1931- .

The Emperor's New Mind: Concering Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. Rec: TLS (artificial intelligence)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions T. Kuhn Implicated Observer

Niels Bohr's Times A. Pais Implicated Observer
The Dancing Wu Li Masters G. Zukav Implicated Observer
New York Trilogy P. AusterImplicated Observer

The Life of Isaac NewtonR. Westfall Engineered Universe

The Last Sorcerer M. White Engineered Universe
Gravity: The Glue of the Universe "H. Gilbert, D. Gilbert" Engineered Universe

The History of Science in the Eighteenth Century "R. Spangenburg, D. Moser" Harnessing Nature
Antoine Lavoisier A. Donovan Harnessing Nature
The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley R.E. Schofield Harnessing Nature

The Beginnings of Western Science D.C. Lindberg Anti-Science

Robert Grossteste A. Crombie Anti-Science
The Name of the Rose U. Eco Anti-Science

Novelties in the Heavens J.M. Dietz Heliocentrism

The Sleepwalkers A. Koestler Heliocentrism
The Copernican Revolution T. Kuhn Heliocentrism

The New Organon F. BaconInductive Method

Hostage to Fortune "L. Jardine, A. Stewart" Inductive Method
Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy S. Gaukroger Inductive Method

Discourse on Method R. Descartes Verifiability of Existence

Working Without a Net R. Foley Verifiability of Existence
Descartes' System of Natural Philosophy S. Gaukroger Verifiability of Existence

Microbes and Men R.W. Reid Microscopic Life

Man and Microbes A. Karlen Microscopic Life
The Coming Plague L. Garrett Microscopic Life

On the Origin of Species C. Darwin Natural Selection

The Descent of Man C. Darwin Natural Selection
Time Frames N. Eldredge Natural Selection
Darwin A. Desmond Natural Selection
Charles Darwin J. Brown Natural Selection

SCIENCE: GENERAL REFERENCE

SCIENCE: GENERAL REFERENCE BOOKS

Derek Gjertsen

In 1704 John Harris, a mathematician and cleric, published his Lexicon Technicum, a Universal Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences, the first comprehensive technical dictionary to be published in Britain. Since then the need for such works has grown
enormously. The literature of science has become so vast, and sometimes so technical and unfamiliar, that general readers and
experts alike frequently need to consult a reference work of some kind. While each individual science will have its own corpus
of detailed reference works, there is also a large class of works covering the whole of science, some of the more important
of which are listed below.

The largest encyclopedia which has been at our constant disposition

has been the Thu Shu Chi Chheng, that magnificent collection
produced by imperial order in 1726, consisting of 32 sections, 6,109
subsections, and 10,000 chapters ... in some 1,700 volumes.
JOSEPH NEEDHAM

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1994) edited by Sybil P Parker. 20 volumes with 7,500
alphabetically sequenced entries and 50,000 cross-references, McGraw-Hill is the most comprehensive work available.
Profusely illustrated, it contains both long technical articles and many shorter, more accessible entries.

Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary (1988) edited by Peter M B Walker. A widely available 1,300-page single
volume. Chambers can be recommended for its comprehensiveness. It also contains a number of useful tables.

Penguin Dictionary of Science (1993) by E B Uvaroa and Alan Isaacs. Although less comprehensive than the Chambers
dictionary, the Penguin text is easier for the nonscientist.

Dictionary of the History of Science (1983) by W F Bynum, E J Browne and Roy Porter. Contains more than 700 entries
explaining the origins, meaning, and significance of many of the main ideas of science and medicine.

Companion to the History of Modern Science (1989) by R C Olby, G N Cantor. J R Christie and M J S Hodge. An extensive
and authoritative survey consisting of 67 essays covering the period 1500-1900. Also discussed are a number of related themes
including science and literature, marginal science, science and war, and science and imperialism.

Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975) edited by Charles C McGraw-Gillispie. 13 volumes, published by Simon and
Schuster. The most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary available, though it is only likely to be found in large libraries.
Because it excludes living scientists, it is now in need of a major revision.

Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists (1994) by J Daintith, S Mitchell, E Toothill and D Gjertsen. More accessible and up
to date than the Simon and Schuster, this is also the most comprehensive of the currently available dictionaries of scientific
biography. It contains accounts of the life and work of over 2,000 scientists from the earliest times to the winners of the 1993
Nobel prizes.

Breakthroughs: A Chronology of Great Achievements in Science and Mathematics (1985) by Claire L Parkinson. The
work lists on a year-by-year basis many of the major breakthroughs in science from antiquity until recent times.

GENERAL TEXTS
Derek Gjertsen

Science has come to exercise such a profound influence over modern society that its presence can be felt in almost every area
of life. One effect of this has been the production of an enormous number of popular works attempting to present science to the
general reader. And few in this field have improved upon the mature work of Isaac Asimov. Today there is scarcely an aspect of
science, however recondite and technical it might be, that cannot be approached through some popular introduction. At the
same time, scholars from what were previously thought to be unrelated fields such as sociology and literature have realized that
their own work is incomplete without some understanding of science and its history.

Some 80 or 90 per cent of all scientists that have ever been, are alive now.
DEREK DE Sow PRICE

Great Scientific Experiments (1981) by Rom Harre. Harre describes with great lucidity and with numerous illustrations `20
experiments that changed the world'. The experiments discussed include J J Thomson's discovery of the electron, Louis
Pasteur's work on artificial vaccines, and Stephen Hales's demonstration that sap circulates in plants.
Science Good, Bad and Bogus (1983) by Martin Gardner. A superb and entertaining defence of science against the attacks and
claims of pseudoscientists. The collection includes essays on Uri Geller, the psychic surgery of Arigo, the biorhythms of Fliess,
and the claim that quantum theory can justify belief in ESP.

The Two Cultures and a Second Look (1993) by C P Snow. In 1959 C P Snow first argued that many highly educated people
had as much familiarity with the Tibetan language as with some of the basic principles of science. His critique of mod-em
education and society, and his argument that the `two cultures' - the arts and the sciences- need to be brought together, are srill
relevant.

The Sociology of Science (1973) by Robert Merton. Recent times have seen the creation of the discipline of the sociology of
science. The modem founding father of the discipline in Robert Merton, whose writings in this collection of his more important
papers show a wit, style, imagination, and judgement rarely found in his followers.

Asimov's Guide to Science (1973) by Isaac Asimov. Dealing with both the physical and the biological sciences, and the basic
principles of science as well as the results of the latest researches, Asimov writes with a lucidity and enthusiasm few have ever
equalled.

Science and Change 1500-1700 (1972) by Hugh Keamey; Science and Social Change 1700-1900 by Colin Russell. These two
works, though written about different periods and in different styles, show how developments in science have produced
changes not only in such obvious fields as warfare and navigation, but in the structures of society itself and in the ways in
which we see the world around us and our place within it.

Darwin's Plots (1983) by Gillian Beer. Beer was one of the first scholars to show how much the imaginative literature of a
period can be deeply influenced by the science of the day. The work of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in particular, she
argues, pursue explicitly Darwinian themes.

The Art of the Soluble (1967) by Peter Medawar. A collection of essays in which Medawar argues that if politics is the art of
the possible, then science is the art of the soluble. The collection also contains Medawar's ruthless destruction of the theories of
Teilhard de Chardin.

Medawar, Peter B., English, 1915-1987.

The Art of the Soluble. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Popper (1973) by Brian Magee. A brief and clear introductory account of the work of Karl Popper, one of the most influential
philosophers of science.

Little Science, Big Science (1963) by Derek de Solla Price. A pioneering and entertaining attempt to show how the growth,
value, and productivity of science can be objectively measured.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Derek Gjertsen

In the past historians have tended to see in science an uninterrupted advance to ever more and deeper truths about ever more
aspects of nature. In the process, it was thought, poverty, disease, and superstition would simply disappear from the face of the
Earth. But it is only too apparent that superstition, disease, and poverty are as entrenched as ever, while many previously
lauded scientific truths have turned out to be simple errors. Consequently, contemporary historians of science are more
concerned with understanding how science changes - what factors, for example, have influenced the acceptance and rejection
of particular theories. They are further concerned to understand the supposed uniqueness of the scientific revolution and why
this crucial process seems to have occurred in the West alone.

New systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretended to demonstrate
them from mathematical principles would flourish but a short time, and be out of vogue when that was determined.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500-1800 (1991) by David Goodman and Colin A Russell. This richly illustrated text is
probably the best single-volume general work for the period in question. It is of particular interest in dealing with science in
such so-called `fringe' areas as Sweden and the Iberian peninsula, countries usually ignored in most earlier histories of science.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World's Science (1983) by Colin Ronan. A more comprehensive work that the
Goodman and Russell text, Ronan's history covers the period from the origin of science in antiquity to recent times. Most
unusually, it also has separate chapters on Chinese science, Arabian science, and Indian science.

The Revolution in Science 1500-1750 (1983) by A Rupert Hall. Historians have long tried to understand the nature and origin
of the apparently unique scientific revolution. Hall provides a classic survey of the problem and explores the extent to which
the revolution can be derived from the structure of European society. He concludes that no particular reason can be singled out
since `every feature of European civilization was a contributing factor'.

The Classics of Science (1984) by Derek Gjertsen. The work deals with 12 classic scientific texts ranging in time from the
Elements of Euclid to Darwin's Origin of Species. The contents of the 12 works are analysed and described, placed in their
historical context and their subsequent publishing history recounted.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by T S Kuhn. One of the most important and influential work on the history
and philosophy of science published this century. Kuhn's book argued that science alternated between periods of `normal'
science, when scientists work within the confines of a particular paradigm, and `revolutionary' periods, when the old paradigm
is overthrown and replaced by a new model.

Science and Religion (1991) by John Hedley Brooke. An authoritative discussion of the interaction between science and
religion from Galileo to the 1980s. Brooke shows that the boundaries between religion and science have frequently shifted and
that past attempts to see nothing but conflict in their relationship are merely partisan.

The Fontana History of Science. The following four volumes on this ongoing series had been published by 1995: Chemistry
(1992) by William Brock; The Environmental Sciences (1992) by Peter Bowler; Technology (1994) by Donald Cardwell;
Astronomy and Cosmology (1994) by John North. Further volumes on mathematics, physics, biology, and medicine wi11
appear in due course. The volumes published so far, while incorporating the results of much recent scholarly research, have
remained admirably readable.

Augustine to Galileo: Science in the Middle Ages (1952) by A C Crombie. Crombie's work is still the most easily available
and accessible account of medieval science. It covers the period from the 5th to the 17th century and is most notable for
displaying long-ignored continuities between medieval and 17th-century science.

The Shorter Science and Civilisation of China (1978- ) by Colin Ronan. Four volumes, covering mathematics, astronomy,
physics, and engineering have already appeared of this abridgement of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. It
provides in a readable form an account of the development of science in China and argues that science was not the exclusive
invention of Western scholars.

MATHEMATICS: INTRODUCTION
Ian Stewart

The big problem with school mathematics, apart from the way it puts most people off the subject for life, is that it gives the
impression that there are no problems left to solve. Real mathematics is far broader, and more vigorous, than most of us ever
imagine. The difficulty is to make contact with genuine mathematics without getting submerged in technical details. All these
books manage to achieve just that.

Only an elephant or a whale gives birth to a creature whose weight is

70 kilograms or more. The President's weight is 75 kilograms. Therefore
the President's mother was either an elephant or a whale.
STEFAN THEMERSON

The Mathematical Experience (1981) by Philip J Davis and Reuben Hersh. Best-selling book about what it is like to be a
mathematician, for people who aren't.
3.1416 and All That (1985) by Philip J Davis and William G Chinn. A witty collection of short, simple items on all aspects of
mathematics.

Mathematics, the Science of Patterns (1994) by Keith Devlin. Highly illustrated, in the Scientific American Library series.
Gives an overview that is strong on both ancient and recent history.

For All Practical Purposes (1994) edited by Solomon Garfunkel. The book of a US TV series that brought real mathematics to
the people. Highly illustrated and very up to date.

Mathematics, a Human Endeavour (1994) by Harold R Jacobs. Subtitled `A book for those who think they don't like the
subject', it has sold over a million copies because it is.

Invitation to Mathematics (1992) by Konrad Jacobs. Based on a course called `Mathematics for Philosophers' at Erlanger-
Nuremberg University: it assumes no more than high-school mathematics.

e, The Story of a Number (1994) by Eli Maor. The only book I know whose hero is a number other than pi - and a fascinating
historical tour through large chunks of the mathematical scenery.

Innumeracy (1988) by John Allen Paulos. The surprise New York Times best seller that sharpens your mathematical grip on
the everyday world.

The Most Beautiful Mathematical Formulas (1992) by Lionel Salem, Frederic Testard, and Coralie Salem. Tackles formula-
aversion head on by making formulas the focus of the story: accessible, strewn with cartoons.

Concepts of Modern Mathematics (1975, 1995) by Ian Stewart. I wrote this 20 years ago when `modern mathematics' was
just coming into schools: it's just been reissued.

NUMBERS
Ian Stewart

The most fundamental concept in mathematics is number. Ignore logicians and philosophers who try to tell you otherwise and
start waffling about sets and propositions - numbers are where it all started. And numbers lead on to higher things, among them
combinatorics (sophisticated counting) and algebra (general properties of numbers and other numberlike entities). All are
represented here, but good old-fashioned numbers are in the majority.

I once had a conversation with a doctor who, within approximately

20 minutes, stated that a certain procedure he was contemplating
(a) had a one-chance-in-a million risk associated with it; (b) was
99 per cent safe; and (c) usually went quite well.
JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

A History of Mathematics (1968) by Carl B Boyer. An extremely well-written account of the history of mathematical thought,
offering many insights into numbers.

Descartes' Dream (1986) by Philip J Davis and Reuben Hersh. How numbers behind the scenes rule our world, and whether
that is a Good Thing.

A First Course in Abstract Algebra (1989) by John B Fraleigh. Algebra from the modern abstract viewpoint, for those who
want to know what's involved.

Concrete Mathematics (1994) by Ronald L Graham, Donald E Knuth, and Oren Patashnik. Combinatorics - the art of
counting - from the viewpoint of computer science. Worth reading for the students' marginal notes alone.

Number (1991) by John McLeish. An often idiosyncratic but highly readable account of the origins and developments of the
number concept.
Beyond Numeracy (1991) by John Allen Paulos. How numbers feed into more general mathematical ideas, presented as a
series of quick bites at a variety of simple topics.

Elementary Number Theory (1988) by Kenneth H Rosen. An undergraduate-level text that can be read by anybody interested
in the deeper properties of numbers.

Galois Theory (1989) by Ian Stewart. Galois was a colourful character who proved that the equation of the fifth degree cannot
be solved and was killed in a duel over a woman. Read it for its history and the pictures.

Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations (1988) byJean-Pierre Tignol. An accessible discussion of what led up to Galois' epic
work on equations of the fifth degree and higher.

The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers (1986) by David Wells. Arranged in numerical order from -1
to Graham's Number; a collection of curious facts about every interesting number in existence - and also the first uninteresting
one.

GEOMETRY
Ian Stewart

Once upon a time geometry was easy, because there was only one of it - the one laid down in great logical detail by Euclid.
Then we began to discover alternatives - spherical geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, finite geometries ... even topology, a
mod-em arrival that focuses on concepts such as `inside' or `knotted' that remain unchanged when a shape is stretched, bent, or
twisted. at do all these disparate geometries have in common? The visual element, humanity's most powerful mental tool.

Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined /Too mad for mere material chains to birul, / Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
/Now running round the circle, finds it square.
ALEXANDER POPE

Introduction to Geometry (1969) by H S M Coxeter. An elegant survey of virtually every area of geometry. Demanding, but
worth it.

A Budget of Trisections (1987) by Underwood Dudley. Why angles cannot be trisected with ruler and compasses, and
hundreds of attempts to do it despite that. After all, what do mathematicians know about it?

Ideas of Space (1989) by Jeremy Gray. Historical introduction to Euclidean, non- Euclidean, and relativistic models for the
shape of the universe.

Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries (1993) by Martin Jay Greenberg. There are more geometries than we usually
imagine, and parallel Lines need not behave the way we usually think.

Geometry in Nature (1993) by Vagn Lundsgaard Hansen. How geometry sheds light on form in the natural world.

Knot Theory (1993) by Charles Livingston. An excellent introduction to a major area of topology, the geometry of continuous
transformations. How to prove that a knot can't be untied.

Poetry of the Universe (1995) by Robert Osserman. The contribution of mathematics to our understanding of the shape of the
universe and the physics that goes with it, from Flat Earth to Big Bang.

Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer? (1992) by Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky. How the geometrical concept of
symmetry is deeply involved in the creation of nature's patterns.

Journey into Geometries (1991) by Marta Sved_ Alice in Geometryland.

The Shape of Space (1985) by Jeffrey R Weeks. Exotic geometries stimulated by speculations about the nature of space and
time.
FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
Ian Stewart

Numbers are fundamental to the historical development of mathematics and to the way human beings learn it and think about
it. But you can dig down underneath the number concept and turn up ideas upon which it logically rests. The ideas include the
notion of a set, and the various disciplines of mathematical logic. These books cover a variety of topics in the philosophy and
foundations of mathematics.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, / The Element of fire is quite
put out, / The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no mans wit / Can well
direct him, where to looke for it.
JOHN DONNE

Founders of Modern Mathematics (1982) by F Gareth Ashurst. Historical account of where modern mathematics came from,
and who did it.

Algorithmic Information Theory (1987) by Gregory J Chaitin. What do we really mean by `random'? One of the great
original minds of recent decades provides some surprising answers.

What Is Mathematical Logic (1990) by J N Crossley, C J Ash, C J Brickhill, J C Stillwell, and N H Williams. Technical,
readable, and brief account of the basic ideas of mathematical logic and foundations.

Logic and Information (1991) by Keith Devlin. What mathematical logic can tell us
about intelligence, knowledge, and the communication of information.

Abraham Robinson (1995) by Joseph Warren Dauben. Extensive biography of one of the founders of modern mathematical
logic.

Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics (1993) by Douglas M Jesseph. History of one of the great controversialists in the
foundations of mathematics, and why he was worried about them.

The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge (1984) by Philip Kitcher. Philosophical analysis of the meaning and significance of
mathematics, and the development of its own internal view of what it's all about.

Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge (1985) by Morri Kline. at has mathematical thinking done for humanity, and
how has it changed our view of what it means to `know' something?

Introduction to Mathematical Logic (1964) by Elliott Mendelson. This one is technical; but it's a brilliant description of the
nuts and bolts of logic and set theory which to my mind has never been bettered.

Sets, an Introduction (1990) by Michael D Potter. Undergraduate textbook providing an unusually accessible introduction to
the foundational concepts of set theory. Don't be put off by the apparent level of difficulty.

APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Ian Stewart

Today's mathematics is general and abstract, littered with curious ideas invented for their own sakes. Yet it pays its way
through applications that range across the whole spectrum of science, and into the humanities, business and medicine ... No
corner of human culture is untouched by mathematics. These books mostly describe new and exciting applications of new and
exciting mathematics, but a few of the more orthodox applications are represented too.

One factor that has remained constant throughout all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive
importance of mathematical imagination.
FREEMAN DYSON

Fractals Everywhere (1993) by Michael F Barnsley. The intricacies of fractals, a new and beautiful type of geometrical
object, and their uses in image compression.

Reality Rules (1992) by John L Casti. How to build mathematical models of the world, solve them, and gain insight into how
the universe works.

Symmetry in Chaos (1992) by Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky. Glorious technicolour picturebook of some novel
applications of exotic mathematics. Order and chaos combined in a nutshell.

Let Newton Be! (1988) edited by, John Fauvel, Raymond Flood, Michael Shortland, and Robin Wilson. Multi-author volume
on the life, works, and influences of Isaac Newton.

Introduction to Physical Mathematics (1985) by P G Harper and D L Weaire. Basic mathematical concepts that prove useful
in physics, with plenty of physical motivation.

Complexity (1992) by Roger Lewin. The recent creation of the mathematics of complex adaptive systems, and its implications
for evolution, history, economics, and the kitchen sink ...

Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws (1991) by Manfred Schroeder. Some of nature's deepest symmetries are related to changes of
scale. This simple insight leads to beautiful and powerful new mathematical theories.

Games of Life (1993) by Karl Sigmund. Applications of mathematics to the games that living creatures play in order to
survive, reproduce, and evolve.

Nature's Numbers (1995) by Ian Stewart. The role of mathematics in understanding the world. In the widely praised Science
Masters series.

The Geometry of Biological Time (1990) by A T Winfree. How a visual approach to dynamics sheds light on the biological
world.

FRONTIERS OF MATHEMATICS
Ian Stewart

How can you do research on mathematics? Haven't all the numbers been discovered? Well, no, but that's not really the point.
Research mathematics is no more about studying bigger numbers than biology is about making a bigger elephant. It's what you
do with the numbers that matters. These books will open your eyes to the enormous breadth, variety, and vigour of mathematics
on the front line.

Aelius Donates (4th century) is quoted by his student St Jerome

as saying Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerum, freely translated as
'Damn the guys who published our stuff first'.
RALPH P BOAS JR

The Collapse of Chaos (1993) by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. at is the relation between simplicity and complexity in science?
The new mathematics of complexity theory, intermingled with biology, physics, and evolution.

Mathematics: The New Golden Age (1988) by Keith Devlin. When was the Golden Age of mathematics? Now!

Mathematics and the Unexpected (1988) by Ivar Ekeland. An elegant little book about modem theories of change and their
connections with chance and prediction.

Bridges to Infinity (1984) by Michael Guillen. A friendly, formula-free trip through the human side of mathematical research.
Fuzzy Thinking (1993) by Bart Kosko. How to think precisely about vagueness. If there were a Society of Fuzzy Logicians
you would be able to be a 37% member, paying 37% fees and receiving 37% benefits.

Understanding the Infinite (1994) by Shaughan Lavine. The best discussion I know of the philosophy of mathematical
theories of the infte. Tough going in places, but worth the effort.

The Mathematical Tourist (1988) by Ivars Peterson. An extremely readable survey of a variety of areas of frontier research in
the mathematical sciences.

Islands of Truth (1990) by Ivars Peterson. Sequel to The Mathematical Tourist. More of the same, as you'd expect.

Does God Play Dice? (1989) by Ian Stewart. Best-selling introduction to chaos theory which cuts out the he and explains the
mathematics.

The Problems of Mathematics (1992) by Ian Stewart. A sweeping survey of today's mathematical frontiers, originally aimed
at undergraduates. Soon to be reincarnated as From Here to Infinity, aimed at everybody.

PHYSICS: INTRODUCTION
Brian Pippard

Until the last years of the 19th century, the principal aim of physics was to find the basic rules governing the movement of
bodies, and to use them in solving a wide variety of problems, including the practical problems of engineering. Isaac Newton's
laws of motion and his discovery of universal gravitation form the heart of this venture, and were followed after a century by
the exact description of electric and magnetic processes which culminated in James Clerk Maxwell's linking of light to
electromagnetic waves.
The resulting, very nearly consistent, picture of the general behaviour of matter (as distinct from chemistry and other studies of
particular forms) is now known as classical physics. It was found to be seriously incomplete with the discovery, between 1895
and 1900, of X-rays, radioactivity, the electron, and the quantum; in 1905 Albert Einstein formulated the relativity principle.
From those remarkable ten years has sprung the whole of modem physics, which in no way relegates classical physics to the
scrapheap, but delineates its limits of applicability. To grasp the ideas of modem physics and its vast range, from the human
scale downwards to atoms and their constituents, and upwards to the very bounds of the cosmos, one must first appreciate how
classical physicists discovered what they knew and how they made sense of it.
Although mathematics is the most powerful and convenient language with which to develop the logical consequences of the
fundamental laws, one does not need mathematical facility to obtain a good feeling for how success has been achieved.

It behoves us to remember that in physics it has taken great men to

discover simple things. They are very great names indeed which we coupk
with the explanation of the path of a stone, the droop of a chain,
the tints of a bubble, the shadows in a cup.
D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON

General principles of physics:

Physics for the Inquiring Mind (1960) by E M Rogers. An introduction to the general ideas of physics, with much historical
detail, aimed at the nonspecialist reader by an outstanding and innovating teacher; copious line drawings by the author.

The Laws of Nature (1955) by R E Peierls. Similar to the above but on a smaller scale, and with more emphasis on relativity
and particle physics.

The Character of Physical Law (1965) by R P Feynman. Based on a television series by a great physicist and brilliant
expositor. Concentrates on basic concepts such as conservation, symmetry, the concept of time, and probability in quantum
physics.

From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves (1984) by E Segre. A historically based account of classical physics through the
achievements of such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Rudolf Clausius, James Clerk Maxwell, and Josiah Gibbs.
The transition from classical to modem physics:

The Evolution of Physics (1938) by Albert Einstein and L Infeld. The greatest of modem physicists describes the
developments he pioneered - relativity and quantum physics - as the outcome of earlier achievements.

Order, Chaos, Order (1994) by P Stehle. A largely nontechnical account, with more detailed appendices, of the complex early
years of the 20th century during which the perceived weaknesses of classical physics were resolved through the invention of
quantum mechanics.

Thermal physics:

The Refrigerator and the Universe (1993) by M and I F Goldstein. Energy and entropy in physics, chemistry•, and
cosmology (including the greenhouse effect).

The Quest for Absolute Zero: Meaning of Low Temperature Physics (1977) by K Mendelssohn. A nonmathematical
account of how very low temperatures are produced, and the phenomena, such as superconductivity and superfluidity, that
occur at these extreme conditions.

Matter in all its forms:

The Cambridge Guide to the Material World (1985) by R Cotterill. An extraordinarily wide and copiously illustrated survey
of the varieties of matter from fundamental panicles to the constituents of plants and animals, taking in crystals, Liquids,
glasses, polymers, and many others.

Social and political aspects of physics:

The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) by R Rhodes. A very full account of the physics, technology, and organization
involved in one of the greatest of all industrial ventures, and its appalling outcome.

Biographies of great physicists:

It is hard to make a choice, but the following deserve serious consideration for their breadth of coverage:

Energy and Empire (1989) by C Smith and M N Wise on William Thomson Kelvin; Rutherford (1983) by D Wilson;
Subtle Is the Lord (1982) by A Pais on Einstein; Niels Bohr's Times (1991) by A Pais;
Uncertainty (1992) by D C Cassidy on Werner Heisenberg;
The Life of Isaac Newton (1993) by R Westfall. A shorter version of his magisterial Never at Rest (1980).

PARTICLE PHYSICS
Christine Sutton

Particle physics is the study of the basic building blocks of matter and the forces that l act upon them. Over the past 50 years
research in this field has shown that the matter we observe is built from only a few elementary particles called quarks and
leptons, and that only four fundamental forces operate on these particles to yield the great diversity of the universe. More
recently, discovering how these particles and forces evolved in the very early universe has forged intimate links between
particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics, and yielded a remarkable synthesis of ideas.

We now know that in the maelstrom of high density and temperature that existed in the early moments of the universe, only the
most primordial objects could exist; any transient combinations, such as pmtons, let alone molecules, would decompose more
quickly than a butterfly in the core of a volcano. It is for this reason that the search for what is elementary
underlies both particle physics and the cosmology of the early universe.
LEON LEDERMAN AND DAVID SCHRAMM

The Discovery of Subatomic Particles (1983) by Steven Weinberg. An intriguing discussion of the early history of particle
physics. It covers in particular the discoveries of the electron and the atomic nucleus by introducing a number of basic physical
principles and emphasizing how they underlie our ability to `see' within the atom.
Quarks: The Stuff of Matter (1984) by Harald Fritsch. A straightforward account of the peculiar world of quarks and the
strong force that binds them together, never to let them appear alone.

The Cosmic Onion: Quarks and the Nature of the Universe (1983) by Frank Close. A first guide to particle physics by a
gifted and inspirational lecturer, who presented the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures 1993-94. The many illustrations
include photographs, diagrams, and the author's own cartoon quarks.

The Particle Explosion (1987) by Frank Close, Michael Marten, and Christine Sutton. A highly illustrated, loosely historical
account describing the different particles and how they were discovered. At the same time it reveals how the field has
developed with advances in experimental techniques for making particles and tracking them down.

The Forces of Nature (1986) by Paul Davies. A valuable companion to any of the books that are mainly about quarks,
'building blocks' of matter, thus concentrates on the 'mortar'. It provides an introduction to how modem deals with forces at a
quantum level.

Particles and Forces: At the Heart of the Matter (1990) edited by Richard Carrigan and Peter Trower. A collection of articles
from Scientific American, mainly from the 1980s, which brings particle physics into the 1990s. All are good, some are classics.

From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery (1989) by Leon Lederman and David Schramm. An experimental particle
physicist and a theoretical astrophysicist team up to show how the physics of the very small has become inextricably linked
with our understanding of the universe on cosmic scales. Well illustrated. The emphasis is on what we know through
experiment.

Dreams of a Final Theory (1993) by Steven Weinberg. The most eloquent of particle physicists, and a Nobel prizewinner,
presents the case for research in particle physics, and in particular the ill-fated Superconducting Supercollider. That this was
later cancelled does nothing to detract from the unfolding arguments, but adds poignancy to a tale well told.

The Particle Garden (1994) by Gordon Kane. A fascinating, up-to-date introduction to particle physics, which also presents a
personal view of the field as it heads towards the 21st century. It places the present state of understanding in better context than
many other books and articles.

QUANTUM THEORY AND RELATIVITY

Stephen Webster

Quantum physics give an atom's-eye view of the world; relativity theory makes the link between space and time, gravity and
motion. Both theories are 20th-century deve opments and both have revolutionized physics. The books listed here reveal some
of the peculiarities that these days dominate the working life of a physicist.

When I first came across quantum mechanics I rang my mum and

told her: This is it - I'm going to be a physicist.
FROM THE HANDBOOK CAREERS IN PHYSICS

No Ordinary Genius (1994) edited by Christopher Sykes. An amply illustrated tribute to Richard Feynman, Nobel
prizewinner and pioneer in the understanding of quantum mechanics, who died in 1988.

Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics (1992) by James Gleick. Full-scale biography of the attractive and brilliant
Richard Feynman.

The Quantum Self (1990) by Danah Zohar. An encouraging book which attempts to make the Is between our understanding of
atomic behaviour and our understanding of ourselves.

The Quantum Society (1994) by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall. This sequel to The Quantum Self carries the argument
further, making links between the quantum idea and a new and better society.
Schrodinger's Kittens (1995) by John Gribbin. The well-known science writer takes a look at the behaviour of light, and
searches for quantum and relativistic interpretations.

Einstein for Beginners (1993) by Joseph Schwartz and Michael McGuinness. A cartoon treatment of the great physicist and
his ideas which no one can fully understand. This book will at least get you started, and relatively painlessly.

Relativity for the Layman (1969) by James A Coleman. One of the great classics of popular science, in spite of the sexist title.
Written with a sure economy of words, this is a book of great clarity and elegance.

Einstein's Universe (1979) by Nigel Calder. A full account of the history of relativity theory and its implications for the way
we understand the universe. Included is enough material about Einstein for the reader to get an idea of what the man was like.

CHEMISTRY: GENERAL
Julian Rowe

Getting familiar with what chemistry is all about is more important now, at the end of a century, than at the beginning, when
this science was comparatively primitive. Now we need to know why the ozone layer is under chemical attack, why book and
magazine printers now choose to use water-based inks, and what the analysis on every packet of food means. Increasingly, the
boundaries between different scientific disciplines are blurred: the subtle mixture of chemistry and physics that underlies the
manufacture of the microchip means that we are dealing with physics, chemistry, and electronics simultaneously. These books
provide a firm basis for pursuing such questions further.

The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much
remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can
never apply - there are always new worlds to conquer.
HUMPHRY DAVY

A Short History of Chemistry (1937) by J R Parton. A prolific author of text-books on chemistry and author of a multivolume
history. This is a clear and authoritative account of the history of chemistry. It draws on many original sources and although it
starts with alchemy and ends with radioactivity and the transmutation of the elements, this excellent and concise book
concentrates on the foundation of modem chemistry and the great scientists who lead the way.

Asimov on Chemistry (1975) by Isaac Asimov. In 17 wide-ranging essays this experienced science popularizer effectively
covers the entire field of chemistry in an accessible manner. Everything from the chemistry of the planet Earth, inorganic,
organic, and nuclear chemistry are entertainingly treated, and there is an essay on the Nobel prizewinners at the end.

The Nature of the Chemical Bond (1940) by Linus Pauling. A double Nobel prizewinner_ A classic, perhaps ambitiously
included in a general reading list, but showing how real advances in understanding are made as a result of modem chemical
research.

The Chemical History of the Candle (1861) by Michael Faraday. Often acknowledged as one of the greatest scientists of all
time, during the Christmas holiday (1860-61) Michael Faraday gave a series of talks on physics and chemistry to an audience
of young people in London. He engaged their imagination and made them feel the challenges and delights of science. The
Chemical History of a Candle is clearly one of the best and covers the chemistry of combustion in an original and astonishingly
comprehensive way. These talks became an institution and have been given ever since by distinguished scientists over the
Christmas period at the Royal Institution, London.

Success in Chemistry (1982) by Jean Macqueen, series editor. One of the brilliant Success Studybooks - really aimed at pre A-
level students, but giving an excellent basic, nontrivial coverage of the subject.

The Penguin Dictionary of Chemistry (1990) by D W A Sharp. Useful, updated compendium of definitions of chemical
terms. Not just examination fodder.

The Alchemists (1976) by F Sherwood Taylor. The author is a former director of the Science Museum, London. No reading list
on chemistry would be complete without a look at the alchemists. Widely misunderstood, much of their pioneering work under-
lay the astonishing expansion of chemistry from the 17th century onwards.
The Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopedia (1994) by Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest (consultants). Covers many
topics in chemistry and applied chemistry-in a highly illustrated and informative way.

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, French, 1743-1794.

Elements of Chemistry. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC (Selections)

ORGANIC AND INORGANIC CHEMISTRY

Julian Rowe

Inorganic chemistry is probably what most people regard as chemistry - memories of school laboratories, smells, flashes, and
bangs. The laboratory scenes beloved by movie directors that show an antiquated distillation apparatus, smoke and bubbling,
coloured solutions belong rightly to popular mythology. This reading list should redress the balance.

So it happens, therefore, that every element says something to someone (something

different to each) like the mountain valleys or beaches visited in youth.
PRIMO LEVI

The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide (1994) by John Emsley. A good guide, thoroughly dippable - just what its title
implies.
Structure and Change - An Introduction to Chemical Reactions (1981) by R A Richardson, A C Blizzard, and D Humphreys. A
high-school text that successfully blends a factual and theoretical approach to chemistry. It succeeds in giving an appreciation
of the vital role of chemistry in the world.

Usborne Introduction to Chemistry (1983) by Jane Chisolm and Mary Johnson. A highly illustrated and simple introduction
to chemistry that covers an amazing amount of ground.

Chemistry in the Service of Man (1925) by Alexander Findlay. A wonderful text from what now seems like a bygone era.
Nonetheless it is a substantial introduction to chemistry, very readable, and the chapter on radioactivity and atomic structure,
written in the prenuclear age, is particularly absorbing.

Men and Molecules (1960) by Carl R Theiler. What chemistry is and what it does. The author takes the reader through the
transformation of first ideas into reality - the building up of mighty industries and the production of astonishing new materials.
The reader grows familiar with chemical formulae and their strange names in this well-illustrated book which has a very good
glossary.

BIOCHEMISTRY
Julian Rowe

To understand what the life sciences are about, some biochemistry is a necessary requirement. Modern biology has travelled a
great distance from the observational stance of the naturalist, without, it is necessary to say, in any way invalidating it. The
route was certainly via biochemistry. To understand genetics, to understand the molecular sciences or molecular basis of life,
start with biochemistry. This list is in part informative, in part a march of progress.

When you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers,
your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
WILLLgM THOMSON KELVIN

A Guide-Book to Biochemistry (1959) by Kenneth Harrison. Many standard books on biochemistry are very thick, 500-1,000
pages. This excellent book is a deliberate exception and provides a good guide that is brief and to the point.

The Physical Basis of Life (1951) by J D Bernal. Based on a prescient lecture delivered to the Physical Society, this
speculative survey discussed the conditions under which life may have emerged from an inorganic world - biochemistry in
action.
Readings in Molecular Biology by W B Gratzer. Selected from Nature by W B Gratzer, these short essays in journalism were
aimed at the working scientist and chart the progress of the then emergent branch of science - molecular biology.

Principles of Biochemistry (1993) by A L Lehninger. A comprehensive American undergraduate text, written with masterly
clarity. The author properly declares that biochemistry is now the lingua franca of the life sciences, and no one consulting this
introductory text should be the poorer for having done so.

Dynamic Aspects of Biochemistry (1967) by E Baldwin. A book that first high-lighted the fact that biochemistry is an
interesting and a quite different discipline from chemistry. Many thousands of undergraduates must have cut their novice teeth
on this particular book and were probably grateful.

APPLIED CHEMISTRY
Julian Rowe

There are few products around us at home or at work that do not owe their existence to the ever more sophisticated application
of chemistry. From prescribed drugs to paints, better petrol or food analysis, crime detection or perfume - all have at base an
understanding of chemistry. These books are selective, but they cover the ground. The general reference works noted in this
section are also, of course, equally useful for any inquiry into a subdivision of chemistry.

They leave such things alone and busy themselves with their fires and learning the
steps of alchemy, which are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction,
calcination, reverberation, sublimation, fixation, separation, reduction,
coagulation, tinction, and the like.
PARACELSUS

The Life Savers (1961) by Richie Calder. The cover blurb says: the enthralling story of today's revolution in medicine - the
discovery and development of the life-saving drugs'.

Butter Side Up or The Delights of Science (1978) by Magnus Pyke. Reviewed by the Evening Standard: `An opencast mine
of unexpected information that can be understood even by someone who cannot tell a Bunsen burner from a laser beam.'

Chemistry: The Conquest of Materials (1957) by Kenneth Hutton. A good account, by a teacher and author, of the scope of
modem chemistry, telling a clear story from the elements to modem drugs. On the way fuels, modem materials such as plastics,
pesticides, and explosives are dealt with at a usefully informed level.

Metals in the Service of Man (1972) by W Alexander and A Street. How metals are obtained and worked and the part they
play in modem life. An ideal introduction for the general reader.

Plastics in the Service of Man (1956) by E A Cousins and V E Yarsley. A description of the structure. manufacture, properties
and the contemporary use of plastics.

Science and Technology (1993) by Open University Press. A good work of reference which covers just what its ride implies
and includes applied chemistry. Well illustrated and up to date, it is a good volume for browsing.

The following encyclopedias provide sound, accessible articles on a wide range of chemistry topics:
Junior Britannica Surprisingly readable articles on any aspect of science chemistry and applications thereof covered
adequately.
The World Book Covers the ground more than adequately.

ASTRONOMY: COSMOLOGY
John Gribbin
Where do we come from? Cosmology deals with the big questions, the origin and evolution of the entire universe, and its
ultimate fate. This means that it also deals with our own origins, giving the subject the same fascination for many people as
religion or philosophy. And yet, cosmology is one of the youngest sciences. Until the 1920s, no astronomer seriously doubted
that the universe was eternal and unchanging. That cosy assumption was overturned by the discovery of universal expansion,
leading to the idea of a definite origin in the Big Bang, some 15 billion years ago. Today, cosmologists are even prepared to
tackle the question of what happened before the Big Bang. The books mentioned below will give you the opportunity to peer
over their shoulders at this work in progress, and to see how these ultimate questions are being tackled, even if the ultimate
answers are not yet in.

Credit must be given to observation rather than theories, and to theories

only in so far as they are confirmed by the observed facts.
ARISTOTLE

The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John Barrow and Frank Tipler. An exhaustive overview of the cosmos and
humankind's place in it, daunting in parts but quite readable if you skip the technical stuff.

Afterglow of Creation (1993) by Marcus Chown. The best book about the `cosmic background radiation' that fills all of space
and is a remnant of the Big Bang itself.

The Creation of the Universe (1952) by George Gamow. Fascinating (if slightly dated) `horse's mouth' account from one of
the pioneers of the Big Bang theory.

In Search of the Big Bang (1986) by John Gribbin. Historical account of the development of cosmology in the 20th century,
from the expanding universe to the theory of inflation.

The Stuff of the Universe (1990) by John Gribbin and Marlin Rees. The Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, joins forces with
science writer John Gribbin to describe the `dark matter' that makes up 99% of the universe.

Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos (1991) by Dennis Overbye. The story of the quest for the secret of the origin of the universe,
told in terms of the personalities involved. Gives a real flavour of how cosmologists work and think.

Time Machines (1993) by Paul Nahin. Goes beyond the black hole, mixing science fiction and science fact to discuss the
extraordinary implication of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, that time travel may not be impossible.

Was Einstein Right? (1986) by Clifford Will. The answer, of course, is yes. The most accessible guide to Einstein's theories
for the nonscientist.

HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY
Derek Gjertsen

More than most exact sciences, astronomy lends itself to historical treatment. For one thing, along with mathematics, it was the
first science to establish itself in antiquity and therefore has a longer and more fully documented history than most other
sciences. Furthermore, the records of ancient astronomers contain data still valuable to the astronomers of today. But also, as
much of modern astronomy changes so rapidly with books becoming out of date within a decade, the only way to estimate the
value of any theory or observation is to see it within some kind of historical context. Consequently it is no accident that almost
every work on modern cosmology, popular or scholarly, will begin with the structure of the universe pro-posed by Copernicus
in the 16th century and lead via Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton to the Big Bang.

People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the Earth revolves,
not the heavens. This fool wishes us to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but
sacred scripture commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.
MARTIN LUTHER ON COPERNICUS

Astronomy and Cosmology (1994) by John North. A new, authoritative, and read-able history (part of the excellent Fontana
History of Science series), this book covers astronomy from prehistory to Stephen Hawking.
The Sleepwalkers (1960) by Arthur Koestler. Mainly an account of how Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo battled to show that it
was the Sun and not the Earth that lay at the centre of the universe. Despite bias against Galileo and some inept theorizing,
Koestler's work remains - at the narrative and biographical level - an extraordinarily exciting book.

In Search of Ancient Astronomies (1979) edited by E C Krupp. An account of the astronomical knowledge, techniques, and
monuments of neolithic Europe, North and Meso-America, and Egypt.

Megaliths, Myths and Men: An Introduction to Astro Archaeology (1976) by Peter Lancaster Brown. A critical and expert
survey of the supposed astronomical background of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and several other ancient remains. Lancaster
Brown manages to dispose of some of the more outlandish claims commonly made about ancient astronomy.

The Expanding Universe 1900-31 (1982) by Robert Smith. A scholarly but read-able account of the theoretical arguments and
observational evidence that enabled such astronomers as Edwin Hubble to conclude that the universe is expanding. The same
period and argument is covered in the more popular and lavishly illustrated Man Discovers the Galaxies (1976) by R
Berendzen, R Hart, and Daniel Seeley.

The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History (1992) by Owen Gingerich. An engrossing
collection of 36 short essays ranging from 'Egyptian Sky Magic' to 'The Great Comet of 1965'.

The Astronomical Scrapbook (1984) by John Ashbrook. A fascinating collection of 91 short articles, mainly gleaned from the
more curious byways of the history of astronomy, which originally appeared in the popular magazine Sky and Telescope.

History of the Telescope (1955) by Henry King. The standard history of the telescope from the earliest times to the 1950s.

The Story of Jodrell Bank (1968) by Bernard Lovell. The story of Lovell's attempts to design, finance, and build a huge
steerable parabolic radio telescope. Against all the odds, it was opened in 1957. More detail about the various telescopes built
by Lovell can be found in The Jodrell Bank Telescopes (1985).

Halley and the Comet (1985) by Peter Lancaster Brown. Probably the best of the many popular works written to
commemorate the return of Halley's comet in 1986. It contains historical, biographical, and astronomical material.

A History of Japanese Astronomy (1969) by Shigeru Nakayama. There are, of course, non-Western astronomical traditions.
Nakayama provides a sound account of the development of astronomy in Japan. A comparable account for China can be found
in The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China (1978-94) by Colin Ronan.

PLANETS AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Derek Gjertsen

Until the 1960s, books on the Solar System could do little more than describe such grosser features of the planets as their size,
mass, and distance from Earth. But with the launch of the Orbiter, Apollo, Mariner, Voyager, and other planetary probes,
astronomers could at last speak significantly about the geology, meteorology and history of the planets. They also had access to
many stunning colour photographs of planetary surfaces and such remarkable phenomena as the rings of Saturn. As a result,
cur-rent books on the Solar System are much more plentiful, detailed, and colourful than those produced only a few years
before.

It is most beautiful and pleasing to look upon the lunar body distant from us by about 60 terrestrial diameters as if it were
distant by only two of these measures. Anyone will then understand that the Moon is by no means endowed with a smooth and
polished surface but is rough and uneven crowded everywhere with deep chasms and convolutions.
GAIILEO GALILEI IN 1610 ON FIRST SEEING
THE MOON THROUGH A TELESCOPE.

Orbiting the Sun: Planets and Satellites of the Solar System (1981) by Fred Whipple. A comprehensive account of the solar
system incorporating satellite data and photos from the various Viking missions. Patrick Moore's New Guide to the Planets
(1993) covers much the same ground at a less technical level.
Guide to the Sun (1992) by Kenneth Phillips. Though somewhat technical in pans, this book provides a readable account of
the chromosphere, photosphere, corona, and interior of the Sun, and how best it can be observed.

Times Atlas of the Moon (1969) by H A Lewis. A detailed 110-page map of the Moon. Less detailed and with more general
information about the Moon - its origin, orbit etc - is Patrick Moore's The Moon (1985).

Comets: Readings from Scientific American (1981) edited by John C Brandt. A collection of authoritative articles covering
such topics as the tails, spin, and nature of comets. A simpler account can be found in Guide to Comets (1977) by Patrick
Moore.

Solar System: Readings from Scientific American (1975) by W H Freeman. A useful and readable collection of articles on
the Solar System including individual papers on the planets, their origin, and interplanetary fields.

The Discovery of Neptune (1979) by Morton Grosser. A fascinating account of the discovery in 1846 of the existence of a
previously unknown planet.

Nemesis (1988) by Richard Muller. The exciting story of the search by astrophysicists in the 1980s for the `killer star' Nemesis.
Nemesis is thought to be orbiting the Sun and - as it approaches the Earth every 26 million years - causing such catastrophes as
the extinction of the dinosaurs.

We Are Not Alone (1970) by Walter Sullivan. A sensible but interesting discussion of whether or not life exists on worlds
outside our Solar System.

STARS AND GALAXIES

Derek Gjertsen

Until relatively recent times the only books on stars were concerned with the mythic origin of their names. Nothing more was
known about stars than that they were numerous, twinkled, and were very far away. In the 19th century things changed
radically when it was shown that detailed knowledge of a star's composition, temperature, density, and much more besides
could be derived by analysing the light it emitted. The Milky Way was still, however, assumed to represent the whole of
creation, and it was not until the 1920s that it became apparent that a profusion of other galaxies could be found beyond the
Milky Way. They have been studied intensively ever since.

I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky when I noticed a new and
unusual star shining almost directly above my head where there had never been
any star in that place in the shy. Unable to accept the evidence of my eyes 1
called upon my servants and a passing peasant to verify my observations.
TYCHO BRAHE ON THE SUPERNOVA OBSERVED IN 1572

The Milky Way (1973) by S L Jaki. A historical account of the growth of our knowledge of the Milky Way from the
speculations of Aristotle to the observations in the 1920s of Edwin Hubble.

The Guide to the Galaxy (1994) by Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper. A lavishly illustrated, popular but detailed work on
the Milky Way. It has chapters on the discovery of the Milky Way, its geography, its centre, and the Perseus, Orion, and
Sagittarius arms.

Supernovae (1985) by Paul Murdin and Lesley Murdin. The Murdins begin their popular work with descriptions of the
supernovae of 1066, 1572, and 1604 and go on to show how supernovae are related to pulsars, black holes, neutron stars, and
the creation of the elements. End in Fire (1990) by Paul Murdin describes the discovery in 1990 of SN1987A, the first
supernova to be visible to the unaided eye since 1604. Murdin traces the development of the supernova and shows its
connection to theory.

Frontiers in Astronomy: Readings from Scientific American (1970) edited by Owen Gingerich; The Universe of Galaxies:
Readings from Scientific American (1984) edited by Paul W Hodge. The two works are valuable collections of articles on such
topics as quasars, dark matter, the Milky Way, the red shift, and exploding galaxies.
The X-Ray Universe (1985) by Wallace Tucker and Riccardo Giacconi. X-ray stars were first observed in 1962. The authors
describe the discovery and the resulting research which led to the launch of the two X-ray telescopes UHURU in 1970 and
EINSTEIN in 1978 and the results gathered.

Observing the Universe (1984) by Nigel Henbest. A collection of short articles from New Scientist dealing with research into
X-ray astronomy, ultraviolet astronomy, the gamma ray sky, cosmic rays, the infrared sky, and optical and radio astronomy.

The Cosmic Perspective (1990) by M Zeilik and J Gauttard. A major 800-page-plus single-volume textbook dealing with the
evolution of the stars and the galaxies. Although technical in pans, much of the text remains within the competence of the
general reader.

Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (1899; republished 1995) by Richard Allen. A standard and comprehensive survey of
the meaning of star names in English, Greek, Arabic, and other languages.

AMATEUR ASTRONOMY
Patrick Moore

Many books on astronomy have been published in recent years. Many of them are specialized; in my list I have included only
books which give a general picture - and which do not include complex mathematical formulas. You may note that some of my
choices appeared in 1990 or 1991, but I have selected them because of their excellence and because the material in them has
not become outdated.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance,

in which human understanding appears in its whole magnittule, and
through which man can best learn how small he is.
G C LICHTENBERG

Heavenly Bodies: Beginner's Guide to Astronomy (1995) by Iain Nicolson. A simple outline, based on the recent BBC
television series of the same name.

The Natural History of the Universe (1994) by C A Ronan. A well- written, beautifully illustrated general survey of modern
astronomy; it has been widely acclaimed.

Concise Dictionary of Astronomy (1991) by Jacqueline Mitton. A very clear, well organized `A to Z', which includes a
tremendous amount of information and is very easy to digest.

Images of the Universe (1991) edited by Carol Stott. Mainly an observer's book; each chapter is written by an expert in his
particular field. Most of the authors are closely linked with the British Astronomical Association.

The Hidden Universe (1991) by Roger Tayler. A very clear account of some of the problems of modern cosmology - problems
which are no nearer solution in 1995 than they were in 1991!

PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY
Derek Gjertsen

Astronomy is probably the only exact science in which amateurs can play a significant role and operate, just like their
professional colleagues, in their own scaled-down observatories with their own, much smaller telescopes. To this end they need
a large number of practical aids, ranging from catalogues and dictionaries to books on how to make and use a telescope. The
first published star catalogue, compiled by Ptolemy in about 150 AD, listed 1,022 stars in 48 constellations. In contrast, the
Bonn Catalogue compiled by Friedrich Argelander in 1863 listed 324,198 stars from the northern hemisphere alone.

In order to the finding out of the longitude of places and perfecting

navigation and astronomy, we have resolved to build a small observatory
within our park at Greenwich.
WARRANT OF CHARLES II, 1675

Exploring the Night Sky with Binoculars (1986) by Patrick Moore. A book for beginners. After offering advice on choosing
binoculars, Moore writes about the planets, comets, and the Moon. Half the book is devoted to charts of the constellations.

Astronomy with a Small Telescope (1985) by James Muirden. Introductory chapters describe the various telescopes and their
mounting and are followed by advice on how to observe the Sun, Moon, planets, meterorites, comets, constellations, and
galaxies. There is also a chapter on photography.

Telescope Making for Beginners (1974) by Roy Worrill. For those prepared to make their own telescope Worrill offers a
simple guide. More detailed advice and information can be found in Handbook for Telescope Making (1962) by M E Howard.

Norton's 2000 (1989) by Arthur Philip Norton. Norton 's Atlas first appeared in 1910: the latest edition (18th) is calculated for
the year 2000. A similar approach can be found in the Cambridge Star Atlas 2000 (1991) by Will Trion.

Sundials (1969) by Frank Cooper. A standard work giving instruction on how to construct horizontal, vertical, polar, and
equatorial sundials.

Both the Penguin Dictionary of Astronomy (1993) by Jacqueline Milton and the Macmillan Dictionary of Astronomy
(1988) by Valerie Illingworth are excellent concise guides for the amateur.

Dictionary of Space (1986) by Malcolm Plant. An essential aid for those who can-not remember whether Apollo 7 went to
Mars or the Moon or which rocket first landed on Venus.

The Guinness Book of Astronomy (1992) by Patrick Moore. A familiar and informative guide to the Solar System and the
stars with a 90-page star catalogue, and brief sections on the history of astronomy.

Ptolemy, Alexandrian Greek, ca. 100-170.

Almagest. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC (Selections)

NAVIGATION, CALENDARS, AND HOROSCOPES

Derek Gjertsen

Astronomy has always been an abstract and speculative science as well as a practical and precise discipline. The first signs of
specialized astronomical skills become apparent in the lengths of the year and the month. This was no simple matter and it was
not until the 16th century, for example, that a reasonably reliable calendar was introduced into Europe. The data compiled in
this way could be and from early times was used by astrologers to forecast horoscopes. Practical and technical skills were
needed to navigate successfully over the oceans and, eventually, to guide missiles and planes through the skies. For this reason
astronomy was one of the first sciences to receive substantial government support and under the broad umbrella of the `space
race' has continued to receive huge financial assistance.

The Calendar was so out of joint that Caesar placed between the months of
November and December two intercalary months of 67 days, having already
intercalated 23 days in February, which gave 445 days to that year.
CENSORINUS ON 46 BC, THE SO-CALLED YEAR OF CONFUSION

The Haven Finding Art. A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook (1971) by E G R Taylor. An account of how
sailors have navigated first by wind rose and stars, then by compass and chart, next by instruments and tables, and finally, with
the introduction of the chronometer in the 18th century, with the full accuracy provided by being able to find a precise
longitude.

From Sails to Satellites (1992) by J E D Williams. Covering with less historical detail but with more illustrations much of
Taylor's ground, Williams also extends the story to recent times to include the use of radio and radar in navigation.

Greenwich Time and the Discovery of Longitude (1980) by Derek Howse. The first part of the book deals with the discovery
of longitude and the role of Greenwich Observatory in the solution. Howse also relates how Greenwich came to be accepted as
the prime meridian and the role of Greenwich time in the world.
The Voyaging Stars (1978) by David Lewis. An account of how throughout Oceania islanders in traditional canoes navigate
from one small island to an equally small but distant island.

Time and the Calendars (1975) by W M O'Neil. Details are provided of the Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese,
and Meso-American calendars and the extent to which they rely upon astronomical investigation.

Gregorian Reform of the Calendar (1983) edited by M Hoskins and 0 Pedersen. A full and fascinating account of the
historical and astronomical problems of introducing the Gregorian calendar into Europe.

A History of Western Astrology (1987) by Jim Tester. A detailed and scholarly history of Western astrology from the 5th
century BC to the 17th century.

Astrology: Science or Superstition (1984) by H J Eysenck and K B Nais; The Truth about Astrology (1984) by Michel
Gauquelin. Two works in which the traditional claims of astrology are tested against a variety of empirical evidence.

EARTH SCIENCE: GEOLOGY

Dougal Dixon

Geology is a very wide subject. It contains so many subdisciplines - such as mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, geochemistry,
palaeontology, sedimentology - that it is almost impossible to produce a list that covers them all. The following, however,
should give the interested reader a good start.

These rocks, these bones, these fossil ferns and shells, / Shall yet be touched
with beauty, and reveal / The secrets of the book of earth to man.
ALFRED NOYES

Rocks, Minerals and Fossils of the World (1990) by Chris Pellant. It is normally not a good idea to base mineral
identification on photographs - the diagnostic properties do not show. However, the photographs in this book are particularly
good.

The Practical Geologist (1992) by Dougal Dixon. A useful coverage of the various aspects of geology and the techniques used
to study them.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences (1982) edited by David G Smith. Rather academic treatment of all the
physical earth sciences (of which geology is a part), but well illustrated.

The Principles of Physical Geology (1965) by Arthur Holmes. The standard university textbook that deals principally with
landscape formation.

Earth and Life Through Time (1986) by Steven M Stanley. The whole panoply of Earth's history, with the different types of
rocks formed at different times, and the different animals and plants found preserved in them.

Understanding the Earth (1992) by G A Brown and others. The updated version of the Open University's textbook on earth
science, bringing the original 1972 classic completely up to date.

Natural History Museum, Earth Galleries booklets:

The Age of the Earth (1980) by John Mac ay. An excellent rundown on the techniques used to work out geological time.
Britain Before Man (1978) by F W Dunning and others. Covers the development of the British Isles and so includes
sedimentary rock formation, plate tectonics, fossils, and the concept of geological time.

PALAEONTOLOGY
Brian Rosen
Palaeontology, the study of fossil remains of former life, lurks benignly in its quiet backwater - surely, little to do with the real
world. Children reel off the tongue-twisting names of dinosaurs as though they were playground friends, though no one has
ever seen a live one. Anybody can go out at weekends fossil-hunting, and they don't have to be professional palaeontologists to
make discoveries. Appearances, however, are misleading. Every so often, the subject rears up and bares its intellectual teeth. It
had a critical role in giving us the very concept of geological time, and hence the great age of the Earth, ideas that were
shocking in their time and later became vital in dating the past and discovering natural resources. Palaeontology is dragged
from its lair and into the witness box for the perennial battle between creationists and evolutionists, and has startled the world
with the awe-inspiring notion that large slices of life on our planet are wiped out almost instantly in mass extinction events,
some say on a regular basis every 26 million years in response to Earth collisions by extraterrestrial bodies. Palaeontology gave
us `deep time', `macroevolution', and Jurassic Park, and is, quite simply, the only direct evidence we have for over 3,000
million years of life on our planet before we humans arrived here ourselves. And if you want to know what global change has
in store for us, and for the rest of life, ask the palaeontologists, for much of the future has already been written in the past. at is
this science that contemplates strange and beautiful organic objects found in the rocks, and yet can shake the Earth by studying
them?

We [palaeontologists] try to discover as many facts as possible that might be

connected, the more the better. We let the problem become complicated. We want to
know all the factors that must be taken into account, so we let the difficulties
accumulate. We get a great kick out of this...
L B HALSTf:AD

Before the Deluge (1968; translated 1970) by Herbert Wendt. The history of palaeontology, its issues and its personalities, rich
in narrative and with a balanced international perspective.

The Meaning of Fossils (1972) by Martin Rudwick. Widely regarded as the standard scholarly reference to the historical
scientific issues and intellectual questions posed by palaeontology.

The Message of Fossils (1991; translated 1993) by Pascal Tassy. An easy-going essay focused on the interface between
palaeontology and evolution, which includes its more recent controversies.

Fossils (1960) by H H Swinnerton. A notable contribution to the classic New Naturalist series, this inevitably has a very
homely British bias. No matter - the range of fossil-bearing rocks in Britain is a good enough sample of the fossil record, which
Swinnerton sets out with charm, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.

Earth and Life Through Time (1986) by S M Stanley. Earth and life and the meaning of nearly everything. This is the
American college solution to everything you wanted to know about fossils, evolution, and geology. Don't worry about the self-
assessment questions unless you are a student - this book is here on its encyclopedic merit.

History of Life (radically expanded edition 1990) by Richard Cowen. A delightfully individual and good-humoured account,
complete with arcane limericks and other incidental entertainment, which highlight the science without distracting from it.
Good on invertebrates.

The Book of Life (1993) edited by Stephen Jay Gould. The thinking person's palaeontological coffee-table book (and why not?
See Gould's panegyric on the significance of coffee tables and their books). First-class illustrations and chapters by an
impressive cast list of other distinguished specialists with emphasis on vertebrates, including humans.

The Natural History Museum Book of Dinosaurs (1995) by Angela Milner. No book list in this subject can be without
something on dinosaurs. This is an up-to-date look at their biology - what we can deduce about their lifestyles from modem
research and new finds - together with the history and practice of dinosaur studies, from bones in the rock to a restoration of the
whole animal.

The Nemesis Affair. A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and Ways of Science (1986) by David Raup. Treats extinction
generally, ad discusses controversial collisions between extraterrestrial bodies and Earth, between organisms and their physical
world, and between scientists and mass culture.

Wonderful Life (1989) by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould is palaeontology's most virtuoso narrator and interpreter. Here he brings
to life in epic style the famously mysterious, and miraculously preserved, animals of the Burgess Shale, and the personalities
who have studied them, using them as the raw material for expounding his ideas about the significance of chance.
Fossils: The Key to the Past (1991) by Richard Fortey. Bringing fossils to life and applying this knowledge to geology and
biology. An effortless browse through all the branches of the subject, introducing all the main fossil organisms at the same
time.

EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANOES, AND TECTONICS

Dougal Dixon

When it comes to volcanoes the reading public is not well served by books at a popular level. Beware, particularly, of the block
diagram showing a cone of a volcano cut in half, fed by a red thread of liquid cutting through the rocks below, exiting through
side vents as well as the main crater. There never was a volcano like that, and the oversimplification is misleading. That said,
however, the following are probably the best books available.

It is useful to be assured that the heavings of the earth are not the work of
angry deities. These phenomena have causes of their own.
LUCIUS ANNUS SENECA

The Natural History Museum's Earth Galleries (formerly the Geological Museum) produce a series of booklets covering a
range of earth sciences. All are published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

Earthquakes (1983) by Susanna van Rose. Describes the various phenomena associated with an earthquake, covers the known
causes, and gives some case histories.

The Story of the Earth (1981) by F W Dunning and others. Gives an overview of the concept of plate tectonics and shows
how volcanoes and earthquakes fit into the grand scheme.

Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guides: Volcano (1992) by Susanna van Rose. An elegantly illustrated book with
photographs and artwork showing all sorts of phenomena associated with volcanic activity.

The Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopaedia (1993) edited by Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest. Has good sections on
earthquakes and volcanoes.

Mountains of Fire: The Nature of Volcanoes (1991) by R W and B B Decker. A well-illustrated introduction to volcanoes,
their rock types, and their effects.

Natural Disasters: Volcanoes (1991) by Jacqueline Dineen. A good, simple book, but beware the block diagrams!

METEOROLOGY
Chris Pellant

The swirling, circulating atmospheric systems that control the Earth's daily weather and seasonal climate are driven by the
principles of physics, especially those relating to how fluids heat up, cool down, and move. Meteorology is concerned with
understanding these processes and the events they cause, and because of man's dependence on his atmospheric surroundings,
the prediction of changes in weather and climate is a very important part of the science. Today, possibly as much as at any time
in the past, the atmosphere is changing and being changed. Temperatures are rising, new gases are appearing and established
ones are changing in quantity; circulation is being altered. The effects of these, often man-induced, changes is a new area to tax
the skills of meteorologists.

Yesterday it thundered, last night it lightened. I have a leech in a bottle,

my dear, that foretells all these prodigies and convulsions of nature.
WILLIAM COWPER

The Restless Atmosphere (1953-67; various reprints) by F Kenneth Hare. A very readable account this, covering physics and
related science in easily understood language. The section on the depressions of middle latitudes even hints at the effects these
cyclonic air masses have on the humans who continually suffer from them, by reference to `cyclonic man'.
Climate and the British Scene (1975) by Gordon Manley. Originally one of the now collectable Collins New Naturalist series,
this classic account opens with a fascinating history of meteorological recording and, after detailed coverage of the climate of
Britain, finishes with the impact of weather and climate on man.

Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (1992) by Roger G Barry and Richard J Chorley. A heavyweight volume for the dedicated
reader. Everything is here from the gas content of the sky to the causes of climatic change.

The Weather Book (1982) by Ralph Hardy, Peter Wright, John Gribbin, and John Kirtgton. A book to fascinate anyone with
an interest in meteorology. Packed with colour pictures and amazing facts.

The Weather Machine (1974) by Nigel Calder. A very readable account of meteorological phenomena and events, by an
expert in putting science into everyday language.

Ice Age Earth (1992) by Alastair Dawson. A detailed account of the meteorological and geological evidence for the changes in
the climate during the ice age. at we know about the current changes in the world's climate is in great measure reliant on what
we know about past climatic change. The Ice Age changes in climate were not man-made. Today, in addition to man's
interference with the climate, there are still many natural causes of global warming and cooling.

BIOLOGY: INTRODUCTION
Stephen Webster

The job of biology is to look at life: where it came from, how it works, and what it is made of. Yet, surprisingly, even biologists
find it hard to define what is meant by `life'. An elephant, of course, is a living thing, but what about a virus, or a length of
DNA? Or a glucose molecule? The books below show how broad a subject biology has become in its attempt to make scientific
sense of the living world.

Tyger.! Tygerl burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal
hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
WILLIAM BLAKE

Pedigree: Words from Nature (1973) by Stephen Potter and Laurens Sargent. A wonderful collection of revelations about the
origins of the names we give to plants and animals. From where, for example, does the porcupine get its name? And did you
know that the collective noun for the starling is a murmuration?

The Double Helix (1968) by James D Watson. A terrific read about arguably the greatest scientific breakthrough of our age -
the discovery of the structure of DNA by the two young Cambridge scholars James Watson and Francis Crick. If you think that
scientists are remote and cold, this book will quickly change your mind.

Life on Earth (1979) by David Attenborough. One of the best-written introductions to the variety of life on Earth - and
beautifully illustrated too. Based on his award-winning TV series of the same name. Attenborough takes you through the whole
`story of evolution', beginning with the primeval soup and ending up with us.

The Panda's Thumb (1980) by Stephen Jay Gould. A collection of essays by a master science writer able to breathe life into
facts both general and particular. Here, Gould reflects on the evolution of the panda, investigates Charles Darwin, and wonders
whether `dinosaurs were dumb'. Fine bedtime reading.

What Is Life? (1944) by Erwin Schrodinger. This is one of the great science classics of the 20th century, elegantly written by
an eminent physicist. His theoretical approach to the question of life involved an analysis of how genes must work, an analysis
that set the agenda for the new study of molecular biology.

Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare (1980) by Paul Colinvaux. A good introduction to the science of ecology. Each chapter
looks at a feature of the complex and fascinating set of relations that exist between plant animals and environment. If you want
to read about how animals and plants get on with their normal day-to-day life, undisturbed by people and pollution, this book
would be a good start.

CELLULAR BIOLOGY
Stephen Webster

All living things are made of cells - you could almost call cells the atoms of life. Yet these tiny things are themselves
immeasurably complicated and the subject of constant research. Inside the cell lie the genes and an intricate series of
mechanisms for making proteins and other substances. The books below show that cells are fundamental to biology - yet are
still only partially understood.

Let's begin this way, then: there is a cell, and this cell is a unicellular
organism, and this unicellular organism is me, and I know it, and
I'm pleased about it. Nothing special so far.
ITALO CALVINO

The Chemistry of Life (1991) by Steven Rose. This is an up-to-date and authoritative survey of the chemical goings-on inside
a cell. Rose is a professor at the Open University and here makes a technical subject pretty approachable.

Immunology (1991) edited by Paul William. Authoritative papers from the Scientific American, covering the fascinating
science of immunology. Difficult in parts but a wonderful book for conveying how clever cells can be.

The Science of Aids: Readings from Scientific American (1989) .by various authors. More papers from Scientific American,
this time on how the HIV virus mounts an attack on the cellular immune system.

The Doctrine of DNA (1991) by Richard Lewontin. Lectures originally given on Canadian radio. A sustained attack on the
idea that DNA controls people - or even cells.

The Red Queen Hypothesis (1993) by Matt Ridley. Highly readable account of the way the genes inside our cells have
organized life in favour of sex.

Cell Biology (1986) edited by Barry King. Different contributors give their account of some of the most interesting aspects of
cell biology, including evolution, motility, and protein synthesis.

Time and the Hunter (1967) by halo Calvin. Short stories inspired by science. Several of the stories spring from the wonders
of cell division, and have their own kind of truth.

The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) by Ernst Mayr. Included in this great book is a fascinating account of the 19th-
century delvings by biologists interested in the mysterious world of the cell.

DNA
Stephen Webster

It is easy to think that with so much talk about genes, the question of how DNA works must be resolved by now. Not true. We
may know the genetic code and the positions of some genes, but precisely how they work remains a riddle. Furthermore, as the
books below show, there is no agreement about the extent of the power genes have in the daily life of an organism.

I, ________, being a natural born human being, do hereby forever copyright my unique genetic code, however it may be
scientifically determined, described or otherwise empirically expressed ...
PT OF A `CERTIFICATE' OFFERED BY THE US
CONCEPTUAL ARTIST LARRY MILLER
Perilous Knowledge (1993) by Tom Wilkie. Useful account of the Human Genome Project - the mapping and decoding of
each and every one of our genes. Wilkie is a science journalist and so well placed to understand and express public concerns
over the moral consequences of molecular biology.

Blueprints (1989) by Maitland A Edey and Donald C Johanson. A brilliantly written and exciting account that shows just how
much has been achieved by the geneticists. The history of science made vivid.

Not in Our Genes (1984) by Steven Rose, on Kamin, and Richard Lewontin. Political as well as biological, these essays are an
argument against the so-called reductionist ideas that suggest genes are in charge.

The Language of the Genes (1993) by Steve Jones. Entertaining yet restrained, the celebrated geneticist gives a reliable
account of what we do and don't know about our genes.

The DNA Mystique (1995) by Dorothy Nelkin and M Susan Lindee. Two American authors give fascinating insights into the
way the gene has invaded popular culture, turning up in comics, pop songs, and soap commercials.

The Science and Politics of IQ (1974) by Leon Kamin. More than 20 years old, this is a passionate and compelling study of
the dubious idea that intelligence is determined by genetics.

The Mismeasure of Man (1981) by Stephen Jay Gould. The Harvard scientist and science writer turns his skills to examining
the history of attempts to link intelligence to genetics.

EVOLUTION
Richard Dawkins

All living creatures, though superficially diverse, are cousins of each other and all give the illusion of being superbly designed
for the purpose of continuing the genetic instructions that built them. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the
unifying theory of life and it explains everything that we know about living things, their diversity, and their appearance of
design. With the addition of Mendelian genetics, Darwinism became neo-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism today goes from strength
to strength, and it is itself still in a rapidly evolving phase, as many of the following books show.

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the
single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of
Newton and Einstein and everyone the. In a single stroke, the idea of
evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose
with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical
law. But it is not just a wonderful scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea.
DANIEL DENNETT

The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin. Easier to read than many people imagine. In addition to the brilliant theory
itself, Darwin has astonishingly wise and far-sighted things to say about a great variety of related topics, from ecology to
biogeography. The only thing he got badly wrong (along with all his contemporaries except Mendel) was genetics.

The Theory of Evolution (1958) by John Maynard Smith. Clear, authoritative, and readable account of the modem neo-
Darwinian theory.

Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) by George C Williams. A seminal work which succeeds in combining inspiration
with tough-minded correction of error. The book has exerted an increasing influence in the decades since it was written, and
Williams is now respected as perhaps the dominant figure among American Darwinians.

Darwinism Defended (1982) by Michael Ruse. Darwinism hardly needs defending, but this worthwhile book includes a rip-
roaring attack on creationism.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986) by Richard Dawkins. Argues that Darwinian natural selection is the only known theory that
could, in principle, explain adaptive complexity.
The Problems of Evolution (1986) by Mark Ridley. Witty and cultivated essays on particular topics of controversy, or of
lively discussion, in the field of evolution.

The Ant and the Peacock (1991) by Helena Cronin. A beautifully written account of two important evolutionary topics,
altruism and sexual selection, tracing them from their origins in the writings of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to the
sophisticated theories of modem times.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (1992) edited by Steve Jones. Edited by a team led by Steve Jones, the
well-known geneticist. A comprehensive and up-to-date survey of all aspects of human evolution, with some fascinating
information.

The Origin of Humankind (1994) by Richard Leakey. A brief and readable personal view of human fossils by today's leading
authority on them.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) by Daniel Dennett. The penetrating view of a philosopher with a deep understanding of
modem Darwinism, showing the importance of Darwinism for all aspects of human thought. Filled with fascinating and
original insights.

HUMAN EVOLUTION
Chris Stringer

Interest in our origins was a human characteristic long before the biblical version in the Book of Genesis was written. New
evidence from fossils and archaeology show that the 5-million-year history of human evolution was not a simple ladder of
inevitable progress, but a complex bush of radiating lineages, with ours as the sole survivor.

We are all Africans under the skin.

CHRIS STRINGER

Links (1988) by John Reader. A very readable introduction to the history of fossil discoveries and the personalities involved.

Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (1981) by Don Johanson and Matt Edey. A very popularly written insider's view of
palaeoanthropology.

Human Evolution: An Illustrated Guide (1993) by Roger Lewin. An excellent general review of the topic.

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Human Evolution (1992) edited by Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam. Good
general coverage of primates, fossils, archaeology, and recent human variation.

Encyclopaedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory (1988) edited by Ian Tattersall and others. An alphabetically arranged
in-depth coverage of palaeoanthropology, although not so strong on the behavioural side.

The Origin of Modern Humans (1993) by Roger Lewin. An up-to-date review of this controversial topic.

In Search of the Neanderthals (1993) by Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble. All aspects of these fascinating extinct people are
covered here by Chris Stringer and an archaeologist coauthor.

REPRODUCTION
Peter Tallack

All living things can generate new individuals of the same species. But sex is not absolutely necessary. With asexual
reproduction, individuals are derived from one parent - by division or budding, for instance - and no special reproductive
structures are involved. But although simple and direct, this method produces offspring that are genetically identical to the
parent. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, involves specialized reproductive cells of two parents - typically male and
female - that fuse to produce a new individual with a different genetic make-up. This mode of reproduction apparently has
great advantages, as most complex plants and animals have adopted it. Even many bacteria and other organisms that normally
reproduce asexually engage in occasional bouts of sexual reproduction. But just why sex evolved and what benefits it brings
are two of the biggest unsolved problems in biology. And with the advent of new medical technologies, we are now faced with
the difficult question of deciding when it is right to interfere with our own reproductive futures.
Reproductive biology is a fast-moving field, and most books on the subject rapidly become out of date. Those listed below look
set to stand the test of time.

If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing

and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself
BORIS PASTERNAK

Reproduction (1977) by Jack Cohen. A standard, well-illustrated introduction that collects together information on all aspects
of biological reproduction.

Reproduction in Mammals (1982) edited by C R Austin and R V Short. A scholarly, comprehensive, and authoritative
reference series justly famous for its clear and interesting presentation of up-to-date data and theory. Early volumes cover germ
cells and fertilization, hormones in reproduction, embryonic and fetal development, reproductive patterns, and the manipulation
of reproduction.

Peacemaking Among Primates (1989) by Frans de Waal. The author draws on detailed observations by himself and other
leading experts to describe primate reproductive behaviour in captivity and in the wild. A stimulating tale of relationships,
rivalries, and reconciliations.

Sperm Wars (1996) by Robin Baker. Since the 1970s, biologists have been fascinated by the biological and evolutionary
implications of sperm from different males competing for fertilization of the egg in the female reproductive tract. This is the
first popular book on the phenomenon in humans. It summarizes an immense amount of information, all carefully documented.
Iconoclastic and provocative.

The Triumph of the Embryo (1991) by Lewis Wolpert. A limpid and engaging account of embryology and development - the
coordinated process leading from a fertilized egg to an adult that is itself capable of becoming a parent.

The Red Queen Hypothesis (1993) by Matt Ridley. A wide-ranging and erudite examination of the scientific debates over the
hows and whys of sex and the unending evolutionary battle between males and females that results once it gets going. Up to
date, provocative, and stylish.

Life Cycles (1993) by John Tyler Bonner. Art evolutionary biologist who has devoted his life to the study of slime moulds.
Writing with clarity and humour, he sets reproduction in the context of the life cycle - a linkage of evolution, development, and
the complex activities of adult organisms. Filled with wonderful insights and interesting examples.

The Pill (1995) by Bernard Asbell. The development of the oral contraceptive pill and its liberating impact on the lives of
millions of women is a remarkable tale of scientific discovery, fortuitous discovery, dogged persistence, and moral dilemmas
over reproductive choices. The story is told in this riveting book, a skilful combination of history, biography, science, and
public policy.

The Human Body Shop (1993) by Andrew Kimbrell. The author reviews the technological and commercial controls of human
reproduction, arguing that our current legal and technical framework is inadequate to deal with advances in biotechnology.

A Question of We (1984) by Mary Warnock. The author is a British philosopher who has had enormous influence on the issue
of what it is permissible to do with embryos. Intended for a broad general readership, this is a clear and balanced report of a
committee she chaired that looked into human fertilization, embryology, and the ethics of assisted reproduction.

EMBRYOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

Stephen Webster
All living things grow and change, yet usually in quite predictable ways. For example, as children get older we expect them to
get bigger. And a lettuce seed, planted in the ground, will quite soon become a leafy vegetable. How? at controls development?
The books below will start you on one of the greatest puzzles of biology.

But other [seed] fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit,
some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
THE BIBLE, MATTHEW 13:8

Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977) by Stephen Jay Gould. This account of the 19th-century idea of recapitulation - that
individual development mirrors evolutionary development - is a fascinating piece of research into the history of biology.

When Did I Begin? (1988) by Norman D Ford. In-depth analysis of an important ethical problem: when, exactly, does a
human embryo become an individual?

The Triumph of the Embryo (1991) by Lewis Wolpert. A straightforward and informative account of the development of the
vertebrate embryo. This is Wolpert's own research field, and he writes with verve.

How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (1994) by Brian Goodwin. As an outspoken critic of those biological models that see
the gene as all-powerful, Goodwin here presents his own ideas about the nature of development.

Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (1994) by Nicholaas Rupke. A contemporary of Charles Darwin and an opponent of the
theory of natural selection, Owen is more or less forgotten today. This biography gives sympathetic treatment to Owen's
`romantic' views of biological change.

On Growth and Form (1917) by D'Arcy Thompson. This scientific classic lays out in fabulous detail the different forms we
see in living things - and attempts a theory of unification.

The Engineer in the Garden (1993) by Colin "fudge. Sometimes disturbing account of how animals and plants may grow up
to be different - thanks to genetic engineering.

MEDICINE: HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Roy Porter

Aside from medicine proper, interest is growing today in the historical, cultural, and social dimensions of medicine. These are
the aspects dealt with in the books I have chosen, which set out to explain why we have the medicine we have.
They look at such central issues as the way medicine relates to other features of a culture, such as science and technology,
religion and mythology, and the question of whether modem medicine really serves the interests of patients or the medical
profession.

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men

mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and
religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
THOMAS SZASZ

A Short History of Medicine (1968) by Erwin H Ackerknecht. Probably the best short history, it provides an ideal
introduction to the subject.

Limits to Medicine: The Expropriation of Health (1977) by Ivan Illich. A stimulating book that argues that modem medicine
serves the profession and not the patient.

The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis? (1979) by T McKeown. A thoughtful book, it questions how far
medicine is really responsible for today's revolution in health.

The Body in Question (1978) by Jonathan Miller. A fascinating exploration of the functioning of our bodies and our
experience of them. The book is based on a popular television series.
The Illustrated History of Medicine (1992) by Jean-Charles Sournia. Superbly illustrated, this book is particularly strong on
its coverage of contemporary medicine.

The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 (1995) by Lawrence Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, and Roy
Porter. An up-to-date scholarly survey.

Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (1993) by W F Bynum and Roy Porter. The most up-to-date work of
reference dealing with the history of all the world's medical cultures.

MEDICAL BIOGRAPHY AND PRACTICE

lames Le Fanu

Medicine may be a science but, though it may be a truism to say so, it is primarily about people - the personalities of the
doctors who practice it and the patients who seek their attention. This humanistic side of medicine is a source of end-less
fascination. More than any other profession, medicine provides opportunities for a vast range of talents from those content with
the humdrum life of everyday general practice to the white-coated scientist in his laboratory, from the missionary doctor to the
sophisticated teaching-hospital specialist. Few leave a permanent record of their lives, so medical biographies and
autobiographies are a particularly useful means of understanding the real nature of medical life. They are complemented by two
collections of medical anecdotes from the British Medical journal and the Lancet which focus on the particularity of medicine,
its idiosyncrasy and humour.

It was wonderful to see the Vietcong flag raised on Berkeley campus,

but it felt even better when the staff and workers at Bethnal Green
Hospital voted to occupy against its threatened closure.
DAVID WIDGERY

Talking Sense (1972) by Richard Asher. This series of essays by the late Dr Asher exemplifies better than anything else I know
the humane common sense that is the hallmark of good medical practice. It contains such gems as the Seven Sins of Medicine
(obscurity, cruelty, bad manners, overspecialization, love of the rare, common stupidity, and sloth), the Dangers of Going to
Bed and the first description of Miinchhausen's syndrome.

Soundings (1992) edited by Ruth Holland. The best of contemporary medical writing are the contributions by a series of eight
doctors and journalists to be found at the back of the British Medical journal each week. This is a collection of their mini-
essays, 800 words each, covering every aspect of modern medical practice.

The Lancet: In England Now (1989) For many years, but regrettably no longer, the Lancet ran a column, In England Now,
consisting of anonymous anecdotes sent in by readers describing the idiosyncratic, perverse, and unusual events of everyday
medical practice.

Weary, the Life of Sir Edward Dunlop (1994) by Sue Ebury. The most sustained instance of the dedication and ingenuity of
doctors was exhibited by those working on the Burma-Thailand railway during World War H. Of these the most remarkable
was Edward Weary' Dunlop. By his example, `he held this body of men from moral decay in bitter circumstances which they
could only meet with emotion rather than reason'.

A Doctor's Life (1989) by David Selboum. These are the diaries covering the years 1960-63 of Hugh Selboum, consultant
physician, edited by his son. They provide a fascinating insight into the everyday life of a busy provincial doctor with three
grid references to the political and cultural events of the time.

Churchill's Doctor: A Biography of Lord Moran (1992) by Richard Lovell. Moran is most famous for being Churchill's
doctor who was much criticized for the inclusion in his autobiography of the details of the great man's illnesses. This biography
places Moran's achievements in a wider context as well as illustrating the son of wide-ranging intelligence with which leaders
of the profession guided and shaped the emergence of the National Health Service.

The Fibre Man, the Life Story of Dr Denis Burkitt (1985) by Brian Kellock. Burkitt is best known for his espousal of the
role of dietary fibre in preventing disease but his most remarkable achievement was the discovery of the cause of Burkitt's
lymphoma we working as a physician in Uganda and the introduction of effective treatment. This biography illustrates the at
scope offered by medicine for the enterprising doctor in the years after World War R.

Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants (1993) by Paul Brand and Philip Yancey. Paul Brand is an inspirational orthopaedic surgeon
who was the first person to understand the cause of leprosy's characteristic disfigurement and developed both methods for its
prevention and surgical repair. His subsequent research into the mechanisms of pain transformed medical approach to this
serious problem.

Some Lives! A GP's East End (1991) by David Widgery. David Widgery was a general practitioner in London's East End for
20 years and this is a highly personal account of one man's fight against the medical and social consequences of prolonged
unemployment, homelessness, and poverty.

MEDICAL RESEARCH
lames Le Fanu

Research is central to the intellectual life of medicine and the application of the scientific method has repaid enormous rewards.
There are regrettably few good descriptions of the practice of medical research but the examples noted here give a flavour of
what is involved. The story of the world's first test-tube baby emphasizes the reality of the frustrations and false avenues that
can so frequently hinder the resolution of an apparently quite straightforward problem. The saga of self-experimentation
catches the fanaticism and urgency which lies behind the onward march of medical progress.

So the substance and the ways of the living are broken down,
and from the bits and pieces tomes are gathered in encyclopaedic
summary; what is known of a cell, or part of a cell, may fill a volume.
EDRED CORNER

The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher (1984) by Lewis Thomas. Lewis Thomas's medical career saw the
beginning of the transformation of medicine into a science-based discipline throughout the 1950s and 1960s. This book
captures the enormous excitement of these thrilling decades.

A Matter of Life: The Sensational Story of the World's First Test Tube Baby (1981) by Robert Edwards and Patrick
Steptoe. This is much more than the description of a heartening medical success story as it describes in fascinating detail the
enormous frustrations encountered when developing pioneering techniques and the tenacious force of character which is
necessary to see them through.

Who Goes First: The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine (1988) by Lawrence K Altman. This is the remarkable
story of many medical self-experimenters who deliberately acted as human guinea pigs in the furtherance of their research. Its
main theme might be characterized as obsessionalism - the determination of those involved in medical research to get at the
truth no matter what the cost.

The Encyclopaedia of Medical Ignorance (1984) by R Duncan and M Weston-Smith. As its title suggests, this fascinating
volume describes not what is known but rather what is not known. This is interesting not only in itself but as a useful antidote
to the claims of omniscience of the medical profession, particularly the belief that medicine has all the answers. Rather,
medicine's great achievement has been the application of technological solutions to diseases whose causes for the most part
remain unknown.

CRITIQUE OF MODERN MEDICINE AND MEDICAL ETHICS

lames Le Fanu

The two great projects of modern medicine have been the prevention and treatment of disease. The achievements of prevention
stretch from the great sanitary reforms of the 19th century to the elimination by vaccination of life-threatening infectious
diseases. By contrast, a completely different intellectual approach, mostly empirical and technical, has produced a cornucopia
of new drugs and operations for the chronic degenerative diseases which are not amenable to prevention but rather a necessary
consequence of the marked general increase in life expectancy. Though apparently complementary, in fact the philosophies of
prevention and treatment have been in constant conflict over the last 50 years. Many diseases, it is argued, are caused by an
unhealthy lifestyle and so resources should be directed towards preventing rather than curing them. Contrariwise the claims of
the preventability of such diseases, it is alleged, are based on faulty science and a desire to medicalize all aspects of society.
This conflict of perception lies at the heart of understanding the role of medicine in contemporary society and the diversity of
the arguments are well presented in the following books.

It is silliness to live when to live is torment; /And then have we a

prescription to die / When death is our physician.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Limits to Medicine, Medical Nemesis - the Expropriation of Health (1976) by Ivan Illich. This was much the most
influential book in encouraging the steady disillusionment with technologically based medicine that occurred from the 1970s
onwards. Illich focused on the adverse features of medicalization - the robbing of personal autonomy, medicine's inhumanity,
and the high price patients paid in terms of medical complications. (There is an interesting reply to Illich by David Horrobin
called Medical Hubris - A Reply to Ivan Illich 1977).

The Role of Medicine (1979) by Thomas McKeown. McKeown was very influential in the 1960s by challenging the belief
that medicine could take the credit for improvements in life expectancy and disease control which he claimed were almost
entirely attributable to social factors such as improvements in the standard of living, better housing and nutrition. It formed the
basis for the rise of what has been called the `new public health', an idea, particularly favoured by the government, that
prevention is bet-ter than cure and that resources are better spent on such things as health education and health promotion than
on curative medicine.

The Death of Human Medicine (1994) by Peter Skrabanek. Skrabanek's position is almost directly opposed to that of
McKeown. He contrasts the traditional human medicine with doctors caring for individual patients who seek their aid, with the
false pretensions of prevention - what he calls `healthism' - the propagation of health promotion, screening to encourage
ordinary people into adopting a `healthy' lifestyle.

Preventionitis: the Exaggerated Claims of Health Promotion (1994) edited by James Le Fanu. This collection of essays has
a similar position to that of Skrabanek and focuses in particular on the weaknesses in the scientific evidence concerning the
preventability of disease.

Philosophical Medical Ethics (1986) by Raanan Gillon. This is the best general introduction to medical ethics from a British
perspective and covers all the main issues concerning autonomy, paternalism, and justice in the practice of medicine.

Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion and Euthanasia (1993) by Ronald Dworkins. This is a masterful elucidation
of the arguments around the two most important ethical issues of abortion and euthanasia. Dworkins writes so well and
seductively that even those totally opposed to these practices might almost be convinced.

Dworkin, Ronald, American, 1931- .

Taking Rights Seriously. Rec: TLS

PSYCHIATRY
Anthony Clare

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that applies knowledge from the biological and social sciences, including genetics,
pharmacology, physiology, psychology, and epidemiology, to the care and treatment of patients suffering from disorders of
mental activity and behaviour. Psychiatry's emergence in the 18th century as a separate speciality coincided with the splitting
of medicine into an increasingly triumphalist biological science and a geographically isolated, stigmatized, and neglected
psychological domain. Over the past two decades, the growing interest in and understanding of brain function has resulted in
an explosion of interest in the biological basis of many psychiatric disorders and a growing reintegration of psychological and
physical approaches to health and disease.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, / Pluck from the

memory a rooted sorrow, / Raze out the written troubles of the brain, /
And with some sweet oblivious antidote / Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of
that perilous stuff / Which weighs upon the heart?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970) by Henri Ellenberger. A brilliant account of the historical development of the study
of mind and the birth, evolution, and vicissitudes of dynamic psychiatry and psychotherapy. It includes a detailed assessment of
the dynamic systems associated with the names of Pierre Janet, Alfred Adler, Sigmund Freud, and C G Jung, and traces the
origins of modem dynamic psychotherapy back to the healing practices of primitive peoples, to the role of the shaman and the
practices of exorcism, magnetism, and hypnotism.

General Psychopathology (1946) by Karl Jaspers. This book, the first edition of which appeared in 1913, the seventh and last
in 1959, is a monumental examination of psychopathology which comprises the study of causal connections and general laws
underpinning mental events and so-called empathetic understanding involving empirical experiment and free existential
achievement.

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984) by Adolf Grunbaum. This constitutes the most intellectually formidable and
devastating critique of the claims and achievements of psychoanalysis. The need to provide adequate supportive evidence for
psychoanalytical principles before their application to other fields is underscored but the book itself reveals just how far
psychoanalytical theories outstrip the scientific evidence available to support them.

Darkness Visible (1991) by William Styron. An intimate personal account by a gifted writer of his tortured descent to the edge
of self-destruction into what he terms the `inexplicable agony' of severe depression.

Psychiatry in Dissent (1980) by Anthony W Clare. A nontechnical account of the major controversial issues in modern
psychiatry - including the nature of mental illness, the concept of schizophrenia, compulsory treatment, and ECT - placed
within the context of psychiatry as it is currently practised.

Manic-Depressive Illness (1990) by Frederick K Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison. A substantial analysis of the nature and
extent of manic depression, its cyclical course, and contemporary treatment. Vividly portrays the complexity of this particular
form of psychiatric disorder and the intermingling roles of biology, personality, and environment in its genesis, impact, and
outcome.

Schizophrenia and Related Syndromes (1994) by P J McKenna. A lucid account of the most baffling psychiatric disorder
comprehensible to lay and professional reader alike.

The Faber Book of Madness (1991) edited by Roy Porter. A diverting and informative anthology on the subject of madness,
including a rich selection of the writings of those who have themselves suffered serious mental instability.

The Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry (1989) edited by Michael Gelder, Dennis Gath, and Richard Mayou. The most
comprehensive yet manageable textbook of psychiatry currently available.

PSYCHOANALYSIS
Anthony Storr

Freud ranks with Charles Darwin and Karl Marx as one of the three pioneers who most altered man's vision of himself in the
20th century. Darwin demonstrated man's kinship with other animals, Marx postulated that history was governed by economic
forces over which the majority of human beings have no direct influence. Freud laid siege to Victorian notions of rationality,
and claimed that men were much more governed by unconscious forces and emotional drives than they were by reason.
Although Freud's psychoanalytic theories have been sharply criticized in recent years, psychoanalysis has had such a powerful
influence on our thinking about ourselves that it cannot simply be dismissed because it does not fulfil the criteria of science.
Even if every idea that Freud put forward could be proved wrong, we should still be greatly in his debt.

Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible,

but to give the patient's ego the freedom to decide one way or the other.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970) by Henri F Ellenberger. Subtitled `The History and Evolution of Dynamic
Psychiatry', this is an invaluable source book which has won worldwide acclaim.

Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988) by Peter Gay. The best and most recent biography of Freud by an American historian who
is also trained in psychoanalysis.

Gay, Peter, American, 1923- .

Freud. Rec: Good Reading

The Unconscious before Freud (1962) by Lancelot Law Whyte. An irreplaceable account of how the idea of unconscious
mental function and events gradually developed over several centuries to culminate in Freudian theory.

The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985) by Ernest Gellner. A witty, irreverent account of how psychoanalysis developed from
being a theory of neurosis in a widespread movement which conquered the Western world.

Anxiety and Neurosis (1968) by Charles Rycroft. A penetrating account of how the psychoanalytic method can be used to treat
neurotic symptoms, which relates psychoanalytic theory to biological principles.

Freud and His Followers (1975) by Paul Roazen. Based on interviews with some 70 people who had known Freud personally,
this is a readable, scholarly, sometimes scandalous account of the history of psychoanalysis.

Freud (1989) by Anthony Storr. A brief account of Freud's life and thought which may be found useful as an introductory text.
Freud: Biologist of the Mind (1979) by Frank J Sulloway. An outstanding contribution to Freudian studies which is still
indispensable reading for anyone interested in psychoanalysis and its founder.

PSYCHOLOGY
Hans Eysenck

Psychology is the scientific study of human (and animal) behaviour. It has its classics, of course, but for nonprofessional
readers general overviews of recent research are probably to be preferred - science constantly advances, and the latest research,
and the most recent theories, build on what was done before and advance it further. For most readers interest will probably
centre, not so much on purely technical issues, but on topics relevant to the human condition. Psychology has made important
contributions to our understanding of crime, neurosis, personality, intelligence, and many other important topics; it has also
pioneered methods of curing neuroses, rehabilitating criminals, and generally improving the quality of life. There has in recent
years been a recognition that human beings are bisocial animals, and hence the old-fashioned disregard of genetics and biology
in general has given way to a more inclusive theory taking into account both social and biological factors.

Everything that exists exists in some quantity, and can therefore be measured. E L THOl~rrnlKE

Conditional Reflexes (1927) by I P Pavlov. Pavlov's book is a classic, and worth reading in spite of its age. Many people have
built on this secure foundation, and any-one wanting to see how a science of behaviour is possible can do no better than read
this monumental contribution. The experiments are mainly done on dogs, but the general principles have been found to apply
equally to humans.

Personality and Individual Differences: A Natural Science Approach (1985) by H J Eysenck and M Eysenck. Personality is
of central importance in modern psychology, and many important advances have been made in the experimental study of
personality and in the social importance of these advances. This book gives a brief overview of where we are now.

Handbook of Effective Psychotherapy (1993) by T R Giles. In the last 12 years or so behaviour therapy, based on the
principles of conditioning and learning, has been shown to be much more effective in curing neurotic disorders than the
psychotherapies based on Freudian speculations. This book discusses methods and evidence in detail.

Biological Approaches to the Study of Human Intelligence (1993) by P A Vernon. The study of intelligence has been
transformed in recent years by successful attempts to look at the brain processes underlying cognitive functioning, and the
psychophysiological differences between high- and low-IQ people. This book gives a good summary of what has been
achieved.
The Psychopathology of Crime (1993) by A Raine. Raine has summarized a great deal of recent work demonstrating that high
criminality (and antisocial behaviour generally) has a strong genetic basis, so that we can identify the hormonal influences and
the neural transmitters mediating these effects. These findings have important consequences for our thinking about crime.

Biological Psychology (1994) by F J McGuigan. McGuigan explains the biological basis underlying our emotions, memory,
learning, social behaviour, and so on. It is a successful attempt to show the close links between psychology and biology, and to
get beyond the simplistic, purely social approach hitherto prevalent.

Perspectives on Bias in Mental Testing (1984) by C R Reynolds and R Brown. Reynolds and Brown deal in detail with the
problems raised by bias in mental testing, and in particular the arguments about the influence (if any) of race in this connection.
They give an unprejudiced account of the problem, and tell the reader what factual knowledge is available.

Nature and Nurture in Psychology (1993) by R Plomin and G McCleam. Plomin and McClearn give a detailed account of the
present status of the age-old nature-nurture controversy, covering the personality and intelligence, attitudes and other topics.
This is an easy-to- read but very up-to-date account written by leading experts.

ANIMALS: THE LIVES OF ANIMALS

Stephen Webster

Life for an animal has its simple priorities, feeding and reproduction being just two. However, actually finding out how an
animal lives, and where, is an often uncomfortable experience requiring patience and diligence. Any of the books below might
inspire you to go out into the wild and take a look for yourself.

Sing a song of sixpence / A pocket full of rye, / Four and twenty blackbirds, /
Baked in a pie; / When the pie was opened, / The birds began to sing; /
Was not that a dainty dish / To set before the king?
TRADITIONAL NURSERY RHYME

We of the Bee (1901) by Maurice Maeterlink. A beautiful account of one man's study of the bees in his care. The author is
almost poetic in his descriptions of the efforts of the bees, working to look after hive and queen. Still an apicultural classic.

The Goshawk (1951) by T S White. A gripping account, suitable for younger readers too, of the author's attempt to train a
hawk. The story shows how profound can be the relationship between animal and owner. One of the best books on the an of
falconry ever written.

Life at the Edge (1989) edited by James Gould and Carol Grant Gould. This book is a series of articles from Scientific
American and is a detailed scientific account of how animals live in even the strangest and fiercest places - in the Antarctic or
inside volcanoes, for example. Quite technical and challenging but with a little effort this book makes an excellent read.

The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observation on Their Habits (1881; new edition
1985) by Charles Darwin. As an old man Darwin chose the common earthworm as the final object of his curiosity, and wrote
this splendid book on its habits and its intelligence.

Last Animals at the Zoo (1991) by Colin Tudge. An inquiry into the places most of us must visit if we want to see elephants
ad rhinos, lions and tigers. An interesting and thought-provoking description of how, through captive-breeding programmes,
zoos can assist endangered species.

Primate Visions (1992) by Donna Haraway. A detailed survey of the nature of primate research, looking especially at how
issues of gender and race have influenced the scientists' work.

LIFE IN THE SEA

Gordon L J Paterson
Sea covers much of our planet. Hidden beneath the waves lives a rich diversity of plants and animals, appearing to us as
bizarre, fantastic, and intriguing. The oceans and their inhabitants represent the last great frontier on the planet. It is significant
that we know more about processes on other planets than our marine ecosystems. Even now startling discoveries are made.
New habitats, such as the hot vents, and huge animals like megamouth sharks have been found in the last 20 years, reminding
us how little we really know about our planet. Marine biology and oceanography are the branches of science that study life in
the sea.

Every living thing is descended from marine life. Indeed, we carry the
ancient sea inside us, for the isotonic composition of the blood of
vertebrates on land bears an unmistakable resemblance to seawater ...
Eu.Iorr A NORSE

The Open Sea - Its Natural History, Part I. The World of the Plankton (1972) by Alister Hardy. This is a classic text,
wonderfully written, which will serve as a good introduction to the open sea and the intriguing creatures that live in it. Slightly
dated now but nevertheless a fascinating account.

Deep-Sea Biology - A Natural History of Organisms at the Deep-Sea Floor (1992) by J D Gage and P A Tyler. The deep sea
is one of the largest ecosystems, covering some 50% of the planet. This scholarly work introduces the reader to how
oceanographers study the animals and their ecology in this alien world, where the temperature is only just above freezing and
the pressure reaches several tonnes per square centimetre.

Global Marine Biological Diversity (1993) edited by Elliott A Norse. It is often forgotten that the sea represents one of the
most diverse systems on the planet. This book explains the problems facing, conserving, and sustaining biodiversity in the
marine environment. It provides a readable account of the current debate about biodiversity and how and why we should try to
sustain it.

Reader's Digest Book of the Great Barrier Reef (1984). The Great Barrier Reef is without doubt one of the great natural
phenomena of the world. But even more amazing are the plants and animals that live on, in, and around this coral wonderland.
The book beautifully illustrates the vast diversity of life to be found.

The Greenpeace Book of Coral Reefs (1992) by Sue Wells and Nick Hanna. The main thrust of this book is explaining the
coral ecosystem and the complex cycles of life that are increasingly under threat by human activities.

Oceans - A Mitchell Beazley World Conservation Atlas (1991) edited by Danny Elder and John Pernatta. This atlas gives
useful background to conservation problems in the marine environment.

Water Baby (1992) by Victoria A Kaharl. This is a fascinating account of the building and development of the research
submersible Alvin. It is one of a handful of vehicles that take scientists down into the depths to glimpse this alien realm. Alvin
has been the platform from which researchers have made many startling discoveries. It is the oceanographic equivalent of the
space shuttle.

Sharks in Question - The Smithsonian Institution Answer Book (1989) by Victor G Springer and Joy P Gold. No book list
on marine life would be complete without something on sharks. Our fascination with this group of top marine predators is
mirrored by the format of the book, which is based on the most frequently asked questions. The book is a mine of useful
information.

Guardians of the Whales - The Quest to Study Whales in the Wild (1992) by Bruce Obee and Graeme Ellis. Much of what
we know about the behaviour and ecology of whales comes from dedicated bands of scientists studying whales from boats - a
kind of professional whale-watching. This beautifully photographed book recounts the people and the methods they use to
study whales in the NE Pacific.

There are numerous field guides to help those interested in marine life identify the plants and animals they encounter on shores
and while diving. Collins, Hamlyn ,and the Marine Conservation Society produce general guides to marine life and fish for
Europe and further afield. The Audubon Society and Peterson guides cover the North American coasts.

The Hutchinson University Library series provided a range of books about various groups of marine animal and although
these are aimed at students they contain a wealth of biological detail. Examples of volumes in the series are: Marine Mammals,
Annelids, Molluscs, Sponges.
FISHES
Darrell J Siebert

Ichthyology is the study of fishes, in all their aspects. This includes trying to figure out the evolutionary relationships among
them (their history) and attempting to understand their ecology (how they live). The history of fishes provides insight into
panevolutionary theories of how life and Earth have evolved together. Fish ecology will be the key to the sustainable
development of an important food source worldwide. Fishes also give great pleasure to many people as pets. A well thought-
out and maintained aquarium is a beautiful sight. The diversity of modem fishes is bewildering. If there is among vertebrates a
biodiversity crisis of species it is the fishes: perhaps only half of all living fishes are known. They deserve better.

Fishes are a necessary part of our environment. During the past couple of decades millions of people have come to realize that
our planet is in danger and have dedicated their energies to protecting and improving the world we live in. I am reminded of a
dialogue in an old Pogo comic strip which starts when one of the characters says that `everyone is talking about it'. `I'm not
talking about it.' `You're not everyone."No, but without me, no one is everyone.' This is the way it is with our environment:
nothing in it is really expendable.
C LAVETT SMTTH

Fish of the World: A Collection of 19th-Century Paintings (1990) by Hiroshi Aramata. A beautifully compiled work of the
amazing artwork of illustrators from the 19th century.

Dr Axelrod's Atlas of Freshwater Aquarium Fishes (1985) by Herbert R Axelrod, Warren E Burgess, Neal Pronek, and Jerry
G Walls. A huge work of colour photographs for which there is as yet no substitute. Arranged by region of the world with
information on husbandry.

Fishes: Expedition Field Techniques (1993; 2nd edition 1995) by Brian W Coad. An excellent introduction to ichtyhological
fieldwork, for the amateur and professional alike.

The Fishes of Tennessee (1993) by David A Envier and Wayne C Starness. As good an example of an American `state' book as
there is, lavishly illustrated with colour photographs, some of which show the amazing world of fish colours.

The Rise of Fishes: 500 Million Years of Evolution (1995) by John A Long. A surprising introduction to fossil vertebrates
(fishes). An academic work but so well illustrated it will be of interest in the popular literature.

Fishes of the World (1976; 3rd edition 1994) by Joseph S Nelson. The only real introduction into the realm of fish
classification. Now in its 3rd edition, it has improved with time.

Encyclopedia of Fishes (1994) edited by John R Paxton and William N Eschmeyer. Arranged systematically, this is the best of
the compendia written for the layman.

Fish Watching: An Outdoor Guide to Freshwater Fishes (1994) by C Lovett Smith. A delightful introduction to fish
watching in nature, by a dedicated fish watcher. You can learn to do it yourself from this book.

Sharks in Question (1989) by Victor G Springer and Joy P Gold. Simply the best, most informative shark book on the market.

The Aquarist's Encyclopaedia (1983) by Gunther Sterba. One of the hobbyist volumes, but filled with biological information.

Trout (1991) edited by Judith Stoltz and Judith Snell. A wonderful, well-illustrated compilation of information on the world's
most important freshwater game fishes.

Fishes of the World: An Illustrated Dictionary (1975) by Alwyne Wheeler. A dictionary of fishes and fish terms. Most of
what you want to know can be found here.

INSECTS
Paul Eggleton
The study of insects is known as entomology, and covers a very broad range of disciplines from behaviour to molecular
biology. Insect biology is one of the most important areas of biology, and one of the least well-known, given that of the 5
million probable insect species perhaps only 1 million have been formally described. Of those 1 million, perhaps 100,000 have
their biologies known in any detail, and at the present rate of habitat destruction, many species will go extinct before anything
at all is discovered about them. The enormous number of insect species has recently led entomologists to become concerned
with insect biodiversity as an area of research in itself, and especially with insect conservation and the effect of human
disturbance on insect diversity.

I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of the trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles ... It really makes me long
to begin collecting again.
CHARLES DARWIN

Bugs in the System: Insects and Their impact on Human Affairs (1995) by May R Berenbaum. A simple and readable
introduction to insects, their classification, biology, and effects on people. It gives a good overview of the extraordinary
diversity of the insect world.

Life on a Little-Known Planet (1993) by Howard Ensign Evans. Covers similar ground to the first book, but might be
considered either more poetic or more pretentious, according to taste. Throughout, however, the author's love of his subject
shines through.

A Field Guide to the Insects of Britain and Northern Europe (1982) by Michael Chinery. An excellent introduction to the
natural history of British insects, with identification keys and good illustrations.

Insects of Australia (1991) edited by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. In contrast to the
Chinery book, this deals in detail with a tropical fauna which is much richer and more varied than the European one. It also has
useful chapters on insect systematics, morphology, and biogeography.

Insect Conservation Biology (1994) by M J Samways. A good introductory book dealing with the problems and principles of
insect conservation, a topic that has been neglected compared with the conservation biology of larger vertebrate animals.

The Ants (1990) by B Holidobler and E 0 Wilson. A Pulitzer prizewinning book dealing with a group of animals with one of
the most complex and interesting social systems of any organism. A unique contribution to biology. The same authors' Journey
to the Ants (1994) is shorter and more accessible, intended for the general reader.

Insect Phylogeny (1981) by W Hennig. Although out of date and in places difficult to read, this still remains a seminal work
by the great German entomologist Willi Hennig. It was one of the first works to apply the principles of cladistics to estimating
evolutionary relationships between organisms, and many of its conclusions are still accepted today.

Imm's General Textbook of Entomology (1957; 10th edition 1977) volume 2 by O W Richards and R G Davies. An excellent
textbook introduction to insect diversity, dealing with each group in detail. A good primer for those interested in the whole
range of insect forms.

The Insects: Structure and Function (1982) by R F Chapman. A textbook that emphasizes a functional approach to the study
of insects. Readable and highly informative.

BIRDS
Robert Prys-Jones

Birds fascinate people. Colourful, vocal, and accessible, they provide an avenue through which we can begin to obtain
understanding of the selective forces moulding the living world to which we belong. Partly as a result, the breadth of
knowledge available on birds is unrivalled for other animal groups. This knowledge, combined with the affection with which
most are held, has placed birds at the forefront of efforts by conservation organizations worldwide to maintain natural
environments in the face of overwhelming and ever accelerating human-induced change. Birds thus demand our attention, not
only for the amazing creatures they are, but also for the role they can play as a shield for the great unknown world that is
vanishing around us.
The pleasure of studying birds and the pleasure of finding out new things can be combined at small cost in money, though more
in time, by anyone so inclined.
DAVID LACK

The Life of the Robin (1943) by David Lack. A classic, highly readable account of the life of a bird species, written by one of
the century's pre-eminent ornithologists.

Finches (1972) by Ian Newton. Written with enthusiasm from great personal experience, this is a model of how to write a
comparative account of the behaviour and ecology of a bird family.

The Web of Adaptation (1976) by David Snow. A strangely little-known but compellingly readable account of the behaviour
of fruit-eating birds in the American tropics.

The Age of Birds (1980) by Alan Feduccia. The evolutionary history of birds is a topic of great current research, but this
remains the best introduction to the subject.

Bird Migration (1983) by Chris Mead. A wide-ranging, well-illustrated overview of a subject that holds a particular
fascination for many bird-watchers.

Save the Birds (1987) by Anthony Diamond. Produced in a number of languages and national editions, this book provides
authoritative and beautifully illustrated insight into the problems that endanger a depressingly large number of bird species
worldwide.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ornithology (1991) edited by Michael Brooke and Tim Birkhead. Undoubtedly the place to
begin pursuing an interest in almost any aspect of ornithology. Well arranged and illustrated, and clearly written by an
impressive team of contributors.

Dunnock Behaviour and Social Evolution (1992) by Nicholas Davies. Fifty years on from Lack's Life of the Robin, this is a
brilliantly written account of the insights that arise from combining detailed fieldwork on a species with modern evolutionary
theory.

Handbook of the Birds of the World (1992, continuing) edited by Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott, and Jordi Sargatal. With
two of a proposed 12 volumes now published, it is impossible to praise this work too highly. Immensely ambitious and
astonishingly illustrated, it combines exceptionally readable family-level reviews with brief but comprehensive species
accounts and distribution maps for every bird species.

The Beak of the Finch (1994) by Jonathan Weiner. Written by a journalist, this books succeeds well in conveying the
fascination inherent in the profoundly important, long-term studies by Peter Grant and his co-workers into the action of natural
selection on Galapagos finch populations.

Peterson, Roger Tory, American, 1908-1996.

A Field Guide to the Birds. Rec: Counterpunch NF NYPL

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Peter Tallack

In order to survive and reproduce successfully, animals have evolved clever ways of finding food, shelter, and mates, avoiding
predators, caring for their young, and so on. Ethology - the study of animal behaviour - views animals as machines with
fascinating mechanics, as organisms with complex life histories, and as the end products of natural selection that have evolved
from ancestors who themselves lived and behaved and were successful in producing offspring.
The subject ranges from microscopic investigations of genetic mechanisms and nervous systems, through experimental work of
the behaviour of whole organisms, to long-term studies on groups of animals in forests, fields, and oceans. There are four
underlying questions of animal behaviour - what are the mechanisms that control it? why or how are they useful? how did they
develop? what is their evolutionary history? - and a vast array of splendid books that attempt to provide answers.
We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed
to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth
that still fills me with astonishment.
RICHARD DAWKINS

The Oxford Companion to Animal Behaviour (1981) edited by David McFarland. A standard handbook that anyone
interested in animals can enjoy. Contains more than 200 articles, each written by a specialist, on a wide range of topics.

King Solomon's Ring (1952) by Konrad Lorenz. A gripping introduction to mod-em animal behaviour by one of its founders,
an advocate of the view that most animal behaviour is genetically fixed or innate. Full of original insights and a pleasure to
read.

The Study of Instinct (1951) by Niko Tinbergen. A systematic discussion of the beginning of ethology written with brilliant
clarity by the pioneer of the biological study of animal behaviour under natural or near-natural conditions. Important and
influential.

The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees (1967) by Karl von Frisch. A definitive account of von Frisch's marvellous
observations and experiments on the waggle dance and other forms of honeybee communication behaviour. The culmination of
more than 50 years of research, this is a genuine classic.

In the Shadow of Man (1983) by Jane Goodall. Goodall's work with the chimpanzees of Gombe is one of the great scientific
achievements of the 20th century. Her detailed revelations of their behaviour first appeared in this lyrical book, written with
sympathy and understanding.

Sociobiology (1975) by Edward 0 Wilson. This groundbreaking study of the biological basis of all social behaviour on social
animals was the subject of much controversy when it first appeared, principally because of the final chapter focusing on
humans. Authoritative, encyclopedic, and readable.

Wilson, Edward O., American, 1929- .

(See also Hoelldobler, Bert and Edward O. Wilson)
Sociobiology. Rec: LAT National Review
The Diversity of Life. Rec: NYPL

The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. The author's first book and still his most famous. An engrossing look at
evolution and behaviour from a gene's-eye perspective, expounded with clarity, wit, and verve. Forceful and persuasive.

How Monkeys See the World (1990) by Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth. The authors describe their superb study of
signalling in vervet monkeys. The enthralling ideas and lucid presentation combine to make this the best exploration so far of
what goes on inside the mind of another species.

The Red Queen (1993) by Matt Ridley. A brilliant look at the evolution of sex and its implications for behaviour, providing a
rich collection of insights into the private lives of a whole host of creatures.

The Tangled Wing (1982) by Melvin Konner. A poetic and masterly survey of the biological constraints on human nature,
including what animal behaviour can and cannot tell us about ourselves.

ANIMAL RIGHTS
Andrew Linzey

The moral status of animals has emerged as a new field of study in its own right. In the area of philosophy alone, within the last
20 years contemporary moral philosophers have written more on the topic of human responsibility to other animals than their
predecessors had written during the previous 2,000 years. In fact, ethical concern for animals is not new. Although Western
culture has generally accorded animals a low status, almost every thinker from Pythagoras to Schweitzer has at least considered
the question of duties to animals. at is new is a major shift in ethical sensitivity. The old idea that animals are simply resources,
machines, tools, things here for our use, is slowly but surely giving way to another perception that sentient beings have value in
themselves, inherent dignity, and rights. This revolution of sensibility has been facilitated by a number of pioneering works in
the field of ethics, philosophy, and religion. Listed here are some of the major works that have been significant during the
modern period.

The time is coming, however, when people will be astonished that mankind needed so
long a time to learn to regard thoughtless injury to life as incompatible with ethics.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Civilization and Ethics (1923) by Albert Schweitzer. Although Schweitzer was not the first to embrace the humane treatment
of animals, his doctrine of `reverence for life' has been widely influential. Civilization and Ethics is the second volume of his
wide-ranging critique of Western philosophy. According to Schweitzer, reverence for life is the `basic principle of the moral'.
`It is good to maintain and encourage life; it is bad to destroy life or to obstruct it.' Although Schweitzerian doctrine - in its
original form at least - has few followers today, it is difficult not to be impressed by the sheer profundity of this thought.
Readable and very challenging.

Animal Rights (1976) by Andrew Linzey. This slim volume effectively heralded the modem animal rights movement. It argues
that sentiency (the ability to experience pain and suffering) rather than `personhood', `soulfulness', or `rationality' should be the
criterion for rights; and examines our current use of animals as food, for science, and for sport. Criticizes the Judaeo-Christian
tradition for its theological insensitivity to animals. Limey's later works, Christianity and the Rights of Animals 1987 and
Animal Theology 1994, develop his theological critique of Western religious attitudes.

Animal Liberation (1976) by Peter Singer. Following on the heels of Animal Rights, Singer's work is a philosophical defence
of the sentiency criterion for moral consider-ability. If a being suffers, there can be no good reason why that suffering should
not be taken into consideration. Argues that many contemporary practices are `speciesist'; that is, the result of an arbitrary and
unjustifiable prejudice against animals. Hugely popular and readable book, still in print.

The Moral Status of Animals (1977) by Stephen R L Clark. Another heavyweight philosophical defence of animals. It argues
that the humanitarian tradition against cruelty within Western culture should compel us to rethink our attitudes to animals and
become vegetarians. Not an easy read but frill of challenging insights.

Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 (1983) by Keith Thomas. Consummately
impressive history of the origins of modern sensibility to animals. Charts with great skill the movement of ideas from medieval
views of human supremacy to the emergence of Victorian philanthropy. Especially good on the religious aspects and the role
of theology for and against animal welfare. Thomas is a celebrated historian and a very fine writer.

The Case for Animal Rights (1983) by Tom Regan. Yet another heavyweight philosophical book. Argues that all animals are
`subjects of a life' and have intrinsic value, and therefore rights. Maintains that only a theory of rights can do justice to our
moral obligations to animals. A significant philosophical contribution, nicely textured writing, but no easy read.

The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science (1989) by Bernard E Rollin. Rollin is one of the few
animal-rights theorists equally versed in physiology, philosophy, and bioethics. This is a powerful critique of the view that
animals do not have a mental life and cannot suffer, especially critical of experimental scientists who work with animals. Rollin
developed the world's first course in veterinary ethics and animal rights at Colorado State University.

Political Theory and Animal Rights (1990) edited by P A B Clarke and Andrew Limey. A major anthology comprising 60
extracts from political theorists, philosophers, and theologians including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Rene
Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, George Berkeley, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gottfried Leibniz,
Montaigne, Richard Hooker, Karl Marx, Albert Schweitzer, and Bertrand Russell. The anthology shows how various concerns
about animals form part of a long historical tradition and details the major shifts of thinking about the status of animals.
Indispensable to understanding the emergence of the modem animal-rights movement.

Created from the Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (1991) by James Rachels. A powerful defence of Darwin,
arguing that, correctly understood, Darwinism provides a strong theoretical basis for animal rights. Maintains that Darwin, in
holding that humans are `created from the animals', laid the foundations for a new inclusivist ethic. Chapter 5 on `Morality
without the idea that humans are special' is provocative and challenging. Written in an accessible style with wit and elegance.

The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism (1993) by Colin Spencer. The first major history of vegetarianism from
early humanoids to the ethical vegetarianism of the 1990s. Spencer's conclusion echoes the words of Henry Beston: `We need
another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals ... They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are
other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.' A
fascinating volume, remarkable for its breadth and lucidity.

PLANTS: INTRODUCTION
Sandra Knapp and Bob Press

Plants are the basis for all life on Earth. Their ability to convert the Sun's energy into a usable form places them at the base of
the pyramid of life. Plants range from simple to highly complex organisms and occupy a bewildering variety of niches in the
natural world. They can be parasites, carnivores, mimics, and are often equal partners with animals in intricate associations.
The science of botany comprises the study of plants, their diversity of form and function, their distribution, and their uses.

I indulged the fancy once upon a time that a botanist was one who
distinguished plants by sight: but I observe that, unless scent, taste and
touch come in and that very obviously, a botanist is of no account.
CARL VON LINNE

The Compleat Naturalist (1971) by Wilfred Blunt is a lively and beautifully illustrated biography of the world's most
influential botanist, Carl von Linne (otherwise known as Carolus Linnaeus). In the 18th century he devised not only the first
adequate system for classifying plants - the then notorious sexual system - but also the binomial system of Latin plant names
which remains the universal currency among botanists.

The Life of Plants (1964; revised 1981) by E J H Corner is a successful solution to the problem of writing a `small book about
plants in toto' and an enthusiastic counter to previous `thoroughly dull and dully thorough' works on the subject.

The Plant Book (1990) by David Mabberly follows in the footsteps of classic works by J C Willis, A Cronquist, and others. It
is as complete a reference to the vascular plants as it is possible to have, with entries for evey currently accepted family and
genus. Brief text gives information on interrelationships, morphological characteristics, distributions, numbers of species, and
uses.

Plant Taxonomy (1990) by Tod Stuessy is a heavyweight text by one of the most authoritative taxonomists around. Slightly
daunting but comprehensive and thought-provoking.

Biology of Plants (5th edition 1992) by Peter Raven, Ray Evert, and Susan Eichorn. As well as explaining form and function,
the authors address the themes of heredity, evolutionary relationships, and ecology, providing a rounded picture of plant
biology.

The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening (1992) edited by A Huxley is a comprehensive work
covering most plants ever cultivated. It is liberally sprinkled with explanations of gardening terms and techniques as well as
describing numerous cultivars, hybrids, and cultivated plants of both wild and purely garden origin.

The Plant Finder (1994-95 edition) published by the Hardy Plant Society is the ultimate plant catalogue, listing 55,000
different plants and where to obtain them in the UK. This is where to find those little-known species you have always wanted
to cultivate.

The Private Life of Plants (1995) by David Attenborough is an eminently readable and lavishly illustrated account of different
aspects of the lives of plants, from dispersal, growth, and nutrition to plant-animal interactions and survival strategies. Based
on his television series for the BBC.

Ayensu, Edward S. and Robert A. DeFilipps, Ghanaian-American and American, 1935- and 1939-.
Endangered and Threatened Plants of the United States. Rec: LAT

PLANT VARIETIES
Sandra Knapp and Bob Press
There are in excess of 250,000 species of vascular plants alone in the world and species new to science are discovered and
described almost daily, especially from tropical regions where the biodiversity is still nowhere near being adequately
quantified. Gardeners and horticulturalists have added enormously to this natural variety by producing cultivars of purely
garden origin. The limits and defining characteristics of taxa are constantly under review, changing with the increase in our
understanding of the plants involved. Two common methods of getting to grips with this wealth of life are taxonomy and
floristics. Taxonomy is the describing, naming, and classifying of organisms - in this case plants. Floristics focuses on the
whole flora of a geographical region.

Locality often makes plants a little different, but it has never changed one species into another, not even in the brain of any
sane botanist.
CARL. VON LINK$

Carnivorous Plants (1979) by Adrian Slack is still probably the best book describing a fascinatingly macabre and diverse
group of plants which are linked by their unique method of supplementary nutrition.

Palms (1982) by Alec Blombery and Tony Rodd. A good example of a study of a single group of plants, this book deals with
the cultivation, care, and economic importance of palms as well as describing the world's species.

A World of Ferns (1991) by Josephine Camus, Clive Jermy, and Barry Thomas is a general introduction to the subject of
ferns, organized by habitat. The beautiful photographs show the diversity of the group.

Crucifers of Great Britain and Ireland (1991) by Tim Rich. Number six in a series of seven BSBI Handbooks by various
authors, pitched at the more committed botanist. The series covers difficult and taxonomically challenging groups of plants in
the British Isles flora, including sedges, umbellifers, docks, willows, and roses. All are written and illustrated to the highest
standards.

Field Guide to the Trees of Britain and Europe (1992) by Bob Press is typical of the New Holland Field Guides. The books
in this series, by various authors, epitomize the most common style of photographic guides to identifying plants, and reflect the
increasing tendency to include all species in Europe rather than a limited selection of them.

Guide to Flowering Plant Families (1994) by Wendy Zomlefer is a synoptic treatment of the flowering-plant families that
occur in the USA. Despite this apparent geographical limitation, it is useful almost anywhere and has the added bonus of lucid,
easily assimilated sections on modern taxonomic methods, cladistics in taxonomy, and botanical terminology.

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

Sandra Knapp and Bob Press

Living things are complex and a first step in their study is to know how and why they are constructed as they are. Structure and
function are indivisible; to study one without the other is to understand only half the story. The basic principles of different
functions are similar throughout the plant kingdom but the means by which they may be achieved and, therefore, the range and
type of structures required, are much more varied. Habitat, too, is highly influential on plant structure. Plants occur in a wide
range of habitats, from boiling springs to ice-bound tundra and from sea beds to mountaintops; their structural diversity is
equally broad. Within this diversity of form there are also examples of superficial similarity between unrelated groups of
plants; for example, the cactuses of North and Central America and succulent Euphorbias from the deserts of the Old World.
Different organs may be modified to meet the same environmental demands, and homology, the principle of comparing like
with like, is especially important when dealing with morphological features of plants where a 'leaf may be a true leaf, a leaf
stalk, a stipule, or a stem, and a `bulb' may derive from a root, a stem, a leaf base, or a bud.

A biologist, regardless of his specialty, cannot afford to lose sight of the whole
organism if his goal is the understanding of the organic world.
KATHERINE ESAU

Anatomy of Flowering Plants: An Introduction to Structure and Development (1987) by Paula Rudall is a concise but
comprehensive description of plant anatomy and its pre-eminent role in plant taxonomy. Stunningly illustrated.
Plant Form. An Illustrated Gude to Flowering Plant Morphology (1991) by Adrian Bell is a rapid-reference guide to the
architecture and construction of plants, giving concise explanations of the derivation and interpretation of morphological
features. Suitable for users of varying abilities.

Bark: The Formation, Characteristics and Uses of Bark Around the World (1993) by Ghillean and Anne Prance. Bark is
one of the defming tissues of woody plants_ This work uses photographs to explain its variety of form, function, and use
worldwide.

THE LIVES OF PLANTS

Stephen Webster

Plants are the producers of our planet. They are the organisms that absorb the Sun's light and manufacture the food on which
animals depend. The waste product of that process we also need rather a lot: oxygen. As these books show, plants are every bit
as fascinating and important as animals.

The thirsty earth sucks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again. / The plants suck in the earth, and are / With
constant drinking fresh and fair.
ABRAHAM COWI.EY

The Fate of the Forest (1989) by Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn. A measured account of the destruction of the
Amazonian tropical rainforest. Filled with interesting details on the flora of Amazonia.

The Pollination of Plants (1973) by Michael Proctor and Peter Yeo. A rich source of information on the many and varied ways
plants have found of getting pollen from one to another.

The Private Life of Plants (1994) by David Attenborough. Beautifully illustrated account of the lifestyles of plants, combined
with detailed text and the traditional Attenborough enthusiasm.

The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham. Fiction, but still a compelling story of the worst nightmare - the day the
plants turned against mankind. Quite a lot of interesting botanical detail too.

A Passion for Plants (1995) by Clive Langmead. The subject of the book is as much Ghillean Prance as it is plants. For Prance
is director of Kew Gardens and is a man in love - with things botanical. Essential reading for someone who thinks plants are
dull.

Mushrooms (1990) by Roger Phillips. Strictly speaking, mushrooms are fungi, not plants, but we eat them and tread on them
as though they were plants. This book will open up a completely new world for you - and help you distinguish between the safe
and the dangerous.

Vegetables (1995) by Roger Phillips and Martin Rix. A survey of the edibles we normally see in the greengrocery or down at
the allotment, plus some oddities. Fascinating, scientific, and well illustrated.

AGRICULTURE AND MEDICINAL PLANTS

Sandra Knapp and Bob Press

Agriculture played no part in the earliest human societies but once the first plant domestications took place, crops became a
major factor in shaping our civilization. In its broadest sense, modern agriculture encompasses such aspects as gene
manipulation and conservation of wild progenitors as well as the more prosaic planting, growing, and harvesting of crops.
Medicinal usage of plants almost certainly dates from man's earliest history. Initially there was probably little or no difference
between plants as healthful foods and plants as curatives in the crudest sense. When these roles diverged, medicinal use
gradually became entwined with folklore, mysticism, and other philosophical accoutrements, often to the point of entirely
obscuring the original purpose of the plant. Synthetic drugs and chemicals have largely replaced herbal reme-
dies in the industrialized world, but extracts derived from plants maintain an important role in modern medicine and for many
peoples traditional drugs remain their only available source of treatment. The renewed interest in natural plant extracts is a
reminder that, once upon a time, we were all similarly reliant on herbs and herbal lore.

I have oft-times declared, how by the outward shapes and qualities

of things we may know their inward virtues.
PARACELSUS

Nightshades, the Paradoxical Plants (1969) by Charles Heiser successfully uses a `let's tell' style to convey the importance of
an intriguing group of medicinal plants.

Medical Botany - Plants Affecting Man's Health (1977) by Walter Lewis and Memory Elvin-Lewis. A reference work with
the information organized both by plant and by the conditions treated. The coverage is worldwide and the data easily
accessible.

Seed to Civilization (1981) by Charles Heiser covers the origins and evolution of agriculture in a readable style by focusing on
the major food species.

The New Age Herbalist (1988) by Richard Mabey is an up-to-date herbal in the European tradition. Mabey uses modem
interpretation and relevant medical research to explain and justify the use of traditional remedies.

Field Guide to the Crops of Britain and Europe (1989) by G de Rougemont is a useful tool for identifying the numerous
crop plants grown in the region.

Plants and People (1990) by Anna Lewington is a book of the uses of plants by people for agriculture and medicine. Beautiful
coffee-table style disguises a highly authoritative work.

Earthly Goods (1994) by Christopher Joyce tackles the complex relationships between medicinal plant hunters, local peoples,
conservationists, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as emotive issues including `ownership' of biodiversity. The book is
leavened with descriptions of eccentric scientists, the author's navels, and examples of useful plants.

A Dictionary of Folklore (1995) by Roy Vickery is a source of information on plants in folklore and ethnobotany in the British
Isles, including superstitions and customs, legends, folk medicine, and other uses. Unusually for the subject matter, Vickery
emphasizes present-day practices and beliefs (those current during 1975-94) as well as dealing with older traditions.

ENVIRONMENT: BIODIVERSITY
Nigel Dudley

Biodiversity, or biological diversity, refers to the richness and variety of life, measured by the number of species of plants and
animals, their genetic variety, and the ways they interact in ecosystems. Ten years ago `biodiversity' did not even appear in
dictionaries, yet in 1992 it received international attention through agreement of the Convention on Biological Diversity at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The concept marks an increasing sophistication in our understanding of ecology. Plants and
animals need a working ecosystem. Variety within a species may be as important, from an evolutionary standpoint, as several
different species. Preservation of nothing but a relic population may not be much better than complete extinction. Yet at the
moment, biodiversity is disappearing faster than at any time in the Earth's history, due to habitat destruction, overexploitation
and pollution.
Biodiversity already commands an impressive library of books. The titles listed below help show how the idea is developing,
give a range of viewpoints about the importance of biodiversity, and outline some options for management of biodiversity in
the future.

Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think, but more
complex than we can think.
FRANK EGLER

The Sinking Ark (1979) by Norman Myers. Argues that we face a massive loss of species, particularly through tropical
deforestation, and that conservation efforts are manifestly failing to counter this trend. In this book he also puts the practical
case for preserving species, in terms of their use as genetic resources for foodstuffs, medicines, and so on; a theme which he
has continued to developed in a number of further titles, including The Primary Source.
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979) by James Lovelock. Proposes the still heretical theory that the planet itself is,
biologically speaking, a self-regulating mechanism. Whether you agree with Lovelock or not, he presents a sober and well-
argued case, and his book helped focus attention on the role that different components play in the ecology of the planet, thus
paving the way for discussion on biodiversity.

Biodiversity (1988) edited by Edward 0 Wilson. The first book to crystallize the debate about biodiversity, which also brought
the word itself to public attention. A fascinating array of articles, papers, and even poems about biological diversity around the
world. Still the best single introduction to the subject. See also The Diversity of Life by Wilson himself for a readable
introduction to the subject.

Conserving the World's Biological Diversity (1990) by Jeffrey A McNeely, Kenton R Miller, Walter V Reid, Russell A
Mittermeir, and Timothy B Werner. The most comprehensive attempt so far to set an agenda for international conservation of
biodiversity. Much of the thinking was later incorporated into proposals for the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The Threatened Gene: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity (1990) by Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney.
Biodiversity loss does not only affect natural systems; during the 20th century we have lost hundreds of traditional crop strains
and livestock breeds. This meticulously researched and readable book looks at what has happened, how genetic diversity has
been lost in food production, and why it matters.

Biodiversity: Social and Ecological Consequences (1992) by Vandana Shiva. Proposes that biodiversity conservation has to
be tackled by first addressing problems of intensive farming and North-South relations. It is one of a series of books by a noted
Indian scientist and feminist; her Staying Alive looks at women's issues in more detail.

Global Biodiversity: The Status of the Earth's Living Resources (1992) edited by Brian Groombridge. A massive review of
biodiversity around the world, looking at the status of key ecosystems, the human uses of plants and animals, rates of change in
natural systems, and so on.

Saving Nature's Legacy (1994) by Reed F Noss and Allen Y Cooperrider. Guidelines on practical biodiversiry conservation at
a landscape level.

ECOLOGY
Nigel Dudley

Ecology has become one of the fastest-growing scientific disciplines of the latter 20th century, and the serious student can refer
to a seemingly endless stream of textbooks, monographs, journals, and conference proceedings. The following list has a more
modest aim: to introduce some basic and accessible books for the general reader that will outline some of the key ideas for the
nonspecialist. As such, it includes two historical titles from people who started to focus attention on issues of ecology, and
looks at some accessible modem interpretations.

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil - to
regard man as an inhabitant, or a pan and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
HENRY THOREAU

The Natural History of Selborne (1789; several recent editions) by Gilbert White. Why should a series of letters about natural
history, written by an obscure parson living near the English South Downs, become a perennial bestseller? Perhaps because
White was one of the first to seek the interrelationships in nature, and to look beyond simple classification of biology. Still
fascinating, even if White did make a few mistakes, perhaps most famously that swallows and martins overwintered by
hibernating in burrows rather than by migrating.

The Portable Thoreau (1980) edited by Carl Bode. An excellent introduction to one of the best nature writers of all time,
including the complete text of Walden (1854), Thoreau's account of living in a remote house in the Maine woods and of the
surrounding nature, along with selections from his journals, The Maine Woods, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,
and other works.
History of the Countryside (1990) by Oliver Rackham. For much of the world, ecology is now intimately tied up with human
history, and with the changes that farming, forestry, industry, and migration patterns have made on the landscape. Rackham's
book, which concentrates particularly on England, shows how ecology and history can be matched to explain the current
landscape and ecology. Fascinating and provocative.

Ecology (1990) by M Begon, J L Harper, and C R Townsend. One of the more read-able of a series of textbooks on ecology,
looking at relationships within populations and communities.

Ecological Imperialism (1993) by Alfred W Crosby. Looks at the biological expansion of Europe over 1,000 years, with
particular emphasis on the colonial period, and argues that displacement of native peoples by Europeans in most temperate
regions was driven as much by ecology as by military conquest. Interesting for its perspectives linking ecology with historical
movements.

Global Marine Biological Diversity (1993) edited by Elliott A Norse. Looks at the ecology of marine systems and at steps to
address current problems facing the world's seas and oceans.

The Private Life of Plants (1995) by David Attenborough. A stimulating introduction to plants and the way that they function,
by one of the world's best-known natural-history filmmakers and writers. Important because plant ecology is so often ignored
by anyone but the professional academics. Attenborough has written many fascinating books; watch out also for Life on Earth,
which starts from a more general ecological perspective.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Nigel Dudley

Environmental awareness did not suddenly emerge, fully fledged, some time during the 1980s. A concern about environmental
impact of human society can be traced back for hundreds of years and, for example, the first pamphlet on air pollution,
Fumifugion: or the smoake of London dissipated, was published by John Evelyn in London in 1666. Since then, ideas have
developed gradually, and have been refined and some-times revised as our understanding of the environment has become more
sophisticated. The list below gives some of the milestone publications of the `modern' environmental movement. A few of the
earlier titles may now sometimes seem a little simplistic, or their ideas have been so incorporated into mainstream thinking that
they hardly seem radical any more. All of them have played important roles in shaping, and often changing, people's thinking
about our relationship to the planet.

Pollution has a long history. The creation of wastes has been one of the distinguishing characteristics of every human society.
CLIVE PONTING

Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson. Probably the one book that, more than any other, kick-started today's environmental
movement. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist, who drafted this passionate expose about the impact of pesticides on the
environment when she was already seriously ill. The book caused a furore and Carson spent her last months being bitterly
attacked by industry representatives. She helped change the outlook of a generation. Beautifully written and cogently argued,
still fresh after 35 years.

Small Is Beautiful (1973) by E P Schumacher. The title of the book, which delighted or infuriated readers during a period
when technology and transnational business practices were increasingly being challenged, was actually suggested by the
publisher. The essays give a theoretical background to such developments as intermediate technology. The best, such as
`Buddhist economics', remain pertinent and readable today.

The Limits to Growth (1975) by Donella L and Dennis L Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W Behrens III. An early
and influential attempt to map the likely impacts of resource depletion using computer modelling. Coming immediately after
the 1973 oil crisis, the book helped create new attitudes towards nonrenewable resources. The predictions have proved to be
overly pessimistic in terms of time scale, although the central argument remains valid, and the team produced a new analysis,
Beyond the Limits, almost 20 years later.

How the Other Half Dies - The Real Reasons for World Hunger (1976) by Susan George. It is commonly argued that
`overpopulation' is the greatest threat facing the human race, and the major cause of hunger and famine. Susan George
elegantly and comprehensively demolishes these claims, showing that access to food has more to do with the priorities of
international agribusiness and the ways that development aid is used and abused.

Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace (1977) by Amory Lovins. At a time when solar and wind power were regarded
as little more than utopian dreams, Lovins turned the argument around and boldly claimed that, using established technologies,
renewable sources will supply all our energy in the future. Part research paper and part polemic, it provided much of the
inspiration for current developments of wind farms, solar villages and small-scale hydropower projects. `Soft energy' became
synonymous with post-oil energy sources.

The Nuclear Barons (1981) by Peter Pringle and James Spiegelman. The other half of the energy debate: a detailed and
readable analysis of the rise of nuclear power, from early weapons-testing through to then current debates about energy. Written
in advance of the major US nuclear accident at Harrisburg and the disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the book sounds
prophetic warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy and remains the best one-volume history of the first 40 years of nuclear
development.

In the Rainforest (1984) by Catherine Caufield. Repeated opinion surveys show that tropical deforestation is the single
environmental issue that causes the most concern around the world. This book, written by an American journalist, is the
account of a personal investigation into causes and effects of tropical forest loss that covered Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Brundtland Report: Our Common Future (1987) by World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro
Harlem Brundtland. The most comprehensive official international attempt to define `sustainable development' and to
harmonize the needs of people and environment, coordinated by the then prime minister of Norway. Like most such efforts at
consensus, it contains contradictions and compromises. Important because of its influence on many governmental and United
Nations initiatives.

The Green History of the World (1991) by Clive Ponting. A history of the world from an environmental standpoint, packed
with information but also presenting a sustained argument about the links between ecology and human activities, and linking in
the influence of religious thought and political philosophy. An excellent one-volume introduction.

How Much is Enough? (1992) by an Thein Durning. Addressing the issue that will increasingly dominate the debate about the
environment in the next few years; how the rapidly increasing levels of consumption - of raw materials, energy and other
resources - by the rich fifth of the population can be reconciled with the needs of the environment and of the poorer human
majority.

CONSERVATION
Peter Tallack

Round the globe, biological communities that took millions of years to develop are being devastated by human action. at is bad
for biological diversity will almost certainly be bad for the human population, because we too are dependent on the natural
environment. Conservation biology is the scientific discipline born of this crisis. Its aim is to study and prevent the loss of
biological diversity: specifically, the extinction of species, the loss of genetic variation, and the destruction of biological
communities. It brings together people and knowledge from many different fields.

When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another
heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.
Wrr mivt BEEBE

The Diversity of Life (1992) by Edward 0 Wilson. An outstanding overview of the biodiversity crisis, as well as basic
concepts such as evolutionary change, extinction, and speciation, written for the general public. The all-encompassing range,
the compelling case for conservation, and the delightful natural history are virtues enough to recommend this book.

Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare (1980) by Paul Colinvaux. An excellent read-able guide to how the living world works.
The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967) by Robert MacArthur and Edward 0 Wilson. This seminal text presents and
explores the relationship between the number of species on an island and its size, distance from the mainland, and
biogeographical history. The book has stimulated more research in conservation than any other work and remains controversial.
Nature's Keepers (1995) by Stephen Budiansky. An environmental journalist explains in simple terms the new science of
mathematical ecology, which is providing tools for effective environmental management by revealing how ecosystems really
work and interact.

Reflections of Eden (1995) by Birute M F Galdikas. A pioneering primatologist and world leader in conservation tells the
enthralling story of her 25-year study of the orangutans of the Borneo rainforests. A powerful advertisement for the
preservation of these great apes and their habitat.

The Last Panda (1992) by George D Schaller. A fascinating account of the author's efforts to study and save the giant panda.
He successfully mixes natural history with the politics of conservation: the expose of the countless cover-ups and fatal mistakes
of zoos, governments, and international wildlife groups makes for gripping and often depressing reading.

Last Chance to See (1990) by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
teams up with a zoologist in this lively but poignant tour of the imminent threat of extinction facing many well-known species.

Gerald Durrell's Army (1992) by Edward Whitley. Gerald Durrell - the world's most intrepid animal collector, who died in
1995 - was also the 'commander of an army of local people trained to save their own wildlife. This is a first--hand globetrotting
account of their trials and tribulations.

Noah's Choice (1995) by Charles C Mann and Mark L Plummer. Explores the politics of endangered species with some good
reporting on what goes on inside he US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Last Animals at the Zoo (1991) by Colin Tudge. A look behind the scenes at the difficulties and successes of captive breeding.
The author convincingly argues that zoos are now an essential part of modem conservation strategy.

ANTHROPOLOGY: BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Helen M MacBeth

Biological anthropology arose out of physical anthropology, which involved measuring and comparing, on the one hand, living
peoples worldwide and, on the other hand, the fossilized bones of early humans or their even earlier ancestors. The study of
this prehistory is also called palaeoanthropology. The aspects to study about living humans mushroomed with the increase in
biochemical and molecular science, to include genetics, protein analysis, nutrition, parasites, diseases, and all aspects of human
physiology and biochemistry. Anthropology means the science of humans, but the subject matter is usually concentrated on
humans in groups.
Interest in the evolution, past and ongoing, of human biology is central to the subject. So a closely related discipline is the
study of our closest relatives, the monkeys and apes. Although humans are clearly biological organisms like other animals, they
are distinctive because of the extent of their thought processes and social organization. Whereas some biological
anthropologists are specialists in genetics, biochemistry, nutrition, and so on, the contribution of others is much more generalist
as they integrate social processes into their perception of biological outcomes. Biological anthropology is a subject for
everyone with or without background education in biology, for it is only human to be interested in ourselves.

The extent of human variability is enormous, so large that no two individuals who have ever lived or will ever live can ever be
exactly the same. The fundamental causes for this variability lie in ... the genes inherited from our parents, and the infinity of
environments which act upon and within individuals from conception to death.
G AINSWORTH HARRISON

Introduction to Physical Anthropology (6th edition 1994) by R Jurmain and H Nelson. An excellent first reader for the layman
or new student.

Human Biology: an introduction to human evolution, variation, growth and ecology (3rd edition 1988) by G A Harrison, J
M Tanner, D R Pilbeam, and P T Baker. More difficult, but probably the central textbook for the discipline.

Human Variation, Races, Types and Ethnic Groups (3rd edition 1992) by Stephen Molnar. Intermediate between the above
two books; gives useful insight into that politically sensitive topic commonly known as `race'.
Human Populations: Diversity and Adaptation (1995) edited by A J Boyce and V Reynolds. A very recent collection of
research papers on a wide spectrum of biological anthropological topics, collated in honour of the retirement of Professor G A
Harrison, who for over a generation has been a central figure in the discipline.

Humankind Emerging (1976) by B G Campbell. Now rather dated but a well-illustrated book for those who like a Time-Life
approach to understanding human evolution.

The Book of Man, the Quest to Discover Our Genetic Heritage (1994) by W F Bodmer and R McKie. A clear and simple
book with an emphasis on the understanding of genetics for understanding ourselves.

The Language of the Genes, Biology, History and the Evolutionary Future (1993) by Steve Jones. A fascinating and
painless way into understanding genetics by the Reith lecturer.

Human Biology and Ecology (1977) by A Damon was written for the layman or first-year student and despite its date gives
useful insight.

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Chris Holdsworth

Who are we? The answer to this question, more than any other, inspires anthropology. We are all fundamentally alike, yet we
live in an amazing diversity of cultures. By participating in and observing everyday life in other cultures, anthropologists hope
to obtain an understanding of how others experience life.
At the heart of anthropology is ethnography: a written description of the culture of another society and an account of the
anthropologist's experience within that culture. It is through the comparative study of other cultures that anthropologists hope
to understand who we are. But anthropology is a discipline in turmoil. It consists of a multiplicity of theoretical approaches and
areas of concern, is a uniquely Western development, and the ethnography is now recognized as essentially autobiographical. In
recent years this has led many anthropologists to question the validity of their methods, epistemology, and some of their most
basic concepts such as culture, society, the self, rationality, and human nature.

In anthropology we study ourselves, precisely because it requires us to

change our conception of who `we' are, from an exclusive, Western `we'
to an inclusive, global one. To adopt an anthropological attitude is to
drop the pretence of our belonging to a select association of Westerners,
uniquely privileged to look in upon the inhabitants of `other cultures',
and to recognize that along with the others whose company we share (albeit
temporarily), we are all fellow travellers in the same world. By comparing
experience - `sharing notes' - we can reach a better understanding of what such
journeying entails, where we have come from, and where we are going.
TIM INGOLD

Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) by Bronislaw Malinowski. A classic account of the interrelationship between magic
and the ceremonial exchange of valuables in the South Seas by one of the founders of modern anthropology. Malinowski's
methodological introduction established the standard for future anthropological fieldwork.

Return to Laughter (1954) by Elenore Smith Bowen (pseudonym of Laura Bohannan). A vivid and moving description of life
and death in a Nigerian village as it copes with a smallpox epidemic. The book was one of the first to provide an introspective
account of the fieldwork experience.

Witchcraft, Magic and Oracles among the Azande (1937; abridged edition 1976) by Edward Evans-Pritchard. A description
of Azande beliefs about witchcraft, magic, and sorcery. Evans-Pritchard's theoretical insights about the nature of human
rationality have been very influential, the book being quoted as much by philosophers as anthropologists.

Yanomamo: The Fierce People (1968) by Napoleon Chagnon. A compelling study of the well-known Amazonian be, whose
traditional violent way of life is now under threat from deforestation and the activities of gold miners. Chagnon argues that
their social organization is a dynamic process controlling their chronic warfare.
The Interpretation of Culture (1973) by Clifford Geertz. A collection of essays by America's leading anthropologist
examining the concept of culture, its role in society, and how it should be studied.

Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School (1973) by Adam Kuper. Anthropology is perhaps best
understood through its history. Kuper's well-written account of the theories and characters involved in the development of
British social anthropology is the best there is.

Orientalism (1978) by Edward Said. A controversial critique of the West's interpretation of `the Orient that questions some of
our most basic assumptions about ourselves as Westerners.

Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (1983) by Johannes Fabian. A fascinating discussion of how
anthropology uses time to define the relation ship between the self and the other.

The Gender of the Gift (1988) by Marilyn Strathem. A spirited critique of cross-cultural comparisons that examines initiation
rites and ceremonial exchange in a Melanesian society where male-female relations are based on gift exchange.

Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Society (1994) edited by Tim Ingold. Consisting of 38
essays on a diversity of topics, it is a comprehensive and readable overview of current thinking in the subject.

ARCHAEOLOGY: INTRODUCTION
Paul Bahn

Archaeology is the study of the human past - from the earliest tools to yesterday's garbage - through its material remains. It
developed over the course of centuries from a natural curiosity about the past into antiquarianism and eventually the unique
blend of science and art that characterizes archaeology today. It covers a vast array of topics, from the Stone Age to recent
times, and encompasses many specialities, such as Egyptology and underwater archaeology. Although it is associated in most
people's minds with excavation, this is in fact only one of the many ways that information can be obtained about the past; and
archaeology now calls on specialists from many other subjects, and especially from the sciences, to extract an ever increasing
range of evidence in order to team more about, to understand, and to explain the form and behaviour of past societies.

The archaeological excavator is not digging up things, he is digging up people ...

the life of the past and the present are diverse but indivisible ... Archaeology, in so
far as it is a science, is a science which must be extended into the living and must
indeed itself be lived if it is to partake of a proper vitality.
MORTIMER WHEELER

Archaeology from the Earth (1954) by Mortimer Wheeler. A classic text by one of modem archaeology's greatest pioneers
and practitioners.

The Archaeologist's Handbook (1986) by Jane McIntosh. A useful and readable survey of how we know what we know about
the past.

Past Worlds: The Times Atlas of Archaeology (1988) edited by Chris Scare. A major encyclopedic survey of past cultures by
a battery of specialists.

Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice (1991) by Colin Renfrew and Paul B. A leading textbook that explains, with
examples from all over the world, how archaeologists obtain the evidence to answer the wide range of questions that interest
them.

The Collins Dictionary of Archaeology (1992) edited by Paul B. The most up-to-date reference book offering definitions of
sites, cultures, artefacts, technical and theoretical terms.

Understanding Archaeological Excavation (1993) by Philip Barker. The best available introduction to archaeology's
traditional methods of extracting information from the ground.
Time Detectives (1995) by Brian Fagan. A collection of essays comprising a wide variety of case studies that show how
archaeology uses modem science to obtain information about the past.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology (1995) edited by Paul Bahn. A fully illustrated survey of archaeology's
history, from its beginnings to the present, in all parts of the world.

The Story of Archaeology (1995) by Paul B. A beautifully illustrated collection of 100 spreads - `archaeology's greatest
discoveries' - that display the subject's tremendous range.

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Anthony Burton

This is a new subject: the term `industrial archaeology' appeared in print for the first time in 1955. It can be loosely defined as
the recordings and investigation of the remains of industrial buildings and structures. At first, the work was largely limited to
the period of the Industrial Revolution and that was generally taken as being centred on the vast range of developments that
took place in Great Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries. A feature of the early years was that much of the investigation
was left to amateurs doing work on local cities. Over the years the subject (and its literature) has developed, so that it has
become worldwide and extended to cover the recording and, where appropriate, conservation of industrial sites from any
period. There has also been a movement to place the sites in their human and social as well as a technological context.

It is difficult to carry our minds back to a time when buildings of such

overwhelming presence were not familiar objects, and to understand the impact: their
first appearance must have made. They belonged to a whole new range of man-
made objects of superhuman scale, by means of which the transformation of
England from an agricultural to an industrial country, and later from a largely
rural to an urban one, was given physical form.
J .M RICHARDs

The Functional Tradition (1958) by J M Richards. A seminal work that showed industrial buildings were worthy of study, and
through Eric de Mare's superb photographs disclosed they could even be beautiful.

Industrial Archaeology (1972) by Arthur Raistrick. One of the first, and one of the best, attempts to show how the subject
could be treated in a logical and scholarly fashion.

Remains of a Revolution (1974) by Anthony Burton. A study of the classic period of the British Industrial Revolution, which
combines a study of the physical remains with their human history.

Industrial Archaeology (1975) by Neil Cossons. A standard work which deals systematically with the different branches of
the subject, and an ideal starting point for beginners.

Industrial Archaeology (1976) by Theodore Anton Sanck. This is an introduction to American industrial history, based on a
detailed look at a number of key sites.

Monuments of Industry (1986) by Geoffrey D Hay and Geoffrey P Stell. Although it is limited to Scotland, it is a model of
how sites should be recorded in words, photographs, and drawings.

Civil Engineering 1839-1889 (1991) by Mike Chrimes. One of the few books to look at engineering structures on a worldwide
basis.

TECHNOLOGY: INTRODUCTION
Trevor I Williams

Today, technology is generally regarded as the application of science for practical purposes, but it must be remembered that
many technologies - such as the smelting and working of metals and the processing and weaving of fibres - were well
developed before science as it is now understood existed at all. Others, such as plastics, have emerged almost within living
memory. The term `technology' (as the German technologie) was coined in 1777 by Johann Beckmann of Gottingen.

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no
longer the satisfaction of the primary needs or archetypal wishes, but the
reparation of the evils and damages wrought by the technology of yesteryear.
DENNIS GABOR

A History of Technology: The Twentieth Century c. 1900 - 1950 volumes 6 and 7 (1978) edited by Charles Singer, E J
Holmyard, A R Hall, and Trevor I Williams. This is the recognized comprehensive work on the history of technology, from the
dawn of civilization to the mid-20th century. It deals primarily with the Middle East, Egypt, Europe, and North America.

Science and Civilisation in China (1954) edited by Joseph Needham. This multi-volume work, internationally acclaimed -
commenced in 1954 and still appearing - complements the above with its penetrating and largely original study of the history
of technology in China, relating this to the Middle East and Europe. This is available in an abridged form: The Shorter Science
and Civilisation in China (1978-97; continuing) by Colin A Ronan.

An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology (1990) edited by Ian McNeil. A team of 20 acknowledged experts cover the
history of technology from the Stone Age to the Space Age.

Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia of Invention and Technology (1992) edited by Monty Finniston. One of eight volumes of
the comprehensive Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia.

Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary (1988) edited by P Walker. The latest version of Chambers Technical
Dictionary, which first appeared some 50 years ago. A comprehensive and reliable guide to many thousands of technical terms.

The Power of the Machine (1992) by R A Buchanan. Reviews the social implications of technological revolution, worldwide,
and finds it to be very uneven.

The Materials Revolution (1988) edited by T Forester. A collection of reprinted articles from a variety of sources, intended for
the general reader.

The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (1993) by R Bud. Although biotechnology has been practised for millennia - as
in brewing - it has become an important industrial force only in comparatively recent years. This book is the first authoritative
review of its history.

MATERIALS
Trevor I Williams

The term `material' covers a range of substances from which things can be made. While some fall into broad categories - such
as metals and plastics - others have little in common except their utility. Such, for example, are ceramics and glass, wood and
leather, all used from the dawn of civilization but now appearing in increasingly sophisticated forms.
Today, plastics generally denote some kind of synthetic material - such as polythene or nylon - but it must be remembered that
similar materials abound in nature and have long been in common use. Such, for example, are rubber and shellac. The first
important artificial product to be developed commercially was celluloid (originally Parkesine), a form of cellulose nitrite
plasticized with camphor, invented by Alexander Parkes in 1865.
Metals have played so important a role in the history of civilization that they have been used to designate whole epochs. The
Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and - since roughly the mid-19th century - the Steel Age. For the
greater part of human history no more than eight metals were in common use - gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, zinc, tin, and
mercury. Platinum was introduced in the early 19th century and only more recently have aluminium, magnesium, and titanium
been used in substantial quantities. Others, such as tungsten, vanadium, chromium, molybdenum, and nickel are used in
relatively small quantities for special purposes such as making alloys or electroplating.

The whole of our present material civilization depends on the efficient

harnessing of power, but the control of this power is made possible only by
the use of many varieties of metals and alloys. Without metals no railway,
aeroplane, motorcar, electric motor, or turbine could operate.
W A ALEXANDER AND A STREET

Artifice and Artifacts: 100 Essays in Materials Science (1992) by Robert W C. A compilation of articles written over a span
of 25 years by an acknowledged expert in the field.

Engineering Materials: An Introduction to their Properties and Application (1980) by M F Ashby and D R H Jones. A
guide to the choice of materials for particular purposes.

Advancing Materials Research (1987) by Peter A Psaras and A Dale Langford. A review of recent progress in materials-
science research.

Physical Metallurgy (1974; 3rd revised edition 1993) edited by Robert W Cahn and Peter Haasen. Generally rated the most
authoritative and up-to-date book in this field.

Metals in the Service of Man (1972) by William Alexander and Arthur Street. A short, reliable guide for the general reader.

A Hundred Years of Metallurgy (1963) by W H Dennis. A good general account of developments in metallurgy from roughly
the middle of the 19th century.

Metals, Ceramics, and Polymers (1974) by 0 Wyatt and D Dew-Hughes. A comprehensive review of three major fields,
effectively linking engineering and science.

Pioneers in Polymer Science (1989) edited by Raymond B Seymour. Basically a biographical study, but contains much
background information.

The First Century of Plastics (1963) by M Kaufman. A comprehensive review, published under the imprint of the Plastics
Institute.

NONRENEWABLE ENERGY
Alan Williams

The majority of the country's energy, with one or two exceptions, is produced by fossil fuels or a combination of fossil and
biofuels. This is reflected in a considerable number of publications directed towards combustion but, because of the importance
of the subject, these are generally specialized books in science and engineering. Most general energy books are preoccupied
with the fact that fossil fuels are finite and consequently look very much to the future and to alternative energy sources such as
renewable energy suppliers or, indeed, nuclear energy.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.
PAUL GETTY

The Energy Question (1992) by Gerald Foley. This is a well-known book which deals with systems and resources - including
coal, petroleum, natural gas, and the tar sands and oil shales. It also deals with energy flows and storage, which is a necessary
pan of combustion in a world where climate warming and pollution are pre-eminent in one source. The last pan deals with the
future, including energy forecasting and conservation.

Energy Around the World: An Introduction to Energy Studies. Global Resources, Needs, Utilization (1984) by J C McVeigh.
This book covers such sources as petroleum, natural gas, hydro power, and biomass, and then moves into future energy
sources. Again, this is a very general book. The major energy sources, such as coal and petroleum, are treated at approximately
the same level as solar energy, geothermal energy, and so on.

Energy (1984) by Joseph Priest. A good general coverage of energy and just enough on combustion.

Energy and the Atmosphere: A Physical-Chemical Approach (1986) by Ian M Campbell. An interesting analysis of
atmospheric pollution, including a useful introduction to combustion.
An Introduction to Combustion (1993) by Warren C Strahle. A detailed scientific analysis of all aspects of combustion. Not
for the beginner.

Combustion and Pollution Control in Heating Systems (1994) by V I Hanby. An interesting book detailing the principle of
combustion and pollution control in the context of heating systems.

Combustion of Liquid Fuel Sprays (1990) by Alan Williams. A good coverage of liquid-fuel sprays and, more importantly,
the key aspects of combustion pollution control applicable to almost any fuel.

Coal: Resources, Properties, Utilization, Pollution (1995) edited by Orhan Kural. A useful contemporary survey of all
aspects of coal.

Fire: Technology, Symbolism, Ecology, Science, Hazard (1993) by Hazel Rossotti. Combustion can have adverse
consequences and fire is a classic case. Well illustrated.

Dictionary of Energy Technology (1979) by Alan Gilpin and Alan Williams. A last resort if the words are unfamiliar.

RENEWABLE ENERGY
Mary Cobbett

The natural world has many complex processes for maintaining its own survival. If we want to survive into the future - and
have a relatively smooth ride - our best bet lies with understanding and working with those natural processes, rather than trying
to `conquer' nature. Technologies that support rather than harm the environment exist in the form of obtaining power from
wind, the sun, and rain. Utilizing methods of environment-conscious building and sewage systems and generally being aware
of the conservation of energy that we use every day are all positive ways of assisting the Earth in coping with the pressures we
lay upon it. Through a combination of cost-effective energy-efficient improvements and low-impact renewable energy;
technologies it may be possible to cut the use of fossil fuels by half. In many pans of the world fossil fuels have never been a
viable option, whereas the abundance of sun and wind in some areas are infinite resources waiting to be tapped.

It's only when we put our energies into what we're for, rather than
what we're against, that we can really change things.
PAUL ALLEN

Energy Without End (1991) by Michael Flood. Shows how the UK can start to meet the challenge of switching to less
polluting, renewable energy resources. Positive and comprehensive, recommended reading for anyone concerned about the
future of energy use and the environment.

The Future of Energy Use (1994) by Robert Hill and others. Introduction to the uses of different kinds of energy and their
social and environmental impacts through-out the world.

Power Surge (1994) by Christopher Flavin, and Nicholas Lenssen. The world is being pushed towards more efficient,
decentralized, and cleaner energy systems, and this clearly outlines the massive changes ahead in transport, the home, and
society.

The Solar Electric House (1993) by Steven Strong. This will tell you everything you need to know to decide whether
photovoltaics are for you, including system options and economics; how to determine your electricity requirements; stand-
alone and interactive systems; designing a solar house; and descriptions of all key components.

Real Goods Solar Living Resource Book (8th edition 1994) by John Schaeffer. A guide to all aspects of solar, wind, water,
and other sustainable resources: solar panels, water pumps, batteries, and so on. Chapters on home safety, ecology, food
growing, and how to make a living that doesn't compromise your values. It has become the bible of the US alternative-energy
world. Despite being aimed at the US market, it is also a treasure trove for UK readers.
Windfarm Location and Environmental Impact (1988) by Alexi Clarke. Increasingly becoming a very topical subject, this is an
important assessment of a hitherto relatively unexplored field. Also looks at other siting constraints such as conflicting land
uses, public attitudes, and planning permission.
Wind Power for Home and Business (1993) by Paul Gipe. A comprehensive reference book covering all aspects of modem
wind-energy machines - the new wind machines are efficient, powerful, and inexpensive in the long run. Contains lists of
manufacturers, test centres, and so on in many countries, including the UK, the USA, and continental Europe.

Micro Hydro Design Manual (1993) by Adam Harvey and Andy Brown. Examines every stage of planning and installation of
a small-scale system. Worked examples with illustrations and notes to help with all the practical aspects of the project, with
detailed sections on turbines, governing, drive systems, electrical power, and maintenance.

Micro-Hydro Electric Power (1986) by Ray Holland. Concise, reliable introduction to the technology of small-scale water
power.

Micro-Hydro Power (1991) by Peter Fraenkel and others. Essential for those involved in designing, implementing, or
operating microhydropower schemes in developed and developing countries. Covers civil works, economics, turbines,
electrical power, and more.

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY
Colin Garden

Technology usually implies engineering and machinery but these are only part of what has become known as appropriate
technology or AT. Advocates of appropriate technology aim to provide solutions to the problems resulting from poverty and
mass unemployment in developing countries and they are concerned as much with the social appropriateness of the
technologies they use as they are with techniques. They aim to benefit all members of a community, not just the well-educated
and the wealthy, and to support, rather than replace, local strategies. As the books listed will show, AT is about a self-help,
community-based approach to development and making the most economical use of available resources and skills.

If that which has been shaped by technology, and continues to be so shaped, looks
sick, it might be wise to have a look at technology itself. If technology is felt to be
becoming more and more inhuman, we might do well to consider whether it is
possible to have something better - a technology with a human face.
E F SCHUMACHER

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) by E F Schumacher. Introduces the concepts of
`intermediate' and `appropriate' technology. Schumacher argues that the pursuit of profit and unlimited economic growth will
not provide solutions to the problems of the modern world.

The AT Reader: Theory and Practice in Appropriate Technology (1985) by Marilyn Carr. The standard introduction to AT.
Explains the origins of the idea and demonstrates its application in a wide range of contexts.

Appropriate Technology: Technology with a Human Face (1978) by P Dunn. Written by an engineer; covers the actual
practice of appropriate technology in a clear, simple style.

The Third World Tomorrow (1980) by Paul Harrison. First-hand reports on projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Shows how the concepts of appropriate technology, people's participation, self help, and small-scale enterprise are put into
practice.

The Economies of Small: Appropriate Technology in a Changing World (1990) by Raphael Kaplinsky. A study of the
economics of AT. Gives a good overview of the development of the AT movement and its concern with environmental, social,
and economic issues. Moves from case studies of AT in developing countries to considering the relevance of an AT approach in
industrially advanced countries.

Tinker, Tiller, Technical Change: Technologies from the People (1990) edited by Matthew Gamser, Helen Appleton, and
Nicola Carter. Emphasizes the need for `experts' to recognize local innovation when offering technical assistance to poor
communities. Seventeen case studies of locally developed technologies.
The Critical Villager (1993) by Eric Dudley. A look at the cultural aspect of appropriate technology. The author argues that, if
technical aid is to be effective, development workers must give due consideration to local culture and conditions.

HISTORY OF COMPUTING
Doron Swade

The electronic digital computer has emerged as one of the most significant features of late-20th-century technology. The word
`computer' is now universally associated with electronic digital devices of which the desktop personal computer is perhaps the
most common example. But as recently as the 1950s computers were not machines but people who performed calculations.
Some of the finest minds of past centuries have attempted to build calculating devices to relieve humans from the tedium and
difficulty of calculation. An account of these attempts and the development of machines for arithmetic calculation into the
versatile modern electronic computer is a rich and fascinating tale. The following selection captures the major features of the
history and prehistory of computing from the different standpoints of a variety of authors.

Who can foresee the consequences of such an invention?

LUIGI MENABREA, 1842

Computing before Computers (1990) edited by William. Aspray An authoritative compilation of book chapters covering the
prehistory of computing by five leading computer historians. An accessible account of calculating devices from mechanical
contrivances starting with the abacus and ending with the early electronic calculating machines of the 1950s.

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) by Charles Babbage. Less about computing than about the views and
recollections of the so-called first pioneer of computing. A highly readable and delightfully mischievous book,
autobiographical in nature, by the beleaguered, controversial designer of vast mechanical calculating engines in the 19th
century.

Irascible Genius: A We of Charles Babbage, Inventor (1964) by Maboth Moseley. Energetic biography of Charles Babbage.
Provides a vivid portrait of Babbage's life and his ultimately doomed efforts to construct mechanical calculating machines.

Charles Babbage and his Calculating Machines (1991) by Doron Swade. Short, nontechnical, and well-illustrated book
written to accompany the Babbage bicentennial exhibition at the Science Museum, London.

Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers (1985) by Stan Augarten. Arguably the best single-volume history of
computing, starting with the earliest mechanical devices and ending with the early days of the personal-computer revolution.

The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age (1991) by Jon Palfreman and Doron Swade. Popular account of
computing written to accompany a BBC TV series. History and prehistory is used as a context for the modem computer,
especially the personal computer and its emerging multifunctional role.

A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age (1990) by Charles Eames and Ray Eames. Superbly illustrated
time-line history of computing. Essentially a captioned visual history starting with the electromechanical census devices of the
1890s and ending with the electronic devices of the 1940s.

Early British Computers: The Story of Vintage Computers and the People That Built Them (1980) by Simon Lavington. A
short, invaluable account of British pioneering developments in electronic computing during the crucial three decades from the
1930s to the 1950s.

The Origins of Digital Computing (1982) by Brian Randell. Seminal collection of original historic papers in the history of
computing from the mechanical devices of the 19th century to the electronic machines of the 1940s. Some material is
inevitably technical. An essential reference source.

COMPUTING
Jack Schofield
In one sense, computing is just part of the electronics industry. The boom in computers has been produced by the availability of
low-cost integrated circuits - silicon chips - which powered earlier booms in pocket calculators, video-games consoles, and
other consumer products. (That's why it's called Silicon Valley, not Computer Valley.) In another sense, computing is special
because a computer is a tool for processing information. No one finds it threatening that binoculars and telescopes allow us to
see further, or that wheeled and winged vehicles enable us to travel faster. However, the idea that computer `brains' can store
more data and process it faster and more accurately produces all sorts of phobias. But computers are not mysterious. They are
machines, designed by men and manufactured for profit. Understanding the process and its context will help remove any such
fears. That's important, because computing is one of today's biggest industries, and the one on which many of our futures
depend.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

ALAN KAY

Microchip: The Story of a Revolution and the Men who Made It (1985) by T R Reid. The power of the chip industry is
based on one big idea, the Monolithic Idea that you could combine different kinds of components on an integrated circuit. In
the late 1950s, this idea came separately to two men, Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby. Its application launched the Information
Revolution.

The Soul of a New Machine (1982) by Tracy Kidder. A novelistic account of how a new we of computer came together out of
the efforts of hardware designers and software writers. If Kidder had been lucky, the machine would have been a huge success.
As it wasn't, the story now has little historical interest, though it's still the only computer book to have won its author a Pulitzer
Prize.

Father, Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond (1990) by Thomas J Watson Jr and Peter Petre. IBM is by far the world's
largest computer company, and dominated the business for 25 years from 1964. Tom Watson Jr, son of the company's founder,
was the man most responsible.

Innovating for Failure: Government Policy and the Early British Computer Industry (1989) by John Hendry. In the 1940s and
1950s, the British computer industry was at least level with the Americans and miles ahead of the Japanese. at went wrong?

Computer Lib (1987) by Ted Nelson. Nelson understood the microcomputer industry and self-published a book about it in
1974 - which is impressive when you remember the microcomputer wasn't even invented until 1975. At the time it was a
mixture of handbook and religious tract for the freaks and hackers who got the industry rolling. It's still a cult classic.

West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer (1989) by Frank Rose. One of the ideas that drives the computer
industry is that a couple of young hackers can start a company in their garage and develop it into a multibillion dollar
international corporation. The two Steves, Jobs and Wosniak, did that at Apple, before losing control of their company ...

Gates (1993) by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews. In 20 years, Bill Gates went from college dropout to the world's richest
individual: according to Fortune magazine, his personal net worth is about $12.9 billion. The success of Microsoft, Gates's
company, was bound up with the huge success of the personal computer, particularly the IBM PC-compatible, for which
Microsoft supplies most software.

The Cuckoo's Egg (1990) by Clifford Stoll. at starts as an attempt to account for a few cents turns into a hunt for a mystery
hacker and then into international espionage. It sounds like a techno-thriller but it's nothing more than the truth. The book thus
provides more insight into the world of hacking than the many more sensationalized accounts.

Virtual Reality (1988) by Howard Rheingold. A pioneering account of the origins of cyberspace, and where it might take us.
Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (1988) by Hans Moravec. Moravec, a leading roboticist, thinks
that we may be moving from the biological to the postbiological world, and that our true children may not be flesh and blood
but self-replicating machines.

CYBERSPACE
Wendy M Grossman
Cyberspace is one of the hot topics these days. Most of the books on the market that talk about it are geared towards telling
people how to get on-line and what to do when they get there. Those books are useful, but they're not much fun to read, and
they're not much use as an introduction for people who don't want to go on-line themselves but just want to know what's
happening out there. The books on this list are geared towards the latter type of reader.

It is a region without physical shape or form. It exists, like a standing wave,

in the vast web of our electronic communication systems. It consists of electron
states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought itself
MITCH KAPOR AND JOHN PERRY BARLOW

Surfing on the Internet (1995) by J C Herz. The ultimate travel guide to cyberspace, whether you want to go there or not. Hen
samples Al sorts of different Internet offerings and reports back with a lot of humour.

The Media Lab (1987) by Stewart Brand. The Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was set up in 1985 to
bring together artists and computer scientists to invent the future of technology. Brand's reporting on the many projects and
thinkers at the lab introduces many of the concepts behind today's new developments.

Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace (1994) by Douglas Rushkoff. The youth culture of today: acid-house rock,
virtual reality, on-line communities, and cyberpunks.

Virtual Reality: Through the New Looking Glass (1993) by Ken Pimentel and Kevin Teixeira. An introduction to the
technology behind virtual reality and what can be done with it.

Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge (1990) by Ed Regis. Not
specifically about cyberspace, but in its entertaining Tom Wolfe style recounting of the further reaches of science it wanders
into the related areas of artificial intelligence and artificial life.

The Hacker Crackdown (1992) by Bruce Sterling. Sterling is best known as a science-fiction writer, but a series of raids in
the US inspired him to write this non-fiction book to explore the extension of law and civil liberties to what he and many others
like to call the Electronic Frontier.

The Cuckoo's Egg (1989) by Clifford Stoll. The more we depend on computer net-works, the more vital it is that they have
adequate security. This is the story of an astronomer turned computer-security specialist who set out to solve the small
accounting problem of a $0.75 discrepancy and wound up helping to trap an international hacker.

Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. This science-fiction novel, Gibson's first, is the book that invented the word
`cyberspace'. The story of a data thief and the development of artificial intelligence inside a computer matrix, this book is
somewhat difficult to read; it launched a new type of science fiction, known as `cyberpunk'.

PARANORMAL
Wendy M Grossman

Every year a great tidal wave of books is published that defies everything we know about science on subjects like UFOs,
psychics, faith healing, ghosts, alternative medical treatments, spontaneous human combustion, creationism, astrology, and
even angels. If that weren't bad enough, more books promote pseudoscientific myths that have little basis in fact. The books
below attempt to redress the balance and go a long way to show that truth, in many cases, really is stranger than fiction.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

WILLIAM OCCAM

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (1988) by John Allen Paulos. One reason pseudoscience and
paranormal claims seem so convincing is that most people are so innumerate they can't evaluate their likelihood. Paulos shows
you how.

Psychic Investigator (1991) by James Randi. Randi turns his experience of 35 years' worth of paranormal investigation to
explaining psychic phenomena like dowsing, psychometry, and spiritualism. Based on a 1990 television series.
Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus (1981) by Martin Gardner. Martin Gardner was for many years the mathematical-games
columnist for Scientific American; his second passion is debunking improbable claims and bad science.

Sorry, You've Been Duped! (1986) by Melvin Harris. A historian ferrets out the truth behind well-known mysteries such as the
Amityville honor and the Bloxham tapes.

The Mask of Nostradamus (1990) by James Randi. This sceptical biography of the world's most famous prophet unearths
some of the background to his most often quoted prophecies.

The Prevalence of Nonsense (1967) by Ashley Montagu and Edward Darling. An enjoyable and authoritative debunking of
myths and common fallacies.

Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence (1988) by Terence Hines. A lively and
thoroughly researched introduction to all areas of pseudoscience, in which category Hines includes psychoanalysis.

The Mismeasure of Woman (1992) by Carol Tavris. A brilliant re-analysis of many of the most prevalent myths about
women, many of them due to bad science. Subtitled Why women are not the other sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex'.

The Mismeasure of Man (1981) by Stephen Jay Gould. Intelligence testing pervades our education systems and thinking.
Gould investigates the shameful history of intelligence research and its abuse.

High Weirdness by Mail (1988) by Ivan Stang. A book that proves there's nothing so weird that you can't find people who
believe it. A directory of the world's most bizarre mailing lists, with samples of their output.
Media

The products of the media, apparently ephemeral, in fact lodge themselves in the mind. They are. in part, what everybody
knows: they help significantly to form popular consciousness, popular knowledge and belief. Even ten. twenty years later we
can clearly remember, in detail, radio sequences, television images, newspaper cartoons and commentaries. Books, too, are
talismans, though of a slightly different kind. As our punchdrunk century staggers on, they seem to promise reliable solidity;
they are a doorway to the certainties and apparently clearer visions of the past and a guarantee, in the present, that someone
else is with us (an expert, an authoritative voice), that we are not alone. The books on this list discuss the ethics of media
communication, its methods and its power. They concern us all—for we are all listeners, viewers, readers, the validating figures
in the communicative act.
See DIARIES (Fitzgerald); POLITICS (Woodward. B.)

Appelbaum, J. and Evans, N. How to Get Happily Published

(1978) *✓ Delightfully fresh American approach to the publishing jungle: author's-eye view makes an intriguing contrast
with that of Unwin (qv). Everything from how to write a book proposal, to how to cope with success. A splendid, and very
helpful, read.

Bailey, Herbert Smith The Art and Science of Book Publishing (1971) it
Excellent American book on the why and how of publishing.

Berg, A. Scott Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978)

Breathless biography of the great editor who discovered and nursed such authors as Wolfe, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Perkins
was himself a better writer than Berg, for evidence of which see Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins. See
DIARIES (Fitzgerald)

Berry, W. T. and Poole, H. E. (eds) Annals of Printing (1966) 0 a

Chronological encyclopaedia of printing and publishing, from Gutenberg to 1966. Exhaustive, competent, engrossing.
Briggs, Asa A History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (3 vols, 1961-70) P Authoritative survey. Essential background
to the more personal accounts of Curran (qv) and Goldie (qv). Also: Essays in the History of Publishing; Communications and
Culture, 1823 -1973. See HISTORY/BRITISH

Curran, Charles A Seamless Robe (1979)

Ex-director of the BBC examines what he calls its "competent integrity". How philosophy (liberal, utopian, sometimes
paternalistic) is translated into practice. Urbane antidote to the sharpness and concision of H. Greene: The Third Floor Front
(herewith recommended).

Dessauer, John P. Book Publishing: What It Is, What It Does

(1974) 0 lk Authoritative study of the publishing business in America. No sentiment: the text concentrates on real problems of
real publishers—royalty-rates, production schedules, fulfilment mix-ups, the problems and the joys. Regularly updated.

Evans, Harold Pictures on a Page (1978) it Ill* One of a remarkable series of manuals on newspaper production and design,
but of general relevance because of its discussion of the effect of design on meaning. Presentation of news—or manipulation?
The argument begins here. Fascinating commentary on some of the most famous news photographs of the century.

Fisher, John Funny Way to be a Hero (1973) *Iv Marvellous evocations of British radio comedians of the last 50
years, the last great flowering of the music-hall tradition. Routines and gags lovingly reconstructed, but criticism is sharp as
well. Also: Call Them Irreplaceable (on international stars of the century)

Goldie, Grace W. Facing the Nation (1977)

The author was a founder-member of the team that made BBC television the best in the world. This book is an account of its
development from 1936 to the present, and particularly of its handling of politics and current affairs (the author's own special
field).

Hackett, A. P. and Burke, H. J. 80 Years of Best Sellers (1977)

A book of records, a chronicle of American times and tastes and a fascinating account of book sales and reading habits. For
literary criticism along similar lines see Claud Cockburn: Best Sellers.
Halberstam, David The Powers That Be (1979) rk
In-depth journalism about journalists— Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and CBS television—recreates
newsroom tensions, anxieties, with all the verve of moves like The Front Page or All the President's Men. Packed with incident,
thin on comment and analysis. A riveting, but finally tabloid book. (Compare with Talese: The Kingdom and the Power, on the
New York Times.) See HISTORY/AMERICAN; POLITICS (Woodward, B.)

Higham, David Literary Gent (1978)

Witty autobiography of a leading London literary agent from the 1920s-1970s. Good on publishers, music, jacks-in-office of all
kinds; sensitive account of service in the two World Wars.

Hoggart, Richard The Uses of Literacy (1957)

Seminal study of 1950s British working-class culture, as expressed in and influenced by publications and entertainments. We
may think our attitudes have changed since 1957, just as our entertainments have moved on: re-reading Hoggart may make us
revise that view. (See also Hall and Whannell: The Popular Arts; 1. D. Halloran: The Effects of Mass Communication.) Also:
Speaking to Each Other(vol I, About Society; vol II, About Literature)

King, Cecil The Cecil King Diary, 1965 -1974 (2 vols, 1972-75) *Ite British press baron (he controlled four of the major
national tabloids) walks like a cat amid contemporary great affairs, reflects cattily on personalities and issues. Endearing as the
memoirs of an influential crank; enduring as a picture of the interrelation between politics and the popular press. Should be
read with the memoirs of his (equally forthright) editor-in-chief, Hugh Cudlipp: Publish and Be Damned, and with Richard
Boston: The Press We Deserve.

Knopf, Alfred A. Publishing Then and Now, 1912-64(1964)

Reminiscences by the dean of American publishers.

McLean, Muni Magazine Design (1969)

Massive volume; contains reproductions of covers of famous magazines of America, Britain and many European countries. A
feast for the eyes, but also full of useful information.

McLuhan, Marshall The Medium and the Massage (1967)

In the 1960s, guru NtcLuhan's terrifying vision of an existential, all-engulfing trash culture (electronic media replacing books)
seemed as self-fulfilling a prophecy as Orwell's Newspeak. It remains (just) an unfulfilled prediction, but no less scary for all
that. Useful critical analysis by Rebecca West in McLuhan and the Future of Literature (1969). Also: The Gutenberg Galaxy;
Understanding Media, etc

Merrill, J. C., Bryan, C. R. and Alisky, M. Foreign Press: A Survey of the World's Journalism (1970)
Excellent concise survey of the newspaper publishing industry all over the world. Some knowledge of the American press is
assumed, but the book is so valuable that this should not deter serious students.

Nowell-Smith, Simon (ed) Letters to Macmillan (1967)

Who wrote to Macmillan (the famous British publisher)? Tennyson, Gladstone, Lewis Carroll, Churchill, Yeats, all the Sitwells,
Shaw, Joyce, Housman—to say nothing of Hugh Walpole and Ethel M. Dell. The Macmillan replies are splendid, too. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Macmillan)

Packard, Vance The Hidden Persuaders (1957)

Twenty-five years ago, in an age of innocence, this book on the processes and ethics of mass advertising was greeted with
shock, horror and (on the advertisers' part) self-righteous disengagement. Nowadays advertising uses exactly the same
methods, we have all digested Packard's words—and still we allow ourselves to be persuaded. Failure of communication? Or of
moral standards? The conman's mark often willingly cooperates in being conned. Compare with Inglis: The Imagery of Power
(1972)

Peterson, Theodore Magazines in the Twentieth Century (1964) Scholarly survey not only of many noted magazines per se
but also of the social scene that saw their birth. Sober, but important and useful.

Steinberg, S. H. Five Hundred Years of Printing(1955) 0

Standard history of printing methods and achievements. Dry, concise narrative (no analysis or comment), dull illustrations, but
the ground is ably covered.
Wilk, Max The Golden Age of Television (1976) *Mk
Affectionate survey of the first 30 years of American TV. Do you find today's programmes junk, look back with longing to
Studio One, Mr Peepers, Jack Benny, Art Carney, Dave Garroway et al? Should you?

Williams, Raymond Communications (1962)

Founding-father textbook, laid the basis for systematic British study of the subject. Analysis, criticism and proposals for the
future of all forms of mass communication. Details and examples are dated and entirely UK-oriented, but the general
conclusions are still stimulating and essential. 1969 edition recommended. Also: Culture and Society, 1780-1950; The Long
Revolution; Television, Technology and Cultural Fonn. See DRAMA
Medicine and Psychiatry

Owners' manuals for laymen on body and mind vary in tone from arcane to simplistic. from the mysterious to the plumber's
guide. The prime qualities of the books on this list are authority, accessibility, and a feeling (elusive to some medical writers,
and to some surgeons and doctors too) that humanity is common to the owner of the body and to the mechanic who maintains
it.
See BIOGRAPHY (Jones, Pickering, Woodham-Smith); DIARIES (Hall); MATHEMATICS (Bernard); PSYCHOLOGY
(Burton); SEX (Breecher. Kinsey. Masters, Peel); SOCIOLOGY (Goff-man, Jacoby)

Belleveau, F. and Richter, L. Understanding Human Sexual Inadequacy (1971)

Shorter, more readable version of Masters and Johnson. Recommended reading, before visiting a sex or marriage counsellor,
for those convinced that they—or their partners—will never make it sexually again. See Kaplan; SEX (Masters)

Bernard, Claude, French, 1813-1878.

Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. Rec: Adler

Boston Women's Health Collective Our Bodies, Ourselves (1972) * Clever, helpful health-guide. Describes symptoms and
treatments in straightforward style; aimed principally at women, but helpful to men. Particularly lucid on childbirth and on
sexuality. Unfrightening: a good book to have in a household with young teenagers.

Boston Women's Health Book Collective, American, Pub. 1973.

Our Bodies, Ourselves. Rec: Boston PL

Copeland, James For the Love of Ann (1973)

The story of an autistic child and of how she and her family coped, taken from her father's diaries. Moving and readable.

Dubos, Rene Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress and Biological Change (1959)
Discusses the social, cultural and environmental factors that have guided humanity's search for health. Lively, sometimes
shocking, look at past and future, makes the point that perfect health and happiness are an unhealthy illusion; unhappily, they
are outside the realm of possibility.

Freud, Sigmund New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1963) LS*?

Like other profound thinkers, Freud writes with enviable clarity and simplicity. He is also often extremely funny. Many of his
ideas have fallen into disrepute or into the wrong hands, but he is still the single most influential figure in this field. These
lectures are an ideal key for newcomers to his work. But see Timpanaro, The Freudian Slip, for a Marxist critique. Also: The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life; The Interpretation of Dreams; Civilization and Its Discontents, etc

Fuchs, V. R. Who Shall Live? Health, Economics and Social Choice (1975) **
Economist's view of the overwhelming problems facing the American system of health services. Equal access to medical care
does not exist; heredity, environment, money and personal lifestyles influence the quality of care citizens receive. Challenging;
readable; ends with specific recommendations for change.

Galen, Greek, ca. 130-200.

On the Natural Faculties. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW

Gray, Henry Gray's Anatomy (1901)

Detail, structure and anatomy of the human body in all its gory glory: a must for doctors, students, artists and the medically
curious. Naming of parts starts here. Isted, Charles R. Learning to Speak Again . . After a Stroke (1979) Author suffered a
stroke; the book details his experiences, and the exercises and therapies which helped him recover. Of particular value for
stroke victims and their families.

Hippocrates, Greek, ca. 460-ca. 377 BCE.

Medical Writings. Rec: Adler GBWW Seymour-Smith

Kaplan, Helen Singer The New Sex Therapy (1974)

Though clinical in language, a fairly rousing study of male/female dysfunction. Concentrates, helpfully and sympathetically, on
methods of treatment. See Belleveau; SEX (Masters)

Kovel, J. A Complete Guide to Therapy (1976)

Reliable account and evaluation of most forms of psychotherapy on offer in Britain and the USA.

Laing, R. D. The Divided Self (1960)

Laing has a guru status which annoys and repels many, but does not totally invalidate what he has to say (the classic double
bind!). His work is programmatic as well as analytical: what we can do about what we are, the creative use of self. Also: The
Politics of Experience; Sanity, Madness and the Family (with Esterson)

Lehrer, Steven Explorers of the Body (1979) a

Fascinating anecdotes about some of the dramatic events that shaped modern medicine; many important discoveries, it seems,
were flukes. Stories about glamorous heroes—Pasteur, Jenner, Curie, Salk—as well as about backroom researchers who never
made it to the front.

McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples (1977) * Eye-opening account of the importance of disease in explaining many
puzzling events in human history—the conquest of the Aztecs by smallpox not Spaniards, the decline of the Roman Empire
explained by measles.

Miner, Jonathan The Body in Question (1978) *

The body, Miller says, sends us signals about itself, and our response to them, our view about pain, location of organs, ease and
dis-ease, largely governs whether we feel well or ill. The book also includes a useful account of the history of medicine. Tough
style in parts, but generally a vivid study of a neglected subject.

Parish, Peter Medicines: A Guide for Everybody (1976)

Useful if prosaic reference book giving details of commonly-used prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs, their side effects
and their selection.

Potts, M., Diggory, P. and Peel, J. Abortion (1977)

Comprehensive account of the history of abortion, its sociological, biological and legal aspects. Stuffed with statistics, a
welcome counterblast to opinionated tracts.

Sacks, Oliver Awakenings (1973)

Sacks was in charge of a colony of elderly patients totally incapacitated as children by the 1920s world epidemic of
encephalitis lethargica. In the late 1960s treatment became possible for these people; their awakening is the subject of this
tremendous book.

Sacks, Oliver, American, 1933- .

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Rec: Good Reading

Selye, Hans The Stress of Life (1976)

Classic study: how the human body responds to a huge variety of nonspecific stresses, and how many diseases are totally or
partially the result of life's pressures. Don't worry though: it also outlines programmes for minimizing stress.

Singer, C. and Underwood, E. A. A Short History of Medicine (1928) a *

Still in print 50 years after its first appearance; regularly updated; outstanding. Also: A Short History of Anatomy from the
Greeks to Harvey

Smith, Anthony The Body (1968) * Clear, comprehensive: "your body made easy". Smith makes statistics come to life. Also:
The Human Pedigree; Blind White Fish in Persia

Sontag, Susan Illness as a Metaphor (1978)

How tuberculosis and cancer have been "encumbered by the trappings of metaphor" to the detriment of the patient. Many of
Sontag's elegant examples are from literature, including Kafka, Dickens, Joyce, Auden. Illuminating reading. See Miller.

Stodard, Sandol The Hospice Movement (1979)

The hospice movement is revolutionizing—some say civilizing—the care of the dying, particularly those dying of cancer. This
attractive, if emotionally written. account will bring solace and comfort to many.
Sutherland, S. Breakdown (1976)
Experimental psychologist's account of his own mental breakdown, in which he evaluates the alternative forms of treatment
available, from a scientific point of view but with his own experience in mind. An honest, disturbing book.

Szasz., Thomas The Second Sin (1973)

Szasz is the leader of the anti-psychiatrists, who believe that mental illness is a convenient label applied by society to non-
conformist elements; his polemically argued view that mental illness is a myth has been widely adopted by critics of orthodox
psychiatry. Also: The Myth of Mental Illness; Psychiatric Slavery; Law. Liberty and Psychiatry. See Wing.

Szasz, Thomas, American, 1920- .

The Myth of Mental Illness. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Thomas, Lewis The Lives of a Cell (1975)

Thomas was puffed by the New Yorkeras one of the "few scientists who can make his work intelligible to a non-scientific
reader". Here he looks at the workings of cells and the way that our knowledge of them is used in the conquest of disease. Also:
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

Trevor-Roper, Patrick The World through Blunted Sight (1970) This "inquiry into the influence of defective vision on art and
character", by a leading London opthalmologist, is beautifully written and handsomely illustrated. The author's selection of
great artists is discriminating and his language is non-technical.

Veut, Ilza (trans) Huang Ti Nei Ching Suwen (c. 2600 BC)
The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine is the origin of both the concepts of yin and yang and of the science of
acupuncture. Its elegance and imagery make reading it a pleasure: no risk of pins and needles here. Veut's translation is clear
and readable.

Wing, J. K. Reasoning about Madness (1978)

So much nonsense has been written about mental illness that Wing's account of orthodox psychiatry is especially valuable
because he destroys the arguments of the anti-psychiatrists with impeccable logic. He also gives a clear account of the
difference between Western and Russian psychiatry. Also: Institutionalism and Schizophrenia: A Comparative Study of Three
Mental Hospitals. See Laing; Szasz.

S. James Adelstein

S. James Adelstein prepared himself for his career by studying science at M.I.T. and medicine at Harvard. His profession has
developed both educational pursuits, with clinical research in nuclear medicine and scientific research in radiation biophysics.
He has been a member of the Harvard Medical Faculty since 1960 in the Departments of Anatomy, Medicine and Radiology.
Currently, he serves as dean of Academic Programs.

Despite doubters, reading has been a good way to prepare for the last five centuries.

Claude Bernard. An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865). H. C. Greene, trans. New York: Dover, 1957.
(Pb)
For the general reader it marks a watershed in the intellectual history of medicine from an empirical, somewhat mystical
vocation to a profession based on scientific reality and experimentally verifiable phenomena. Personally it provided me with
the conviction, on historical grounds, that medicine is an exciting field for scientific inquiry.

Hans Zinsser. As I Remember Him: The Biography of R. S. Boston: Little, Brown, 1940.
Most embryonic physicians are caught up in the crusades against infectious disease at one time or another (Sinclair Lewis must
have known it when he wrote Arrowsrnith). What a delight to have a sprightly and irreverent biography that deals not only with
an important life in bacteriology and epidemiology but with a broader academic world as well. When I entered Harvard
Medical School, I thought all professors would have the wit of Dr. Zinsser; some did not.

J. Robert Oppenheimer. Science and the Common Understanding. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.
The discoveries and applications of physical science have had a profound effect on thought and action in the twentieth century,
but those of us not educated in modern physics have had to rely on others to convey the essence of this intellectual revolution.
Oppenheimer does it very well in this series of Reith Lectures given in 1953: to his explanation he adds considerable
philosophic reflection, of the kind that has made him one of the more enigmatic scientists of our time. A year after these
lectures were published, I temporarily broke off the study of medicine to learn more physics.

Norbert Wiener. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950). New York: Avon, 1967.
Computers and robotics are now so commonplace that we think of them as standard household and factory items. Along with
technical developments that made them possible there developed a profound theory on information and control. This book is a
milestone in the documentation and translation of that theory for the educated but nonspecialized reader. Professor Wiener was
my instructor in one undergraduate course on mathematics. He made me understand something about mathematical insight: his
book is insightful too.

Eve Curie. Madame Curie (1937). Vincent Sheean, trans. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938.
A true scientific heroine. Mme. Curie's struggles, tragedies and triumphs are well known. Her daughter, Eve. tells the story with
sensitivity and the proper attention to detail. From this book I learned much about scientific tutelage, the promise of
radioactivity in the service of medicine and the struggle of women for equality and recognition.

Howard Frazier

For over twenty-five years, Howard Frazier has educated and enthused medical students at the Harvard Medical School. His
subjects include internal medicine and nephrology. In addition, he pursues research issues in personal health care as the director
of the Institute for Health Research at the Harvard School of Public Health. His personal health-care routine includes canoeing
and camping.
Books both reflect and influence how I look at the world; for that reason I have considered a group of books from early in my
life—the decade from age twelve to age twenty-two, when I think I was more open than I am now. I have organized my
comments without going back to these books and astonishing myself with my poor memory. To modify Cromwell: "What you
have is a portrait of me, painted with warts and all." The decade includes my transition from sheltered suburban Chicago, to
enrollment at the University of Chicago at age sixteen, to the South Pacific as an enlisted man in World War II.

Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (1915). Andrew MacAndrew, trans. New York: Bantam, 1981. (Pb)
The Brothers Karamazov was my introduction to rationality gone mad. The Grand Inquisitor and Ivan were characters of a
rational age and were "rational" men. They set my idea of freedom on its head. I remember being impressed with the cleverness
of the Grand Inquisitor's questions, with such plausible arguments for social control. And then, having been led along the
argument to the advantages of not being free, how repugnant I found the conclusion. The Grand Inquisitor led me down to a
stream from which I couldn't drink. But the conclusions I couldn't accept introduced me to the notion that books were
something more than engrossing plots. Thinking sometimes was uncomfortable.

Percy W. Bridgman. The Logic of Modern Physics (1927), New York: AMS Press, 1980.
Bridgman's Logic of Modern Physics whacked me over the head and knocked out many of my preconceptions about science.
Bridgman makes the point that established, codified science depends on well-defined concepts like mass, time and length. But
at its edge, science has concepts that are fuzzy and unreliable, and that to avoid ambiguity and make progress at frontiers,
science must make use of operational definitions. It was my first exposure to the process of science: the gummy, artistic
business of inspired hunches that it really is. He made me more critical of the science I was reading about, more willing to ask
questions for which there weren't any pat answers. The notion that Bridgman's physics—the queen of the empirical sciences—
proceeded by fits and starts, fumbling, making mistakes, backing up, was a very liberating one when I became a laboratory
scientist.

Ruth F. Benedict. Patterns of Culture (1934). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

Just after I left the affluent, suburban monoculture and moved on to the prideful, turbulent University of Chicago. I read Ruth
Benedict's Patterns of Culture. That there could be worlds so different from any I knew, that they could even exist, made me a
wild cultural relativist. She suggested to me that things that seemed utterly different might, in some sense, be equivalent, and
forced me to think about which were better and which were worse, or what meaning "better" and "worse" had. What was the
relation between the Grand Inquisitor's case for social control and the variety of Benedict's illustrations of systems that work?
How could I choose?
Sophocles. Antigone (ca. 440 B.c.). Michael Townsend, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. (Pb)
In my sea bag in the Pacific I made room for two books, a copy of the Greek tragedies and the paperback version of The Pocket
Book of Verse. In Antigone I had my first introduction to the notion that good people, serving legitimate ends, might come into
irretrievable conflict with the state, and that they might be destroyed as a result. After the Grand Inquisitor and Benedict, I
could see better that events might be set in motion by an individual, basically good, who could then be struck down by a
society that had its own imperatives. It took me beyond good guys and bad guys to the importance and the price of standing
against the established order.

Morris Edmund Speare, ed. The Pocket Book of Verse (1940). New York: Pocket, 1940.
For an enlisted man, The Pocket Book of Verse ideally suited a life that was full of distractions and interruptions. It exposed
me, in small doses, to language. It opened up the power of words other than expletives. It went beyond mere direction to the
discipline of making language express something exactly. It was The Pocket Book that led me to Shakespeare and the Bible, to
language that was lovely, carefully crafted, condensed, precise, masterful.

Henry David Thoreau. Walden (1854). New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
Walden I read later, as I observed my contemporaries rising to what I saw as wealth. It has been important to me. Its message
was to simplify my life, to resist the attractiveness of the dominant cultural objective of pursuing goods, to resist a narrow
definition of fortune. It gave me the courage to do other things and to accept the consequences. The first time, 1 read Walden
against a background of a zillion other books. The second time, I was older, an academic running around with a stethoscope in
my pocket, part of the pack. Now I occasionally urge it on others with the hope it will help to reduce the distractions in their
lives, that it will convince them their lives won't end if they don't own it all.

Thoreau, Henry David, American, 1817-1862.

Walden. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Utne Ward
Civil Disobedience. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Seymour-Smith
Essays. Rec: Bloom

Emanuel A. Friedman

Emanuel Friedman is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Harvard Medical School and a practicing physician at
Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Professor Friedman "rose from humble beginnings," he writes, "in the
depression of the 1930s as the son of an impoverished Brooklyn rabbi who sanctioned spirit over ritual, learning for its own
sake, and every man's essential role in providing for his less fortunate neighbor."
Nil sine inagno labore: This erstwhile motto of Brooklyn College, my alma mater, admonishes that we should try to optimize
our natural gifts for personal achievement as well as for the greater good of mankind by applying ourselves with full effort and
enthusiasm.

John F. Fulton. Harvey Cushing: A Biography (1946). Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1980.
A convincing biography of one of the fathers of modern medical and surgical precepts who strove for perfection in all he did;
his success illustrated the merits of combining focused perseverance with eclectic interests, an example for us all to try to
emulate.

Victor Hugo. Les Miserables (1862). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
While this thrilling story gripped me in my formative years with its suspense and adventure, it served to convince me that a
worthy cause merited the struggle, win or lose and regardless of the odds.

Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species (1859). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)
Reading this, I first began to appreciate that great visions could be derived from fresh perceptions and perspectives about
commonplace and properly detailed observations.

Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850). New York: Advent, 1983. (Pb)
No other book read in my youth gave me the kind of keen insights into the plight of mankind; the pathos of Dickensian London
first awakened my social conscience and the idealistic need to contribute and share.

Isaac H. Flack. Eternal Eve (1950). London: Hutchinson, 1960.

The compellingly graphic representations of suffering womankind painted here sensitized me in the prefeminist era and
motivated my unflagging lifetime interest in obstetrics.

William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. The Elements of Style (1959). New York: Macmillan, 1979. (Pb)
This fabled little guide has served me for decades as an unfailing template for clear communication in both writing and speech,
emphasizing the importance of simplicity and directness.

Stephen J. Gould

Stephen J. Gould is a paleontologist and educator. For seventeen years he has taught geology, biology and the history of
science at Harvard, now as the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. His popular books and monthly column, "This View of
Life" in Natural History magazine have drawn a new generation to science.

As a kid growing up in New York City, I played stickball and poker instead of doing a lot of reading. I wasn't a nonreader —I
read at an average age and an average rate. The passion for reading came later in college.

Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species (1859). New York: Penguin, 1982. (Pb)

George G. Simpson. The Meaning of Evolution (1949). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. (Pb)

Joe Di Maggio. Lucky to Be a Yankee (1946). New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1951.

George Eliot. Daniel Deronda (1876). New York: New American Library, 1979. (Pb)

The Bible. King James version (1611). Book of Job.

Colin McArdle

Colin McArdle is an assistant professor of radiology at the Harvard Medical School and practices medicine at Beth Israel
Hospital in Boston. He was educated in Britain and maintains that he "came over for a year and stayed." He writes that his
education was in no way superior but his accent seems to help in this country.

There is a distinct danger that with every year devoted to the medical profession, a doctor will become less and less literate.

Charles Dickens. Bleak House (1853). New York: Bantam, 1983. (Pb)
I was forced to read this book at the age of fourteen and have never read another Dickens novel since. This is a warning to
overzealous teachers. Fortunately, I was not forced to read Austen or Eliot at this time.

Thomas Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). New York: Bantam, 1968. (Pb)
I was encouraged to read this book by a somewhat pedantic English scholar. It was, he attested, a significant work, a
masterpiece. I struggled through a mishmash of pretentious symbolism and concluded that it was a load of nonsense. It was the
literary equivalent of the emperor's new clothes. At that point, I experienced a great sense of freedom, for previously I had
stood in awe and silence before all those incomprehensible books and films that seemed to flourish in the 1960s and beyond.
Now I was liberated.
P.S. Included in this group are Godard, Resnais, Fowles and many others.

P. G. Wodehouse. Leave It to Psmith (1923). New York: Random House, 1975, (Pb)
The first of many Wodehouse books I read. The earliest books are his best. His somewhat wry and incongruous descriptions are
continuously amusing. I have consciously tried to adapt his techniques to the lectures I give. I am not as successful as he but I
get the occasional laugh.
George Eliot. Middlemarch (1871-72). New York: Bantam, 1985. (Pb)
A magnificent monumental novel—the greatest in the English language. I remember the reluctance with which I put the book
down and the apprehension I felt as I picked it up again as I anticipated some further disaster befalling one of my favored
characters. It may not have altered my life but it certainly enriched it.

George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss (1860). New York: Penguin, 1980. (Pb)
Actually it was a dead heat between this book, the Radiology Journal and Sports Illustrated. The radiology journals I read
because I need to know what is happening in my chosen profession. They consist of usually rather dull treatises which can be
loosely divided into fiction, nonfiction and loosely based on fact. Occasionally, something really exciting appears. A
knowledge of Sports Illustrated allows one to communicate endlessly with other males (except Harvard professors). It is
regarded as trash by most women. The Mill on the Floss gets the nod because of the first book describing Maggie Tulliver's
childhood. Pure magic.

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1813). Tony Tanner, ed. New York: Penguin, 1972. (Pb)
Any book I have read over seven times must have had some influence, though I am at a loss to think how exactly this has
occurred. It is the most perfectly written book in the English language that I know and Elizabeth Bennet the most perfect
woman against whom all others pale.
Music

Of all the arts, music is one of the most elusive of description. Its "product" is intangible; our response is personal and
sensuous; objectivity (for example, analysis) can hinder as much as enhance our pleasure. All this makes music a challenge for
writers: to express the inexpressible, define the indefinable, distil an essence, is to make the blueprint for a butterfly. Prose-
poetic ramblings have been excluded from this list: the few "aesthetics" books left are outstanding for objective sense, and for
the insight they offer into the creative process. Other, easier areas (history, memoirs, analysis) offer wider choice, and our
selection is based on the interest of a subject, the excellence of its treatment, or usually (and happily) on both.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Shostakovich); DIARIES (Anderson, Wagner); MATHEMATICS (Hofstadter)

Austin, William Music in the 20th Century (1966) 0 1) ✓

Excellent survey of music many listeners find inaccessible. Copious musical examples; consistently illuminating. See Whittall.
Balanchine, G. and M. F. Balanchinels Festival of Ballet (1977) di af History of ballet; scene-by-scene guides to over 400
ballets; commentaries by leading choreographers, composers and critics. Does the same service for ballet as Kobbe (qv) does
for opera.

Barzun, Jacques Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1950)

An important critic of 19th-century art in all its forms here concentrates on one of the great enigmatic composers of the last
century. Also: Darwin, Marx, Wagner, The House of Intellect

Berlioz, Hector Memoirs (1870)

Berlioz, one of the great showmen of 19th-century musical life, was a wit and a fine writer. For amateurs of the 1840s artistic
scene, a book not to be missed. Good translation: Cairns (1969).

Bernstein, Leonard The Joy of Music (1960) it a

Conductors shouldn't be allowed to write this well. A book explaining music for the layman: simple, clear language—and the
same energy and sense of enjoyment as Bernstein provides when conducting or composing.

Blesh, Rudi Shining Trumpets: The History of Jazz (1948) a./

Comprehensive introduction to the history and aesthetics of jazz. Controversial, as no two musicians agree about what jazz
was, or is. Written in breathless Hollywoodese, but sound.

Bowra, Sir Cecil Maurice, English, 1898-1971.

Primitive Song. Rec: Ward

Charters, Samuel, American, 1929- .

The Country Blues. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Collier, James L. The Making of Jazz (1978) Oa

Refreshingly non-partisan, affectionate history of jazz up to and including the 1970s. Its innovative and accurate explanations
of what actually happens musically in a jazz performance are perhaps its greatest value.

Cooke, Deryck The Language of Music (1959) VP

A book on the ability of music to express emotional, non-musical ideas. Fine treatment of a neglected area of aesthetic
philosophy. You'll need to read music to get the most from it.

Cross, M. and Ewen, D. The Milton Cross Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and their Music (1969)
Programme notes on most of the greatest works of classical music. Handy; readable; stimulating. See Tovey.

David, H. and Mendel, A. The Bach Reader (1945)

Delightful collation of documents, letters, etc, germane to Bach and his life.

Einstein, Alfred Mozart (1946) Ma*

Affection and scholarship combined; deals with both life and works; has never yet been bettered. See DIARIES (Anderson)
Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder(1976) Enjoyment of lieder partly depends on appreciation of
the subtle marriage of words and music. This book, with German texts and English translations (by Bird and Stokes), provides
a basis—and is also a splendid anthology of German lyric poetry.

Frith, Simon The Sociology of Rock (1978)

Full of information on how the music business operates and why it plays such a large part in the lives of young people. Dense,
sociological style makes the book a tough but rewarding read.

Green, Benny The Reluctant Art (1962)

Subtitled "Five Studies in the Growth of Jazz": penetrating critical essays on Biz Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Lester Young,
Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker. Move on to this after Lee (qv) and in conjunction with Collier (qv) and Wilmer (qv).

Green, Stanley The World of Musical Comedy (1968) di _I

Backstage showbiz glitter-chat on some of the greatest shows of the century. Irresistible.

Greenfield, Edward (ed) The Penguin Stereo Record Guide (annual) Reviews, alphabetically by composer, of available stereo
recordings. Rosettes indicate quality. Invaluable for record collectors—and engrossing for other music-lovers too.

Gustin, Molly, American, 1923- .

Tonality. Rec: Aquinas (music)

Hadley. Benjamin (ed) Britannica Book of Music (1980) Oa

Excellent encyclopaedia, in one volume rather than Grove's (Sadie, qv) twenty. See Hindley.

Harman, A., Metiers, W. and Milner, A. Man and His Music (1969) Good, standard history of music, accessible to the layman
but with sound scholarly pretensions. See Mellers; Robertson.

Heilbut, Anthony, American, 1938?.

The Gospel Sound. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Hindley, Geoffrey (ed) Larousse Encyclopaedia of Music (1971.) * Superb. Magnificent pictures; well-researched, readable,
thorough text (one volume, too). Steak meal where many encyclopaedias offer only soup.

Hoffnung, Gerard The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra (1955) Inspired, zany cartoons. If music was never like this, it's
music's loss. Also: The Maestro; The Hoffnung Companion to Music

Hopkins, Antony Understanding Music (1979) dl _1

Informative survey of the processes and "meaning" of music, with a fresh, stimulating approach to the pleasures of listening.
You'll need to read music to get the utmost benefit from it, alas. Also: Talking about Musk; The Nine Symphonies of
Beethoven, etc

Hutchings, Arthur The Invention and Composition of Music (1958) P Textbook of harmony, counterpoint and other
compositional techniques. For beginners, one of the clearest and best.

Jacobs, A. and Sadie, S. (eds) The Pan Book of Opera (1969)

Shorter than Kobbe (qv) but covers similar ground. Short articles about opera composers, synopses of principal works. If
Kobbe is for dedicated opera-lovers, this is for the rest of us. See Sadie.

Kirkpatrick, John (ed) Charles E. Ives: Memos (1972)

Ives the man was as quirky and mind-stretching as his music. A pleasure—and not just for fans.

Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka), American, 1934- .

Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Rec: Counterpunch NF Hungry Mind (music)

Knapp, J. Merrill The Magic of Opera (1972)

Excellent layman's introduction to this most sumptuous of forms. Sections on the function of each of the basic components
(libretto, aria, chorus, singers, staging) are followed by chapters on conventions, aesthetics and outstanding achievements in the
medium. A thoughtful book, by an enthusiast who is never besotted. Not technical.
Kohl* Gustav The Complete Opera Book (1918)
Summaries of great operas, listed alphabetically by composer. Especially recommended to those who find plots of most operas
arcane, simplistic or ridiculous—here are the facts to support this opinion. Updated edition (ed Hallwood) recommended. See
Jacobs.

Lee, Edward Jazz: An Introduction (1972) a

Logan, N. and Woffinden, B. (eds) The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopaedia of Rock (1976) fJ a ..1/
Useful collection of rock data. Thoroughly researched information on rock artists; subjective assessment of their work;
informative and entertaining. Updated annually.

Marsh, Dave, American, 1950- .

The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Mellers, Wilfrid Music in a New Found Land (1964)

Important study of American music, from its European and folk roots in the 19th century onwards. Very good on jazz; for
concert music, supplement with Austin (qv). See Harman.

Morgenstern, Samuel (ed) Composers on Music (1956)

Selection of composers' writings, from 1500 to the present day. Serious in tone; contains many fascinating, important
documents.

Munrow, David Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1976) a _I

Dry title conceals scholarly work of delightful freshness and zest. A passionate man discussing his passion. Superb.

Newman, Ernest Wagner Nights (1949)

Definitive work on the Wagner operas; detailed analyses of the plot and music of each opera. See Wagner; DIARIES (Wagner)

Nichols, Roger Ravel (1977)

Example of the Master Musiciansseries at its best. Each book clearly, briefly discusses a composer's life and works. For the
layman in search of fairly deep biographical detail, excellent value.

Nolan, Frederick The Sound of Their Music (1978)

Gloriously glossy showbiz biography of Rodgers and Hammerstein, cunningly blended with a cool critical appreciation. A
book for fans—and also for those intrigued by why, as well as how, the musical evolved the way it did.

Oliver, Paul, English, 1927- .

Blues Fell This Morning. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Osborne, Charles (ed) The Dictionary of Composers (1977)

Short critical biographies, alphabetically arranged, of 200 great composers. Entries reliable, often detailed; critical judgements
fresh and lively.

Palmer, Robert, American, 1945-1997.

Deep Blues. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Rauchhaupt, Ursula von (ed) The Symphony (1972) * Coffee-table book (size and weight of the average coffee-table).
Pictures superb; text precise and meaty.

Robertson, A. and Stevens, D. (eds) The Pelican History of Music (3 vols. 1962-68) a
Short books with necessarily compressed judgements, and the usual shortcomings of an over-general approach. Covers earliest
times to 1920 in 600 pages.

Rosen, Charles The Classical Style (1973) M P*

Study of (mainly) Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven: how they wrote, how their style developed, their aesthetic ideals and
technical means. Magnificent. You need to be able to read music—and it's worth learning, if this is the reward. Also:
Schoenberg
Sadie, Stanley (ed) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) 10a*-1 Musicians' and musicologists' bible;
necessitates long shelves and a limitless purse. Musical equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This, 6th, edition is
completely revised and recast—but earlier editions make fascinating browsing, the cobwebby attics of the past. See Hadley;
Hindley.

Simon, George The Big Bands (1967)

The great days of swing recalled in breathless prose with interminable, fascinating detail. Who played third trombone with
Tommy Dorsey in 1938, and what did he think of the caviar? This book will tell you, for sure.

Simpson, Robert The Symphony (1966) 10 a *

Analyses of many great symphonies, historically by composer, from Haydn to the present day. You get most from it if you can
read music, but nevertheless an essential book.

Slonimsky, Nicolas Lexicon of Musical Invective (1969)

Great critics of the past and how wrong they were: the worst reviews ever written. Read it to confirm your prejudices—about
music you hate, or the art of criticism.

Stravinsky, I. and Craft, R. Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1959)

One of the 20th century's leading composers, Stravinsky was also wit, raconteur, caustic and irreverent commentator on
everything around him. This selection concentrates mainly on matters musical. Also: An Autobiography; The Poetics of Music.
See White.

Tovey, D. F. Essays in Musical Analysis (1936) lia

Stimulating analyses of standard classics; originally programme notes, but enduringly valuable for perception and indeed wit.
Also: Essays and Lectures on Music: Beethoven; Musical Textures. See Cross.

Varese, Louise Varese: A Looking-glass Diary (1972)

What is the quest for new sounds all about—and why is it so hard for the modern creator to reach an audience? These chatty
memoirs of a thorny, uncompromising creator (perhaps even a genius) suggest some answers.

Wagner, Richard Stories and Essays (c. 1880)

Wagner's stories inhabit the same world as his operas; his essays are often outrageous, always stimulating. See Newman.

White, Eric W. Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works (1966) 0* -f Admirable clarity; exhaustive thoroughness; elegant,
clear style. Superb. Also: Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas. See Stravinsky.

Whittall, Arnold Music since the First World War(1977)

Study of 20th-century music, shorter and less comprehensive than Austin (qv), but outstanding for aesthetic criticism—a rare
quality in books on this subject.

Wilder, Alec American Popular Song (1972)10*

Huge critical survey of Kern, Berlin, Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Arlen and a dozen other equally distinguished men. Technical
(musical examples crucial); useful glossaries and lists. For anybody interested in the popular music of this century, essential.

Wilmer, Valerie As Serious as Your Life (1977)

What has jars been doing since 1960? This survey covers some of the trends (musical and sociological) and provides a critical
introduction to the work of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and over 100 other luminaries. An enthusiast's book,
ideal for reference—but its eager tone could breed enthusiasm, too. Also: Jazz People; The Face of Black Music; The Jazz
Scene (with Charles Fox)

CLASSICAL MUSIC

EARLY MUSIC - David Fallows

Broadly speaking, the notion of `early music' has two quite separate meanings. The first is the history of Western music before
Bach and Handel (both bom in 1685), an enormous repertory that goes back to Gregorian chant (reputedly assembled by Pope
Gregory the Great around 600 AD) and includes a large number of major composers, among them Perotinus (c. 1200),
Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377), Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400-1474), Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521), Giovanni Pierluigi
da Palestrina (1425-1594), William Byrd (1543-1623), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Arcangelo Corelli (1665-1713), and
Henry Purcell (1659-1695). The second meaning is the application of historical performing techniques to any music before
about World War H: there have been many changes in the construction of instruments, in the way performers react to music on
the page, in the way they phrase the music, in aesthetic attitudes.

The 18th-century musician was taught to see the whole of musical history
as a hill rising gently and undulatingly out of the darkness, with the
music of his own time standing on the sunlit summit: the modern
musician is encouraged to view it as a rather alarming slope, studded like
Easter Island with titanic heads, far larger than life. And he may even
have an uneasy suspicion that the slope is a downward one.
THURSTON DART

A Dictionary of Early Music (1981) by Jerome Roche and Elizabeth Roche. Thumbnail information on all the main
composers, repertories, instruments and concepts in music down to the time of Monteverdi. This is an excellent and
authoritative summary.

Western Plainchant: A Handbook (1993) by David Hiley. A comprehensive orientation to the state of research on the
melodies of the Catholic church, a repertory that formed the basic musical training of all composers before the Reformation
and continued to have a massive impact on composers until the 19th century.

Music in Medieval Europe (1989) by Jeremy Yudkin. Takes the story up to about 1400 with clear and engaging explanations
and copious musical examples.

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (1950) by Manfred F Bukofzer. This remains one of the most gripping books for
the general reader who wants a glimpse at how a musical historian goes to work on early materials. Mainly concerned with the
15th century.

The Rise of European Music, 1380-1500 (1993) by Reinhard Strohm. An extended panoramic view of how these central
years are seen today, bursting with original and controversial insights.

Music in the Renaissance (1976) by Howard Mayer Brown. An elegant bird's-eye summary of music from 1420 to 1600, with
its focus on the main composers and their work.

Music in the Seventeenth Century (1987) by Lorenzo Bianconi. Perhaps the clearest and most incisive recent survey of
music in the years from the beginnings of opera to the time of Corelli.

The Interpretation of Music (1954) by Thurston Dart .Though old and occasion-ally eccentric, this is a glitteringly brilliant
introduction to the performer's problem in music down to the Baroque era.

Authenticity in Early Music (1988) edited by Nicholas Kenyon. Essays that explore the problems of historical performance as
seen today. After its publication nobody dared use the word `authenticity' again, and performers were much more cautious in
their claims of historical correctness.

Early Recordings and Musical Style (1992) by Robert Philip. By exploring the earliest recorded performances, Philip draws
attention to the many aesthetic changes within the last century, to musical styles that would not now be acceptable in any
circumstances, and to how difficult it would be to reconstruct the sounds of the early 20th century if no recordings had
survived. It is a solemn lesson to those attempting to recover the sounds of the 18th century and earlier.

BAROQUE MUSIC
David Maw

The word `baroque' comes from the Portuguese barroco for a pearl of irregular or bulbous shape. It found its way into critical
writing during the middle part of the 18th century, when it was used with a pejorative connotation; thus 'A baroque music is
that in which the harmony is confused, charged with modulations and dissonances, the melody is harsh and little natural, the
intonation difficult, and the movement constrained' (Jean Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique). In modem times, the
word has been used to refer to music of the period 1600-1750, irrespective of its ornateness or frowardness; what the general
characteristics of the style are is still an open question. During the period, important developments were made in opera and
instrumental music (the virtuosity attained in violin and keyboard repertories being noteworthy); and elaborate theories were
formulated about the conveyance of the affections through music.

Music hath two ends, first to please the sense, and that is done by the pure
dulcor of harmony ... and secondly to move the affections or excite passion. And that is done with measures of time joined
with the former. And it must be granted that pure impulse artificially acted and continued hath great power to excite men to act
but not to think ... The melody is only to add to the diversion.
ROGER NORTH

Music in the Baroque Era (1947) by Manfred Bukofzer. Though now old, this stately tome is still the best account of the
developments in musical style during the period.

Source Readings in Music History: The Baroque Era (1950) selected and annotated by Oliver Strunk. A selection of
passages from contemporary writers is here presented in excellent translations. The topics covered are: the stile
rappresentativo, musical practice, operatic rivalries and criticism, and developments in musical theory.

Monteverdi (1962) by Denis Arnold. This is a vivaciously written account of the composer's life and work. Denis Arnold was
the foremost scholar of 16th- and 17th-century Venetian music, and in this book he used his extensive knowledge to good effect
in explaining Monteverdi's pivotal position between Renaissance and Baroque styles.

The Purcell Companion (1995) edited by Michael Burden. An excellent collection of essays concerning many different
aspects of the composer and his music, published to coincide with the tercentenary of his death.

Couperin (1982) by David Turley. A brief and intelligent study of the most eminent composer of the French Baroque.

Vivaldi (1978) by Michael Talbot. Vivaldi deserves to be better known for pieces other than the Four Seasons: Michael Talbot's
book explains why.

Rameau (1968) by Cuthbert Girdlestone. This is the classic work on one of the most characteristic and controversial musicians
working in 18th-century France. In addition to his major contributions to musical theory, Rameau was a composer of
considerable accomplishment.

Scarlatti (1953) by Ralph Kirkpatrick. This elegantly written book covers every aspect of Scarlatti's life and work and also
contains much interesting information about the performance of his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Handel (1994) by Donald Burrows. Handel's was a varied life, often very much at the heart of society. Donald Burrows
presents a balanced picture of the man, his context and work, righting the lopsided impressions that have arisen.

Bach (1983) by Malcolm Boyd. This is a remarkable book, conveying a considerable breadth and depth of insight within
relatively few pages. Of course, the subject matter warrants nothing less.

CLASSICAL MUSIC
David Maw

There is more general acceptance for the notion of a classical style in music - being that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven,
according to Rosen's contention - than for a classical period. In so far as the latter has any validity, then it is to designate the
years 1750-1820; but really the phenomenon is more localized than a simple temporal segment would suggest. The style is
characterized by the formal conventions of the `sonata principle', which are the stock in trade of sonatas, symphonies,
concertos, string quartets, and operatic set pieces; these being the genres principally cultivated. The term `classical' is justified
both by the universality of these formal characteristics, and on account of the balance that they effect between the various
elements of music; it has nothing at all to do with a recrudescence of antique values.

Nevertheless, the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as

to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest
horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and
thereby always remain music.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

The Classical Style (1976) by Charles Rosen. The definitive exposition of this subject.

Source Readings in Music History: The Classic Era (1950) selected and annotated by Oliver Strunk. An anthology of
passages from contemporary writers concerning changes in musical practice, operatic rivalry and criticism, and the musical life
of Europe.

The String Quartet (1983) by Paul Griffiths. The string quartet was one of the most significant developments of the 18th
century. Paul Griffiths tells its story right up to the present day, cunningly structuring his book in the form of the music.

The Piano: A History (1976) by Cyril Ehrlich. The invention and development of the piano had a more significant impact
upon the nature of musical thought than did any other technological innovations before the production of sound by electronic
means. Cyril Ehrlich is one of the most eminent socioeconomic historians of music, and his book a classic.

C P E Bach Studies (1988) edited by Stephen L Clark. J S Bach's second son was one of the most unusual and influential of
the composers who effected the transition between Baroque and classical modes of musical thought. This collection of essays
(some rather technical) affords insights into many areas of a composer who merits greater attention.

Haydn, his Life and Music (1988) by H C Robbins Landon and David Wyn Jones. This is an excellent survey of a long and
productive life with much relevant back-ground material on the composer's artistic and cultural surroundings.

The Mozart Companion (1956) edited by H C Robbins Landon and Donald Mitchell. For a composer as multifaceted and oft
written about as Mozart, the best introduction is a collection of essays by various authors. The full range of his output is
covered here by writers as distinguished as Friedrich Blume, Arthur Hutchings, Hans Keller, and the editors themselves.

Beethoven (1985) by Denis Matthews. The author maintains an admirable distance on the life and the work, where these are
elsewhere so often mythologized; but he conveys also the enthusiasm and awe that so monumental a subject requires.

Schubert (1987) by John Reed. This is a good introduction to a composer who was caught between Classicism and
Romanticism but properly belonged to neither.

ROMANTIC MUSIC
David Maw

The word Romantik entered the common currency of the German language after its use by E T A Hoffman in an essay on
Beethoven's instrumental music, written in 1813. This owes more to Hoffman than to Beethoven, and it would be wrong to
con-fuse the novel forms of Beethoven's later music, impelled by a complete fidelity to his material, with the formal vagaries of
subsequent music, where expressive caprice was the guiding light. Romanticism can be dated, then, from around 1820; many
of its traits lingered on well into the 20th century. While music was generally regarded in the 19th century as the highest art
form, it frequently looked to literature and the fine arts for inspiration: symphonic poems, songs without words, nocturnes,
evocations, fantasies, rhapsodies, and countless other pieces of a fanciful inclination were among the most experimental and
typical genres cultivated. Yet, even where the form was ostensibly abstract - in symphonies, concertos, and sonatas - there was
a strong suggestion that it was being narrated by the material, rather than emerging inexorably from it.

It is the art of music which most completely realizes this artistic ideal,
this perfect identification of matter and form. In its consummate moments,
the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the
subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate
each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments,
all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire.
WALTER PATER
Romantic Music (1984) by Leon Plantings. A highly readable introduction to the ideas and styles of music in the 19th century.
Source Readings in Music History, the Romantic Era (1950) selected and annotated by Oliver Strunk. This is an invaluable
collection of excerptions presenting the literary background to romanticism and the writings of composer-critics of the period
(Carl von Weber, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Richard Waver).

The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz (1969) translated and edited by David Cairns. Berlioz was no less significant as a literary
figure than as a musical one. His memoirs are a compelling read, telling of his upbringing and education, literary and musical
passions, amorous adventures, travels, life as a critic, and progress towards compositional success. David Cairn's translation is
excellent.

Berlioz (1982) by Hugh Macdonald. A considered appraisal of the man and his music by the most eminent scholar of the
subject.

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin (1992) edited by Jim Samson. It is a paradox that Chopin's music should be so
classical in technique, given its highly romantic sound. This excellent collection of essays helps to explain why this is so,
setting the music in the context of its influences, borrowed and bequeathed. One or two of the essays may be slightly too
technical for the general reader; but most are quite approachable.

Schumann and his World (1994) edited by R Larry Todd. Many minds come together here to consider the enigmatic work,
elusive personality, and turbid milieu of one of the 19th century's most characteristic composers.

Liszt (1990) by Derek Watson. Liszt's flamboyant personality and the legends that accrued around it have for a long time
hindered evaluation of the compositional legacy. Derek Watson's excellent study rectifies this with a clear-sighted account of an
oeuvre that is often masterly and frequently innovative.

The Wagner Compendium, a Guide to Wagner's Life and Music (1992) edited by Barry Millington. To encompass Wagner
in a single volume is an impossibility; I suspect that Barry Millington's compendium comes as close to achieving this
unfeasible task as can be reached.

Brahms (1990) by Malcolm Macdonald. Brahms rued his having been born `too late'; the figure of Beethoven was a blessing
and a bane to him. Malcolm Macdonald's is a careful study of a scrupulous and complicated artist.

Tchaikovsky (1973) by Edward Garden. No account of Tchaikovsky could satisfactorily separate the life and the work; so
Edward Garden integrated the two in a very sensitive evaluation.

20TH-CENTURY MUSIC
Paul Griffiths

Two themes stand out in the history of Western music in the 20th century: change and accumulation. Instances of the first
include, in the early part of the century, Schoenberg's break with tonal harmony and Stravinsky's renewal of rhythmic pulse;
and the growing power of electronic technology, particularly since the World War II, has altered how music is composed,
performed, and heard. at Western classical music has simultaneously accumulated has been a deeper awareness not only of its
own past but of traditions outside itself, including especially the many musical cultures of Asia. Western composers in 1900
were working within a tradition that was essendally Germanic and that extended back no more than 150 years or so. Their
colleagues now survey many centuries, and the world.

You cannot tell where music is going any more than you can tell
where people are going. Each time creates its own needs.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Modern Music: A Concise History (1994) by Paul Griffiths. A general introduction to the modern age in Western music, from
Claude Debussy to the present. The next step would be to move to the following three volumes, which divide up the period,
and which need some acquaintance with musical notation.

Music in Transition (1977) by Jim Samson. A study of the first two decades of the century, and in particular of the breakdown
of tonal harmony, as it occurred in the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Sabin, and others.
Music Since the First World War (1977) by Arnold Whittall. This is an excellent, companionable read; Whittall shows wide
sympathies in considering how composers dealt with broadening musical possibilities.

Modern Music and After (1995) by Paul Griffiths. This book works from the detonation of radical change that came in the
late 1940s Gohn Cage, Pierre Boulez, electronic music) to the exuberant confusion of music in the 1990s.

Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (1978) by Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft. From the time of The Firebird (1910) to
his death (1971), Stravinsky was the dominant musical force by virtue of his influence and prestige, not to mention the variety
and brilliance of his achievement. This compendium is full of tang, colour and insight, despite its other, quite un-Stravinskian,
quality of disorder.

The Music of Stravinsky (1988) by Stephen Walsh. For a more consistent view of Stravinsky's output - and also a lively one -
this is the best choice. The author has been working on a major biography of the composer.

Schoenberg (1975) by Charles Rosen. There should be more books like this: a concise introduction, steered, by the author's
intelligence, between reverence and scepticism, and requiring from the reader nothing but curiosity.

Silence (1961) by John Cage. A classic collection of essays by the man who persuaded us that music is not an art, still less a
means of communication, but an attitude of mind, a way of being attuned, even to silence.

JAZZ
Miles Kington

A year or two back I did a book for HarperCollins called The jazz Anthology which, if I did again now, I'd call A Jazz
Anthology, but I wouldn't change a lot else; it's still quite a good sampler. In the introduction I see I wrote that most writing on
jazz is not very good (including almost all the novels and poetry ever written on the subject) and I stick to that now. The best of
it tends to be anecdotal, like the best conversation of jazz musicians, which explains this selection. The best musical history of
jazz is not yet finished - Gunther Schuller has written the first two volumes and has got up to about 1940.

Most of the people who have any respect for jazz in this country
are those who can make a buck out of it.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

We Called It Music (1992) by Eddie Condon. Condon embraced jazz, the guitar, and the bottle during the Prohibition years.
He wasn't a great guitarist but he was a wonderful storyteller and this is the most funny, colourful, prejudiced account of jazz
between the wars ever written. Sample phrase: `I arrived at the club in a perfect state of equilibrium - half man, half whisky.'

Raise Up Off Me (1979) by Hampton Hawes. Miles Davis's autobiography is commonly thought to be the toughest, frankest
book by a modern black musician about drugs, racism, Charlie Parker, and so on. It isn't, though it's good. This is.

The McJazz Manuscripts (1979) by Sandy Brown. Sandy Brown was a wonderful Scots clarinettist who learned to play at the
sort of Edinburgh clubs where Sean Connery learned to be a teenage bouncer. He later became a genius of an acoustic architect
and a damned good writer; this book contains all the writings he left behind, including an unfinished autobiography.

Close Enough for Jazz (1983) by Mike Zwerin. Zwerin played trombone with Miles Davis in 1949 and never played with
anyone as good again, but he did become the resident jazz writer on the International Herald Tribune (in Paris), where he still
is, and, in my opinion, is the best jazz writer alive today. This is his odd, freewheeling life story, which takes in everything
from playing on tours in Russia to inheriting a steel company he didn't want. (He has also translated a book by the wonderful
French writer Boris Vim and written a sombre history of jazz under the Nazis.)

Jazz Anecdotes (1993) edited by Bill Crow. The best collection of (genuine) jazz anecdotes ever printed. Bill Crow is a
musician himself (very good bass player) and knows how to get, and tell, a story from other players.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This (1991) by Val Wilmer. Val Wilmer is the complete opposite of the jazz stereotype.
Typically, a jazz person is American, black, male, and heterosexual. Wilmer is English, white, female, and lesbian. She is also
one of the best photographers and writers ever to fall in love with jazz, and has got closer inside black culture than most white
people ever get.

POP MUSIC
Charles Shaar Murray

Pop provides one of the broadest cultural umbrellas which the 20th century has to offer: sheltering beneath it can be found such
wildly dissimilar flora and fauna as Bing Crosby and Howlin' Wolf, Gracie Fields and Madonna, Barry Manilow and Ice-. T,
the Bay City Rollers and the Butthole Surfers. By the same token, pop books come in a bewildering variety of flavours and
weights, as well as shapes and sizes. They range from potboiling biographies to train spotter's guides; from addled memoirs to
academic tracts; from dryly fact-packed laundry listings to airily free-flying theory; from solemn social and cultural history to
scabrously bawdy anecdote; from the most impenetrably parochial of subcultures to the most all-encompassingly ubiquitous
manifestations of the international mass market. Pop means an infinite number of things to an infinite number of people, and
the sheer diversity of the field has been well served by its equally diverse chroniclers.

Rock and roll is the most brutal, ugly, vicious form of expression - sly,
lewd, in plain fact, dirty ... rancid-smelling, aphrodisiac ... the
martial music of every delinquent on the face of the earth.
Fxalvx SINATxA

The Faber Book of Pop (1995) by Hanif Kureishi and Jon Savage. With an 800-page celebration of precisely that diversity
covering the full half-century and drawing on contributions from (among hundreds of others) Malcolm X, Angela Carter,
Hunter S Thompson, Greil Marcus, Nik Cohn, Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol, Lester Bangs, Colin Machines, and Paul Johnson,
Kureishi and Savage cater for every conceivable taste and interest, delivering as sumptuous a smorgasbord of pop-culch text
bites as anyone has ever served up between a single pair of covers.

AwopBopALooBop ALopBamBoom: Pop from the Beginning (1969) by Nik Cohn. Inaccurate, opinionated, shamelessly
unfair, and unashamedly biased, this is the best and most influential book about pop music ever written by an Englishman.
Barbecuing every sacred cow he could and - he was the first pop critic to damn the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band as the emperor's psychedelic new clothes - Cohn wrote this book as a funeral oration for the corpse of pop at the end of
the 1960s, a time when the Flash McTra., aesthetic he adored had been seemingly subsumed beneath a welter of solemnity and
pretension. This eulogy for superpop is the most relentlessly quotable pop book ever written: Cohn's coining of the term
`boring old fart' is almost the least of his achievements.

Mystery Train (1975) by Greil Marcus. Modem rock criticism starts here. Marcus was unravelling the subtexts of pop before
most of his peers even knew what a subtext was, and these essays - on Robert Johnson, Sly Stone, Randy Newman, Elvis
Presley, and the Band - address the expression, in popular music, of the classic themes of American literature, providing both
cross-disciplinary continuity and a signpost towards new ways of listening.

Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story (1982) by Nick Tosches. The most audacious, imaginative, and unorthodox rock
biography ever written: an intoxicating, magic-realist account of the life and times of a white 1950s rocker more radical and
challenging than Presley could ever have dreamed of being, who straddled the implicit contradictions of who he was and what
he did until they tore him apart.

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Music and the Sixties (1995) by Ian MacDonald. A virtuoso example of just how
scholarly pop criticism can get, and also of how spectacularly this approach can pay off when it's done properly. MacDonald -
the author, incidentally, of a rather good book about Shostakovich - analyses each and every Beatles song in order of recording
and in doing so Links the band's rise and fall with that of the Sixties Dream.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung (1988) by Lester Bangs. The late Lester Bangs took the 1960s notion of `new
journalism' as far as anyone who ever wrote about popular music: he was pop's Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and Norman
Mailer all stuffed into the same battered black leather jacket. This collection of a decade and a half's demented scribblings - on
Kraftwerk, John Coltrane, the Clash, Elvis Presley, and his personal hero and bete noir, Lou Reed - is the most highly charged
and deeply committed writing about pop available anywhere. For Bangs the music he wrote about was a matter of life and
death, and it shows. Includes his famous essay James Taylor - Marked for Death.
The History of the Blues (1995) by Francis Davis. A huge story, intelligently told; Davis succeeds in his gargantuan task not
least because he knows what to leave out. Witty, perceptive, compassionate, and incisive, this self-proclaimed 'pop critic's
history of the blues' is the finest single-volume introduction to pop's primal root music that any general reader could desire.

The Death of Rhythm and Blues (1988) by Nelson George. Whites - specifically, white males - have traditionally enjoyed a
near monopoly on the analysis of popular music, even though the bulk of the music worth writing about has been black. Here
Nelson George, the doyen of African-American pop commentators, redresses the balance (partially, anyway) and tells you what
the white boys can't: that the great black music upon which modern notions of pop is founded thrived under segregation and
lost much of its impetus and identity in the wake of the civil-rights movement, and that white patronage of the music and its
makers has proved a far from unmixed blessing.

The Ice Opinion (1994) by Ice-T and Heidi Siegmund. Rap is the most word-intensive form of pop since the mid-1960s
heyday of Bob Dylan (whose `Subterranean Homesick Blues' is itself one of rap's ancestor records), and therefore it's not
surprising that rap's most prominent standard-bearer has a lot to say for himself, albeit with the aid of a ghostwriter. The
chapters on race relations and the social origins of gang culture are fascinating and the chapters on sex rather less so, but the
material on his famous conflict with Time Warner over his `Cop Killer' song provides a unique account of a classic music-biz
confrontation between a street hustler with a story to tell and a megacorporation with assets to protect.

The Sex Revolts (1995) by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press. The best and most ambitious of the current crop of books dealing
with pop's gender agenda, this transcends the narrow confines of the women-in-rock debate to examine what pop's treatment of
sexuality is actually telling us. Sometimes irritatingly rock-centric (black music scarcely gets a look in), it's nevertheless
challenging, well argued, and innovative.

DANCE
Susanne Lahusen

Recent dance literature has expanded far beyond biography and technical manuals. Writers have looked at dance from all
imaginable angles: dance as a form of communication, dance in its social, political, and cultural contexts, dance in education
and therapy. The books here chosen range from general histories of both Western and non-Western traditions in stage and social
drama, to biographical accounts and inspirational texts for the teacher and participant.

I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

The History of Dance (1981) by Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp. A comprehensive history, covering more than 2,000 years
and crossing many cultural boundaries, that illustrates how dance has always played an important role in every society.

Ballet and Modern Dance (1988) by Susan Au. A concise and lucid text, vividly describing the great performers and
performances of the past, as well as exploring today's Western theatre dance.

Time and the Dancing Image (1988) by Deborah Jowitt. A fascinating account of how European and American theatrical
dance has evolved in its social and cultural settings during the last two centuries.

Let's Dance: Social, Ballroom and Folk Dancing (1978) by Peter Buckman. Amusing anecdotes, lively descriptions, a useful
glossary - a superbly illustrated compendium of social, ballroom and folk dancing.

Rhythm in Joy: Classical Indian Dance Traditions (1987) by Leela Samson. An introduction to the variety and richness of
five of India's classical dance forms.

The Black Tradition in American Dance (1989) by Richard Long. A beautifully illustrated book which looks at the African-
American contribution to social and theatre dance from the early minstrels to the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

The World of Diaghilev (1971) by John Percival. A book on the great impresario who had become the focal point for many
leading artists of the early 20th century.
Martha, the Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes De Milk. Probably the most interesting of the numerous
biographies of the famous modem dancer and choreographer, and an insider's view of the American modem-dance scene.

In Touch with Dance (1993) by Marion Gough. A stimulating book encouraging teachers to make the dance lesson a dynamic
and highly creative experience for young people.

Denby, Edwin, American, 1903-1983.

Looking at Dance. Rec: Boston PL
Mythology

A major step in the evolution of rational from instinctive man is the development of myth, a "story- which enables him to give
formal shape to his experience of the inexplicable and thus, if not to control it, at least to contain it within a framework of
experience, of rationality, of precedent. Indeed, by altering and delimiting its myths, a society develops its relationship with the
world beyond its reasoning. For the modern reader, myth thus offers a series of parables for his own experience, case studies as
it were of the human mind grappling with religious, moral and ethical dilemmas. The study of myths is, at the objective level, a
kind of philosophical anthropology; at a subjective level, it shades into philosophy itself. Thus the stories (often engrossing and
delightful in themselves, not the least of their attractions) are charged with self-renewing relevance (compare Freud's use of
Oedipus), with an urgency of meaning which both informs and universalizes their local particularity. The books on this list
gather (and sometimes interpret) myths from many areas of the world; taken together, they give a picture of the developing
consciousness of man at large.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Dodds, Malinowski); CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Anderson, Kingsley, Lang, Lines, Perrault); DRAMA
(Aeschylus, Euripides); FICTION/SHORT STORIES (Grimm); HISTORY/AMERICAN (Slotkin); POETRY (Homer);
REFERENCE (Opie); RELIGION (Bible); SEX (Duffy)

Armah, Ayi K., Ghanaian writing in English, 1939- .

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Rec: Bloom

Branston, Brian The Lost Gods of England (1957)

Examines the religious and moral beliefs of the unconverted pre-Norman British. Readable account of ancient myths associated
(among others) with Wayland the Smith. See Raffel.

Burland, C. The Gods of Mexico (1967)

Imposing but accessible study of ancient Mexican religion—an ethical system as self-contained and programmatic as Judaism.
Excellent, clear interpretations of the myths, and of the symbolism of wall-paintings, stone carvings and temple decorations:
the convincing answer (if one is needed) to von Daniken and all that nonsense. See HISTORY/LATIN AMERICAN (Katz)

Burland, C., Nicholson, L. and Osborne, H. Mythology of the Americas (1968) if a *

Comprehensive survey of Indian mythologies from North, Central and South America. Copious quotations; sensible
interpretations; superb illustrations. See HISTORY/AMERICAN (Josephy); HISTORY/LATIN AMERICAN (Katz, Wachtel)

Clark, Anne Beast and Bawdy (1975) fi -if A lovely witty book on mythological beasts from the Middle Ages: dragons,
hippogriffs, unicorns, hairy hippopotami, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders". What a Rabelaisian crew
they were!

Dasent, G. W. (trans) The Story of Burnt Njal (1861)

Probably the greatest of the Icelandic sagas; Dasent's version—the first in English—is compelling.

Davidson, H. R. E. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964)

Full account of the gods of Teutonic and Norse Europe who eventually gave way to Christianity. Some scholars dispute
Davidson's conclusions; but these need not disturb those mainly interested in the narrative.

Detienne, Marcel, French, 1935- .

The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Dowson, J. A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion (1878)

Easy to read, if prosaic; basic information about the principal characters of Hindu mythology. 11th edition (1968)
recommended. See Dutt.

Dutt, R. C. The Ramayana and Mahabharata (1920)

Poetic, rather Victorian version but conveys much of the flavour of these two famous epics of the Indian world. See Dowson.

Eliade, Mircea Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1968)

Eliade is an authority on the concepts and ideas underlying religions of the world. Here he expands the contention that "myths
reveal the structure of reality, and the multiple modalities of being in the world." Also: From Primitives to Zen: An Anthology
from the World's Religious Texts

Eliade, Mircea, Romanian-French, 1907-1986.

Images and Symbols. Rec: TLS
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Faits, S. L. and Spoerl, D. T. Beginnings (1958)

The authors communicate the fabulous richness and beauty of myth in a book likely to fascinate younger readers. Far-ranging
anthology; sensitive style.

Feldman, Susan (ed) African Myths and Tales (1963) at a

Very little introductory or "academic" material in this book. Its fascinating stories will come as a surprise to readers brought up
exclusively on Greece and Rome.

Traditional, Hungarian.
Folktales of Hungary. Rec: Ward

Frazer, James The Golden Bough (1890– 1915) di!Oa*?

Frazer's 12-volume study (also available in a one-volume condensation) of comparative myth, magic, religion, and belief was
the foundation of modern, "Cambridge school" anthropology. Starting with the sacred kingship of the grove of Nemi near
Rome, Frazer covers the world of myth and magic from China to Peru. Much detail out of date or plain wrong; but still a magic
book. Also: Totemism and Exogamy; Aftermath

Frazer, Sir James George, Scottish, 1854-1941.

Golden Bough. Rec: Boston PL GBWW (Selections) Good Reading ML Nonfiction

Gantz, Jeffrey (trans) The Mabinogion (1976)

Fairy tales of a world magically, recognizably Welsh, a Celtic world unadulterated by medieval chivalry. Gantz's modern
translation supersedes all others. See Branston; Rees.

Gardner, John (trans) The Complete Works of the Gawain Poet (1965) "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," "The Pearl" and
other minor works of the poet known only as "the Gawain poet," in a fine modern translation. Geoffrey of Monmouth History
of the Kings of Britain(c. 1130) Geoffrey purports to give an account of "the kings who dwelt in Britain before the incarnation
of Christ" and especially of "Arthur and the many others who succeeded him after the incarnation". He was an unscrupulous
liar and forger, but his accounts of the early myths of England, from its colonization by Brutus through Lear to Arthur, are
charming and seminal. See Gardner; Malory; CHILDREN'S BOOKS (White)

Graves, Robert The Greek Myths (1955) 0* *

Graves' two volumes recounting the stories of Greek gods and heroes include conclusions of modern archaeology and other
branches of scholarship as well as his own hobbyhorses (notably that of the Moon Goddess). Immensely readable, though
subject to academic sniffs: usefully read in conjunction with Kerenyi (qv). Also: The White Goddess. See
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: FICTION/NOVELS; POETRY

Gray, John Near Eastern Mythology (1969) 0 Useful illustrated survey. Avoids interpretation and is thin on quotation, but the
facts are excellently covered. See Hooke.

Harrison, Jane Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) 2* Now something of a curiosity, a great Cambridge
scholar's imaginative reading of neglected data of pre-Olympian Greek religion and myth gave rise to a new approach, less
pious and more generous, to the whole field of ancient studies. Also: Thetnis. See Kerenyi; Kirk; ANTHROPOLOGY (Dodds)

Hatto, A. T. (trans) The Nibelungenlied (c. 1260)

13th-century epic develops from a chivalric fairy tale to the grim realities of treachery, revenge and desperate human courage
in the face of inevitable doom. As well as for the Ringoperas of Wagner, this saga was an important source for Tolkien's Lord
of the Rings (see CHILDREN'S BOOKS).

Hesiod, Greek, 8th C BCE.

Works and Days. Rec: Bloom Lubbock Utne
Theogony. Rec: Bloom Lubbock

Hooke, S. H. Middle Eastern Mythology (1963) II * *

One of the few books to examine Bible myths, quite properly, in the context of Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythology.
Includes narratives of the birth and resurrection of Jesus. See Gray; RELIGION (Bible)

Huxley, Francis The Invisibles ( 1966)

Thorough, and thoroughly scary, study of the myths and rituals of the voodoo cult. Huxley is an anthropologist and this book
combines scholarly detachment with personal enthusiasm for the island of Haiti and its people, if not for every one of their
weird practices. Also: Affable Savages (praised anthropological study of Brazilian Indians)

Ions, Veronica The World's Mythology in Colour(1974)

Sumptuously illustrated survey. Necessarily brief text (heavy on wonder, light on interpretation) will whet the appetite, and the
bibliography points the way to more substantial diets.

Kamakau, Samuel Manaiakalani, Hawaiian, 1815-1876.

The Works of the People of Old. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (mythology)

Kerenyi, C. The Gods of the Greeks(195 1)

Somewhat flowery Jungian reading of Greek mythology, but lively with recherché variants; to be sipped, with a long spoon, for
devilish pleasure. Also: The Heroes of the Greeks. See Graves; Harrison.

Kirk, G. S. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures ( 1970) LO P
Critical examination of the theories of Levi-Strauss (qv) in particular; though coloured by his views, an important and useful
book for readers wishing to understand the anthropological sources of the myths of the ancient Near East and Greece. Also:
The Nature of Greek Myths. See Harrison; Hooke; Slater; ANTHROPOLOGY (Dodds); PHILOSOPHY

Lame Deer (John Fire), Native American, 1903?-1976.

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions (With Richard Erdoes). Rec: Counterpunch NF (mythology)

Larousse (publisher) New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology (1959) tOa*

Abundantly illustrated, full of clearly presented information, with quotations from literature and reference to modern
archaeological discoveries. Outstanding.

Anonymous, Hawaiian, First pub. 1891.

A Legendary Tradition of Kamapua'a: The Hawaiian Pig-God (Ed. and trans. by Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa). Rec: Counterpunch
Trans

Levi-Strauss, Claude The Raw and the Cooked(1969) 09*

Levi-Strauss founded the "structural" method of analysing cultures. His explanation of the "reality" behind the mythology of
primitive cultures, especially those of South America, created a revolution in the study of myths. Also: Totemism; Tristes
Tropiques. See ANTHROPOLOGY (Leach, Levi-Strauss)

Lewis, Lloyd Myths after Lincoln (1929)

Lewis was a poet and scholar who became fascinated by the body of myth that built up about President Lincoln after his death,
and that still endured in Lewis's time. (For example, most visitors to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, think that
Lincoln is buried there: he is not—he is actually buried in Springfield, Illinois—and this gives him multiple sepulchres, one of
the essential characteristics of the mythical heroes of old.) Absolutely fascinating: proof that mythologizing is by no means
dead in our "scientific" world. See Raglan; Rank.

Malory, Sir Thomas Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) *161

Arthur and Guinevere, the Knights of the Round Table, the quest for the Holy Grail and the rest are the most potent of British
myths, known in the Middle Ages as "the Matter of Britain". See Gardner; Geoffrey of Monmouth; CHILDREN'S BOOKS
(White, T. H.)

Malory, Thomas, English, d. 1471.

Le Morte d'Arthur. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Lubbock Rex

Mitchison, Naomi The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931)
An extraordinary novel about a ritual king and queen from the outer reaches of the Black Sea area who journey to Rome in the
era of the Gracchi and become caught up in the "real" (as opposed to "mythical") events of Roman history.

Narayan, R. K. Gods, Demons and Others (1964) £ a *

Essential primer for those wishing to enter the world of Hindu culture. Also: Waiting for the Mahatma; The Guide; The Man
Eater of Malgudi. See Dowson; Dutt; O'Flaherty.

O'Flaherty, W. D. Hindu Myths (1975) *

This does for Hinduism what Graves (qv) did for the Greeks, but is more accessible for the general reader.

Ovid Metamorphoses (1st century AD) a*P.

Not only a treasure-house of mythological stories, but also a source-book for all Western writers from the 12th century on—
Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, etc—and for painters, sculptors and musicians. Good translation: Innes.

Ovid, Roman, 43 BCE-17 CE .

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Metamorphoses. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Ward
Ars Amatoria (Art of Love). Rec: Bloom Ward
Heroides. Rec: Bloom

Raffel, Burton (trans) Beowulf (1963) *

Good modern translation of "the oldest English epic". Still a great story and a fine, scary one to while away a winter's night.
See Branston.

Anonymous, English, 8th C.

Beowulf. Rec: Bloom Rex

Raglan, Lord The Hero (1952)

A remarkable study, by an amateur anthropologist and mythologist, of the characteristics of mythical heroes, showing how they
are common to many cultures and eras—even shared by such a modern "hero" as Lincoln. Also: Jocasta's Crime. See Lewis;
Rank.

Rank, Otto The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1952)

Fine discussion, by a noted psychoanalyst, of the unconscious elements in mythopoeic thought—with emphasis on the psychic
backgrounds of the birth-stories of heroes.

Rees, A. and B. Celtic Heritage (1961) PP

Scholarly, detailed study of the myths of Ireland and Wales. First part considers the various cycles of tradition and their
characteristics; second examines the cosmological framework; third discusses themes. Myths are narrated in each section. See
Gantz.

Sandars, Nancy The Epic of Gilgamesh (1960)

Famous, most important non-Biblical myth of the ancient Near East, deserves to be as well known as stories of ancient Greece.
This book gives the full version, with useful introduction. See Gray; ARCHAEOLOGY

Traditional, Native American.

Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (Compiled by Jerome Rothenberg). (See also
Technicians of the Sacred) Rec: Ward

Slater, Philip The Glory of Hera (1971)

Psychoanalytic account, never glib or ideological, of the roots (and branches) of Greek myths, especially of the tangled "life"
of Herakles, but ranging through Oedipus, etc. See Kirk.

Thomas, P. Epics, Myths and Legends of India (1942) Si P a * J

Comprehensive reference book and anthology; exhaustively factual but readable. Essential background for Dutt (qv), Narayan
(qv), O'Flaherty (qv); usefully read in conjunction with Dowson (qv). 13th edition (1973)
recommended. Also: Hindu Religion, Customs and Manners; Festivals and Holidays of India; Christians and Christianity in
India and Pakistan
Villas Boas, Orlando and Claudio, Brazilian, 1914-2002 and 1916-1998.
Xingu: The Indians, Their Myths. Rec: Ward

Wasson, R. Gordon, American, 1898-1986.

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. Rec: Counterpunch NF
This book principally discusses the role of the hallucinogenic mushroom in the writings of the earliest Indo-Europeans
(Aryans), in the Rg Veda (as Soma) and the Zend Avesta (of the Zoroastrians, as Haoma) (amazon)

Weston, Jessie From Ritual to Romance (1920)

Study (by cultural historian) of the roots of medieval romances in earlier ritual religions. Fascinating; one of the sources of
Eliot's The Waste Land (see POETRY, Eliot and LITERARY CRITICISM, Gardner).

Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands J.D. Evans Mother-Goddess

When God was a Woman M. Stone Mother-Goddess
The Civilization of the Goddess M. Gimbutas Mother-Goddess
The Once and Future Goddess E.W. Gaddon Mother-Goddess
The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects B.G. Walker Mother-Goddess
Alone of All her Sex M. Warner Mother-Goddess

Ancient Egyptian Literature M. Lichtheim Ruler as God

The Golden Bough J.G. Frazer Ruler as God
Genesis as Myth E. LeachRuler as God

MYTHOLOGY
Roy Willis

Although competing theories of myth abound, no single explanation has yet received unanimous scientific endorsement.
Probably most of the theories have some truth in them, and the suggested readings represent some of the more significant
recent attempts at solving the mystery of why ancient mythical tales continue to fascinate the modem mind.

The kind of logic used by mythical thought is as rigorous

as that of modern science.
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (1988) by Joseph Campbell. The best-known modern exponent of the meaning of myth
argues for the relevance of mythology to the predicament of present-day humankind.

The Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (1984) edited by Alan Dundes. Wide-ranging survey of theories of
myth by experts from different scholarly fields.

The Golden Bough (1890-1915) by James George Frazer. There are several abridged editions of the classic study by the late-
Victorian scholar of the widely occur-ring theme of the Dying King and his ritual sacrifice.

The Myth of the Eternal Return (1949) by Mircea Eliade. This persuasive study sees myths as windows to an underlying
sacred and spiritual reality.

Psychological Reflections (1953) by Carl Jung. A master of psychoanalysis explains the heroes and heroines of myth as
embodiments of 'archetypes', or permanent under-lying features of the human mind.

Myth and Meaning (1979) by Claude Levi-Strauss. A lucid summary of this famous French anthropologist's view of myth as
embodying the basic processes of human thought.

Magic, Science and Religion (1948) by Bronislaw Malinowski. Influential account of primitive myths as `charters' for
existing social orders, written by the founding father of modem anthropology.
MYTHOLOGIES
Roy Willis

The 20th century has seen a growing scholarly and popular respect for the wisdom enshrined in the many and varied
mythological traditions belonging to the human heritage worldwide. Some of these, like the brilliant mythologies of the eastern
Mediterranean, sprang from civilizations long extinct; while others, including those studied by anthropologists working with
tribal cultures in Africa, Australia, and the Americas, remain local sources of inspiration and guidance to this day. The
following works exemplify something of the rich variety available.

There is a dream dreaming us.

BUSHMAN HUNTER OF THE KALAHARI DESERT
REPORTED BY LAURENS VAN DER POST.

African Mythology (1963) by Geoffrey Parrinder. Readable, well-illustrated introduction to the main mythical themes of black
Africa.

Classical Hindu Mythology (1978) by Comelia Dimmitt and J A B van Buitenen. A selection of texts from one of the richest
mythical traditions in the world.

Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (1991) by T H Carpenter. Draws on ancient Greek an to add new meaning to some of the
central stories of the classical tradition.

Kingdoms of Jade, Kingdoms of Gold (1991) by Brian Fagan. Lively presentation of mythical themes from the complex
civilizations of pre-Columbian Central America.

Polynesian Mythology (1965) by George Grey. Ancient myths from the island peoples of the Pacific.

Celtic Mythology (1970) by Proinsias MacCana. The vivid mythical imagination of the ancient Celts is brought to life in this
scholarly and readable collection.

Gods and Myths in Northern Europe (1964) by Hilda Davidson. The mythical tales of the Nordic peoples, replete with the
doings and epic conflicts of gods, goddesses, and monsters.

Middle Eastern Mythology (1963) by S H Hooke. An authoritative account of the mythical themes that arose in the great
civilizations of the ancient Middle East.
Natural History

The science of life has always had wide general appeal. On the one hand it offers the observer examples of miraculous
engineering, self-generating and evolving mechanisms of the rarest ingenuity and beauty. On the other, because it concerns the
mysterious life-force itself, it leads to elaborate and intriguing philosophical speculation: far more than rocks or stars, the
existence of animate nature raises questions about creation, evolution and the meaning of consciousness which each new theory
or discovery, from the evolution of species to genetics, seems to open up to wider speculation rather than to answer.
Observation and speculation are kept in balance in the books on this list—and they also offer passion, a sense of wonder, and
not least the satisfying beauty of the subject matter: nowadays photography is as much a medium for the natural scientist as the
written word.
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Ucko): AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Gosse); GEOGRAPHY (Carson); HOME (Bray, Grieve);
MATHEMATICS (Bronowski, Calvin. Thompson, Watson); MEDICINE (Thomas): RELIGION (Teilhard de Chardin);
TRAVEL (Muir)

Adams, Alexander B. The Eternal Quest (1969) itd a-1 _I

Lives and discoveries of sixteen great naturalists (including Linnaeus, Lamarck, Darwin, Mendel), in readable, enthusiastic
prose. Also: John James Audubon Aitchison, Jean The Articulate Mammal (1976)
"Are babies born with a blueprint for language in their brains? Do children all over the world acquire language in the same
way? Can chimpanzees be taught to speak?" These and other equally intriguing questions on the phenomenon of speech lucidly
and amusingly discussed.

Applewhite, James, American, 1935- .

River Writing: An Eno Journal. Rec: Bloom

Ardrey, Robert The Territorial Imperative (1967)

The territorial behaviour of animals analysed and applied to the human race. Caused controversy in its conclusion that the
common cause for war lies in man's ignorance of his animal nature and that family loyalty lies in the joint attachment to
territory. Also: African Genesis; Social Contract. See Lorenz.

Attenborough, David Life on Earth (1979) a* ✓

Outstanding illustrations; lively, lucid text expounds the origins and development of all forms of life. Author's zest for and love
of creation is informative, infectious. A beautiful book. Also: Zoo Quest in Paradise, etc

Audubon, J. J. The Birds of America (1827 –38)

Unsurpassed illustrations; a model of how to deal with a specific group of animals.
Banks, Sir Joseph Sir Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and South America (1766)
Personal diaries of Captain Cook's companion on one of his voyages. Banks, a founder of modern botany, was instrumental in
stocking London's botanical gardens at Kew with exotics and making it a place for scientific study.

Bewick, Thomas A Memoir of Thomas Bewick Written by Himself (1862) .1/t

Autobiography of one of the great Victorian wild life engravers. Bewick revived the ancient art of wood engraving; he
illustrated the first edition of White's (qv) Natural History of Selbounze. Also: General History of Quadrupeds; History of
British Birds

Bates, Henry Walter, English, 1825-1892.

The Naturalist on the River Amazons. Rec: Ward (natural history)

Blunt, Wilfred The Complete Naturalist (1971) OA II

Biography of Linnaeus, the father of modern botanical classification. Lavish quotations from his diaries and letters;
contemporary illustrations add to the 18th-century flavour. Useful appendix on scientific classification.
Buchsbaum, Ralph Animals without Backbones (1948) t a Step-by-step biology of all animals more lowly than fish; simply
explains their anatomy and how they work.

Burton, Sir Richard Wanderings in West Africa (1863)

Travel tales of one of the great 19th-century explorers, the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika. Not entirely devoted to natural
history but excellent foundation material. See SEX (Boccaccio, Nefzawi, Vatsyayana); TRAVEL
Corner, E. J. H. The Life of Plants (1964)
Popular guide to the life and evolution of plants.

Cousteau, Jacques The Silent World(1953)

The first in a series of best sellers by an extraordinary scientist-publicist who developed the method of skin-diving with the
aqua-lung. Cousteau is a popularizer, but a brave and thoughtful man as well, and a capable writer.

Darwin, Charles The Origin of Species (1859)

Created a huge outcry on first publication for its conclusion that man and apes have a common ancestor. Written twenty-one
years after Darwin's epic voyage to the Galapagos Islands and South America (on which, see Moorehead). Lucid, readable
prose, full of personality and enthusiasm. Also: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals; Autobiography, etc. See
Huxley; Lack; Smith; RELIGION (Barbour, Teilhard de Chardin)

Desmond, Adrian J. The Hot-blooded Dinosaurs (1975) A Were the dinosaurs cold-blooded, pea-brained lizards—or hot-
blooded protomammals? Revolutionary, influential and enjoyable study of a major new turn in palaeontology.

De Wit, H. C. D. Plants of the World (3 vols, 1963)

One of the few surveys of the world's plants largely free of technical terms; interesting sidelights on their evolution and uses to
man.

Dobie, J. Frank, American, 1888-1964.

The Mustangs. Rec: LAT (natural history)

Dorst, Jean Before Nature Dies (1965)

Useful European adjunct to Carson's Silent Spring: emphasis is on pollution and over-exploitation of the natural resources of
land and sea; contains proposals for a radical revision of our attitudes. Also: Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa. See
GEOGRAPHY (Carson. Ward)

Douglas-Hamilton, I. and 0. Among the Elephants (1975)

Diary of five years spent among the elephants of Tanzania, remarkable for the pioneering of radio-tracking animals and the
discovery of "the elephants' graveyard".

Durrell, Gerald The Bafut Beagles (1947)

Tales of animal collecting in the Cameroons, by the founder of the conservation-based Jersey Zoological Park. Delightful,
humorous portraits of both animals and men. Also: The Overloaded Ark; A Zoo in My Luggage, etc. See CHILDREN'S
BOOKS

Elton, Charles Animal Ecology (1927) 09 On first appearance a pioneering work for zoology, then dominated by the
study of anatomy. Explains why animals live where they do and describes their strategies for survival. Also: The Pattern of
Animal Comm unities; The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants

Fabre, J. H. The Sacred Beetle and Others (1887)

Fabre did not accept the theory of evolution and therefore was (is) out of the main stream of naturalists of our time. But nobody
was ever a better observer, as is evident from this small book. The title piece, on the dung beetle, is delightful.

Fabre, Jean-Henri, French, 1823-1915.

Souvenirs Entomologiques. Rec: Aquinas

Frisch, Karl von The Dancing Bees (1954)

Greeted with amazement when first published: it seemed impossible that insects could devise such a sophisticated and complex
means of communicating and finding food. Also: Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses and Language.

Fry, C. H. and Flegg, J. (eds) World Atlas of Birds (1974) ia

Continent by continent catalogue of the world's natural aviary; excellently illustrated.

Galdikas, Biruté M. F., Canadian, 1946- .

Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Good, Ronald The Geography of the Flowering Plants (1947) World atlas of plants not only catalogues what grows where but
explains the reasons why. Not a book for complete beginners, because it gives only botanical names for plants; but it is
invaluable once this hurdle has been passed.

Goodall, Jane In the Shadow of Man (1971)

Fascinating first-hand account of life with the chimpanzees; lively text; excellent photographs (by Hugo van Lawick). Also:
Innocent Killers

Goodall, Jane, English, 1934- .

In the Shadow of Man. Rec: Boston PL

Gray, Sir James Animal Locomotion (1968) f Enlarged version of author's earlier How Animals Move; an elegant
combination of physics and biology, in lucid, non-specialist terms.

Grzimek, B. and M. Serengeti Shall Not Die (1960)

Pioneering study that led to the establishing of Crater in the Serengeti as a conservation area. Also: Among the Animals of
Africa

Hardy, Sir Alister The Open Sea (2 vols, 1956-59)

Biographies of who eats whom in the food-chains of the oceans. First volume devoted mainly to the eaten (plankton), second to
the eaters (fish). Also: Great Waters

Hoelldobler, Bert and Edward O. Wilson, German and American, 1936- and 1929-.
(See also Wilson, Edward O.)
The Ants. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Holden, Edith The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1977) i .1 Remarkable illustrated diary of Edith Holden, written in
1906 but not published until the 1970s. Like her 18th-century predecessor White (qv), she records the natural history of the
seasons with eyes and ears alert to every change. Hubbard, C. E. Grasses (1968)
Beautifully illustrated catalogue; limited in scope to Europe, but a model of its kind.

Hudson, W. H. Birds in Town and Village (1919) P South-American-born poet-naturalist arrived in England in 1860 and
revelled in all he saw around him. Book contains a bitter-sweet essay berating fashionable women for wearing bird feathers.
Sensitive; unsentimental; fascinating. Also: Birds and Man; The Naturalist in La Plata. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Huth, Hans Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (1957) 41:
Pioneer history of the conservation movement in America, highlighting the link between natural history and natural resources.

Huxley, Thomas H. Evolution and Ethics (1893) *

Application of Darwinian evolution to man's morality by one of Darwin's great champions. Knotty prose, but worth
persevering—the arguments are still vital today. Also: The Crayfish; Manual of the Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrated
Animals; Man's Place in Nature and Other Essays. See Darwin.

Imms, A. D. Insect Natural History (1947) fi II a!

Types of insects and the way they live, as recorded by one of the great entomologists. Excellent, regularly updated introduction
to entomology.

Jefferies, Richard Nature near London (1885)

Observations of natural history in the days when the suburbs really were at the fringes of the countryside. Also: Wild Life in a
Southern County; The Game-Keeper at Home; Hodge and His Master

Koestler, Arthur The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971) *

Riveting story of how the German scientist Paul Kammerer set out to prove Lamarck right by showing that toads could inherit
acquired characteristics. Splendidly clear on the motivation and method of scientific research, and on the morality of science.
See FICTION/NOVELS; MATHEMATICS; OCCULT

Koninck, Charles de, Canadian, 1906-1965.

"The Lifeless World of Biology". Rec: Aquinas
Krutch, J. W. The Desert Year (1952)
Superb evocation of the life of the south-western American desert by a New Englander who moved there because he loved it
more than anywhere else in the world. Krutch, a professor of literature turned naturalist, always wrote extraordinarily well.
Also: The Twelve Seasons; Grand Canyon: Today and All Its Yesterdays, etc. See BIOGRAPHY

Lack, D. Darwin's Finches (1947)

Accessible modern study of Darwin's famous finches. Fascinating detail on how each bird is suited to one particular life style.
Also: Life of the Robin; Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers. See Darwin.

Lorenz, Konrad On Aggression (1963) !*

"Nature red in tooth and claw", or why aggression is a good thing (because the fighting instinct is the essence of survival, not
destruction). Interesting parallels between behaviour of men and animals; hopeful conclusions. Also: King Solomon's Ring;
Studies in Animal and Human Behaviour. See Ardrey.

Maxwell, Gavin Ring of Bright Water (1960)

Life of the author and his otters Mijbil and Edal in the Highlands of Scotland. Good on local wildlife; Maxwell manfully resists
the temptations of anthropomorphism. Also: The Rocks Remain; Raven Seek Thy Brother

Medawar, P. B. and J. S. The Life Science (1977)

Useful summary of biological ideas and research since 1950. Technical language, but accessible with perseverance. Also: The
Uniqueness of the Individual; The Art of the Soluble; The Hope of Progress, etc

Moorehead, Alan Darwin and the Beagle (1969)

Travelogue of Darwin's famous voyage round the world. Illustrations include drawings and paintings by Darwin's fellow
passengers. See Darwin; TRAVEL

Mountfort, S. Wild Paradise: The Story of the Coto Donana Expeditions (1958)
Portrait of the unspoilt wilderness of southern Spain and its varied wildlife. Vivid descriptions of migratory wildfowl.

Perucho, Joan, Catalan, 1920- .

Natural History. Rec: Bloom

Peterson, Roger Tory Field Guide to the Birds (1934) Oaf*

This is the first in an extraordinary series of field guides that are the most dependable such works for the student of North
American flora and fauna. Wonderful text (with wry comments) and illustrations; convenient pocket size; indispensable
companions of walkers and watchers everywhere in America. Revised edition (1942) recommended.

Rhodes, F. H. T. Evolution of Life (1962)

Excellent guide to the history of life on earth, without an excess of technical language. Not the first book to read on the subject
(see Attenborough); but invaluable follow-up material.

Romer, Alfred Sherwood The Vertebrate Story (1959) P

Authoritative account of the life and evolution of vertebrates, by one of America's foremost zoologists.

Savory, T. H. The Spider's Web (1952) _I

A hundred and one ways in which spiders say "come into my parlour". Details of spinning techniques and capture methods
make creepy, fascinating reading.

Scheffer, Victory B. The Year of the Whale (1870)

Chronicle of a 12-month period in a whale's life; delightful details of birth and suckling. Unpretentious charm; joyful style.
Also: The Year of the Seal

Sears, P. B. Deserts on the March (1935)

The science of the dust-bowl, and man's devastating effects on desert animals and plants. In the 1980s, rather a case of told you
so." Also: The Ecology of Man

Simpson, George Gaylord Horses (1951)

History of horse evolution over many millennia; guide to the biology of the modern horse. Splendid illustrations include T. H.
Huxley's famous "Eohippus and Eohomo" cartoon.
Smith, John Maynard The Theory of Evolution (1958)
Confirms Darwin's conclusions on evolution and expands them in the light of modern knowledge. Hard going in parts, for the
beginner, but worth the effort. See Darwin.

Spinar, Z. V. Life before Man (1972) £aJ

Glossy guide to the world of prehistory with detailed reconstructions of our planet as it once was. Sound introduction to
dinosaurs.

Tansley, Sir Arthur G. Britain's Green Mantle (1949)

Scientific study of plant communities, written with a rambler's enthusiasm. One of the first books to stress the importance of
conservation.

Tinbergen, Nikolaas The Herring-gull's World (1960)

Study of instinct in the life history of the herring-gull. Outstanding for its demarcation between "inherited" and "learned"
behaviour; good introduction to the author's more advanced works. Also: The Study of Instinct, Social Behaviour in Animals;
Animal Behaviour

Tinbergen, Niko, Dutch, 1907-1988.

Curious Naturalists. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Tomlin, P. and Bird, C. The Secret Life of Plants (1973)

The supposed powers of plants to memorize, mindread and even commit murder propounded in highly entertaining style by
two serious botanists. Also records how plants communicate, how they select classical music in preference to pop. Sceptically
received by many; not to be missed.

Waddington, C. H., English, 1905-1975.

The Nature of Life. Rec: GBWW

Walker, E. P. Mammals of the World (1968)

Walton, Izaak The Compleat Angler (1653) 13

A catch for any lucky reader.

Walton, Izaak, English, 1593-1683.

Compleat Angler. Rec: Bloom Rex

Ward, Ritchie, R. The Living Clocks ( 1972)

Biorhythms, hibernation, celestial navigation—fascinating areas of biological research enthusiastically, accessibly discussed.
Waterton, Charles Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States and the Antilles (1825)
Vivacious, unconventional account of wildlife and adventures in the Americas. On his return Waterton turned his Yorkshire
park into a miniature zoo. Highly entertaining.

White, Gilbert The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne

(1789) 10a*10
Diary of a naturalist, records year-by-year changes in the author's curacy at Selbourne, Hampshire, in minute detail down to the
first snowdrops of spring and the departure of summer's last swallow.

White, Gilbert, English, 1720-1793.

Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Rec: Lubbock Rexmo

Young, J. Z. The Life of Vertebrates (1950)

A textbook, in technical language, but an outstanding one. Author's enthusiasm for his subject shines through the matter-of-fact
presentation. Carries the student from prehistory to the present with lucidity and ease. Also: The Life of Mammals.
Occult and Paranormal

Are we alone? Whatever we may think of the underlying premises of this study, these books offer serious and intellectually
responsible examinations of the "evidence". Treading delicately on the borderline between objective and subjective, fact and
fiction, rarely letting "I wish it were" shade into "It must be so", they may not give definitive answers; but certainly (whether
you regard the subject as an examination of actual phenomena or as a bypath of the human mind at its most darkly and
fantastically ingenious) they leave the right questions posed, and poised.
See HISTORY/EUROPEAN (Cohn); MATHEMATICS (Lindsay); RELIGION (Hick)
Bennett, Ernest Apparitions and Haunted Houses (1939)
Classic study of the evidence for all kindsof ghosts and hauntings, plausibly authenticated.

Bennett, J. B. Witness (1974)

Autobiography of one of Gurdjieff's leading followers, and a remarkable man in his own right; fascinating, detailed account of
Bennett's "search for the miraculous". See Reyner.

Conway, David Magic: An Occult Primer (1972)

Most sensible people take it for granted that magic is basically nonsense. Yet there is now a widespread minority belief that it is
not quite as absurd as we think. Sensible, balanced book by a man who claims actually to practise magic—a good introduction
to a bewildering subject.

Coxhead, Nona Mindpower (1976)

Balanced, readable account of "parascience and the study of consciousness"—telepathy, psychic healing, mystical experience,
etc. Gauquelin, Michael Cosmic Influences on Human Behaviour (1973) Persuasive arguments for treating astrology as a
science. Attempts objectivity, and assumes an open mind in the reader: win or lose, an interesting, well-argued book.

Grant, Kenneth The Magical Revival (1972)

An underrated writer, Grant was an Aleister Crowley disciple, so writes with insight and authority of this century's revival of
interest in magic and occultism. Also: Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God; Cults of Shadow; Nightside of Eden Gris, H. and
Dick, W. The New Psychic Soviet Discoveries (1979) A crisis of scientific conscience exists in Russia about psychic
phenomena, but nevertheless they are doing much more research than we in the West. This book is a thorough, intelligent
account of recent work.

Hansel, C. E. M. ESP: A Scientific Evaluation (1966)

Highly critical review of the experimental literature of the field. Interesting comparison with Rao (qv).

Head, J. and Cranston, S. L. Reincarnation (1967)

Jenkins, Stephen The Undiscovered Country (1977)

Good introduction to the mysterious subject of "ley lines", the lines of magnetic force around the earth, which may have had
sacred significance for ancient man.

Koestler, Arthur The Roots of Coincidence (1972)

Investigates the Rosenheim case in fascinating detail. See FICTION/NOVELS; MATHEMATICS; NATURAL HISTORY

LeShan, Lawrence The Medium. the Mystic and the Physicist (1966) a*
LeShan is a scientist who began as a sceptic, but slowly became convinced of the reality of "paranormal phenomena"—and that
they are related to the "underlying reality"• glimpsed by mystics. Outstanding, especially if approached with scepticism.

Lethbridge, T. C. The Essential T. C. Lethbridge (1979) tti a*

Lethbridge, a retired archaeologist, was one of the most remarkable "psychical researchers" of the 20th century, fascinated by
dowsing, ghosts, extra-sensory perception and the mystery of time. His books are readable, eccentric, full of personal anecdote
and experience.

Myers, F. W. H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1903)

Prince, Walter Franklin (ed) Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences (1928) a*
Absorbing anthology of strange occurrences: ghosts, out-of-the-body experiences, premonitory dreams, telepathy and so on.
The point of the title is that all the "witnesses" were "respected figures"—writers, politicians, lawyers, etc—a fact assumed to
lend weight to what they claimed.

Rao, K. R. Experimental Parapsychology (1966)

Sympathetic account by a scientist of the literature of the field of parapsychology. Gives most experiments described the
benefit of the doubt, at least where there is doubt. Should be balanced by a reading of Hansel (qv).

Reyner, J. H. The Diary of a Modem Alchemist (1974) a

The "alchemy- Reyner writes about is more closely related to the ideas of Gurdjieff than to the alchemy of the Middle Ages.
See Bennett, J. B. Rhine, J. B. and Pratt, J. G. Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind (1957)
Rhine was one of the best known American experimenters in the field; he undertook studies with Zener cards at Duke
University for many years. As with so much in parapsychology, the final verdict on his work is inconclusive. See Rao.

Roll, William G. Poltergeists (1977) HIP

Up-to-the-minute scientific study by an acknowledged expert. See Sitwell.
Sakoian, F. and Acker, S. The Astrologer's Handbook (1973) a Best single-volume introduction to astrology; comprehensive
treatment, sensible and well written.

Siggwick, D. et al Phantoms of the Living (1918) 9

Vast, diligent work on the subject of people who have been seen in one place while they were actually in another.

Sitwell, Sacheverell Poltergeists (1940) &a

Stylish account of the knockabout comedians of the spirit world, which we now believe to originate in our own unconscious
minds. See Roll; AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Sitwell, 0.)

Smith, Adam Powers of Mind (1975)

Written in gratingly "with-it" journalese; but a useful survey of modern research into the mysteries of the mind, bio-feedback,
etc.

Stevenson, Ian The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations (1961)
Valuable study, treated as scientific inquiry rather than speculation and theory.

Steiger, Brad (ed) Project Blue Book: The Top Secret UFO Findings Revealed (1976)
Project Blue Book—the official reports assembled by the US Air Force up to 1969, when the project was discontinued.
Steiger's book is a good account; repeats many of the "best" stories.

Summers, Montague The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926) The "Reverend" Summers writes as a totally
convinced believer in the reality of witches and powers of evil—demons, etc. Also: The Vampire; The Werewolf, The
Geography of Witchcraft

Targ, R. and Puthoff, H. Mind-Reach (1977) 9

Two scientists, both of whom worked with Uri Geller at the Stanford Research Institute, examine psychic ability with particular
reference to "remote viewing".

Tart, Charles (ed) Altered States of Consciousness (1969) MI 9

Collection of papers on strange and hidden aspects of consciousness; necessary foundation for any study of the "paranormal".

Thouless, R. H. From Anecdote to Experiment in Psychical Research (1972) 9

Thouless' detailed and comprehensive approach is essential for those who wish to attain real understanding of parapsychology
as opposed to psychic anecdote.

Tyrell, G. N. M. Science and Psychical Phenomena (1939) a

This, together with Tyrell's Apparitions, is an excellent book on ghosts, extrasensory perception and telepathy.

Vaughan, Alan Patterns of Prophecy (1973)

Vaughan, fascinated by the possibility of precognition, conducted exhaustive research of which this book is a readable,
scientific account.
Vyvyan, John A Case against Jones (1966)
Sensible, balanced study of the whole field of psychical research. Ernest Jones, Freudian biographer, said that anyone who
believes in the paranormal needs his head examined: hence this book.

Watson, Lyall Lifetide (1979)

Watson achieved an overnight reputation with Supernature, an attempt to demonstrate that there is a sound scientific basis for
many so called "supernatural phenomena". This book, his most important so far, bases its theories of the paranormal on Jung's
idea of the collective unconscious. Also: The Romeo Error, Gifts of Unknown Things

Webb, James The Flight from Reason (1971) al a

Webb writes about "occultism" as a sceptic; his knowledge is immense, his approach entertaining. Also: The Occult
Establishment

Wilson, Colin The Occult (1971) Oa* Comprehensive summary of the whole field, from extra-sensory perception and second-
sight to vampires and the Kabbalah. Also: Mysteries

"Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande" E.E. Evans-Pritchard Witchcraft
Witchcraft G. Parrinder Witchcraft
The World of the Witches J.C. Baroja Witchcraft

Totemism C. Levi-Strauss Totemism

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life E. Durkheim Totemism
The Secret of the Totem A. Lang Totemism

The I Ching Oracles

"Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic"E.E. Evans-Pritchard Oracles
Oracles and Divination "M. Loewe, C. Blacke" Oracles
Athletes and Oracles C. Morgan Oracles

The Upanishads J. Mascaro Illusion

Encyclopedia of the Upanishads N.S. Subrahmanian Illusion
Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll Illusion
Alice Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll Illusion

"Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China" N. Sivin Taoist Knowledge

Science and Civilization in China J. Needham Taoist Knowledge
The Tao of Physics F. Capra Taoist Knowledge

Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition F. Yates Magic as Science

The Art of Memory F. Yates Magic as Science
The Memory Theatre of Matteo Ricci J. Spence Magic as Science
Rudolf II R.J.W. Evans Magic as Science
Philosophy

What other subject ever aroused such passion in its devotees or such impatience among outsiders? "Why do you only talk of
virtue?" someone asked Socrates (who proceeded, philosophically, to explain). Certain philosophers have themselves become
so impatient with philosophical pretentiousness that they have advocated closing down the talking shop. But the philosophical
standard—the attempt to argue honourably and reasonably—affects nearly all intellectual and aesthetic disciplines. It proposes
an ideal for the conduct of all kinds of disputes; it asks us to be honest with ourselves; it refuses to go away. Mere words?
"Words are loaded pistols," said Brice–Parrain. The picker and chooser of philosophical texts intrudes in a field where every
corner claims that every other is swarming with impostors and trespassers. No single point of view has been allowed to prevail
in this list: there are no definitive answers, but at least the questioning can be begun.
See DIARIES (Kierkegaard, Seneca, Teilhard de Chardin); ECONOMICS (Heilbroner. Robinson): MATHEMATICS (Koestler,
Ziman); POLITICS (Mannheim, Niebuhr. Rowls): RELIGION (Buber, Pascal, Teilhard de Chardin. Tillich); SOCIOLOGY
(Bottomore, Marcuse)

Adler, M. J. The Conditions of Philosophy (1965)

History of philosophy by a renowned—and controversial—philosopher who holds (hence the controversy) that most "modern"
philosophy (ie post-Cartesian) is of little worth. Fascinating to see history through the wrong end of his telescope; it redresses
the bias towards relentless modernity in other authors and critics. Also: The Common Sense of Politics; How to Think about
God. See REFERENCE

Adorno, Theodor, German, 1903-1969.

Philosophy of Modern Music. Rec: Boston PL
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologica (1267-73)

Written, Saint Thomas said, to "instruct beginners," this extraordinary work—its numerous volumes dictated to a team of
scribes because one alone could not keep up with the Master—is one of the unbending monuments of the human intellect. See
Gilson.

Thomas Aquinas, St., Italian writing in Latin, ca. 1225-1274 .

Summa Theologica. Rec: Adler Aquinas (Selections) GBWW Rexmo Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections)
Selected Writings. Rec: Aquinas Colcc91 Ward
Proem to the Posterior Analytics. Rec: Aquinas
On the Teacher. Rec: Aquinas
Canon of the Mass. Rec: Aquinas
On the Principles of Nature. Rec: Aquinas
On the Combination of the Elements. Rec: Aquinas
On Kingship. Rec: Aquinas
The Division and Method of the Sciences. Rec: Aquinas
On Being and Essence. Rec: Aquinas

Arendt, Hannah, American, 1906-1975.

On Violence. Rec: Colcc91
Origins of Totalitarianism. Rec: Colcc91 (Selections) National Review TLS
Eichmann in Jerusalem. Rec: Counterpunch NF TLS
The Life of the Mind. Rec: LAT

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)

Aristotle ("the Master of those that know") treats human behaviour as natural history, not as a subject for dogmatic
metaphysics. A far more open-minded and humane thinker than his stiff predecessor. Plato, he accepted the diversity of man,
creation's paragon, the "reasonable animal". Also: Metaphysics; The Organon (collected logical treatises), etc. See LITERARY
CRITICISM; POLITICS

Aristotle, Greek, 384-322 BCE.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections) GBWW Seymour-Smith
Ethics (Nicomachean). Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Colcc91 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock SJC
Ward
Politics. Rec: Aquinas Colcc91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Lubbock SJC (Selections) Ward
Poetics. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 4 Rexmo SJC Ward
Physics. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Metaphysics. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
On Generation and Corruption. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Parts of Animals. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Generation of Animals. Rec: SJC (Selections)
De Anima. Rec: Aquinas SJC
On Interpretation. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Prior Analytics. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Categories. Rec: Aquinas SJC (Selections)
Rhetoric. Rec: Aquinas
Posterior Analytics. Rec: Aquinas
Topics. Rec: Aquinas

Austin, J. L. Sense and Sensibilia (1964)

Posthumously published dry-as-sneezing powder lectures assailing the hallowed traditions of the philosophy of perception, in
particular as represented by Ayer's (qv) The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. For Austin's own explanation of the
methodological principles involved, see "A Plea for Excuses", in Philosophical Papers. Also: How to Do Things with Words

Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Arab in Islamic Spain, 1126-1198.

On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy. Rec: Oriental

Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic (1936) dP

Concise, superb British restatement of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists. Ayer later said of it: "Being in
every sense a young man's book, it was written with more passion than most philosophers allow themselves to show, at any rate
in their published work." Also: The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge

Bacon, Francis, English, 1561-1626.

The Great Instauration. Rec: Aquinas
Advancement of Learning. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward
New Atlantis. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward
Essays. Rec: Adler Bloom Good Reading Lubbock Ward
Novum Organum. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections)

Bentham, Jeremy, English, 1748-1832.

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Rec: Adler Ward
Theory of Fictions. Rec: Adler

Bergson, Henri, French, 1859-1941. Nobel Laureate

Time and Free Will. Rec: Adler
Matter and Memory. Rec: Adler
Creative Evolution. Rec: Adler
Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Rec: Adler
An Introduction to Metaphysics. Rec: GBWW

Berkeley, George Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)

A favourite target for professional philosophers, Berkeley's arguments are popularly associated with the view that "everything
exists in the mind". Dr Johnson famously refuted him (or did he?) by kicking a stone, thus anticipating the commonsense
prejudice of British philosophy. Crucial specialist text; for the layman, delightfully fresh, lucid, fun. Also: Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous; A lciphron, or The Minute Philosopher; Essay towards a New Theory of Vision

Berkeley, George, Irish-English, 1685-1753.

Principles of Human Knowledge. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC

Bruno, Giordano, Italian, 1548-1600.

The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast. Rec: Bloom
Chomsky, Noam Language and Mind (1968) P
Clear statement of Chomsky's influential philosophy of language, in the form of three lectures on linguistic contributions to the
study of mind—past, present and future. Chomsky's official pigeon-hole is linguistics— but the implications of his thought
have wider philosophical significance, eg on the tabula rasa idea of the mind. Also: Syntactic Structures; Cartesian Linguistics;
Problems of Knowledge and Freedom

Chomsky, Noam, American, 1928- .

Syntactic Structures. Rec: Boston PL Seymour-Smith

Comte, Auguste, French, 1798-1857.

The Positive Philosophy. Rec: Adler Lubbock Seymour-Smith

Confucius (Kong Fuzi), Chinese, 551-479 BCE.

The Analects. Rec: Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock Oriental Seymour-Smith StJE Ward
Daxue (Ta Hsueh; The Great Learning, attributed). Rec: Oriental StJE
Chang Yun (Doctrine of the Mean, attributed). Rec: Oriental StJE

Croce, Benedetto, Italian, 1866-1952.

Selected Works. Rec: Ward

Debord, Guy, French, 1931-1994.

Society of the Spectacle. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Harvard

Descartes, Rene Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) !P*P3

Classic whose influence has been profound and prolonged. In questioning scepticism Descartes shows a talent for lateral
thinking: instead of direct confrontation, he chooses to allow the process of doubt to run its course until it arrives at an
(allegedly) indubitable truth: "I think, therefore I am." Therefore, he concludes with more faith than reason, God undoubtedly
exists and all's well with the world. Also: Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason; Principles of
Philosophy; Passions of the Soul

Descartes, René, French, 1596-1650.

Discourse on Method. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Seymour-
Smith SJC Ward
Meditations on the First Philosophy. Rec: Adler Aquinas Collh91 GBWW SJC
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies. Rec: GBWW
Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC
Geometry. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW SJC (Selections)
The World. Rec: SJC (Selections)
Principles of Philosophy. Rec: Aquinas

Dewey, John Experience and Education (1938)

Deriving from the American "pragmatist" school, Dewey has been particularly influential as a philosopher of education. This
little volume gives a concise summary of his theories; it was written twenty years after (and modifies) his Democracy and
Education, in the light of experience with progressive schools. Also: Experience and Nature; Logic: The Science of Inquiry.
See HISTORY/AMERICAN

Dewey, John, American, 1859-1952.

Philosophy and Civilization. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The School and the Child. Rec: Boston PL
How We Think. Rec: Adler
Democracy and Education. Rec: Adler
Experience and Nature. Rec: Adler
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry. Rec: Adler
Human Nature and Conduct. Rec: Fadiman 3
Experience and Education. Rec: GBWW

Empedocles, See Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Engels, Friedrich, German, 1820-1895.
(See also Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels)
"Quantity and Quality". Rec: Aquinas
"Negation of the Negation". Rec: Aquinas

Epictetus, Greek, ca. 55-135 CE .

Discourses. Rec: Adler GBWW SJC Ward
Encheiridion (Manual). Rec: Adler Aquinas SJC
Works. Rec: Lubbock

Epicurus, Greek, 341-270 BCE.

Writings. Rec: Ward
Letter to Herodotus. Rec: Adler
Letter to Menoeceus. Rec: Adler

Erasmus, Desiderius, Dutch writing in Latin, ca. 1469-1536 .

Colloquies. Rec: Ward
In Praise of Folly. Rec: Adler Bloom GBWW Seymour-Smith Ward

Frege, Gottlob Logical Investigations (1977)

A "philosopher's philosopher", Frege had enormous influence on the philosophy of mathematics, logic and language—crucially
on Russell (qv) and Wittgenstein (qv). Logical Investigationsis the title of an unfinished book for which the three articles in this
volume (written in 1918 and 1923) were intended. Also: The Foundations of Arithmetic; The Basic Laws of Arithmetic;
Philosophical Writings

Gilson, Etienne The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas (1924) Sympathetic critique by a leading Thomist. No
modern philosopher writes with more grace than Gilson. But compare Henri-Georges Egouttier: Cuisses Blanches, Ides Noires
(1980). See Aquinas; ART

Goytisolo, Juan de, Spanish, 1931- .

Space in Motion. Rec: Bloom (philosophy)

Habermas, Jürgen, German, 1929- .

Transformation of the Public Sphere. Rec: Colcc91

Hacking, Ian, Canadian, 1936- .

The Taming of Chance. Rec: ML Nonfiction (philosophy)

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich The Phenomenology of Mind (1807)!I/C>

Massive; magnificent; metaphysical. Seminal influence (alas) on Marx, Sartre and many more. Also: The Philosophy of Mind;
Science of Logic; The Philosophy of History,etc

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, German, 1770-1831.

Selected Works. Rec: Ward
Phenomenology of Spirit (Also known as Phenomenology of Mind). Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 (Selections) Seymour-Smith
SJC (Selections)
Philosophy of Right. Rec: Adler Colcc91 GBWW
Philosophy of History. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 (Selections) GBWW SJC (Selections)
Logic. Rec: SJC

Heidegger, Martin Being and Time (1927) li P

Classic of German existentialism; heavy on meaning (correction: meaninglessness) of life, authentic choice, conscience,
freedom, nothingness, etc. Almost unreadable without assistance: Gelven's Commentary and Steiner's Heideggerare
recommended introductions. Also: An Introduction to Metaphysics; The End of Philosophy; The Question Concerning
Technology, etc

Heidegger, Martin, German, 1889-1976.

Being and Time. Rec: Boston PL Counterpunch Trans National Review TLS
What is Metaphysics?. Rec: GBWW
Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan (1651)!Co
Mainly read nowadays for Chapters 13-30, developing his political ideas; other chapters give the gist of the remainder of
Hobbesian philosophy. (See, for instance, Chapter 46 for mischievous, mordantly deflationary comments on the Roman
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.) Also: De Cive, de Corpore Politico; Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and
Chance

Hobbes, Thomas, English, 1588-1679.

Leviathan. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Colcc91 (Selections) Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Seymour-Smith SJC

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno, German-American writing in German, 1895-1973 and 1903-1969.
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS

Hume, David An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) !0*

Easier-going than his earlier Treatise, the Enquiry encapsulates the central doctrines and themes of Hume's radically empiricist
philosophy. Dr Johnson accused Hume of "writing French", but his language remains vintage Scotch. Also: A Treatise of
Human Nature; An Enquiry into the Principles of Morals; Dialogues Concerning the Natural History of Religion, etc

Hume, David, Scottish, 1711-1776.

History of England. Rec: Lubbock
Treatise of Human Nature. Rec: Adler Seymour-Smith SJC
Essays Moral and Political. Rec: Adler Lubbock
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Rec: Adler Aquinas Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Rec: Colcc91

Husserl, Edmund The Paris Lectures (1950)

These lectures by the founder of "phenomenology" (the correlation of subject and object in the act of perception) provide a
concise introduction to his mature thought. Husserl was perhaps the most prominent of modern "continental" philosophers and
his influence (not least as a progenitor of existentialism) is extensive. Also: Ideas; Cartesian Meditations; The Crisis of
European Sciences

Husserl, Edmund, German, 1859-1938.

The Idea of Phenomenology. Rec: Aquinas

James, William Pragmatism (1907) 9

James' dedication reads: "To the memory of John Stuart Mill from whom I first learned the pragmatic openness of mind and
whom my fancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive today". These lectures seek to "unify the picture" of the pragmatic
movement. See RELIGION

James, William, American, 1842-1910.

Pragmatism. Rec: Adler Bloom Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Seymour-Smith
Four Essays from The Meaning of Truth. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
The Varieties of Religious Experience. Rec: Adler Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 ML Nonfiction NYPL
Essays in Radical Empiricism. Rec: Adler

Jaspers, Karl Philosophy of Existence (1937) P*

Together with Heidegger, Jaspers is the leading luminary of German existentialism. Although focusing on the "concrete human
situation" he is a self-proclaimed apostle of reason—a poignant perspective in view of the fact that he delivered these lectures
in Germany in 1937. soon after he had been dismissed from his university professorship by the Nazis. Also: Reason and
Existence; Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Tinier. The Great Philosophers

Jaspers, Karl, German, 1883-1969.

The Perennial Scope of Philosophy. Rec: TLS

Kant, Immanuel Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) !

In Prolegomena Kant sketches the cool outlines of his magnificent vision—a reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism—as
an introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason (which is much longer, even more influential and—for the layman—almost
inaccessibly hard). Also: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason. etc
Kant, Immanuel, German, 1724-1804.
Critique of Pure Reason. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Good Reading Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 SJC
Critique of Practical Reason. Rec: Adler GBWW
Science of Right. Rec: Adler
Critique of Judgment. Rec: Adler GBWW SJC
Perpetual Peace. Rec: Adler
"What is Enlightenment?". Rec: Colcc91
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Rec: Aquinas

Kierkegaard, Soren The Concept of Dread (1844)

In this early study, published under the pseudonym of Vigilius Haufniensis (the Watchman of Copenhagen), Kierkegaard
composes the theme (freedom, nothingness, anguish) on which existentialism has played so many variations. Also: Either/Or;
Fear and Trembling; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, etc. See DIARIES

Kierkegaard, Søren, Danish, 1813-1855.

Either/Or. Rec: Seymour-Smith Ward
Stages on Life's Way. Rec: Ward
Philosophical Fragments. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Fear and Trembling. Rec: Aquinas GBWW SJC

Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E. The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1957) 0 P In the beginning were Parmenides, Heraclitus and a
host of other honourable names who appear on the roll-call of the First Philosophers—names already venerated (or vilified) by
the time of Socrates and Plato. Invaluable collection of the earliest Greek philosophical fragments, with full commentary. See
MYTHOLOGY

La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de, French, 1613-1680.

Maxims. Rec: Bloom SJC (Selections) Ward

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von The Monadology (1714) it 9*

If you've never thought of yourself as a monad, now's your chance. Each of us has a place in the marvellous metaphysical
system of the mathematical genius of 17th-century rationalism, who exercised powerful influence—in philosophy, in
mathematics, and in the world at large. Also: Discourse on Metaphysics; Theodicy; New Essays Concerning Human
Understanding, etc

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, German, 1646-1716.

Works. Rec: Seymour-Smith
Discourse on Metaphysics. Rec: Adler Aquinas SJC
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. Rec: Adler
Monadology. Rec: Adler SJC
What is Nature?. Rec: SJC
Essay on Dynamics. Rec: SJC

Lewes, George Henry, English, 1817-1878.

The History of Philosophy. Rec: Lubbock

Lippmann, Walter, American, 1889-1974.

A Preface to Morals. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Good Society. Rec: National Review

Locke, John An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) WP *

Locke's forthright Essay pioneered the tradition of exploring, by empirical observation and analysis, the supposed limits of our
understanding. Opens with the famous attack on the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas. Also: Essays on the Law of Nature;
Thoughts Concerning Education. See POLITICS

Locke, John, English, 1632-1688.

Of the Conduct of the Understanding. Rec: Lubbock
Second Treatise on Government. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW SJC
Letter Concerning Toleration. Rec: Adler GBWW
Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Good Reading Seymour-Smith
Thoughts Concerning Education. Rec: Adler

Longinus, Greek, 1st C CE.

On the Sublime (in Classical Literary Criticism). Rec: Bloom Ward

Lonergan, Bernard, Canadian, 1904-1984.

Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Rec: National Review (philosophy)

Marcel, Gabriel Philosophy of Existence (1949) VP

Marcel was articulating (Christian) existentialism in France at about the same time as Heidegger and Jaspers in Germany. This
volume contains three papers, written in 1933 and 1946, plus an autobiographical essay. Of special interest is the second paper
which is a critical survey of Sartre's (qv) philosophy. Also: Metaphysical Journal; Being and Having, Creative Fidelity, etc

Marcuse, Herbert, German-American writing in English, 1898-1979.

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud. Rec: LAT

Maritain, Jacques, French, 1882-1973.

Art and Scholasticism. Rec: Adler
The Degrees of Knowledge. Rec: Adler
The Rights of Man and Natural Law. Rec: Adler
True Humanism. Rec: Adler

Martin of Dacia (a.k.a. Martin of Denmark), Danish writing in Latin, d. 1304.

Tractus de Modis Significandi. Rec: Aquinas (philosophy)

Mencius (Mengzi), Chinese, ca. 400-320 BCE.

The Book of Mencius. Rec: App Fadiman 4 Oriental StJE Ward

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) P Here is a philosopher who talks about "body image".
Very French and very sensuous. For the layman his preface gives a valuable short account of what he understands by
"phenomenology". Also: Signs; Sense and Nonsense; The Structure of Behaviour, etc.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, French, 1908-1961.

Sense and Non-Sense. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Mill, John Stuart Utilitarianism (1861)

Valiant, stylish defence of Bentham's celebrated "greatest happiness" principle. Also: System of Logic. See ECONOMICS;
FEMINISM; POLITICS

Mill, John Stuart, English, 1806-1873.

Principles of Political Economy. Rec: Lubbock
Utilitarianism. Rec: Adler Aquinas GBWW Ward
On Liberty. Rec: Adler Bloom Colcc91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Seymour-Smith Ward
The Subjection of Women. Rec: Adler Fadiman 4
Representative Government. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward
Autobiography. Rec: Adler Bloom Ward
A System of Logic. Rec: Adler Lubbock

Maimonides, Jew in Islamic Spain and Egypt writing in Arabic and Hebrew, 1135-1204.
Guide for the Perplexed. Rec: Seymour-Smith Ward

Montaigne, Michel de Essays (1580) 411010*-0

Sceptical, humane and urbane, Montaigne wrote, in an age tormented by savage ideological conflict, essays not so much in
technical philosophy as in a tolerant and civilized philosophy of life.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, French, 1533-1592.

Essays. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful
Rex Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica (1903) !DP
One of the major works of British philosophical ethics, written by the man who, together with Russell (qv), was a prominent
mover in the contemporary British reaction against idealism. Source-book for the pretensions of the Bloomsbury Group. In
Chapter 1 the phrase "naturalistic fallacy" begins its long and continuing career. Also: Philosophical Studies; Same Main
Problems of Philosophy; Philosophical Papers

Moore, G. E., English, 1873-1958.

Principia Ethica. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Mozi (Mo Tzu), Chinese, ca. 470-ca. 391 BCE.

Basic Writings. Rec: Oriental StJE Ward

Nietzsche, Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil ( 1886) alii*

Representative, thunderous work by the fallen angel of Western philosophy, about whom it is impossible to have a placid
opinion. It is hard to doubt Nietzsche's statement, "I have at all times written my work with my whole body and my whole life".
Also: Thus Spake Zarathustra: The Gay Science; Twilight of the Idols; The Origins of Tragedy, etc

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, German, 1844-1900.

Use and Abuse of History. Rec: Aquinas
Thus Spake Zarathustra. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
The Birth of Tragedy. Rec: Bloom
The Genealogy of Morals. Rec: Adler Bloom Colcc91 Fadiman 4
Beyond Good and Evil. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 4 GBWW SJC (Selections)
The Will to Power. Rec: Adler Bloom Good Reading
Other Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Ortega y Gasset, Jose The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Powerful critique of modern man and modern democracy by a leading Spanish philosopher. Ortega, though not against
democracy, is franker than most in assessing the consequences of runaway egalitarianism. Also: Towards a Universal History;
The Idea of a University, etc

Ortega y Gasset, José, Spanish, 1883-1955.

Invertebrate Spain. Rec: Ward
Revolt of the Masses. Rec: National Review TLS Ward

Passmore, John A Hundred Years of Philosophy (1957) a

Compressed account of main trends and major thinkers in philosophy—especially epistemology, logic and metaphysics—from
the mid 19th century to the mid 20th. Second edition (1966) revised and updated. Readable style: accurate summaries—a
difficult job well done. Also: Man's Responsibility for Nature; Philosophical Reasoning; The Perfectibility of Man

Plato Phaedo (4th century BC) gla • a *

Excellent introduction to Socrates' character, and to the thought and style of Plato. Centred on the question of the immortality
of the soul, the dialogue includes a myth of the after-life, and ends with a touching account of Socrates' death. Plato's limpid
style and firm (if to philosophers debatable) personal views make him especially attractive to the general reader. Also: The
Symposium, etc. See POLITICS

Plato, Greek, 428-348 BCE.

Dialogues. Rec: Adler (Selections) Bloom GBWW Lubbock (Selections)
Selected Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Ion. Rec: Aquinas Col37 Col61
Euthyphro. Rec: Rex
Apology. Rec: Aquinas Col37 Col61 Collh91 Rex SJC Ward
Crito. Rec: Aquinas Rex SJC Ward
Phaedo. Rec: Aquinas Col61 Good Reading Rex SJC Ward
Symposium. Rec: Aquinas Col61 Collh91 Good Reading SJC
Republic. Rec: Aquinas Col37 Col61 Colcc91 Collh91 Good Reading Harvard Rex Seymour-Smith SJC Ward
Meno. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Gorgias. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Parmenides. Rec: SJC
Theatetus. Rec: SJC
Sophist. Rec: SJC
Timaeus. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Phaedrus. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Seventh Letter. Rec: GBWW
Protagoras. Rec: Aquinas

Plotinus, Greek, ca. 205-ca. 262.

Enneads. Rec: Adler GBWW Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward

Popper, Karl Conjectures and Refutations (1963) !P A bigger, better introduction to Popper's important and influential
philosophy of science than The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Bryan Magee's Popper (1973) and Popper's own Unended
Quest(1974) are also good sources of guidance. Also: Objective Knowledge. See POLITICS (Plato)

Porphyry, Greek, 233-ca. 301.

On the Predicaments. Rec: Aquinas

Various Authors, Greek, 6th-5th C BCE.

Presocratic Philosophers. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Ward

Quine, Willard van Orman From a Logical Point of View (1953) p * Quine's name constantly recurs in current mainstream
analytic philosophy. His controversial tenets are summed up in this selection of essays. Also: Word and Object, Methods of
Logic; The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, etc

Rorty, Richard, American, 1931- .

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Rec: TLS

Russell, Bertrand The Problems of Philosophy (1912) &a

One of the first books commissioned for Home University Library, in which Russell outlines proposed solutions as well as
problems. Platonism and empiricism are both anatomized. Lucid, honest, thoroughly engaging: excellent introduction to
academic philosophy. Also: A History of Western Philosophy; Mysticism and Logic,etc. See MATHEMATICS (Whitehead)

Russell, Bertrand, English, 1872-1970. Nobel Laureate

(See also Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell)
Why I Am Not a Christian. Rec: NYPL
Autobiography. Rec: Counterpunch NF
History of Western Philosophy. Rec: Ward
The Problems of Philosophy. Rec: Adler GBWW
The Analysis of Mind. Rec: Adler
An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth. Rec: Adler
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Rec: Adler

Ryle, Gilbert The Concept of Mind (1949)

Ryle attacks the Cartesian view of man as an incorporeal soul in the machine of the body. Acute, amusing analysis of mental
concepts, the plausible upshot seeming to be a totally implausible behaviourism. Also: Dilemmas; Collected Papers; Plato's
Progress

Santayana, George, Spanish-American, 1863-1952.

The Life of Reason. Rec: Adler
Skepticism and Animal Faith. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3
Persons and Places. Rec: Adler
Selected Other Works. Rec: Fadiman 3

Sartre, Jean-Paul Being and Nothingness (1943) !P **

Unofficial gospel of the Paris café, whose tidings are not exactly glad: "Man is a useless passion". Dense terminological
thickets alternate with vivid insights and penetrating descriptions of human folly and foibles. Impassioned, atheistic
existentialism. Also: Existentialism and Humanism; Critique of Dialectical Reason; Sketch fora Theory of the Emotions, etc.
See BIOGRAPHY; DRAMA; FICTION/NOVELS
Sartre, Jean Paul, French, 1905-1980. Nobel Laureate
Being and Nothingness. Rec: Adler Boston PL NYPL Seymour-Smith
Existentialism and Humanism. Rec: TLS

Schopenbaner, Arthur The World as Will and Idea( 1819)

Rare combination of Kant and Buddha underlies Schopenhauer's thought. Lively, lucid style, replete with entertaining and
mordant chatter, especially about his hated Hegel. Discussion of human character and the unconscious anticipates Freud and
psychoanalysis. Strong influence on Nietzsche (qv), also on Wittgenstein (qv). Also: The Fourfold Root, Parerga and Para
lipornena; Essay on the Freedom of the Will

Schopenhauer, Arthur, German, 1788-1860.

The World as Will and Idea. Rec: Seymour-Smith
Essays and Aphorisms. Rec: Ward
Studies in Pessimism. Rec: Adler

Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism (c. 200) p

Classic statement of philosophical scepticism. With Sextus's rediscovery in the 16th century, and his influence on such writers
as Montaigne (qv), scepticism flourished in Europe. Thus indirectly, Sextus triggered Descartes (qv) in his crucial search for
true knowledge by means of systematic doubt. Good translation: Loeb Library. Also: Against the Dogmatists; Against the
Professors
Sextus Empiricus, Greek, fl. ca. 190.
Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Sloterdijk, Peter, German, 1947- .

Critique of Cynical Reason. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (philosophy)
Spheres

Smith, Adam, Scottish, 1723-1790.

Theory of Moral Sentiments. Rec: Adler

Spencer, Herbert, English, 1820-1903.

First Principles. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Spinoza, Benedict Ethics (1677) !*P

Arguably the most perfect, most sublime metaphysical system of them all. Spinoza proceeds in a "geometrical" manner,
commencing with definitions and axioms, from which he derives his propositions. Excommunicated by the Dutch Jewish
community as an atheist, his entire system is a kind of intellectual panegyric to "God or Nature". Also: The Treatise on the
Correction of the Understanding A Theologico-Political Treatise, etc

Spinoza, Baruch, Dutch writing in Latin, 1632-1677.

Ethics. Rec: Adler Col37 Col61 GBWW Good Reading Seymour-Smith Ward
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Rec: Aquinas Lubbock SJC

Strauss, Leo, German-American writing in English, 1899-1973.

Natural Right and History. Rec: TLS (philosophy)

Stumpf, Samuel, American, 1918-1998.

Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy. Rec: Good Reading

Unamuno, Miguel de, Spanish, 1864-1936.

Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations. Rec: Ward
Three Exemplary Novels. Rec: Bloom
Our Lord Don Quixote. Rec: Bloom

Wang Chong (Wang Ch'ung), Chinese, 27-ca. 97 CE.

Lun Heng (Philosophical and Miscellaneous Essays). Rec: Ward

Wang Yangming, Chinese, 1472-1529.

Instructions for Practical Living, and Other Neo-Confucian Writings. Rec: Oriental StJE Ward

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations (1953)kil*ro A series of observations, loosely collected into numbered
paragraphs and short sections, in which the older Wittgenstein wrestles with his younger self of the Tractatus—and with the
philosophical proclivities of generations of thinkers. Not so much a work, more a working out; less a handbook of thought than
a model of how to think. Also: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; The Blue and Brown Books; On Certainty, etc

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Austrian, 1889-1941.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Rec: National Review TLS Ward
Philosophical Investigations. Rec: Counterpunch Trans GBWW Seymour-Smith TLS

Xunzi (Hsun Tzu), Chinese, ca. 313-238 BCE.

Selected Writings. Rec: Oriental StJE

Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.

Harvey Mansfield has been a professor of government at Harvard University for twenty-six years. His research area is political
philosophy. His writings flow from Burke, to Machiavelli, to The Spirit of Liberalism. He is working on a study of executive
power.
These five books reflect the central importance of politics in my life. Or else, one could say, they reflect the central importance
of politics, recognized or not, in anyone's life. Whatever draws us away from politics—play, artistry, poetry, thought—at the
same time draws on politics to supply the conditions of peace and harmony that such detachment requires.

Plato. The Republic (370-360 B.c.). James Adam, ed. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
This problem of attachment-detachment in politics is shown best and most beautifully in Plato's Republic, where the human
condition is put in the image of prisoners in a cave. The cave is our politics, and the prisoners' chains represent enthrallment to
the delusions by which we live. We can, some of us, some of the time, escape from them, but we always have to come back to
them.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 350 B.C.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. (Pb)
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the first book on moral virtue and still the best. Not a book on theories of morality, it
describes the actual virtues of the moral person. Read today, it seems strangely familiar—we expect it to be obsolete and
irrelevant, but do not find it so.

Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince (1513). Peter E. Bondanella and Mark Musa, trans. New York: Oxford University Press,
1984.
Machiavelli's Prince gives the clarion call that began the modern age. It tells us to take as our standard the way things actually
are done, not the way we wish or profess them to be done. The Prince is the greatest book ever written on politics, when
politics is understood as devoted solely to winning over an opponent.

Leo Strauss. Natural Right and History (1950). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. (Pb)
Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History makes the cause for reading these old books seriously—as if they might be true. He
shows that the two grand obstacles to doing so, our beliefs in science and in history, lead us to the necessity that we recover
philosophy in its original sense.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (1973). Thomas P. Whitney, trans. New York: Harper & Row,
1985. (Pb)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago is the most powerful book of our time. Its accusation against the Soviet Union
will outlast that regime and will dog it until its dying days. Its message of freedom sounds the call of honor and sacrifice that
attends any notable effort on behalf of freedom, and that is largely missing in the peace-loving West today.
Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick is the author of Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), which received a National Book Award, and Philosophical
Explanations (1981), which received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award of Phi Beta Kappa. He has recently been considering
"the best things in life" in preparation for a book of the same name. This third book "examines what's important about life:
happiness, the self, sexuality, love, intellectual creativity and wisdom." Previously chairman of the Harvard University
Philosophy Department, he is now the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard.

The earliest very powerful impact of the printed word that I can remember was from the classic comics I read as a child. How I
dwelled on Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Adventures of
Robin Hood! If the dialogue and descriptive prose were skimpy, this was more than made up for by the narrative force and the
vivid pictures.

John Stuart Mill. On Liberty (1854). Elizabeth Rappaport, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. (Pb)
To judge by the number of times I recall quoting it in high school, Mill's On Liberty impressed me greatly; it combined a
position I found congenial, the careful marshaling of reasons and also great rhetorical force—hence the ease of quoting.
Plato. The Republic (370-360 B.C.). James Adam, ed. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
I didn't fully recognize it at the time, I think, but Plato's Republic (along with some early dialogues), which I read as a
freshman in Columbia's humanities course, presented me not only with a flurry of ideas and a way of investigating them and
thinking them through but also with a figure, Socrates, vividly portrayed, who embodied these ideas and lived this inquiry. The
issues and the figure have stayed with me.

R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa. Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey. New York: John Wiley, 1957.
Sometime late in college I stumbled across R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa's Games and Decisions, a lucid and
conceptually sophisticated presentation of utility theory and game theory. Its fitting of complicated aspects of human behavior
into abstract mathematical structure intrigued me—and by a roundabout route I returned to this subject in doing a doctoral
dissertation on decision theory.

Friedrich August von Hayek. Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.
Ludwig Von Mises. Socialism (orig. Die Gemeinwirtschaft, 1922). J. Kahane, trans. Indianapolis: Liberty-Classics, 1981. (Pb)
Friedrich August von Hayek. The Constitution of Liberty (1960). Chicago: Regnery, 1972.
While in graduate school I encountered the writings of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, which shook me out of my
then socialist beliefs. There was Hayek's book of essays, Individualism and Economic Order, and Mises's wide-ranging and
unsettling Socialism, which showed me I had not thought through any details—economic, social or cultural—of how socialism
would work. One of their arguments in particular, about the impossibility of rational economic calculation under socialism,
dumbfounded me. Whether or not the argument was ultimately judged to be correct, it was amazing, something I never would
have thought of in a million years. Soon afterward I read Hayek's then recently published and magisterial Constitution of
Liberty, which impressed me with the depth of its thinking about society.

William Shakespeare. Shakespeare: Complete Works (15921611). Alfred Harbage, ed. New York: Penguin, 1969.
The works I have listed affected, in different ways, my first book, a book of political philosophy. Since then my own thinking
has not centered on the political or social realm. However, it is harder for me to pick out individual works since then that have
had large impact. Perhaps the greater the weight of intellectual baggage we acquire as we grow older, the harder it is for one
new thing to move us. But I cannot close without saying that back then and since then, there has been, always, presenting the
world complete and not merely from one partial intense perspective, Shakespeare.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Joe Nye is a professor of government at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of the Harvard Center
for Science and International Affairs, Professor Nye graduated from Princeton, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and wrote his
Harvard Ph.D. thesis in East Africa. His latest book is Nuclear Ethics (1986).
In a world of sovereign states and nuclear weapons, it is too dangerous to think one can know all the answers, but it is essential
to be clear about the key questions and one's values. These books have helped me with both. They are listed chronologically.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1966.
Tolstoy introduced me to the complexity of history; to the enormous gap between what humans intend and what transpires; and
to the importance of being clear about one's own core values. And what a good read!

Joseph A. Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). New York: Harper & Row, 1983. (Pb)
Schumpeter's celebration of the achievements of capitalism, and particularly the role of the entrepreneur and "creative
destruction," is combined with a paradoxical prognosis of capitalism "killing itself by its successes." I wrote my undergraduate
thesis about the question of whether that conclusion followed from his premise. I am still not sure that it does. This great book
sets a great puzzle.

Alfred J. Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic (1936). New York: Dover, 1952. (Pb)
While I would no longer subscribe to such a simple positivist epistemology, the experience of studying "Oxford philosophy"
left me with a lifelong skeptical approach to tangled questions. Before trying to cut tall trees, start by clearing away the
obstructing underbrush. Ayer set a high standard.

Hans J. Morgenthau. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1948). 5th ed. New York: Knopf, 1978.
A flawed book can have a great influence on one's life. This "Realist" text dominated the field when I began graduate study of
international politics. It was too good to dismiss, but something was missing. My book (with Robert Keohane), Power and
Interdependence, was in part a product of this wrestling match with Morgenthau. I am grateful for the great provocation.

Elenore Smith Bowen [Laura Bohannan]. Return to Laughter (1954). New York: Doubleday, 1964.
This sensitive fictionalized account of an anthropologist's coming to terms with cultural relativism helped me to understand
why I could admire so much of life in Uganda when I lived there in the early 1960s, yet still refuse to accept certain things I
felt to be wrong.

David J. Duncan. The River Why (1983). New York: Bantam, 1984. (Pb)
Long after I knew that I am often happiest when waist deep in a rushing river casting flies to rising trout, I read this book on an
Alaskan float trip. Its droll portrayal of the fine line between fishing and philosophy allowed me both to laugh at myself and to
feel justified in continuing as I would in any case. One can love books for many reasons.

Orlando Patterson

Orlando Patterson was born in Jamaica. He was educated and has taught at the University of the West Indies and the London
School of Economics before he came to Harvard in 1969. He is the author of three books on historical and comparative
sociology and of three novels. He is presently completing a work on the historical sociology of freedom.
These works are as important for the way they approach their subjects as for the subjects they treat. By illuminating past and
present in wholly new ways, they teach us how to understand the future when it becomes the present.

Immanuel Kant. Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals (orig. Moral Law, 1797). H. J. Paton, trans. New York: Harper &
Row, n.d. (Pb)
This is the greatest work of philosophy. Through it Kant became my intellectual father-figure. When I first read it as an
undergraduate I was awed, but not scared by its great themes and insights. Under the forbidding Teutonic surface I soon
discovered a very human, deeply compassionate presence. The Groundwork was my path to the serious study of philosophy. It
taught me intellectual discipline and provided me with an inexhaustible philosophical foundation for any later thinking.
It has bvo windows: one looks out on the Enlightenment and all that's best in modern culture, the other looks back at ancient
cultures and their greatest achievement, stoicism. The connections are not immediately obvious. Discovering them has been
one of the abiding pleasures of my intellectual growth.

Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Justin O'Brien, trans. New York: Random House, 1959. (Pb)
There are books such as the Groundwork which one grows with, and there are books one grows out of. Camus's The Myth of
Sisyphus was one such work for me. I first came across it in high school, did not understand it, but was deeply drawn to it. I
read it repeatedly through college. It is the perfect work for a young, searching mind concerned with the problems of identity
and the meaning of existence. Absurdity and exile were just the themes I needed to explore as I came to terms with a
decolonizing society (Jamaica) similar to the one in which Camus grew up (Algeria). Camus taught me intellectual nimbleness,
the serious art of playing with ideas. And I learned confidence from him. When, finally, I came to understand him fully, I came
to see not only that he was wrong but that I could think more creatively about the ideas to which he had introduced me. These
ideas inspired my first novel, The Children of Sisyphus (1964).

Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Volume 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.
This great work was an eye-opener for me. It completely overturned my conventional views on ancient society and thought,
especially that of Plato. It made me realize how it is possible for a whole tradition of scholarship to distort systematically the
interpretation of a period. This work taught me the importance of interpreting the past and the classics for oneself.

Eric E. Williams. Capitalism and Slavery: The Caribbean (1944). New York: Andre Deutsch. 1964. (Pb)
This masterful historical work showed me how a powerful mind can turn long-cherished views of history upside down. It was
also important for all West Indian intellectuals growing up in the 1950s and 1960s—history as a political force. The work
taught me two things: the importance of slavery in the rise of the modern West and the courage to take on big ideas and great
themes.

Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844). Dirk J. Struik, ed., Martin Milligan, trans. New York:
International, 1964. (Pb)
This work, along with the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, restored my respect for Marx after a long love affair
with, and ultimate rejection of, Das Kapital during my early years of graduate school at the London School of Economics. This
is the early, humanistic side of Marx. A profound critique of the central human problem of capitalism—alienation. From this
work I could move back to Hegel and forward to Weber, Laski and other modern thinkers in the development of my own
sociological thought.

David Riesman, with Reuel Denny and Nathan Glazer. The Lonely Crowd (1950). New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973. (Pb)
One of the greatest works of modern interpretive sociology. This is the work that finally turned me on to sociology. It does for
the interpretation of modern American society what Alexis de Tocqueville did for the first part of the nineteenth century. Like
the latter's work, it transcends the deeper period to which it is addressed. The work brought me a deeper understanding of
American society and a lasting fascination with it. More important, it became my model of informed macrosociological
analysis; the interpretive sociological imagination at its best.

Willard V. Quine

Willard Quine has retired from his teaching career at Harvard University, where he is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy
Emeritus. His distinguished work as a mathematical logician and philosopher of language continues. Retirement allows him to
produce such forthcoming works as Bits and Pieces (Harvard University Press). He is the subject of a volume in the "Library of
Living Philosophers" series. Best known for writing Mathematical Logic and Word and Object, his autobiography, Time of My
Life, was published in 1985.

Bertrand Russell. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971. (Pb)
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy was my introduction to the rigors of modern logic and the mysteries of infinite
numbers. It brought new clarity to familiar old mathematical concepts as well, by reducing them to pure logic and set theory.
The charms of the subject matter and of Russell's writing combined to launch me on a career of mathematical philosophy.

Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Principia mathematica (1910-12). 3 vols. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1962. (Pb)
Written mostly in mathematical symbols, these volumes provided the solid fare for which Russell's book above had whetted my
appetite. Here the derivation of classical mathematics from logic and set theory is carried through in strict formal detail.

Sir Arthur S. Eddington. The Nature of the Physical World (1928). Folcroft, Penn.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1935.
This was perhaps the most memorable of several books of popular science that both fired and helped to gratify my curiosity
about the basis, bounds and inner workings of physical reality.

Bertrand Russell. Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). 2d ed. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1972.
The two philosophical interests noted above—the logicomathematical and the physical—are here brought into contact. A
program is sketched for deriving our knowledge of nature from our sensory evidence with the help of modern logical
techniques.

Rudolf Carnap. Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928). Hamburg: Meiner, 1974.
The program that Russell had thus sketched is here undertaken in earnest and explicit technical detail, bristling with logical
symbols. It is a work of admirable vision and ingenuity,

Rudolf Carnap. Logische Syntax der Sprache. Vienna: J. Springer, 1934.

This work, the writing of which I was privileged to witness for a while, brought logical positivism to full flower. It develops
the philosophy of science as the logic and syntax of the language of science. Carnap and I diverged from it in opposite
directions after a few years, but the book has influenced me deeply.

Walter W. Skeat, ed. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1879). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924.
The foregoing six books sparked and nourished interrelated interests that took on professional proportions. But this book has
been the faithful support for fifty-seven years of another and independent interest that I somehow acquired in my late teens: a
consuming interest in the origins of words.

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals I. Kant Universal Morality

A Short History of EthicsA. MacIntyre Universal Morality

"The Sea, the Sea" I. Murdoch Universal Morality

Good and Evil R. Taylor Divine Justice

Before Philosophy H. Frankfort Divine Justice
Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology W.D. O'Flaherty Divine Justice
The Divine Comedy Dante Divine Justice

Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt J.H. Breasted Fate

Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam W.M. Watt Fate
An Essay on Free Will P. VanInwagen Fate

Metaphysics D.W. Hamlyn Monism

A Source Book of Vedanta "E. Deutsch, J.A.B. van Buitenen" Monism
Holism: A Shopper's Guide "J. Fodor, E. Lepore" Monism

A History of Greek Philosophy W.H.C. Guthrie Reality Unknowable

Science and Civilization in China J. Needham Reality Unknowable
Art and Illusion E.H. Gombrich Reality Unknowable

The Art and Thought of Heraclitus C.H. Kahn Dynamic Universe

Remembering HeraclitusR.G. Geldard Dynamic Universe
Studies in Heraclitus R. Dilcher Dynamic Universe

Truth: a History F. Fernandez-Armesto Universal Concepts

The Sociology of Philosophies R. Collins Universal Concepts
The East in the West J. Goody Universal Concepts

Modern Philosophy R. Scruton Relativism

"Objectivity, Realism and Truth"R. Rorty Relativism
In a Grove (Rashomon) R. Akutagawa Relativism

The Nature of Matter G. Arnaldi Materialism

Sources of Indian Tradition A.T. Embree Materialism
A Materialist Theory of the Mind D.M. Armstrong Materialism

The Greek Cosmologists D.J. Furley Atomism

The Epicurean Tradition H. Jones Atomism
The Magic Furnace M. Chown Atomism
Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories C. LuthyAtomism

Western Atheism: A Short History J. Thrower Purposeless World

The Range of Reason J. Maritain Purposeless World
Principles of the Philosophy of the Future L. Feuerbach Purposeless World

Sketch for…the Progress of the Human Mind Marquis de Condorcet Morality of Human Nature
On Human Nature E.O. Wilson Morality of Human Nature
After Virtue A. MacIntyre Morality of Human Nature

Hellenistic Philosophy A.A. Long Practical Ethics

The Modes of Scepticism "J. Annas, J. Barnes" Practical Ethics
Discourses Epictetus Practical Ethics
Meditations M. Aurelius Practical Ethics

Twentieth-Century French Thought J. Chiari Existentialism

The Cambridge Companion to Sartre C. Howells Existentialism
Nausea J.P. Sartre Existentialism
The Outsider A. Camus Existentialism
An American Dream N. Mailer Existentialism

Collected Papers C.S. Pierce Pragmatism

Pragmatism W. James Pragmatism
Pragmatism from Pierce to Davidson J.P. Murphy Pragmatism
William James G.W. Allen Pragmatism
Hard Times C. Dickens Pragmatism

The World as Will and Idea A. Schopenhauer Primacy of the Will

The Will to Power F. Nietzsche Primacy of the Will
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer B. Magee Primacy of the Will
Schopenhauer on the Character of the World J.E. Atwell Primacy of the Will
The Films of Leni Riefenstahl D.B. Hinton Primacy of the Will

Principles of Morals and Legislation J. Bentham Utilitarianism

Bentham G.J. Postema Utilitarianism
On Liberty J.S. Mill Utilitarianism
The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill A. Ryan Utilitarianism
Mill and Liberalism M. Cowling Utilitarianism
The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism 1901-04 E. Halevy Utilitarianism

The Roots of Romanticism I. Berlin Romanticism

Romanticism and Art W. Vaughan Romanticism
Companion to Romanticism D. Wu Romanticism
The Sorrows of Young Werther J. Goethe Romanticism

Abstract Objects B. Hale Abstraction

The Shock of the New R. Hughes Abstraction
Complete Writings on Art W. Kandinsky Abstraction
Abstraction and Empathy W. Worringer Abstraction
Essay Concerning Human Understanding J. Locke Abstraction

The Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous G. Berkeley Idealism

Appearance and Reality F.H. Bradley Idealism
Idealism: Past and Present G. VeseyIdealism

Negation and Non-Being R.M. Gale Nothing

The Book of Nothing J.D. Barrow Nothing
The Nothing that Is R. Kaplan Nothing

Thinking and Experience H.H. Price Creation by Thought

On Thinking G. Ryle Creation by Thought
Ancient Egyptian Religion S. Quirke Creation by Thought
Religion and Creation K. Ward Creation by Thought

The Idea of Progress J.B. Bury Progress

History of the Idea of Progress R. Nisbet Progress
Theodicy G.W. Leibniz Progress
The Future Progress of the Human Mind J.M. de Condorcet Progress
Forrest Gump / Candide W. Groom Progress

WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: INTRODUCTION

PAUL ROWNTREE

There is no agreed definition of philosophy. The question `What is philosophy?' is itself a philosophical question. However,
broadly speaking, philosophy is the systematic analysis of our concepts of - and the construction of theories about the nature of
- mind, reality, language, logic, the self, free will, perception, causation, science, God, morality, rationality, time, space, and so
on. Philosophy includes logic (the study of valid ference), epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and metaphysics (the study
of the nature of existence), as well as ethics, aesthetics, political theory, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of
religion. General readers can begin the study of philosophy either with books about the history of philosophy or with books
about certain topics within philosophy. They should then move on without delay to reading some of the works of the great
philosophers.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

PLATO

Philosophy Made Simple (1993) by Richard H Popkin and Avrum Stroll. Revised edition of a readable and very useful
introduction to philosophy with chapters on ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, the theory of
knowledge, logic, and contemporary philosophy. Each chapter contains critical summaries of the theories of the great
philosophers. Highly recommended for the beginner.

A Dictionary of Philosophy (1990) by G Vesey and P Foulkes. A valuable dictionary of philosophical terms and theories. The
major topic entries and the entries on individual philosophers can be read as an introduction to philosophy for the general
reader.

Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (1994) by Roger Scruton. A remarkably wide-ranging survey of
contemporary developments in both European and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Readable and stimulating, but some chapters are
quite technical.

Body, Mind and Death (1964) edited by Anthony Flew. A fascinating anthology of readings on the question `What is
consciousness?' Contains extracts from the works of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes,
Benedict Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, David Hume, and many others.

Free Will (1972) by D J O'Connor. The best introduction to this classic philosophical problem. Examines a selection of
arguments for and against the view that some human actions are freely chosen. Short and lucid.

A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (1966) by
Alasdair Maclntyre. An early work by arguably the most original of contemporary moral philosophers. Here, he argues that
moral concepts cannot be understood apart from their history. A challenging historical survey, covering many thinkers not
usually regarded as moral philosophers.

The Problems of Philosophy (1912) by Bertrand Russell. A short, classic introduction to philosophical analysis by one of this
century's great philosophers. Topics covered include the nature and existence of matter, appearance and reality, and the value of
philosophy.
Philosophy and the Meaning of Life (1971) by Karl Britton. Written for the general reader concerned about philosophical
questions such as `Why does the universe exist?' and `Why do I exist?'. The author asks what these questions mean, what could
count as answers, and what methods can be used to find answers. Highly recommended for the beginner.

A History of Western Philosophy (1946) by Bertrand Russell. An entertaining history of philosophy in one volume. Weak on
the medieval period and occasionally rather misleading, it nevertheless provides a useful historical survey for the beginner.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Paul Rowntree

Ancient philosophy covers a period of a thousand years - from about 650 BC to about AD 350. It helps to divide ancient
philosophy into three subsidiary periods.
1. Pre-Socratic philosophy covers those speculative cosmologists (such as Democritus and Pythagoras) who flourished in the
period c. 650-c. 450 BC.
2. Classical Greek philosophy begins with Socrates (469-399 BC), covers Plato (c. 428-347 BC), and ends with Aristotle (384-
322 BC).
3. Hellenistic philosophy covers the period from the death of Aristotle until the fall of the Roman Empire, and it includes
Plotinus and the neo-Platonists, Epicurus, and the Stoics. The Hellenistic philosophers were influenced by Greek culture, but
often lived outside Greece.

The history of Western philosophy is, after all, no more than a series of footnotes to Plato's philosophy.
A N WHITEHEAD

Before and After Socrates (1932) by F M Cornford. A classic account of the pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle. Short and very
readable.

The Last Days of Socrates (4th century BC) by Plato (translated 1993 by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant). A collection
of four of Plato's works in which he displayed the methods and teaching of Socrates. Contains the Apology (Socrates's speech
at his trial) and the Phaedo (Plato's account of Socrates last conversation). Readable and short. Newcomers to Plato are
recommended to start here.

The Republic (4th century BC) by Plato (translated 1974 by Desmond Lee). Plato's philosophical and literary masterpiece in
which he expounds his most important theories. Books VI and VII and particularly interesting. A fluent and elegant translation.

The Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC) by Aristotle (translated 1976 by J A K Thomson, revised by Hugh Tredennick, and
introduced by Jonathan Barnes). Aristotle's Ethics is one of the most influential books in history, and a standard text in moral
philosophy. Addresses the issue of how to live well, and is important as much for its analytical methods as for its conclusions.
A book that will repay a lifetime's study. A readable translation.

Aristotle (1982) by Jonathan Barnes. A short, elegant, and comprehensive introduction to Aristotle for the general reader by a
leading philosopher and classical scholar.

The Neo-Platonists (1991) translated by John Gregory. A useful anthology mainly devoted to Plotinus, but containing pieces
by Porphyry, Iambilichus, and Proclus.

Meditations (2nd century AD) by Marcus Aurelius (translated 1964 by Maxwell Staniforth). A classic statement of the stoic
philosophy of life by a famous Roman emperor. A very influential and inspiring work by a sensitive and humble mind. Short
and readable.

Hellenistic Philosophy (1974) by A A Long. An excellent survey and general appraisal. The best introduction to the subject.
Scholarly but still suitable for the general reader.
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY IN EUROPE
Paul Rowntree

Historians will always dispute when the Middle Ages began and ended. The Renaissance and the Middle Ages overlapped; and
much of the medieval philosophical outlook survived into the late 17th century and even later. For philosophical purposes, the
Middle Ages can be divided into:
1. The early Middle Ages (5th-11th centuries), beginning with St Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) and Boethius (AD 480-
524) and ending with St Anselm (1033-1109).
2. The high Middle Ages (12th-13th centuries) in which scholastics such as St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) flourished.
3. The later Middle Ages (14th-15th centuries) in which the greatest philosopher was probably William of Occam (c. 1285-
1349). Undoubtedly, Aquinas has been the most influential of all medieval philosophers.

Examine carefully what has been said, and if possible, reconcile faith and reason.
ANICIUS MANILUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS

A History of Medieval Philosophy (1972) by F C Copleston. An interesting and useful survey of the entire period, including
medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. The author draws attention to the similarities between particular medieval
philosophers and philosophers of later periods. Contains good bibliographies.

Medieval Thought: St Augustine to Ockham (1958) by Gordon Leff. A brisk, brilliant, and brief introduction by an historian.
Contains plenty of short quotations from the works of the medieval philosophers.

Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (1961) by Paul 0 Kristeller. A short, brilliant account
of philosophy in the transitional period of the 15th and 16th centuries. Suitable for the beginner and the expert alike.

The Confessions of St Augustine (4th century) translated 1961 by R S Pine-Coffin. St Augustine's spiritual autobiography.
Contains some notable philosophical reflections on the nature of time in Book XI, and communicates his highly influential out-
look as well. A readable translation of a masterpiece.

The Consolation of Philosophy (524 AD) by Anicius Manilus Severinus Boethius (translated 1969 by V E Watts). A very
beautiful and influential work in verse and prose, written while the author awaited execution. Boethius was a Christian
philosopher who drew extensively on Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. He and St Augustine shaped medieval philosophy.
Contains his famous definitions of eternity and of Providence, which were adopted by Aquinas. A masterpiece.

Boethius, Roman, ca. 480-524.

Consolation of Philosophy. Rec: Aquinas
On Music. Rec: Aquinas

The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm (11th century) translated 1973 by Sister Benedicta Ward. Mainly devotional, but
the book contains the Prologion in which appears Anselm's brilliant version of the ontological argument for the existence of
God. The ontological argument fascinates philosophers, and it has generated a vast literature.

Summa Theologicae by St Thomas Aquinas: A Concise Translation (1989) edited by Timothy McDermott. The most readable
translation of selections from Aquinas's great synthesis of St Augustine and Aristotle. Omits the conventions of medieval
debate used in the original in favour of the modem format of continuous paragraphs. Therefore, to appreciate Aquinas's
methods and style, it should be read in conjunction with another anthology of his writings.

Aquinas (1955) by F C Copleston. Good introduction for those who have no previous knowledge of this great but difficult
philosopher.

The Five Ways (1969) by Anthony Kenny. A lucid philosophical analysis of Aquinas's five proofs of the existence of God by a
former Roman Catholic priest turned agnostic Oxford philosopher. Quite technical in places, but very rewarding.

A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages (1965) by Walter Ullman. Valuable historical introduction to medieval
political philosophy. Traces the emergence of the concepts of sovereignty, parliament, citizenship, the vile of law, and the state.
PHILOSOPHY IN 17TH-CENTURY EUROPE
Paul Rowntree

Philosophy in the 17th century was emerging from its subjection to theology; and the physical sciences began to separate from
philosophy. Increasingly, the God of medieval philosophy was no longer seen as the guarantee and foundarion of all
knowledge. Accordingly, some of the leading philosophers sought a foundation for knowledge in mathematical reasoning,
while others sought a foundation for knowledge in the experience of the senses and the inductive reasoning of the physical
senses. The former are known as rationalists - Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), and Gottfried
Leibniz (1646-1716). The latter are known as empiricists - Francis Bacon (1561-1626), John Locke (1632-1704), and
(arguably) Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Empiricism became the dominant trend in the next century, and it remains an
important trend to this day.

As regards any subject we propose to investigate, we must inquire not what other
people have thought, or what we ourselves conjecture, but what we can clearly and
manifestly perceive by intuition or deduce with certainty. For there is no other way
of acquiring knowledge.
RENE DESCARTES

Descartes: Philosophical Writings (1954) selected and translated by EIizabeth Anscombe and P T Geach. One of several very
useful selections of the most important works. Includes The Meditations - one of the most readable (though deceptively simple)
philosophical classics.

Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (1978) by Bernard Williams. Probably the best commentary by a leading modem
philosopher. Quite a difficult book in places, but it repays the effort.

Ethics (1677) by Benedict Spinoza (translated by A Boyle and revised by G H R Parkinson 1993). The best of the easily
accessible translations. Fascinating, remarkable, and beautiful. This most impressive work of speculative metaphysics is
modelled on Euclid's geometrical demonstrations. Read Spinoza's prefaces and notes before attempting the work as a whole.
Demanding but highly recommended.

Spinoza (1988) by Stuart Hampshire. Revised edition of the best of the basic introductions. Covers not only the monistic
metaphysics but the political philosophy and biblical criticism as well. Lucid and concise.

Leibniz: Philosophical Writings (1973) edited by G H R Parkinson and translated by Mary Morris and G H R Parkinson. The
best selection of Leibniz's shorter works. Includes the very concise and readable Monadology.

Leibniz (1954) by Ruth L Saw. Good introduction, which pieces together Leibniz's doctrines in metaphysics and formal logic.
Avoids undue technicalities and is useful for anyone new to Leibniz.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke (edited by A S Pringle-Pattison 1924). One of several
editions of this long but important work. Begin by reading only selected passages on substance, personal identity, and the
distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Locke's conception of substance as a completely featureless substratum is
important.

John Locke (1952) by D J O'Connor. Covers Locke's highly influential political philosophy as well as his metaphysics and
epistemology. A very readable introduction.

Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes (edited by M Oakeshott 1946). One of many editions of Hobbes's masterpiece, written in
his magnificently pithy style. Commentators still argue about this most important work of political theory. Was I-Iobbes an
authoritarian pessimist and atheist, or not?

Hobbes (1956) by R S Peters. A good introduction to a remarkably original, important, and rather neglected philosopher - the
first great philosopher to write in English. Considers Hobbes's achievement as a whole, and not just the Leviathan. Very
helpful.

The Seventeenth-Century Background (1953) by Basil Willey. A masterly exercise in the history of ideas by a professor of
English literature. Very readable and highly recommended.
PHILOSOPHY IN 18TH-CENTURY EUROPE
Paul Rowntree

In 18th-century philosophy, the dominant trend in metaphysics and epistemology was empiricism, while the dominant trend in
political philosophy was liberal individual-ism. The Irish philosopher and bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) devised a form
of empiricism now known as subjective idealism. The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1774) arrived at generally
sceptical views about reason, causation, the self, and religion. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), claiming
that He had woken him from his `dogmatic slumbers', developed a synthesis of British empiricism and continental rationalism
known as critical philosophy. In France, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) argued for direct rather than representative
democracy. In England, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of utilitarianism, held that the essence of morality was `the
greatest happiness of the greatest number'.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for

instance; let us ask, `Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence? No.' Commit it then to the flames:
for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
DAVID HunlE

Principles of Human Knowledge/Three Dialogues (1710-1734) by George Berkeley (edited by Roger Woolhouse 1988). For
Berkeley, the existence of objects depends on their being perceived: objects have continuous existence only because God
perceives them all the time. May sound bizarre, but highly influential. The Three Dialogues are short and entertaining.

Berkeley (1953) by Geoffrey J Warnock. An excellent account of Berkeley's philosophy. Explains very clearly how Berkeley
came to such extraordinary conclusions as a result of rejecting, in the name of common sense, Locke's conception of substance
as a featureless substratum.

Fifteen Sermons (1914) by Bishop Joseph Butler (edited by W R Matthews). Great, if underestimated, work of moral
philosophy. Butler, the leading conscience theorist, holds that conscience governs and limits both our benevolence and our
selfishness. Subtle in content, solemn in tone. Highly recommended.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) by David Hume (edited by Martin Bell 1990). Of all Hume's philosophical
works, this is the shortest and most accessible to the general reader. A work by a master of English prose. Never a dull moment.
A masterpiece.

Hume (1980) by Alfred J Ayer. A short and stylish account of the main themes in Hume's philosophy by a modern empiricist.
Tends to assume that Hume's philosophical intentions are not in dispute, but nevertheless very valuable.

Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783) by Immanuel Kant (translated by P G Lucas 1953). The shortest and most
accessible of the main works of one of the greatest and most difficult philosophers. Dense and technical, so read a general
commentary on Kant first.

The Philosophy of Kant (1968) by John Kemp. Kant is probably the most influential philosopher in the post-Enlightenment
period. This is a classic account of Kant's critical philosophy. Lucid, short, and readable.

Kant's Moral Philosophy (1970) by Harry B Acton. An excellent and very short account of Kant's ethics and the categorical
imperative. Essential preparation for reading Kant's influential moral philosophy.

Utilitarianism: For and Against (1975) by J J C Smart and Bernard Williams. Two essays on utilitarian ethics. J J C Smart
refines Bentham's classical utilitarianism. Bernard Williams opposes this view. A good introduction to the ethics that influences
so much social policy. Highly recommended.

The Social Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau (1946) introduced by Ernest Barker. Brings together three
great works of political philosophy - Locke's Second Treatise on Government, Hume's Of the Original Contract, and
Rousseau's Social Contract. A very valuable volume for anyone interested in contractarianism in political theory. Rousseau's
work has been variously interpreted as a blueprint for totalitarian-ism and a defence of individual liberty. It is more important
as a source of ideas than as a system of philosophical arguments.

19TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Robert C Solomon

The 19th century displayed a remarkably rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent, perhaps even
comparable to the generation that gave birth to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The scale of the revolution set off in philosophy
by Immanuel Kant was comparable, by Kant's own estimation, to the Copernican revolution that ended the Middle Ages.
Following Kant were some of the most imaginative philosophers of modern times, including G W F Hegel and Arthur
Schopenhauer as well as the philosophers he inspired in opposition to him, notably Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and
Friedrich Nietzsche. Unfortunately, the 19th century on the European continent was not known for the clarity of its writing
style, an unfortunate aspect of the Kantian inheritance. (One might compare the writing of John Stuart Mill and William James,
their English and American contemporaries.) Hegel and Schopenhauer quite consciously employed a formidable Kansan
jargon, although Schopenhauer's cutting wit often shines through. Kierkegaard used this same jargon ironically to mock Hegel.
The later part of the century - which Virginia Woolf described as the passing of a dark cloud - showed a few signs of clearing.
Although Marx's later economic writings are indeed difficult, his earlier philosophical writings are quite bold and accessible.
Nietzsche's writing is among the best one can find in German, although his style is misleadingly facile, often hyperbolic and
intentionally polemical. Easy (if sometimes offensive) to read, he is a master of subtlety and irony. My choice of books,
accordingly, is confined to original texts (and collections of texts) that, nevertheless, are approachable by the intelligent general
reader. More difficult texts are merely suggested.

It is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has
hitherto inhabited and imagined, ... Spirit is never at rest but always engaged in moving forward. But just as the first breath
drawn by a child after its long, quiet nourishment breaks the gradualness of merely quantitative growth, ... so likewise the
Spirit in its formation matures slowly and quietly into its new shape, dissolving bit by bit the structure of its previous world.
G W F HEGEL

Reason in History (1820s; 1953), The Philosophy of Right (1821; translated 1967), and The Phenomenology of Spirit
(1807; translated 1977) by G W F Hegel. The first is actually the introduction to a series of lectures Hegel delivered to his
students in Berlin. Although it is difficult, what clearly emerges is an optimistic vision of a rational, progressive view of
history, in which individual freedom emerges from `the slaughter bench of history' but whose significance is to be found not in
individuals (even the `greatest' individuals) but in the development of spiritual consciousness as a whole. The Phenomenology
of Spirit is an earlier, much more detailed and ambitious work, in which Hegel develops the concept of an emerging world-
spirit. at is not unimportant that he wrote the book just as Napoleon was reaching the full extent of his European conquests,
including the western German states.) The reading is enormously difficult, but I encourage courageous readers to ascertain the
general movement - or `dialectic' - of the text. The most famous (and readable) sections: on `Master and Slave' (in part B) and
his discussion of Antigone and the conflict between divine law and civil society (in part C).

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851; translated 1974) and The World as Will and Idea (1818; translated 1948-50) by Arthur
Schopenhauer. Although Schopenhauer certainly earned his self-styled reputation as the most `pessimistic' of all modern
philosophers, he is arguably one of the wittiest and most humorous of all modern philosophers as well. Despite the morbid
message ('life is meaningless'), reading Schopenhauer is almost always an unexpected pleasure.

Journals (1839; translated from Danish by A Dru 1938), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846; translated by D Swenson
and W Lowrie 1944), Either/Or (1843; translated by D Swenson, W Lowrie, and H Johnston 1954) by Soren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard was fundamentally a religious writer and the first `existentialist' (often misunderstood as a purely atheist
movement). He defended the personal, passionate existence and commitments of the individual (for example, against Hegel's
global notion of world-spirit) and defended a view of Christianity - 'becoming a Christian' - which was first of all a passionate
personal commitment, a `leap of faith'.

Early Writings (1843-4; translated and edited by Thomas Bottomore 1963) by Karl Marx; The Communist Manifesto (1848;
edited by A Taylor 1967) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx is best known as the economist and polemicist who
inspired worldwide revolutions. He is less well known for his humanistic and philosophical writings.
The Gay Science (1881-82; translated by W Kaufmann 1974), Beyond Good and Evil (1886; translated by W Kaufmann
1966), The Viking Portable Nietzsche (translated and edited by W Kaufmann 1954), Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85),
and Twilight of the Idols (1889; translated 1954) by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, in many ways bringing to an
end the philosophical idealism of the 19th century and anticipating the moral confusion and violence of the 20th. He rejected
glib notions of `objectivity', especially in philosophy. He was, above all, a moralist, who (in the name of `immorality')
attempted to reinvent a morality of nobility in place of what he perceived as the `decadent' and decaying values of the Judaeo-
Christian tradition.

20TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Richard Rorty

In the early decades of this century, philosophers thought a lot about the impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on
traditional conceptions of man's place in the universe. Bergson, James, and Dewey all tried to rearrange old philosophical
notions so as to make room for evolutionary thought. Later on, philosophy split down the middle into the `analytic' and the
`continental' schools. The analysts (Ayer, Danto, Dennett, Rawls) are mostly anglophone. They think of philosophy as
argumentative problem-solving. The `continentals' (Heidegger, Foucault, Jacques Derrida) typically view philosophy as
reflection on our contemporary historical situation. These two philosophical schools rarely interact, but both have produced
first-rate books. By now, they have so little in common that the use of the term `philosophy' for both tells one little more than
that both kinds of philosophers trace some of their concern back to Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.

When it is acknowledged that under disguise of dealing with ultimate reality,

philosophy has been occupied with the precious values embedded in social
traditions, that it has sprung from a clash of social ends and from a conflict of
inherited institutions with incompatible contemporary tendencies, it will be seen
that the task of future philosophy is to clarify men's ideas as to the social and
moral strifes of their own day.
JOHN DEWEY

Introduction to Metaphysics (1903) by Henri Bergson. A short, lucid presentation of Bergson's central idea: that ultimate
reality is an evolutionary flux, and that material objects and minds are merely abstractions from that flux.

Pragmatism (1907) by William James. Argues that true ideas are ideas that get us what we want, that the search for truth is
therefore part of the pursuit of happiness, and that the human mind is an organ for coping with reality rather than copying it.

Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) by John Dewey. Debunks the idea that philosophy gives you an understanding of the
true nature of reality, or mind, or anything else. Dewey's alternative conception of philosophy is illustrated by the quotation
above.

Language, Truth and Logic (1936) by A J Ayer. A brilliantly clear and persuasive presentation of logical empiricism, the
doctrine that all knowledge of the world is a matter of predicting the occurrence of sense experiences.

Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy (1989) by Arthur C Danto. An introduction to philosophy by
one of the leading contemporary analytic philosophers. Presupposes no previous acquaintance with the subject.

Political Liberalism (1993) by John Rawls. A defence of the institutions of the liberal democracies, arguing that they do not
need metaphysical or religious foundations, but only the informed consent of citizens to procedures for resolving conflicts.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) by Daniel Dennett. A brilliant defence of the claim
that the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the primeval slime, and from there to us, can be explained as the
chance product of the movements of matter.

Basic Writings of Martin Heidegger (1993) edited by D F Krell. A good sampling from the writings of the most original of
20th-century philosophers. Heidegger was a Nazi, and is often denounced as an irrationalist obscurantist. But his influence has
been enormous.
A Foucault Reader (1984) edited by Paul Rabinow. A selection from the work of Michel Foucault, a brilliant historian of ideas
and political radical. His books have almost replaced Marx's as manuals for leftist intellectuals.

A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (1991) edited by Peggy Kamuf. Selections from the voluminous works of the most
original French thinker of his day, the inventor of `deconstruction' and a philosopher who tries to bring Heidegger together with
Sigmund Freud.
Poetry

Making lists of recommended poets is a subjective exercise. Poetry is of the senses before it is of the mind; to state a preference
for this poem or that is to utter autobiography, not criticism. We have included poets of many ages and languages (though all
are available in good English translations)—though this feature of the list is perhaps more real than apparent. A good poem
often stands outside its locality and time, and speaks directly, now, at the moment of reading, of shared perception of human
experience. This quality of timelessness was our main criterion, whether of individual poets or of the many "one-poem- writers
listed in anthologies.
See LITERARY CRITICISM (Arnold, Brooks, Crane, Gardner, Horace, Jarrell, Pope, Shelley); MUSIC (Fischer-Dieskau);
MYTHOLOGY (Ovid); SEX (Ovid)

Adams, Léonie, American, 1899-1988.

Poems: A Selection. Rec: Bloom

Adunis, Lebanese, 1930- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Akhrmatova, Anna Selected Poems (1959)

Style aims at sense rather than sound, clarity rather than vagueness— and is particularly susceptible to translation. Love poems,
against vividly conjured Russian backgrounds, in the tradition of Pushkin (qv), and excellent. Good translation: McKane.

Akhmatova, Anna, Russian, 1888-1966.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Requiem. Rec: NYPL

Aiken, Conrad, American, 1889-1973.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Alberti, Rafael, Spanish, 1902-1984.

The Owl's Insomnia: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Alcman, Greek, 7th C BCE.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Aleixandre, Vicente, Spanish, 1898-1984. Nobel Laureate

A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Amichai, Yehuda, Israeli, 1934- .

Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Travels. Rec: Bloom

Ammons, A. R., American, 1926- .

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Selected Longer Poems. Rec: Bloom
Sphere: The Form of a Motion. Rec: Bloom

Andrade, Eugénio de, Portuguese, 1923- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Chinese, 8th C BCE-20th C.

Anthology of Chinese Literature. Rec: Ward

Various Authors writing in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, etc., Arabic, Persian, Turkish, etc., 7th-18th C.
Anthology of Islamic Literature, From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Japanese, 8th-19th C.

Anthology of Japanese Literature to the Nineteenth Century. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Korean, 1st Millennium-20th C.

Anthology of Korean Poetry, From the Earliest Era to the Present. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Sri Lankan, 6th-19th C.

An Anthology of Sinhalese Literature up to 1815. Rec: Ward

Anwar, Chairil, Indonesian, 1922-1949.

Complete Poetry and Prose. Rec: Ward

Anzaldua, Gloria, American, 1942-2004.

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Rec: Hungry Mind Utne
The US- Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab
forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country, a border culture.
--Anzaldua

Apollinaire, Guillaume Alcoöls (1913)

Experimental, lyric poet of the early 20th century, in style somewhat akin to Owen (qv), though without the toughening process
of the trenches. Short story writer, art critic (friend of Picasso and Cubists). Good translation: Bernard. Also: Le Poete A
ssassine (a novel); Calligrammes, etc

Apollinaire, Guillaume, French, 1880-1918.

Selected Writings. Rec: Bloom

Aragon, Louis, French, 1897-1982.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Arnold, Matthew Collected Poems (1869)

Arnold's poems are at once more sensuous and more intellectual than Tennyson's (qv) and a few of them (The Scholar Gipsy,
Dover Beach, Sohrab and Rustum) are unforgettable. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Arnold, Matthew, English, 1822-1888.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Essays. Rec: Bloom

Archilochus, Greek, 7th C BCE.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ariosto, Ludovico, Italian, 1474-1533.

Orlando Furioso. Rec: Bloom Ward

Ashbery, John, American, 1927- .

The Double Dream of Spring. Rec: Bloom
Houseboat Days. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Flow Chart. Rec: Bloom
Hotel Lautréamont. Rec: Bloom
And the Stars Were Shining. Rec: Bloom
The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems. Rec: LAT

Auden, W. H. Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957(1966)

Early brilliance; exaggerated coolness and cleverness; emotional doldrums and quirky middle-aged philosophy—these things
comprise but do not encompass the full attractiveness and the sheer size of Auden. A major figure. Also: Another Time; For the
Time Being. See DRAMA : LITERARY CRITICISM

Auden, W. H., English, 1907-1973.

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue. Rec: NYPL
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4
The Dyer's Hand. Rec: Bloom

Bachmann, Ingeborg, Austrian, 1926-1973.

In the Storm of Roses. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Bai Juyi (Po Chü-i), Chinese, 772-846.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Basho, Matsuo, Japanese, 1644-1694.

Poetry and Prose. Rec: MW Asian Oriental
The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Rec: App Fadiman 4 StJE Ward

Baudelaire, Charles The Flowers of Evil (1857)

Classical in form, personal in outlook, Baudelaire's poetry has a weight and dignity in keeping with his themes of human
suffering and the limits of love: and he evokes brilliantly the bustle and sleaziness of urban life. See Sartre's "psycho-
biography" of Baudelaire. See ART; BIOGRAPHY (Starkie); DIARIES

Baudelaire, Charles, French, 1821-1867.

Poems. Rec: Rex SJC
Flowers of Evil. Rec: Bloom
Paris Spleen. Rec: Bloom

Bayatli, Yahya Kemal, Turkish, 1884-1958.

Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Bécquer, Gustavo Adolpho, Spanish, 1836-1870.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, English, 1803-1849.

Death's Jest-Book. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino, Italian, 1791-1863.

Roman Sonnets. Rec: Bloom Ward (poetry)

Ben Ezra, Moses ben Jacob, Jew in Islamic Spain writing in Hebrew, ca. 1055-1138.
Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Benn, Gottfried, German, 1886-1956.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Berryman, John Selected Poems, 1938-68(1972)

Berryman is one of the giants of modern American poetry and—since his poetry is so personal—of the American soul.

Berryman, John, American, 1914-1972.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Bhartrhari, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 7th C.

Poems. Rec: MW Asian Ward

Bialik, Chaim Nachman, Ukrainian-Palestinian Jew writing in Hebrew, 1873-1934.

Shirot Bialik: The Epic Poems. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Bilhana, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 1040-1095.

Caurapañcasika (Phantasies of a Love-Thief). Rec: Ward (poetry)

Various Authors, Arab, 8th-11th C.

Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster: Three Abassid Poets. Rec: Ward
Bishop, Elizabeth, American, 1911-1979.
The Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom NYPL

Blake, William Songs of Innocence (1789)

In his lyric poems and visionary drawings, and in his epigrams, Blake is the unlikeliest of all the products of late-18th-century
London; infinitely complex, and intellectually more powerful, than at first he appears; from several points of view the greatest
English poet after Shakespeare. Also: Songs of Experience

Blake, William, English, 1757-1827.

Poetry and Prose. Rec: Bloom
Selected Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rexmo Ward
The Book of Urizen. Rec: Utne

Bobrowski, Johannes, German, 1917-1965.

Shadow Lands. Rec: Bloom
The heart of his poetry is the writer's evocation of Sarmatia, an ancient name for an area including parts of East Prussia, Latvia,
Poland and Russia. (amazon)

Bogan, Louise, American, 1887-1970.

The Blue Estuaries: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Boiardo, Matteo Maria, Italian, 1441-1494.

Orlando Innamorato. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Bonnefoy, Yves, French, 1923- .

Words in Stone. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, French, 1627-1704.

Funerary Orations. Rec: Bloom

Bowers, Edgar, American, 1924-2000.

Living Together: New and Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Breton, André, French, 1896-1966.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Manifestoes of Surrealism. Rec: Bloom Counterpunch Trans

Bridges, Robert, English, 1844-1930.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Brodsky, Joseph, Russian-American writing in English, 1940-1996. Nobel Laureate

A Part of Speech: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Browning, Robert Men and Women (1855) it A few poems (like The Grammarian 's Funeral) put Browning high among 19th-
century poets; although much of his work is mid-Victorian rubbish, startling, regular outbursts of genuine poetry make it
worthwhile. Also: Dramatic Lyrics; Dramatic Romances. See DIARIES

Browning, Robert, English, 1812-1849.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
The Ring and the Book. Rec: Bloom

Bryant, William Cullen, American, 1794-1878.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Bunting, Basil, English, 1900-1985.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Burns, Robert Poems. Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect(1786)

Those who know only Burns's often whimsical, sentimental popular poems will be surprised at the grandeur and reflectiveness
of his other work: his is an individual, grainy and neglected voice.

Burns, Robert, Scottish, 1759-1796.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Lubbock Rexmo Ward

Butler, Samuel, English, 1613-1680.

Hudibras. Rec: Bloom

Byron, Lord Don Juan (1819) it

Byron, the most brilliant figure of his age, was sometimes a very good poet too. Don Juan is his wittiest, most sustained poem,
surprisingly beautiful; Auden used to cite it as a book that most of the time one just can't read, at certain times one can read
nothing else. Also: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. See BIOGRAPHY (Marchand, Trelawny); DIARIES

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, English, 1788-1824.

Childe Harold. Rec: Lubbock
Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
Don Juan. Rec: Adler Bloom

Calimachus, Greek, ca. 310 BCE-?.

Hymns and Epigrams. Rec: Bloom

Camões, Luís Vaz de, Portuguese, 1524-1580.

Lusiads. Rec: Bloom Ward

Campana, Dino, Italian, 1885-1932.

Orphic Songs. Rec: Bloom

Campanella, Tomasso, Italian, 1568-1639.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
The City of the Sun. Rec: Bloom

Campion, Thomas Bookes of Ayres (1610 -12)

The best Elizabethan words are given a seductive, syncopated overtone by the best Elizabethan music.

Campion, Thomas, English, 1567-1620.

Songs. Rec: Bloom

Anonymous, Spanish, ca. 1140.

Cantar de Mio Cid (Poem of the Cid). Rec: Bloom Ward

Carducci, Giosué, Italian, 1835-1907. Nobel Laureate

Hymn to Satan. Rec: Bloom
Barbarian Odes. Rec: Bloom
Rhymes and Rhythms. Rec: Bloom

Carew, Thomas, English, 1594-1640.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Carmi, T., Israeli, 1925- .

At the Stone of Losses. Rec: Bloom (poem)

Catullus Poems (1st century BC) 0

Erotic, tender, witty and sentimental, Catullus is personal, intense, a poet of his own time and quintessentially for now. Good
translation: Raphael and McLeish.

Catullus, Roman, ca. 84-ca. 54 BCE.

Poems. Rec: Rexmo Ward
Attis and Other Poems. Rec: Bloom
Cavafy, Constantinos Complete Poems(1963)
Greek-born but resident in Alexandria, Cavafy was a subtle poet of luxuriant decline, of poignant moments of love, dramatic
and haunting. Good translation: Keeley and Sherrard. (Useful biography by R. Liddell.)

Cavafy, C. P., Greek, 1863-1933.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Celan, Paul, Austrian-French writing in German, 1920-1970.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Ward

Various Authors writing in Celtic languages, Celtic languages, 7th-19th C.

Celtic Miscellany. Rec: Ward

Cernuda, Luis, Spanish, 1902-1963.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Cesaire, Aimê Return to My Native Land (1947)

Revolutionary Negro poetry of marvellous fineness and precision. Good translation: Berger.

Césaire, Aimé, Martinican, 1913- .

Collected Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Chandidas, Indian writing in Bengali, 15th C.

Love Songs of Chandidas. Rec: Ward

Chapman, George, English, ca. 1559-1634.

Comedies, Tragedies, Poems. Rec: Bloom

Char, René, French, 1907-1988.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales (c. 1388)

Chaucer writes with a vigour, a vividness and a humanity which add up to a bracing reminder that the best work escapes the
sanctions of time. Avoid "translations": the original transcends them all. Also: Troilus and Criseyde, etc

Chaucer, Geoffrey, English, 1342-1400.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
The Canterbury Tales. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful Rex SJC
(Selections) Ward
Troilus and Criseyde. Rec: Bloom GBWW

Various Authors, Chinese, 10th C BCE-20th C.

Chinese Lyric Poetry. (See also Shijing, Chu Ci, Tao Qian, Tang Poetry, Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li He, Su Dongpo,
Li Yu, Yuan Mei) Rec: Oriental StJE

Chrétien de Troyes, French, fl. 1160-1190.

Yvain: The Knight of the Lion. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Chinese, 3rd C BCE-2nd C CE.

Chu Ci (Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South, by Qu Yuan [Ch'ü Yuan] and others). Rec: Ward

Clampitt, Amy, American, 1920-1994.

Westward. Rec: Bloom

Clare, John The Shepherd's Calendar (1827)

Best "peasant" poet in English, the last to remember the English countryside unenclosed, Clare lived, mostly in madhouses, in
the 19th century; his formal strength and his "eye- are outstanding; the life he speaks of makes him unique. Also: Poems of
Rural Life; The Village Minstrel
Clare, John, English, 1793-1864.
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Clark (-Bekederemo), John Pepper, Nigerian writing in English, 1935- .

Casualties: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Japanese, 8th-17th C. .

Classic Japanese Poetry. Rec: Rex

Clough, Arthur Hugh, English, 1819-1861.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor The Ancient Mariner (1797)

Coleridge made a permanent contribution in a very few sharply moving, resonant poems, notably Kubla Khan and The Ancient
Mariner. He has a quality of mystery attained by no other of his romantic contemporaries. (See John Livingston Lowes' The
Road to Xanadu for brilliant exegesis.) See BIOGRAPHY (Lefebure, Coleridge)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, English, 1772-1834.

Selected Works. Rec: Bloom Ward
Poems. Rec: Adler (Selections)
The Ancient Mariner. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Christabel. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Kubla Khan. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Biographia Literaria. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Writings on Shakespeare. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Collins, William, English, 1721-1759.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Indonesian, 20th C.

Contemporary Indonesian Poetry. Rec: Ward

Corbière, Tristan, French, 1845-1875.

Les Amours Jaunes. Rec: Bloom

Corn, Alfred, American, 1943- .

A Call in the Midst of the Crowd. Rec: Bloom

Cowper, William, English, 1731-1800.

Poetical Works. Rec: Bloom

Crabbe, George, English, 1754-1832.

Poetical Works. Rec: Bloom

Crane, Hart, American, 1899-1932.

Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose. Rec: Bloom

Crashaw, Richard, English, 1612-1649.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

cummings, e. e., American, 1894-1962.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Daniel, Samuel, English, 1563-1619.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
A Defence of Ryme. Rec: Bloom

Dante The Divine Comedy (c. 1300)

Dante was one of the greatest medieval poets: worth learning Italian for. Best translation (alas): Sayers. See POLITICS

Dante Alighieri, Italian, 1265-1321.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Divine Comedy. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful Seymour-Smith SJC
Ward
Inferno. Rec: Col37 Col61 Collh91
The New Life. Rec: Bloom Ward

Dário, Rubén, Nicaraguan, 1867-1916.

Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Darley, George, Irish, 1795-1846.

Nepenthe. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Davidson, John, Scottish, 1857-1909.

Ballads and Songs. Rec: Bloom

Davie, Donald, English, 1922- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

De la Mare, Walter, English, 1873-1956.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Memoirs of a Midget. Rec: Bloom

Dickinson, Emily Poems (1890)

The poems of this reclusive New England lady have the same kind of purity as those of Hopkins (qv); she is one of the most
elegant, most honest American poets of the last century. Also: The Single Hound; Further Poems; Bolts of Melody

Dickinson, Emily, American, 1830-1886.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Good Reading Ward

Disch, Thomas M., American, 1940- .

On Wings of Song. Rec: Bloom

Donne, John Collected Poems (1633) 0

Pure distillation of early-17th-century intelligence—troubled, multiple, leaping and swooping, raising self-love to the height of
compassion.

Donne, John, English, 1573-1631.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
Sermons. Rec: Bloom
Selected Works. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 SJC

Douglas, Keith, English, 1920-1944.

The Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Dove, Rita, American, 1952- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Dowson, Ernest, English, 1867-1900.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Drayton, Michael, English, 1563-1631.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Drummond de Andrade, Carlos, Brazilian, 1902-1987.

Travelling in the Family. Rec: Bloom
Dryden, John Miscellany Poems (1684)
Between the organ-roar of Milton and the Mozartian subtlety of Pope, Dryden's verse at its best can hardly be bettered in
English: it has the qualities of perfect prose, and so does his prose. Some of his translations, particularly of Virgil's Eclogues
and Georgics and of Lucretius, are almost finer than his own work, but his serious public poems are passionate and
magnificently dramatic. Also: MacFlecknoe. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Dryden, John, English, 1631-1700.

Poetry and Plays. Rec: Bloom Lubbock
Critical Essays. Rec: Bloom

Du Bellay, Joachim, French, 1522-1560.

The Regrets. Rec: Bloom

Du Fu (Tu Fu), Chinese, 712-770.

Poems. Rec: Rex Utne Ward

Dunbar, William, Scottish, ca. 1456-ca. 1513 .

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Duncan, Robert, American, 1919-1988.

Bending the Bow. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Durrell, Lawrence Private Country (1943)

Dazzling and delightful. Durrell's poetry is among his best work, with a freshness, seriousness and discipline his longer
writings sometimes lack. Also: Cities, Plains and People; On Seeming to Presume. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Durrell, G.);
DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; TRAVEL

Various Authors, Irish (Celtic), 8th C.

Early Irish Epic (including the Ulster Cycle). Rec: Rexmo

Various Authors, German, 20th C.

East German Poetry: An Anthology. Rec: Ward

Eberhart, Richard, American, 1904- .

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Eich, Günter, Austrian, 1907-1972.

Moles. Rec: Bloom

Ekelöf, Gunnar, Swedish, 1907-1968.

Guide to the Underworld. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Ward

Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems and Plays (1969)

Eliot is one of the greatest English-speaking poets of the modern age, a formidable intellect chastely exploring the sensuous
dark. See DRAMA; LITERARY CRITICISM (Eliot, Gardner)

Eliot, T. S., English, 1888-1965. Nobel Laureate

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: SJC
The Waste Land. Rec: Aquinas GBWW NYPL
Collected Plays. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading
Selected Essays. Rec: Bloom ML Nonfiction National Review
"Ash Wednesday". Rec: Aquinas
"Journey of the Magi". Rec: Aquinas
Prufrock and Other Observations. Rec: Boston PL

Elytis, Odysseas, Greek, 1911-1996. Nobel Laureate

What I Love: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Empson, William Poems (1935) P Witty, difficult poems, full of dead-pan jokes and intellectual fireworks. See
LITERARY CRITICISM

Empson, William, English, 1906-1984.

Seven Types of Ambiguity. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Milton's God. Rec: Bloom
Some Versions of Pastoral. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, English and Scottish, 15th-16th C.

English and Scottish Popular Ballad. Rec: Rexmo

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, German, 1929- .

Poems for People Who Don't Read Poems. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Ward

Espríu, Salvador, Catalan, 1913-1985.

La Pell de Brau: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ewart, Gavin, English, 1916- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Faiz, Faiz Ahmad, Pakistani writing in Urdu, 1911-1984.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Feinman, Alvin, American, 1929- .

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Fisher, M. F. K., American, 1908-1992.

How to Cook a Wolf. Rec: Counterpunch NF
The Art of Eating. Rec: Hungry Mind

Feldman, Irving, American, 1928- .

New and Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ferreira, Antònio, Portuguese, 1528-1569.

Poetry. Rec: Bloom

FitzGerald, Edward, English, 1809-1883.

Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyam. (See also Khayyam, Omar) Rec: Bloom
Omar Khayyam, Persian, 1048-1123?.
The Rubaiyat. (See also FitzGerald, Edward) Rec: Fadiman 4 Good Reading

Fitzgerald, Robert, American, 1910-1985.

Spring Shade: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Foix, J. V., Catalan, 1894-1987.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Follain, Jean, French, 1903-1971.

Transparence of the World: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Foscolo, Ugo, Italian, 1778-1827.

On Sepulchres. Rec: Bloom
Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. Rec: Bloom
Odes and The Graces. Rec: Bloom (poetry)
The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the masterpieces of Greek oratory, to fight
again the battles of their country.

Frost, Robert The Poetry (1969)

Frost's work has the sweetness, sharpness and freshness of an apple; he is the most accessible and readable great poet of this
century. (See Alfred Kazin's New York Jew for testy portrait.)

Frost, Robert, American, 1874-1963.

The Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Collected Poems. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading

Fuller, Roy, English, 1912-1991.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Fuzuli, Mehmet bin Süleyman, Turkish, ca. 1490-ca. 1556.

Leyla and Mejnun. Rec: Ward (poetry)

García Lorca, Federico, Spanish, 1898-1936.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward

Gardner, Helen (ed) Book of Religious Verse (1972)

Much of the best poetry in English is religious poetry by obscure poets; this is a perfect collection of a vital tradition. Also:
New Oxford Book of English Verse,1250-1950. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Garrigue, Jean, American, 1914-1972.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Gascoyne, David Collected Poems (1965)

Gascoyne's is a lonely voice, grave and with long-drawn-out harmonies. He is a sound, admirable poet, whose effect comes
more from his work as a whole than from a few show-pieces.

Gautier, Théophile, French, 1811-1872.

Enamels and Cameos. Rec: Bloom

George, Stefan, German, 1868-1933.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ghalib, Indian writing in Urdu, 1797-1869.

Ghazals. (See also The Ghazal) Rec: Ward (poetry)

Various Authors, Indians and Pakistanis writing in Urdu, 16th C-present.

The Ghazal. (See also Ghalib) Rec: MW Asian

Gibran, Khalil, Lebanese, 1883-1931.

The Prophet. Rec: NYPL

Anonymous, Mesopotamian, ca. 2000 BCE.

Gilgamesh. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Meaningful Rex Ward

Gimferrer, Pere, Catalan, 1945- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ginsberg, Allen, American, 1926-1997.

Howl and Other Poems. Rec: Boston PL LAT
Illuminated Poems (With Eric Drooker). Rec: Utne

Gjellerup, Karl, Danish, 1857-1919. Nobel Laureate

Works.
Glatstein, Jacob, Polish-American writing in Yiddish, 1896-1971.
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Poems (1812)

One of Goethe's major achievements, sometimes taken for granted because he was such a polymath, is his love and nature
poetry of the Strasburg and Sesenheim periods. His intensity and his limpid use of a language sometimes thought by foreigners
to be too harsh for lyricism represent a still prominent landmark. Resists translation, even so; best read in the original. See
DRAMA

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German, 1749-1832.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward
Roman Elegies. Rec: Bloom
Venetian Epigrams. Rec: Bloom
West-Eastern Divan. Rec: Bloom
Hermann and Dorothea. Rec: Bloom

Góngora, Luis de, Spanish, 1561-1627.

Sonnet. Rec: Bloom
Soledades. Rec: Bloom

Graves, Robert Collected Poems (1975)

Graves is a strong, spare, almost classical poet; sometimes over-brisk, always invigorating. His epigrams about love are
marvellous. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY;
FICTION/NOVELS; MYTHOLOGY

Graves, Robert, English, 1895-1985.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward

Gray, Thomas Poems (1747)

Gray's lyric gift makes him seem always fresh and crisp (though his Elegy has been compared to a Victorian glass dome).
Early-18th-century urbanity at its most characteristic—and unhappiest?

Gray, Thomas, English, 1716-1771.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Lubbock

Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, English, 1554-1628.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Grossman, Allen, American, 1932- .

The Ether Dome and Other Poems: New and Selected. Rec: Bloom

Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, French, ca. 1212-ca. 1237 and ca. 1237-ca. 1305.
Le Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose). Rec: Ward
The Roman de la Rose is a late medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision. (wiki)

Guillén, Nicolás, Cuban, 1902-1989.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Gunn, Thom Fighting Terms (1953)

Intelligent, striking poetry: smooth and readable, intellectually elegant, morally sophisticated. 1962 revision spoils the line.
Also: The Sense of Movement; Moly

Gustafsson, Lars, Swedish, 1936- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hafiz, Mohammed Shamsuddin, Persian, 1327-1390.

Divan. Rec: Ward

Ha-Levi, Judah, Jew in Islamic Spain writing in Hebrew, ca. 1075-after 1140.
Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Hall, Donald, American, 1928- .

The One Day. Rec: Bloom
Old and New Poems. Rec: Bloom

Halpern, Moshe-Leib, Polish-American writing in Yiddish, 1886-1932.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hamburger, Michael (ed) German Poetry. 1910– 1975 (1977) Bilingual anthology, with good introduction and notes, gives a
first-class impression of the period it covers, fairly reflects the diversity of 20th-century German writing.

Hardy, Thomas Complete Poems (1976)

In his rhythms, his truthfulness and honesty, his subtlety of tone and experience of life, Hardy is one of the most rewarding of
English poets. See FICTION/NOVELS

Hart, Kevin, Australian, 1954- .

Peniel and Other Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hayden, Robert, American, 1913-1980.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), American, 1886-1961.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Heaney, Seamus North (1975)

Fine poet from Northern Ireland talks about realities in a serious tone: his talent has strong roots; his poems will outlast their
grim inspiration.

Heaney, Seamus, Irish, 1939- . Nobel Laureate

Selected Poems: 1969-1987. Rec: Bloom
Field Work. Rec: Bloom
Station Island. Rec: Bloom

Hébert, Anne, Canadian writing in French, 1916- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hecht, Anthony Millions of Strange Shadows (1977)

Urbane, discursive, elegant, Hecht's poems show a sense of ease and security rare in contemporary literature. He brings to
American writing an essentially European temperament; his fluent celebration of life is a source of real pleasure.

Hecht, Anthony, American, 1923- .

Collected Earlier Poems. Rec: Bloom

Heine, Heinrich Book of Song(1827)

A Jew among Germans, a seeker after a God his reason told him to dismiss, Heine is a poet of contradictions with an
outstanding lyrical gift. Particularly good are his nature poems, the marvellous North Sea cycles (translated by Watkins, 1955)
and the later Lazarus poems (translated by Elliot, 1979). Also: New Poems, etc

Heine, Heinrich, German, 1797-1856.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Herbert, George The Temple (1633) * Whatever was best in the English temperament and in the Church of England
between the times of Elizabeth I and Cromwell is present in these strong and lovable poems.

Herbert, Zbigniew, Polish, 1924- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hernández, Miguel, Spanish, 1910-1942.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Herrick, Robert Hesperides (1648) et Herrick celebrates the fragility of life and love, and with the lightest of touches.
His poems are notable for their rhythmic beauty and for their skilfully-worked grace. Also: Noble Numbers or Pious Pieces

Herrick, Robert, English, 1591-1674.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hikmet, Nazim, Turkish, 1902-1963.

Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Hill, Geoffrey, English, 1932- .

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hine, Daryl, Canadian, 1936- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, Austrian, 1874-1929.

Selected Works. Rec: Ward
Poems and Verse Plays. Rec: Bloom
Selected Prose. Rec: Bloom

Hölderlin, Friedrich, German, 1770-1843.

Poems and Fragments. Rec: Bloom Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hollander, John, American, 1929- .

Reflections on Espionage. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Tesserae. Rec: Bloom

Holub, Miroslav, Czech, 1923- .

The Fly. Rec: Bloom

Homer Iliad; Odyssey (12th- 9th century BC)

Homer is easy and enthralling for readers, but a towering Everest for translators. Rieu's graceful prose Odyssey is readable, but
misses the vigour and pounce of the verse; Graves' Iliad (The Angerof Achilles—see also his novel Homer's Daughter, about
the writing of the Odyssey) is tight and sharp; Fitzgerald and Lattimore offer modern sprung verse, alternately excellent and
dreadful. Perhaps Chapman and Pope are still the best; though Logue's Patrocleia gives a tantalizing glimpse of how it might be
done, if he could sustain it over the remaining books. For a fascinating modern "sequel" to the Odyssey (by no means dwarfed
by it) see Kazantzakis' The Odyssey (1938). See LITERARY CRITICISM (Arnold)

Homer, Greek, ca. 800 BCE.

The Iliad. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard Lubbock
Meaningful Rex Seymour-Smith SJC Ward
The Odyssey. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Lubbock Meaningful Rex
Seymour-Smith SJC Ward

Anonymous, Greek, ca. 700 BCE.

Homeric Hymns. Rec: Collh91 (poetry)

Hood, Thomas, English, 1799-1845.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Hope, A. D., Australian, 1907-2000.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Hopkins, Gerard Manley Poems (1918) * Hopkins was a Jesuit with a mind as intricate as unfolding leaves, a mystic in love
with Christ in nature and in mankind. His poetry gives a marvellous sense of the world we hunger for but can never have again.
This collection (edited by Robert Bridges) first published 30 years after Hopkins' death.

Hopkins, Gerald Manley, English, 1844-1889.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward
Prose. Rec: Bloom

Horace Odes (1st century Bc)

A poet's poet, Horace has been endlessly translated. To follow through the translations of a single ode in English is to learn
much not only about the original but also about the history of our own verse. For the full flavour of Horace himself (elusive of
translation, as it happens) the best translation is that of Michie. Also: Satires; Epistles. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Horace, Roman, 65-8 BCE.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections) Lubbock
Odes. Rec: Bloom Ward
Epistles. Rec: Bloom
Satires. Rec: Bloom
Selected Works. Rec: Aquinas

Housman, A. E., English, 1859-1936.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Howard, Richard, American, 1929- .

Untitled Subjects. Rec: Bloom
Findings. Rec: Bloom

Hughes, Ted Selected Poems. 1957- 67 (1972)

A confident, craggy voice. It may be morally and philosophically depressing and it misses genuine rusticity; but the dark,
Jacobean imagination of these poems does reflect our sombre age. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Hughes, Langston, American, 1902-1967.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Big Sea. Rec: Bloom
I Wonder as I Wander. Rec: Bloom
The Best of Simple. Rec: NYPL

Ilango Adigal, Indian writing in Tamil, 2nd C CE.

Shilappadikaram (The Ankle Bracelet). Rec: Ward
Silappatikaram is one of the five great epics of ancient Tamil Literature. The poet prince Ilango Adigal, a Jain monk, is credited
with this work, although no direct evidence to the identity of its author has been found so far.[2] As a literary work, it is held in
high regard by the Tamils.

Ines de la Cruz, Sister Juana, Mexican, ca. 1651-1695.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jabès, Edmond, French, 1912-1991.

The Book of Questions. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jacob, Max, French, 1876-1944.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jacottet, Philippe, French, 1925- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jami, Nur ad-Din 'Abd Ar-Rahman, Afghan writing in Persian, 1414-1492.

Baharistan. Rec: Ward (poetry)
Various Authors, Japanese, 12th-13th C.
[Japanese] Literature. Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Japanese, 9th-11th C.

[Japanese] Poetry, Fiction, and Diaries. Rec: Oriental
Jarrell, Randall The Complete Poems (1969) * Jarrell was an exceptionally warm-hearted poet, who occupies by temperament
the ground between Whitman (qv) and Dickinson (qv)—more like Whitman in form, but with Dickinson's sure touch in writing
the perfectly natural line. See FICTION/NOVELS : LITERARY CRITICISM

Jarrell, Randall, American, 1914-1965.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom
Poetry and the Age. Rec: National Review

Jay, Peter (ed) The Greek Anthology (1973)* Translations by divers excellent hands of the great age—between the 7th century
BC and the 6th century AD—of Greek Mediterranean culture; short, witty, touching and erotic; a scintillating world.

Jeffers, Robinson, American, 1887-1962.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jennings, Elizabeth (ed) Anthology of Modern Verse, 1940-60(1961) Jennings is herself a good though uneven poet. Her
anthology is marvellous; her taste sharp but generous.

Jennings, Elizabeth, English, 1926- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jiménez, Juan Ramón, Spanish, 1881-1958. Nobel Laureate

Platero and I. Rec: NYPL
Invisible Reality: Poems. Rec: Bloom

John of the Cross Poems (16th century)

Spanish poet of the soul's dark adventures into God, John of the Cross carries the reader high on unexpected wings. Good
translation: Campbell.

Johnson, Lionel, English, 1867-1902.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Jones, David The Anathemata (1952) P*

Jones is difficult, but immensely rewarding and moving; his gravity and beauty impressed Auden and Eliot, and will haunt the
mind.

Jones, David, Welsh, 1895-1974.

In Parenthesis. Rec: Bloom Ward
Anathemata. Rec: Bloom Ward

Jouve, Pierre-Jean, French, 1887-1976.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

József, Attila, Hungarian, 1905-1937.

Perched on Nothing's Branch. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Juhasz, Ferenc, Hungarian, 1928- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Justice, Donald, American, 1925- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Juvenal Satires (1st century AD)

These powerful poems are filled with the anger and bitterness of their author, who saw through everything and liked not what
he saw. Like Horace, Juvenal has been translated by many noted English poets; dip here and dip there to feel the savage
intensity of the man. Good translations: Johnson (Satires, 3 and 10); Peter Green (complete work).

Keats, John Poems (1817)

Uneven and at times too obvious in his appeal to adolescence, Keats is one of the stereotypes, almost, of a Romantic poet. But
the best of his poems, as well as many individual lines, are marvellous and memorable. See BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Gittings);
LITERARY CRITICISM

Keats, John, English, 1795-1821.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Ward
Letters. Rec: Bloom

Kees, Weldon, American, 1914-1955?.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Khlebnikov, Velimir, Russian, 1885-1922.

The King of Time. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Khushhal, Khan Khatak, Afghan writing in Pashto, 1613-1689.

Divan. Rec: Ward

Kinnell, Galway, American, 1927- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Kinsella, Thomas, Irish, 1928- .

Peppercanister Poems. Rec: Bloom

Kipling, Rudyard Collected Poems (1886)

Product, bard and victim of the British Empire, Kipling has a robustness that outweighs his occasional vulgarity or silliness.
See CHILDREN'S BOOKS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES

Kipling, Rudyard, Anglo-Indian, 1865-1936. Nobel Laureate

Kim. Rec: Bloom ML Novels NYPL Radcliffe
Collected Stories. Rec: Bloom
Puck of Pook's Hill. Rec: Bloom
Complete Verse. Rec: Bloom

Koch, Kenneth, American, 1925- .

Seasons on Earth. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Japanese, 8th-10th C.

Kokinshu. Rec: MW Asian (poetry)

Kunze, Reiner, East German, 1933- .

Poems. Rec: Ward
Stories. Rec: Ward
The Lovely Years. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indians writing in Tamil, 1st-3rd C CE.

Kuruntokai (Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology). (See also Eight Anthologies and Ten Long
Poems) Rec: Ward

Kuzmin, Mikhail, Russian, 1872-1936.

Alexandrian Songs. Rec: Bloom

La Fontaine, Jean de, French, 1621-1695.

Selected Fables Set in Verse. Rec: Bloom SJC (Selections) Ward
Laforgue, Jules, French, 1860-1887.
Selected Writings. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Landor, Walter Savage, English, 1775-1864.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Imaginary Conversations. Rec: Bloom

Lanier, Sidney, American, 1842-1881.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Larkin, Philip Poems (1945)

Larkin's poetry is alive with convincing rhythms that take hold of you at once and never let go. He is the voice of the post-
Auden generation, in the provincial register.

Larkin, Philip, English, 1922-1985.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Lawrence, D. H. Collected Poems (1922)

His animal poems are wonderful and liberating, and many others are convincing in their rhythms. To be read for his sense of
beauty and his delight in creation. See DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES;
HISTORY/EUROPEAN; LITERARY CRITICISM; TRAVEL

Leib, Mani, Ukrainian-American writing in Yiddish, 1883-1953.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Leino, Eino, Finnish, German, 1878-1926.

Helkavirsiä (Whitsongs). Rec: Ward

Leivick, H. (Leivick Halpern), Russian-American writing in Yiddish, 1888-1962.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Leon, Fray Luis de, Spanish, ca. 1528-1591 .

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Leopardi, Giacomo Selected Prose and Poetry (1966)

Leopardi is the poet of despair—his own and that (by assumption) of the human race, which he considered to have no reason
for hope in this world or the next. All of his poems are imbued with these feelings, but their grace and line make them
irresistible. Worth struggling with the Italian; translations hardly capture him.

Leopardi, Giacomo, Italian, 1798-1837.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Meaningful Ward
Essays and Dialogues. Rec: Bloom
Moral Essays . Rec: Bloom

Lermontov, Mikhail, Russian, 1814-1841.

Narrative Poems. Rec: Bloom
A Hero of Our Time. Rec: Bloom Smiley

Levine, Philip Ashes (1979)

Levine is one of the best of the younger American poets. His short line and lapidary descriptions mask verse of deep
seriousness and power.

Levine, Philip, American, 1928- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Li Bai (Li Po), Chinese, 701-762.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Li He (Li Ho), Chinese, 791-817.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Byelorussian, 19th-20th C.

Like Water, Like Fire: An Anthology of Byelorussian Poetry from 1828 to the Present. Rec: Ward

Lindsay, Vachel, American, 1879-1931.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Li Yu, Chinese, 1125-1210.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, American, 1807-1882.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Lönnrot, Elias, Finnish, 1802-1884.

Kalevala: the National Epic of Finland. Rec: Rex Ward

Lovelace, Richard, English, 1618-1657.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Lowell, Robert Poems. 1938-1949 (1950)

Finely-wrought, haunting and graceful poems of love and loss. His translations are important, variable: Imitations is
magnificent, Prometheus Bound and The Oresteia dreadful. Also : Life Studies; Notebook

Lowell, Robert, American, 1917-1977.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward
Life Studies. Rec: LAT

Lucan, Roman, 39-65 CE.

Pharsalia. Rec: Bloom Ward
Pharsalia (also known as the Bellum civile or Civil War) is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, telling of the civil war
between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great.

Lucian, Syrian Greek, ca. 115-ca. 180 .

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections) Ward
Satires. Rec: Bloom

Lucretius, Roman, ca. 100-ca. 50 BCE.

Of the Nature of Things. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Rex Seymour-
Smith SJC Ward

Luis de León, Fray, Spanish, ca. 1528-1591.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Lysohorsky, Ondra, Czech writing in Lachian, 1905-1989.

Selected Poems. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Welsh (Celtic), 14th C.

Mabinogion. Rec: Ward

MacDiarmid, Hugh, Scottish, 1892-1978.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Machado, Antonio, Spanish, 1875-1939.

Juan de Mairena. Rec: Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

MacLeish, Archibald Collected Poems (1952) *

One of America's most eminent 20th-century men of letters, MacLeish was first and foremost a poet, and a fine one. Much
influenced in the 20s by his life in Paris among the famous emigres, he later became an eloquent patriot and served in
important governmental posts. Also a playwright—J.B. is his best known play—he wrote one of the finest lyrics in the
language, "You Andrew Marvell."

MacNeice, Louis Collected Poems(1966)

His finest poems were early and late; his work had honesty and sober intelligence; his reputation goes on increasing, and
rightly. Fine translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

MacNeice, Louis, English, 1907-1963.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Macpherson, Jay, Canadian, 1931- .

Poems Twice Told. Rec: Bloom

Mallarmé, Stéphane, French, 1842-1898.

Selected Poems and Prose. Rec: Bloom

Mandelshtam, Osip Emilievich, Russian, 1891-1938.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Ward

Manrique, Jorge, Spanish, ca. 1440-ca. 1479.

Coplas. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Various Authors, Japanese, 7th-8th C.

Manyoshu. Rec: MW Asian Oriental Ward
the oldest existing, and most highly revered, collection of Japanese poetry

Marlowe, Christopher Poems (c. 1590) *

His Ovid, sometimes better than Ovid, had to circulate in private manuscript copies, since it gleefully and effectively
introduced to the English a pagan view of sex. With him the technique of English verse begins to have a continuous history; his
influence is immense, even on Shakespeare. See DRAMA

Marlowe, Christopher, English, 1564-1593.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Martial, Roman, ca. 42-ca. 102 CE.

Epigrams. Rec: Bloom

Marvell, Andrew Poems (1681)

The Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland is a thrilling, serious attempt at political poetry. Otherwise his poetry
resembles a 17th-century formal garden, and is often about one. Marvell's verbal fireworks have perfect phrasing, intense
visual resonance; he freshens and sharpens the senses.

Marvell, Andrew, English, 1621-1678.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom SJC

Masters. E. L. Spoon River Anthology (1915)

Short, beautifully right inscriptions, modelled on the Greek Anthology—how did these exquisite little poems come out of the
Illinois prairie where Masters was born and brought up? This book is one of the high points in the history of American verse,
and not to be missed.

Masters, Edgar Lee, American, 1868-1950.

Spoon River Anthology. Rec: Bloom

Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich, Russian, 1893-1930.

The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Ward
McClatchy, J. D., American, 1945- .
The Rest of the Way. Rec: Bloom (poetry)
McClatchy is a deft practitioner of a highly literate formal verse, a master of the resonant detail: "three lines erased in the
address book." A daring and unsettling collection, this book contains both "Fog Tropes," a subtle, moving poem about a dying
friend, and "Kilim," an improbably successful crown of sonnets about a Middle Eastern terrorist.

Various Authors writing in Latin, Latin, 6th-13th C.

Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (Ed. by Helen Waddell). Rec: Rex Ward

Various Authors, Various Nations, Various, 3rd-15th C.

Medieval Literature in Translation. Rec: Ward

Mello Breyner, Sophia de, Portuguese, 1919- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Meredith, George, English, 1828-1909.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Egoist. Rec: Bloom

Merrill, James, American, 1926-1995.

From the First Nine. Rec: Bloom
The Changing Light at Sandover. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Merwin, W. S., American, 1927- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Lice: Poems. Rec: LAT

Michitsuna no Haha, Japanese, ca. 935-995.

The Gossamer Years. Rec: MW Asian

Mickiewicz, Adam Bernard, Polish, 1798-1855.

Pan Tadeusz. Rec: Ward

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, American, 1892-1950.

Renascence and Other Poems. Rec: NYPL

Milton, John Paradise Lost (1667) P

Early, shorter poems are enough to put him among the greatest English poets; long epics have many passages of penetrating
harmony and beauty. Also: Paradise Regained; Comas; Samson Agonistes, etc

Milosz, Czeslaw, Polish, 1911-2004. Nobel Laureate

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Captive Mind. Rec: TLS

Milton, John, English, 1608-1674.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Poetical Works. Rec: Ward
Paradise Lost. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard Lubbock SJC
(Selections)
Paradise Regained. Rec: Bloom
Samson Agonistes. Rec: Bloom GBWW
English minor Poems. Rec: Bloom GBWW Lubbock
Lycidas. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Lubbock
Comus. Rec: Bloom Lubbock
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Sonnets. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Areopagitica. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Ward
Various Authors writing in Arabic, Arab, 20th C.
Modern Arab Poets, 1950-1975. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Czech, 20th C.

Modern Czech Poetry. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Hungarian, 20th C.

Modern Hungarian Poetry. Rec: Ward

Montague, John, Irish, 1929- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Montale, Eugenio, Italian, 1896-1971. Nobel Laureate

The Storm and Other Things: Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Occasions: Poems. Rec: Bloom
Cuttlefish Bones: Poems. Rec: Bloom
Otherwise: Last and First Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays. Rec: Bloom

Moore, G. and Beier, U. (eds) Modern Poetry from Africa (1970) Fascinating guide to one of the growth areas of literature in
European languages.

Moore, Marianne, American, 1887-1972.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Mörike, Eduard, German, 1804-1875.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Mozart on His Way to Prague. Rec: Bloom

Morris, William, English, 1834-1896.

Early Romances. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Earthly Paradise. Rec: Bloom
The Well at the World's End. Rec: Bloom
News from Nowhere. Rec: Bloom

Moss, Howard, American, 1922- .

New Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Moss, Thylias, American, 1954- .

Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Muir, Edwin, Scottish, 1887-1959.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Muldoon, Paul, Irish, 1951- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Murray, Les A., Australian, 1938- .

The Rabbiter's Bounty: Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Musset, Alfred de, French, 1810-1857.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Lorenzaccio. Rec: Bloom

Mutanabbi, al-, Arab, 915-965.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Neruda, Pablo Selected Poems (1975)

Neruda, the foremost modern poet of Latin America, acknowledged the influence of Whitman—like him, he combines
enormous range with a wonderful eye for the particular. This selection by Tarn recommended.

Neruda, Pablo, Chilean, 1904-1973. Nobel Laureate

Canto General. Rec: Bloom Utne Ward
Residence on Earth. Rec: Bloom
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Rec: Bloom
Fully Empowered. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Nerval, Gérard de, French, 1808-1855.

The Chimeras. Rec: Bloom
Sylvie. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Various Authors, American, 17th-20th C.

New Oxford Book of American Verse. Rec: Ward

Anonymous, German, ca. 12th C.

Nibelungenlied. Rec: Adler Bloom Lubbock

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg), German, 1772-1801.

Hymns to the Night. Rec: Bloom
Aphorisms. Rec: Bloom

Anonymous, Icelandic, ca. 1280.

Njal's Saga (also known as Saga of Burnt Njal). Rec: Adler Meaningful Rex Ward

Various Authors, British and American, 20th C.

Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (Ed. by Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair). Rec: Fadiman 3 Good Reading

O'Hara, Frank, American, 1926-1966.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Okigbo, Christopher, Nigerian writing in English, 1932- .

Labyrinths, with Path of Thunder. Rec: Bloom

Olds, Sharon, American, 1942- .

The Dead and the Living. Rec: Utne

Oliver, Mary, American, 1935- .

New and Selected Poems. Rec: Utne

Olson, Charles, American, 1910-1970.

The Maximus Poems. Rec: Bloom LAT
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Call Me Ishmael. Rec: Hungry Mind

Otero, Blas de, Spanish, 1916-1979.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Owen, Wilfred Poems (1920) iti

Stupendous sadness and despair, lightened by compassion. (See John Stalworthy's biography.)

Owen, Wilfred, English, 1893-1918.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom Rec: Counterpunch NF

Pagis, Dan, Israeli, 1930- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Palgrave, F. T. (ed) The Golden Treasury (1861) * Anthology chosen with the help of Tennyson; the best Victorian taste.
Well worth considering: still marvellous. (Latest edition, 1973.)

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Italian, 1922-1975.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Utne

Pasternak, Boris, Russian, 1890-1960. Nobel Laureate

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Patmore, Coventry, English, 1823-1896.

Odes. Rec: Bloom

Pavese, Cesare, Italian, 1908-1950.

Hard Labor: Poems. Rec: Bloom
Dialogues with Leucò. Rec: Bloom

Paz, Octavio, Mexican, 1914-1998. Nobel Laureate

Labyrinth of Solitude. Rec: Bloom Ward
Configurations. Rec: Ward
The Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Péguy, Charles, French, 1873-1914.

The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, French, 11th to 20th C.

Penguin Book of French Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, German, 9th to 20th C.

Penguin Book of German Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Greek, 8th C BCEto 20th C.

Penguin Book of Greek Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Japanese, 3rd to 20th C.

Penguin Book of Japanese Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors writing in Latin, Latin, 3rd C BCE-20th C.

Penguin Book of Latin Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors writing in Spanish and Portuguese, Spanish and Portuguese, 19th-20th C.
Penguin Book of Latin American Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Russian, 12th-20th C.

Penguin Book of Russian Verse. Rec: Ward

Various Authors writing in Spanish, Spanish, 12th-20th C.

Penguin Book of Spanish Verse. Rec: Ward

Péret, Benjamin, French, 1899-1959.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Perse, St.-John, French, 1887-1975. Nobel Laureate

Poems. Rec: Ward
Anabasis. Rec: Bloom
Birds. Rec: Bloom
Exile and Other Poems. Rec: Bloom

Pessoa, Fernando, Portuguese, 1888-1935.

The Keeper of Sheep. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward
Always Astonished: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Book of Disquiet. Rec: Bloom Meaningful

Petöfi, Sandor, Hungarian, 1823-1849.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Petrarch, Italian writing in Italian and Latin, 1304-1374.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward
Triumphs. Rec: Ward
Latin Poetry. Rec: Ward
Prose. Rec: Ward
Letters from Petrarch. Rec: Ward

Pindar, Greek, ca. 518-ca. 438 BCE.

Odes. Rec: Bloom Ward

Plath, Sylvia, American, 1932-1963.

Ariel. Rec: Harvard LAT
Poems. Rec: Ward
The Bell Jar. Rec: BOMC Harvard Ward

Various Authors, Various Nations, Various.

Poem Into Poem: World Poetry in Modern Verse Translation. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, 19th-20th C.

The Poem Itself. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 4th-10th C.

Poems from the Sanskrit. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Africans writing in various languages, Africans (various languages), 20th C.
Poems of Black Africa. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Icelandic, 9th-12th C.

Poetic Edda (also known as the Elder Edda). Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, British and American, 8th-20th C.

Poetry in English: An Anthology (Ed. By M. L. Rosenthal, et al.). Rec: Good Reading

Various Authors, Dutch, 12th-20th C.

Poetry of the Netherlands in its European Context, 1170-1930. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, British and American, Medieval to 20th C.

Poets of the English Language (Ed. by W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson). Rec: Fadiman 3

Various Authors, Polish, 20th C.

Polish Post-War Poetry. Rec: Ward

Ponge, Francis, French, 1899-1988.

Things: Selected Writings. Rec: Bloom
In his most famous work, Le parti pris des choses (Often translated The Voice of Things), he meticulously described common
things such as oranges, potatoes and cigarettes in a poetic voice, but with a personal style and paragraph form (prose poem)
much like an essay.

Popa, Vasko, Serbian, 1922-1991.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Pope, Alexander Eloise to Abelard and Other Poems (1717) 0
Balanced on a razor's edge between sunlit rationalism and the emerging modern world, Pope is at once light and grave, supple
and stinging. Also: The Rape of the Lock; The Dunciad, etc. See LITERARY CRITICISM

Pope, Alexander, English, 1688-1744.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Essay on Criticism. Rec: Adler Lubbock
Rape of the Lock. Rec: Adler Lubbock
Essay on Man. Rec: Adler Lubbock

Porta, Antonio, Italian, 1935- .

Kisses from Another Dream: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Russian, 20th C.

Post-War Russian Poetry. Rec: Ward

Pound, Ezra The Cantos, I –84(1948)

He requires patience; start with his translations and the earliest Cantos, then move to the Pisan Cantos. Pound was a tragic
(rather vile) figure and his best poetry is tragic. See DRAMA (Sophocles); Lit ERARY CRITICISM

Pound, Ezra, American, 1885-1972.

ABC of Reading. Rec: Counterpunch NF National Review
Cantos. Rec: Bloom Ward
Personae: Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Prévert, Jacques, French, 1900-1977.

Paroles. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Prévost, Antoine-Francois, l'Abbé, French, 1697-1763.

Manon Lescaut. Rec: Bloom Ward

Prince, F. T., English, 1912- .

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Propertius, Roman, ca. 50-ca. 16 BCE.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Pushkin, Alexander Eugene Onegin (1833)

Pushkin is magnificent, moving; makes Byron look common and Tolstoy clodhopping. Good translation: Johnstone. (See
Nabokov's critical edition and translation for a literary mausoleum contrived by a doting genius.)

Pushkin, Alexanader Sergeyevich, Russian, 1799-1837.

Complete Prose Tales. Rec: Bloom
Complete Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Eugene Onegin. Rec: Bloom Ward
Narrative Poems. Rec: Bloom
Boris Godunov. Rec: Bloom
Captain's Daughter and Other Stories. Rec: Ward

Quasimodo, Salvatore, Italian, 1901-1968. Nobel Laureate

Selected Writings: Poems and Discourse on Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Anonymous, French, ca. 1225.

Queste del Saint Graal. Rec: Ward

Ravikovitch, Dalia, Israeli, 1936-2005.

A Dress of Fire. Rec: Bloom
Read, Herbert, English, 1893-1968.
The Green Child. Rec: Rexmo Ward

Reverdy, Pierre, French, 1889-1960.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Rilke, Rainer Maria Sonnets to Orpheus (1923)

Outstanding lyric poet, whose work has a difficult surface but a rewarding interior. Good translation: Leishman. Also: Duino
Elegies (translated by Leishman and Spender). See DIARIES

Raleigh, Sir Walter, English, ca. 1554-1618 .

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ransom, John Crowe, American, 1888-1974.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Ribá, Carles, Catalan, 1893-1959.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Rilke, Rainer Maria, German, 1875-1926.

Duino Elegies. Rec: Utne
Works. Rec: Ward
Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom
Sonnets to Orpheus. Rec: Bloom
Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rec: Bloom
New Poems: First Part and Other Part. Rec: Bloom

Rimbaud, Arthur, French, 1854-1891.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Rex SJC Ward

Ritsos, Yannis, Greek, 1909-1990.

Exile and Return. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Robinson, E. A. Collected Poems (1928)

Perhaps the best known American poet half a century ago, Robinson is now too much ignored, not to say forgotten. In fact, he
was and is first rate, from his careful, jocular descriptions of the people of his birthplace in Maine (he called it Tilbury town) to
the grand pessimistic dramas of his later years.

Robinson, Edwin Arlington, American, 1869-1935.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, English, 1647-1680.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Roethke, Theodore Collected Poems (1968)

A loose, serious, late modern American style. His early poems are charming and interesting; his last rough and fine.

Roethke, Theodore, American, 1908-1963.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Straw for the Fire. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Romanian, 19th-20th C.

Romanian Poems: A Bilingual Anthology. Rec: Ward

Ronsard, Pierre de, French, ca. 1524-1585.

Odes, Elegies, Sonnets. Rec: Bloom

Rosenberg, Isaac Complete Works (1979)

Rosenberg, a painter as well as a poet, was killed in the World War I at the age of 27: and the loss was a great one. His work is
remarkable for its exciting use of language and its imaginative intensity.

Rosenberg, Isaac, English, 1890-1918.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Rossetti, Christina, English, 1830-1894.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, English, 1828-1882.

Poems and Translations. Rec: Bloom

Ruiz, Juan (Archpriest of Hita), Spanish, ca. 1283-ca. 1350.

Book of Good Love. Rec: Ward
He is best known for his ribald, earthy poem, Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love). He was born either in Alcalá de
Henares, or perhaps Alcalá de Real, a village of Granada, then part of al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain.

Rukeyser, Muriel, American, 1913-1980.

A Muriel Rukeyser Reader. Rec: Utne (poetry)

Rustaveli, Shota, Georgian, fl. 1200.

The Man in the Panther's Skin. Rec: Ward (poetry)

Saba, Umberto, Italian, 1883-1957.

Stories and Recollections. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Salinas, Pedro, Spanish, 1891-1951.

My Voice Because of You: Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 12th C BCE-14th C CE.

Sanskrit Lyric Poetry. Rec: Oriental

Sappho, Greek, 7th C BCE.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Collh91 Rex

Sarduy, Severo, Cuban, 1937-1993.

Maitreya. Rec: Bloom

Scott, Sir Walter, Scottish, 1771-1832.

Poems. Rec: Lubbock

Seferis, George Collected Poems, 1932– 55 (1969)

The moral authority of the poems and the moral courage of Seferis as a man made him a towering national figure. He was also
amusing and amused; his work is sensuous, eclectic (influenced by Eliot, qv) and intellectually curious.

Seferis, George, Greek, 1900-1971. Nobel Laureate

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Sei Shonagon, Japanese, ca. 965-1035.

The Pillow Book. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Fadiman 4 MW Asian Oriental Rexmo StJE Ward
In it she included lists of all kinds, personal thoughts, interesting events in court, poetry and some opinions on her
contemporaries. While it is mostly a personal work, Shōnagon's writing and poetic skill makes it interesting as a work of
literature, and it is valuable as an historical document.

Shakespeare, William Sonnets (late 16th century)

This giant dominates our literature and our language; with Montaigne, he dominates the soul of Europe in his century. The
universal poet, yet no one speaks with more crushing personal force. See DRAMA (Granville-Barker, Masefield, Shakespeare,
Van Doren); LITERARY CRITICISM
(Bradley, Johnson, Knight, Stendhal)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe Adonais (1821)

Shelley's delicate Muse is best seen, perhaps, in his short lyrics: To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, and the
opium-scented Ozymandias. A donais, an elegy for Keats, shows a robuster and darker side, characteristic of his longer works.
A brooding, private voice, shot through with a melancholic perception of the "tears of things". Also: Queen Mab ; Prometheus
Unbound, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Holmes); LITERARY CRITICISM

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, English, 1792-1822.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Good Reading
Defence of Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Chinese, 10th-8th C BCE.

Shijing (Shih Ching; Book of Songs). Rec: Lubbock MW Asian Ward

Sassoon, Siegfried, English, 1886-1967.

The War Poems. Rec: NYPL

Scève, Maurice, French, ca. 1510-ca. 1564.

Délie. Rec: Bloom

Schuyler, James, American, 1923-1991.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Schwartz, Delmore, American, 1913-1966.

Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge. Rec: Bloom

Seifert, Jaroslav, Czech, 1901-1986. Nobel Laureate

Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Sena, Jorge de, Portuguese, 1919- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Senghor, Léopold S., Senegalese, 1906-2001.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Arab, 6th C?.

Seven Odes. Rec: Oriental Ward

Sidney, Sir Philip, English, 1554-1586.

Arcadia. Rec: Bloom
Astrophel and Stella. Rec: Bloom
An Apology for Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Sikelianos, Angelos, Greek, 1884-1951.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Simic, Charles, American, 1938- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Sisson, Charles In the Trojan Ditch (1974)

Haunted and haunting, Sisson's very English, very Church of England poetry takes a bleak but honest view of the world as it is.

Sitwell, Edith (ed) The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry (1959)
Magnificent anthology of the whole of English poetry. Sitwell had a sharp ear and a fine critical sense; her selection is full,
generous, exciting. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Sitwell, 0.)

Skelton, John, English, ca. 1460-1529 .

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Smart, Christopher, English, 1722-1771.
Jubilate Agno. Rec: Bloom
A Song to David. Rec: Bloom (poems)

Smith, Stevie, English, 1902-1971.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Snyder, Gary, American, 1930- .

No Nature: New and Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Song of Roland, See Chanson de Roland

Anonymous, French, 11th C.
La Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland). Rec: Adler Bloom Ward

Various Authors, French, 12th C.

Songs of the Provencal Troubadors. Rec: Ward

Snyder, Gary Collected Poems (1966)

The poems are daring and solid, and as Thom Gunn remarked, "preserve experience in the process of formation". His version
of Cold Mountain by Han-Shan is a thrilling version of one of the most thrilling Chinese poets (7th century AD). His own
poems have some of the same spirit and atmosphere.

Spender, Stephen Poems (1939)

Underestimated poet of the 1930s generation, he has gone on writing for 50 years and fits no category. He expresses liberal,
intelligent sensibility and is its faithful witness, but he can also be a startling and liberating individual poet.

Spenser, Edmund The Shephearde's Calendar(1579) * The odes of Spenser are the most successfully inventive metrical
system in English. Indispensable. Also: The Faerie Queene, etc

Spenser, Edmund, English, ca. 1552-1599 .

Prothalamion. Rec: Adler
Faërie Queen. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Lubbock
Minor Poems. Rec: Bloom

Spicer, Jack, American, 1925-1965.

The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Ed. by Robin Blaser). Rec: LAT

Stampa, Gaspara, Italian, ca. 1523-1554.

Sonnets and Madrigals. Rec: Bloom

Stein, Gertrude, American, 1874-1946.

Tender Buttons. Rec: Bloom NYPL

Stevens, Wallace Selected Poerns (1953)

Stevens' poems are a splendid combination of the meditative and the sensual. His careful concern with style and vocabulary,
together with a sense of rhythm and refrain reminiscent of Apollinaire (qv), make him one of the most satisfying writers of the
"modern" movement.

Stevens, Wallace, American, 1879-1955.

Poems. Rec: SJC Ward
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Necessary Angel. Rec: Bloom
Opus Posthumous. Rec: Bloom
The Palm at the End of the Mind. Rec: Bloom

Stickney, Trumbull, American, 1874-1904.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Storm, Thedor, German, 1817-1868.
Immensee. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Strand, Mark, American, 1934- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Continuous Life. Rec: Bloom
Dark Harbor. Rec: Bloom

Su Dongpo (Su Tung-p'o; also known as Su Shih), Chinese, 1036-1101.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Sully Prudhomme, French, 1839-1907. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, English, ca. 1517-1547 .

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Swenson, May, American, 1919-1989.

New & Selected Things Taking Place. Rec: Bloom
In Other Words. Rec: Bloom

Swinburne, Algernon Poems and Ballads (1866)

Late Victorian who thrilled the Edwardians with poetic wildness and intoxication. Reading Swinburne is like bathing in scented
ass's milk: cheering, but a little goes a long way.

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, English, 1837-1909.

Poems. Rec: Bloom
Letters. Rec: Bloom

Szymborska, Wislawa, Polish, 1923- . Nobel Laureate

Works.

Tagore, Rabindranath, Indian writing in Bengali, 1861-1941. Nobel Laureate

Poems and Stories. Rec: MW Asian
Complete Poems and Plays. Rec: Oriental Ward

Takeda Izumo, Japanese, ca. 1690-ca. 1749.

Chushingura. (An earlier version is by Chikamatsu) Rec: Oriental Ward

Various Authors, Indians writing in Tamil.

Tamil Poetry. (See also Eight Anthologies, Ilango Adigal, Kuruntokai, Ten Long Poems) Recommended by: StJE

Various Authors, Chinese, 618-907.

Tang Poetry. (See also Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li He) Rec: App MW Asian

Tao Qian (T'ao Ch'ien; also known as Tao Yuanming), Chinese, 365-427.
Poems. Rec: MW Asian Ward

Tasso, Torquato, Italian, 1544-1595.

Gerusalemme Liberata. Rec: Bloom Ward

Tate, Allen, American, 1899-1979.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Indians writing in Tamil, 1st C BCE-3rd C CE.

Ten Long Poems. (See also Kuruntokai, Tamil Poetry) Rec: MW Asian

Tennyson, Alfred Poems (1842) *

Tennyson can be moralizing, morbid, extravagantly decorative, sentimental: but his poems still give pleasure in a very different
age. Victorian certainties offer comfort in our own, torn times. See BIOGRAPHY (Ricks)

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, English, 1809-1892.

Idylls of the King. Rec: Lubbock
Shorter Poems. Rec: Lubbock
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Theocritus, Greek, 3rd C BCE.

Idylls. Rec: Bloom

Thomas, Dylan Collected Poems (1952) it Intense visions (especially of provincial Wales) and exuberant language make
him easy to like or denounce; but he is serious, and, in about a dozen poems, a great poet. See DIARIES

Thomas, Dylan, Welsh, 1914-1953.

The Poems. Rec: Bloom

Thomas, Edward Collected Poems (1920)

Sympathetic and private: an English Robert Frost (they were friends).

Thomas, Edward, English, 1878-1917.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Thomas, R. S., Welsh, 1913-2000.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Thompson, Francis, English, 1859-1907.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Thomson, James (Bysshe Vanolis), Scottish, 1834-1882.

City of the Dreadful Night. Rec: Bloom
Thomson’s poem is a deeply questioning and extremely dark vision of the City that we inhabit, but more than that it challenges
the illusions that inhabit us. Thomson - athiest, alcoholic, anarchist and insomniac - speaks to us all frm the place where we
live.

Thoreau, Henry David, American, 1817-1862.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Vietnamese, 11th-20th C.

A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry. Rec: Ward

Tolson, M. B., American, 1900-1966.

Harlem Gallery. Rec: Bloom (poetry)

Traherne, Thomas, English, 1637-1674.

Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings. Rec: Bloom

Trakl, Georg, Austrian, 1887-1914.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Tranströmer, Tomas, Swedish, 1931- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Tsvetayeva, Marina Ivanova, Russian, 1892-1941.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward

Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard, American, 1821-1873.

The Cricket and Other Poems. Rec: Bloom
Ungaretti, Giuseppe, Italian, 1888-1970.
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
The Buried Harbour: Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Valéry, Paul, French, 1871-1945.

Poems. Rec: Bloom SJC
Manifestoes of Surrealism. Rec: Bloom

Vallejo, César, Peruvian, 1892-1938.

Poetry. Rec: Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Spain, Take This Cup From Me. Rec: Bloom

Vaughan, Henry, Welsh, 1621-1695.

Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Verlaine, Paul, French, 1844-1896.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Very, Jones, American, 1813-1880.

Essays and Poems. Rec: Bloom

Vidyapati Thakur, Indian writing in Sanskrit and Bihari, 1352-ca. 1448.

Love Songs. Rec: Ward

Vigny, Alfred de, French, 1797-1863.

Chatterton. Rec: Bloom
Poems. Rec: Bloom

Villon, Francois Le Grand Testament (1461)

A connoisseur of the dramatic incongruities of life, Villon displays an astonishing zest for it. He is one of the wittiest, most
reflective poets of any age. Good translation: Dale.

Villon, French, 1431-ca. 1462.

Poems. Rec: Bloom Ward

Virgil Georgics (1st century AD)

Dryden thought Georgics "the best poem of the best poet"; his own version shows why he thought so, and he makes a
persuasive case. Good modern translations: Bovie; Day Lewis. Also: Eclogues; Aeneid

Virgil, Roman, 70-19 BCE.

Works. Rec: Adler Lubbock
The Aeneid. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading Harvard Meaningful
Rexmo Seymour-Smith SJC Ward
Eclogues. Rec: Bloom GBWW
Georgics. Rec: Bloom GBWW

Wade, Thomas, English, 1805-1875.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wagner, Richard, German, 1813-1883.

Ring of the Nibelung. Rec: Bloom

Walcott, Derek, St. Lucian, 1930- . Nobel Laureate

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wang Wei, Chinese, ca. 699-ca. 761 .

Poems. Rec: Ward
Warren, Robert Penn, American, 1905-1989.
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Watson-Taylor, S. and Lucie-Smith, E. (eds) French Poetry Today (1971)

Excellent bilingual anthology of poems written and published since 1955.

Wheelwright, John B., American, 1897-1940.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass (1855)

There is no better poet of 19th-century war or of democracy. The full height of his achievement is hardly recognized in Britain.
His liberation and Yankee tone make Tennyson look provincial. His power and precision are amazing.

Whitman, Walt, American, 1819-1892.

Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom
Leaves of Grass. Rec: Bloom Good Reading Meaningful Rex Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Democratic Vistas. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Preface to the first issue of Leaves of Grass (1855). Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
A Backward Glance O'er Travelled Roads. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Specimen Days. Rec: Bloom
"Song of Myself". Rec: Utne

Whittier, John Greenleaf, American, 1807-1892.

Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wilbur, Richard Poems, 1943 – 1956 (1956)

Like Hecht (qv), Wilbur writes with grace and confidence. Attractive, intelligent and accessible, his poetry is perfectly at ease
—and at its best, it is something more.

Wilbur, Richard, American, 1921- .

New and Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Williams, William Carlos, American, 1883-1963.

Poems. Rec: Rexmo
Spring and All. Rec: Bloom
Paterson. Rec: Bloom LAT
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom
In the American Grain. Rec: Hungry Mind ML Nonfiction

Wolfram von Eschenbach, German, ca. 1170-ca. 1220.

Parzival. Rec: Bloom

Wordsworth, William Poems (1807) E!7!

Born and brought up in the English Lake District, Wordsworth found in its landscapes the perfect raw material for his verse,
even though it is often, as he said, "emotion recollected in tranquillity". As articulate as a diarist, he retains a sense of
innocence which makes him inimitable and unforgettable. See DIARIES ; LITERARY CRITICISM (Coleridge)

Wordsworth, William, English, 1770-1850.

Poems. Rec: Adler (Selections) Bloom Good Reading Lubbock (Selections)
The Prelude. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Selected Shorter Poems. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800). Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Wright, Charles, American, 1935- .

The World of the Ten Thousand Things. Rec: Bloom

Wright, James, American, 1927-1980.

Above the River: The Complete Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wright, Jay, American, 1935- .

Dimensions of History. Rec: Bloom
The Double Invention of Komo. Rec: Bloom
Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom
Elaine's Book. Rec: Bloom
Boleros. Rec: Bloom

Wright, Judith, Australian, 1915-2000.

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, English, 1503-1542.

Poems. Rec: Bloom

Wylie, Elinor, American, 1885-1928.

Last Poems. Rec: Bloom

Xie Lingyun, Chinese, 385-433.

Poems. Rec: MW Asian

Yeats, W. B. Collected Poems(1933)

Yeats is one of our finest poets; his greatest poems were written late in life, but the development (from the 1890s onwards) is
continuous and the quality extraordinary, despite its sometimes dotty rationale. See DRAMA

Yeats, William Butler, Irish, 1865-1939. Nobel Laureate

The Wild Swans at Coole. Rec: NYPL
Collected Poems. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Ward
Selected Poems. Rec: SJC
Collected Plays. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Rexmo
A Vision. Rec: Bloom
Mythologies. Rec: Bloom
The Autobiography. Rec: Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
Autobiographies. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Yuan Mei, Chinese, 1716-1798.

Poems. Rec: Ward

Zach, Nathan, Israeli, 1930- .

Selected Poems. Rec: Bloom

Zagajewski, Adam, Polish, 1945- .

Tremor. Rec: Bloom

Zanzotto, Andrea, Italian, 1921- .

Selected Poetry. Rec: Bloom

Zhu Xi, Chinese, 1130-1200.

Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology. Rec: Oriental Ward
Dante Della-Terza

Dante Della-Terza is the Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Professor Della-Terza was
born in southern Italy, in a town destroyed by the earthquake of 1980. He studied in Pisa, Zurich and Paris and moved to the
United States in 1959. He taught at UCLA from 1959 to 1963 and joined the Harvard faculty in 1963. Professor Della-Terza is
currently writing about the disappearance of his home town in the earthquake of 1980 and the collective wound it caused.
Readers will identify in the books only the truths they have been able to conquer or preserve by their own efforts. Books say
better on our behalf what life teaches us. They are in a sense ourselves.

Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy (ca. 1307-21). New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
I started reading the poem when I was in high school. Our teachers would ask us to memorize entire cantos. In a sense it was a
felicitous coaction since Dante's journey became a part of myself. The lines I learned came to my rescue in time of perplexities
by giving me a sense of direction, a certitude.

Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron (ca. 1348). New York: New American Library, 1982. (Pb)
After the first gloomy pages of the book the reader reaches a landscape of rejuvenation, rebirth and revival. A spark of hope
defeats darkness; the world becomes alive again with its doubts and certitudes, its tricks and heroisms, its comic fears and
noble behaviors. It teaches the reader how loving and lovable the world can become.

Ludovico Ariosto. Orlando Furioso (1532). New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. (Pb)
There is a way to escape relativity through evasive attitudes of selfishness, there is a way to absolve in our dreams the deep
sense of our life. Dream becomes a metaphor for life. Ariosto tells with grace and irony a truth about ourselves which is far
stronger than the historical setting that produces it. He has been able to fill poetic dreams with experience and wisdom, hope
and determination.

Michel de Montaigne. Selections from the Essays (1595). Donald M. Frame, ed. and trans. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan
Davidson, 1973. (Pb)
When besieged by endless traps man learns how to grasp values, how to outline intellectual and moral commitments which
represent a frontier of self-preservation. Seldom has a book been written with such literary skill and such implacable lucidity.

Giovanni Battista Vico. Autobiography (1725-28). M. Fisch and T. G. Bergin, trans. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1963. (Pb)
One learns by reading it how a man deprived of skills that could help him to become prominent in a competitive society can
bravely construct an image of the self in which all the deep thoughts, all the world's dreams, are mirrored.

Jeroslav Hasek. The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in War (1922). Cecil Parrott, trans. Cambridge, Mass.: Robert
Bentley, 1980.
It is perhaps not a very great book. It gives me, however, a sense of comic relief when I am confronted with the arrogance of
the powerful. I owe Hasek many good laughs in gloomy times. I am grateful for it.

Albert Lord

Albert Lord is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, Emeritus and honorary curator of the
Milman Parry Collection in the Harvard College Library. Though no longer a classroom teacher, he continues to research and
contribute to his field. He devotes much of his time now to the study of Yugoslavian epic song.
I do not claim originality, only truth, in the first two, and possibly the third, but I expect I am unique in the fourth.

The Bible. King James version (1611).

The book that had the most influence on me from my earliest years has been the Bible. I was brought up on it; as a boy and a
young man I learned to quote many passages from it. The fact that many parts of the Bible originated in oral tradition also drew
me to a study of the Bible from the point of view of oral literature and lore.

William Shakespeare. Shakespeare: Complete Works (1592-1611). Alfred Hasbage, ed. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.
When I was in high school I read several of Shakespeare's plays and was required to memorize many lines from them. Passages
from Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It have stayed with me through the years, and
together with the Bible have formed the backbone of my literary sensibilities. I audited Kittredge's last class in Shakespeare
and added several passages from Othello to my repertory at that time. In my early teaching in the humanities I taught as well
some of the history plays.

Homer. The Iliad (ca. 800 B.C.). Robert Fitzgerald, trans. New York: Doubleday, 1975. (Pb)
. The Odyssey (ca. 800 B.c.). Robert Fitzgerald, trans. Franklin Center, Penn.: Franklin Library, 1976.
The Writings of Milman Parry.
If the first book, the Bible, belonged to my family period and the second came from high-school days, both lasting on into adult
life, the third stems from my college years at Harvard in the early 1930s. It was here that my fascination for the Homeric
poems began, and no books have had a more profound effect on my life than they. They have been at the heart of most of my
scholarly activity. They are associated with the name of my primary teacher in Homer and oral-traditional literature, Mil-man
Parry, and his writings have their place here together with the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Oral-traditional epic poetry.

Homer and Parry led to listening to epic singers in Yugoslavia and to reading a large body of oral-traditional epic poetry,
mostly in Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. Although these are not "books" in the conventional sense, they are literary expressions
and sometimes, like Homer, they find their way into book form. One in particular, "The Wedding of Smailagic Meho" by Avdo
Medjedovic, which I translated into English and published, has had considerable influence on my life, not only in itself, but
also in respect to all that it represents. It is in essence the initiatory experiences of a young hero, his marriage, and his
succeeding to his father's station in life. Such Van Gennep tales from Rites of Passage, whatever form they may take, have been
of importance to me in my own life.

The Epic of Gilgamesh (seventh century B.c.). R. Campbell Thompson, ed. New York: AMS Press, 1981.
This holds true of the next book, the Epic of Gilgamesh, with its account of acceptance of mortality and its ultimate emphasis
on the life of achievement and of family values. It, too, in my experience is also important as representative of several works
from the ancient Near East, such as Enuma Elish and the Baal epic. These works are basically mythic and as such deal with
fundamental problems of life. And with them, I seem to have returned to the place of my beginning.

Helen Vendler

Helen Vendler is a professor of English at Harvard as well as poetry critic of The New Yorker. She is the author of books on
Yeats, Stevens, Herbert and Keats as well as essays on modern American poetry, collected in Part of Nature, Part of Us. She is
the editor of The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poets.

The stuff of poetry, the life of the affections, the speculations of the mind and the contradictions of existence, are as alive in
Homer as in us, for readers and writers alike. The patterning of language—present in every culture—seems likely to be with us
'til the end of time.

The poets who have "had a significant influence on thinking and life" for me might not be the right ones for anyone else. In
poetry, affinities are strong and personal links of temperament and disposition. I think others should find for themselves, by
skimming through anthologies, poets who will mean to them what Yeats, Stevens, Herbert, and Keats have meant to me. For
one reader, it will be Whitman, for another, Marvell, for another, Dickinson. As Dickinson said, "The soul selects her own
Society—Then—shuts the Door."

AMERICAN POETRY
Oliver Harris

All American poetry comes from one book by Walt Whitman called Leaves of Grass 1855. With this extraordinary, exuberant
epic, America - the poem - found its first true poet; or rather, it was Whitman who answered the nation's call for an independent
cultural voice. His work was made to match America in scale, energy, democracy, above all in its unlimited sense of possibility,
both material and mystical, sensual and spiritual. His legacy has been twofold. On the one hand, national history betrayed his
bright vision; from the Civil War onwards, the grand rhetoric of America and often the grim reality of it have moved ever
further apart. On the other hand, rebuffed in his own day, considered too `American' to be `poetic', Whitman's time did
eventually come, a century late: Richard Gray's American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (1990) has an entry three times
longer for Whitman than for any other poet. Modernist American poetry, directed by the expatriates Ezra Pound and T S Eliot,
and by the `home-made' William Carlos Williams, did its 'carving' on, as well as with, language. Poetry demanded new, more
active, more demanding, roles from its readers - and this tended to build on the experimentalism of Whitman, at the expense of
his populism.
But is the revolutionary idea of America that has most inspired its poetry to inspire its people. When the 'Beat' poet Allen
Ginsberg writes `America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel', or the black feminist poet Nikki Giovanni writes 'i wish
i knew how it would feel / to be free', you are listening to the poetic voice of America.

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman - I have detested you long enough ... It
was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving.
EZRA POUND

Leaves of Grass (1855) by Walt Whitman. Includes his great Song of Myself, a unique work which shouts, whispers, sings,
rants, and absolutely insists on being alive.

The Complete Poems (1955) by Emily Dickinson. All but unpublished in her own lifetime, her poetry is remarkable for its
consistent brevity and density. Utterly idiosyncratic, darkly witty.

The Weary Blues (1926) by Langston Hughes. Best of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance poets, perhaps the first to make poetry
sing with a black voice.

Collected Poems (1963) by T S Eliot. Brilliant, yet hard to enjoy, especially given the too great influence of his heavily
allusive poetic style and his conservative criticism.

Collected Poems (1954) by Wallace Stevens. Lyrical, philosophical poetry, at times exquisitely simple, at others obscure,
always wrestling with the imagination.

Howl and Other Poems (1960) by Allen Ginsberg. Very uneven as a poet is credo the opposite of Eliot's craftsmanship), but
always valuable for his provoking, radical energies.

POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
Anthony Thwaite

Some people affect to despise anthologies of poetry; but for readers just starting out they are a good way of sampling and
sniffing and tasting. The first anthology I bought was Arthur Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse. I was 15 and had
just begun to read poems voluntarily, and to try to write them. Quiller-Couch published this book in 1900; and then in 1939,
just before World War II, revised it. It was the revised edition I bought in 1945. The preface was weirdly old-fashioned (`it
were profane to misdoubt the Nine as having forsaken these so long favoured islands'), and so were some of Quiller-Couch's
choices; but the book still has a lot of undisputedly good things in it. However, I don't think I'd recommend it today. I list below
a few anthologies I do recommend.

The New Oxford Book of English Verse (1972) edited by Helen Gardner. This is a full, wide ranging, reliable collection,
from medieval anonymous songs to Dylan Thomas.

Six Centuries of Verse (1984) by Anthony Thwaite. This is a mixture of anthology and comment, historical and critical, which
I put together as a companion to a Thames Television series I was asked to write. It can be read without any knowledge of the
television programmes, and tries to be a sort of guided tour of poetry in English from Chaucer to Philip Larkin and Ted
Hughes, including some Americans, from Poe to Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath.

The Rattle Bag (1982) edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Intended for `young people', this is a deliberate mix of old
and new poems, arbitrary and jumbled, much as the title suggests. It `is also for those who may feel they have missed their first
chance with poetry and are ready to give it - and themselves - a second chance'.

The Oxford Book of Comic Verse (1994) edited by John Gross. I think this is the best and funniest of the many anthologies of
`comic' (or sometimes `light') verse, particularly brilliant on the 19th and 20th centuries, in which John Gross has found some
little-known gems.
Poets of the English Language (1952) edited by W H Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson. If you ever see a second-hand set of
this five-volume collection, snap it up. This is a majestic full-scale gathering, from Langland to Yeats, much the best overall
anthology. I wish it was still in print.

As for anthologies of contemporary poetry, I don't think there is a single wholly satisfactory one. But it wouldn't be expensive
to buy three Penguins (Contemporary Verse, edited by Kenneth Allott; British Poetry Since 1945, edited by Edward Lucie-
Smith; Contemporary British Poetry, edited by Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion), and then throw in a Bloodaxe
paperback, The New Poetry (1993). These four benveen them pretty well cover the ground.

INDIVIDUAL POETS
Anthony Thwaite

My choice of 12 individual poets is personal without (I hope) being completely eccentric. People who read these lists will
make their own discoveries in the anthologies I've recommended. I have omitted the great quartet (Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Milton, Wordsworth), because I take it for granted that anyone who wants to read poems will have to tackle them some time.
The editions I list are big ones, but all these poets are mostly easily available in a variety of selections as well.

The Poet takes note of nothing that he cannot feel emotionally. My opinion is that
a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. To
find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet.
THOMAS HARDY

John Donne (1592-1631): The Complete English Poems (1982) edited by A J Smith Dramatic, immediate, sometimes difficult,
Donne is full of ingenious arguments, whether he is writing about seducing a woman or about God, and he grabs your attention
from the start with his opening words: `Busy old fool, unruly Sun', 'Death, be not proud', ‘What if this present were the world's
last night?'

George Herbert (1593-1633): English Poems (1990) edited by C A Patrides. All the poems he wrote in his maturity, towards
the end of his short life, are religious, specifically Christian. But one doesn't need to share his faith to find Herbert beautifully
convincing in his plain strengths, his ability to think aloud with subtlety and delicacy.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680): The Complete Works (1994) edited by Frank H Ellis. This `wicked' aristocrat
was not only one of the most notorious libertines at Charles II's court but a passionate and witty writer of lyrics and satires. I
don't recommend Rochester to those easily shocked.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824): The Poems (1963) edited by G Pocock, revised by V de Sola Pinto. I much prefer
the Byron of such poems as Don Juan and Beppo to the high Romantic of Childe Harold's Ptilgrimage: in other words, the
cynical, exuberant, sardonic, mocking, and self-mocking poet. He was as famous for his life as for his works, and it's amazing
how much of both he crowded into his 36 years.

Robert Browning (1812-1889): The Poems (1982) edited by J Pettigrew and T J Collins. The ones to begin with are the
dramatic monologues, such as those in Men and Women, which are like strangely self-contained incidents from lost plays.
Poems like `My Last Duchess' are as gripping as any short story, and at the same time a speaking likeness from the past come
to life.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Poems (1989) edited by Christopher Ricks. There's so much variety in Tennyson that it's
hard to know where to begin: the greatest extended elegy in English, In Memoriam; wonderfully musical lyrics (Tears, idle
tears'); brooding monologues; epic Arthurian stuff; and those jaunty poems in Lincolnshire dialect.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886): The Complete Poems (1976) edited by Thomas H Johnson. The greatest woman poet writing in
English, and in my opinion the greatest American writer. She had no success in her lifetime, but the thousands of tiny poems
she left behind in a box in her New England home include some of the most extraordinary riddling masterpieces about death
and immortality and eternity. The best of them take the top off your head.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): Complete Poems (1995) edited by James Gibson. Though he earned his living as a novelist, and
wrote some great novels, Hardy the poet is the writer I prefer. Often a storyteller in his verse, he was also someone who could
catch a moment of truth, of vision, of regret, of lost love, preserving for ever some chilling revelation or one of `life's little
ironies'.

A E Housman (1859-1936): Collected Poems (1939) edited by John Carter. He published only two slim volumes in his
lifetime, and the whole of this collected volume isn't a large one. On the face of it, his poems are simple and repetitive - love is
fleeting, lovers fickle, youth decays into age, death is final. What makes them utterly memorable is their seductive, instantly
recognizable music: `Tell me not here, it needs not saying', `The troubles of our proud and angry dust', `In valleys green and
still'.

T S Eliot (1888-1965): Complete Poems and Plays (1969) by T S Eliot. Eliot was the first 'modern' poet who really caught my
attention, soon after I read that Quiller-Couch anthology (in which he does not appear). And it was The Waste Land that did it. I
don't think that at 16 I understood anything about it - but it seemed to me the most intoxicating thing I had ever read. After 50
years, I can talk fairly learnedly about it; but what remains is the excitement, and indeed the memorable mystery.

W H Auden (1907-1973): Collected Poems (1976, revised edition 1994) edited by Edward Mendelson.. Auden was the great
virtuoso of our century, capable of writing every kind of poem from the intricate intellectual argument to the popular song
('Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone'). I admire that variety, and his energy, restlessness, verbal and rhythmical skills.
Reading Auden often makes you want to write a poem yourself, because (you think for a wild moment) you can do it too.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Collected Poems (1988) edited by A Thwaite. I became besotted with Larkin from the moment I
first properly read him in 1955. Sad, observant, exact, funny, most of his poems work themselves into your memory as if,
somehow, they had always been there - something that is seldom true of most poems at most times.
Politics

Books on "the art of the possible' are prospective or retrospective: programmatically confident about the future, scathing (or,
less often, apologetic) about the past. Meanwhile, the present remains the meeting-point, the inhabited no-man's-land between
philosophy and history, an enclave of contingent circumstance and compromise in which the layman, unfortified by the
professional politician's theory or casuistry, actually has to live. Once or twice in human history (Periclean Athens? Medician
Florence? Founding-fathers' America?) everything seemed (to some, at least) to come momentarily and thrillingly right: theory
fitted circumstance and mood, no-man's land flowered into utopia, and the citizen was served, not ruled. by politics. Why that
happened, and whether it could happen again is in part the subject of this list.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Epstein); ART (Morison); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Franklin, Kropotkin, Macmillan, Malcom X);
DIARIES (Crossman, Lincoln, Wilson); ECONOMICS (Friedman, Galbraith, Gamble, Glynn, Harrison, Kidron, Marx);
FEMINISM (Evans, Rowbotham, Norris); GEOGRAPHY (Cole); HISTORY/ AMERICAN (Bailyn, Berger, George,
Halberstam, Schlesinger); HISTORY/ANCIENT (Sallust, Thucydides); HISTORY/BRITISH (More, Tawney):
HISTORY/LATIN AMERICAN (Freyre); MEDIA (King); PHILOSOPHY (Hobbes, Mill. Ortega y Gasset); RELIGION
(Hebblethwaite, Struve); SEX (Reich); SOCIOLOGY (Anderson, Bottomore, Marcuse. Wallerstein, Weber)

Acheson, Dean Present at the Creation (1967)

US foreign policy in the post-1945 golden age; perceptive account of the way Washington works, or worked.

Acheson, Dean, American, 1893-1971.

Present at the Creation. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Adamic, Louis, American, 1899-1951.

Dynamite: A Century of Class Violence in America, 1830-1930. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Agee, Philip, American, 1935- .

Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Arendt, Hannah Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) P*

Perhaps her most accessible and penetrating book: notions of the "banality of evil" and Eichmann as bureaucrat caused a furore
at time of publication. Also: The Origins of Totalitarianism; The Human Condition; On Violence. See Stern;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Speer); BIOGRAPHY (Bullock)

Aristotle Politics (4th century BC)

Beginning of the practical study of politics as distinct from speculation. See LITERARY CRITICISM; PHILOSOPHY

Aron, Raymond, French, 1905-1983.

The Opium of the Intellectuals. Rec: TLS
Memoirs. Rec: TLS
Written 40 years ago during the battle of ideas between communism and liberal democracy, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"
provided profound insight into the mind of the communist intellectual. Aron, a renowned French historian and philosopher,
wrote this devastating critique of French radicals (such as John Paul Sartre) during the height of the Cold War. Unlike Albert
Camus in his famous book "The Rebel", Aron fires his guns without mercy and exposes these intellectuals' penchant for
irrationalism and extremism.

Arrow, Kenneth, American, 1921- .

Social Choice and Individual Values. Rec: TLS

Babbitt, Irving, American, 1865-1933.

Democracy and Leadership. Rec: National Review

Bagehot, Walter The English Constitution (1867) & *1'1

No other book on the British constitution begins to approach this in scope and elegance. Edition by Crossman (1963)
recommended. Also: Physics and Politics

Bell, Daniel, American, 1919- .

End of Ideology. Rec: TLS
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Rec: TLS

Berger, Peter, American, 1929- .

The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty. Recommended by: TLS

Bernays, Edward L., American, 1891-1995.

The Engineering of Consent. Rec: Boston PL

Bloom, Allan, American, 1930-1992.

The Closing of the American Mind. Rec: National Review

Bobbio, Norberto, Italian, 1909-2004.

The Future of Democracy. Rec: TLS

Bracher, Karl Dietrich, German, 1922- .

The Totalitarian Experience. Rec: TLS

Burke, Edmund Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

Burke was the great English conservative politician. This book was a response to a liberal defence of the 1789 French
Revolution. Burke's rhetoric is devastating and his style unforgettable. His speeches and letters make equally good reading:
especially Letter to a Noble Lord; Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol; On American Taxation, etc

Burke, Edmund, Irish, 1729-1797.

Selected Works. Rec: Lubbock
Sublime and Beautiful. Rec: Bloom
Revolution in France. Rec: Bloom Seymour-Smith

Burnham, James, American, 1905-1987.

The Managerial Revolution. Rec: TLS
The Machiavellians. Rec: National Review

Cabral, Amacar Revolution in Guinea (1969)

Selection from writings, speeches and interviews of one of Africa's most powerful revolutionary thinkers. Also: Return to the
Source

Canetti, Elias, Austrian, 1905-1994. Nobel Laureate

Crowds and Power. Rec: TLS

Caro, Robert, American, 1935- .

The Power Broker. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Carr, E. H. The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin, 1917-29 (1979)

One-volume distillation of a 14-volume history of Soviet Russia. Like the total work, masterly. Also: The New Society; The
Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-39; What is History?; The Romantic Exiles, etc

Castiglione, Baldassare, Italian, 1478-1529.

The Courtier. Rec: Bloom Ward

Castoriadis, Cornelius, French, 1922-1997.

Political and Social Writings, 1961-1979: Recommencing the Revolution, from Socialism to the Autonomous Society. Rec:
Counterpunch Trans

Catt, Carrie Chapman, American, 1859-1947.

Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (With Nettie Rogers Shuler). Rec: NYPL

Chambers, Whittaker, American, 1901-1961.

Witness. Rec: National Review

Chase, Allan, American, 1913-1993.

The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Chomsky, Noam, American, 1928- .

Manufacturing Consent (With Edward Herman). Rec: Utne
The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Clarke, Peter Liberals and Social Democrats (1979) *Pa

Evolution, from 1880 onwards, of the politics of the middle way in Britain, from Whigs to Welfare State. The New Liberals
emerge, convincingly if surprisingly, as the natural party of the working class. Also: Lancashire and the New Liberalism

Claude, 1. L. Power and International Relations (1962)

Tough-minded, clear study of the relationship between sovereign states. Cowling, Maurice The Impact of Hitler (1977)
Starchy but stimulating analysis of the domestic British effects of the Hitlerian challenge.

Clausewitz, Karl von, German, 1780-1831.

On War. Rec: Adler Seymour-Smith

Croly, Herbert, American, 1869-1930.

The Promise of American Life. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Dahl, Robert, American, 1915- .

Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. Rec: TLS

Dangerfield, George, English, 1904-1986.

The Strange Death of Liberal England. Rec: ML Nonfiction (politics)

Dante Of Monarchy (c. 1305)

Careful argument by a great poet in favour of world government approximately 650 years before anybody else thought of it. An
extraordinarily little-known book. Dante's arguments still seem unanswerable. See POETRY

Davis, Mike, American, 1946- .

Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. Rec: Harvard

de Gaulle, Charles, French, 1890-1970.

The Edge of the Sword. Rec: National Review (history)
The introduction to this book, which is translated from English, is probably one of the most revealing and telling commentaries
on the nature of man.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., Native American, 1933-2005.

Custer Died for Your Sins: an Indian Manifesto. Rec: Counterpunch NF Hungry Mind

Demosthenes, Greek, ca. 384-322 BCE.

Philippics, Olynthiacs, and Minor Public Orations. Rec: Ward
De Corona. Rec: Lubbock

de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., English, 1910-2000.

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Djilas, Milovan, Yugoslavian, 1911-1995.

The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. Rec: TLS

Dumont, René, French, 1904-2001.

Stranglehold on Africa. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Eisler, Riane, Austrian-American writing in English, 1931- .

The Chalice and the Blade. Rec: Utne
The Chalice and the Blade describes idyllic, Goddess-worshipping societies that Eisler believes existed several thousand years
ago in eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.
Eldersveld, S. J. Political Parties: A Behavioral Analysis (1964) 0 Itit
The US constitution is a curious document in that it leaves out any mention of how (by what agency) government is to be
organized. This task should in fact be left—said the Founding Fathers—to political parties, who have been at it ever since. Of
many books on the history and workings of US political parties, this is one of the best. Compare Arnold Thurman: The
Symbols of Government

Fanon, Frantz The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Fanon holds that imperialism injected violence into the fabric of the Third World. Does it follow that the resort to violence by
Third World nations is neither surprising nor reprehensible? Dated, brilliant. Also: Black Skins, White Masks Hamilton, A.,
Jay, J. and Madison, J. The Federalist (1787-88) The birth of a nation; the Federalist papers are the best of all testimonies to the
relationship between political theory and practice in the USA.

Fanon, Frantz, Martinican, 1925-1961.

Wretched of the Earth. Rec: Colcc91 Counterpunch Trans NYPL

Gellner, Ernest, English, 1925-1995.

Nations and Nationalism. Rec: TLS

Giedion, Siegfried, Swiss writing in German, 1888-1968.

Mechanization Takes Command: a Contribution to Anonymous History. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Various Authors, Various, 20th C.

The God That Failed: Six Studies in Communism (Ed. By Arthur Koestler and Richard Crossman). (See also Koestler) Rec:
TLS

Godwin, William, English, 1756-1836.

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Gorz, André, French, 1924- .

Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Gramsci, Antonio, Italian, 1891-1937.

The Modern Prince and Other Writings. Rec: Colcc91
Prison Notebooks. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS Utne

Guevara, Ernesto "Che", Argentinian, 1928-1967.

Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Gutierrez, Gustavo, Peruvian, 1928- .

A Theology of Liberation. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Halévy, Élie, French, 1870-1937.

The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War. Rec: TLS

Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay, American, 1757-1804; 1745-1829; 1751-1836.
The Federalist Papers. (See also American State Papers) Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 (Selections) Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4
GBWW Good Reading SJC (Selections)

Hart, H. L. A., English, 1907-1992.

The Concept of Law. Rec: TLS

Hayek, Friedrich von, Austrian, 1899-1992.

The Constitution of Liberty. Rec: National Review TLS
The Road to Serfdom. Rec: National Review NYPL Seymour-Smith

Hill, Christopher, English, 1912-2003.

The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Hinton, William Fanshen ( 1966)

A book of great humanity and intellectual vigour which, in dealing with the impact of China's revolution on the peasants of one
village in 1948, takes us to the heart of what may have been the major world political event of our times. Fanshen means "to
turn over".

Hofstadter, Richard, American, 1916-1970.

The American Political Tradition. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Age of Reform. Rec: National Review

Illich, Ivan, Austrian-American writing in English, 1926-2002.

Tools for Conviviality. Rec: Utne (politics)

Jefferson, Thomas, and others, American, 18th C and following.

American State Papers (Including: Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States).
(See also Federalist Papers, United States Supreme Court, Pentagon Papers, Presidential Transcripts) Rec: Adler Aquinas
GBWW SJC
Selected Other Documents (Basic Documents in American History, ed. by Richard B. Morris, or other selection) . Rec:
Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4

Karp, Walter, American, 1934-1989.

The Politics of War. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Kautilya, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. late 4th C.

Artha Shastra. Rec: StJE Ward (politics)

Kirk, Russell, American, 1918-1994.

The Conservative Mind. Rec: National Review

Klein, Naomi, Canadian, 1970- .

No Logo. Rec: Harvard

Kolakowski, Leszek, Polish, 1927- .

Main Currents of Marxism. Rec: TLS (politics)

Kopkind, Andrew, American, 1935-1994.

The Thirty Years' War: Dispatches and Diversions from a Radical Journalist. Rec: Counterpunch NF (politics)

Laqueur, Walter Terrorism (1977)

The politics of despair and paranoia coolly analysed. Also: A History of Zionism Lenin, Ivan Ilyich State and Revolution
(1917)
Written on the eve of the October Revolution, a utopian prospectus at odds with Lenin's other books, it failed as prophecy but
remains influential. Also: Imperialism; What is to be Done?

Leary, Timothy, American, 1920-1996.

The Politics of Ecstasy. Rec: NYPL

Lefebvre, Henri, French, 1901-1991.

Critique of Everyday Life. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (politics)
"The more needs a human being has, the more he exists," quips Lefebvre in a savage critique of consumerist society, first
published in 1947. The French philosopher, historian and Marxist sociologist, who died this summer at age 90, meditates on the
dehumanization and ugliness smuggled into daily life under cover of purity, utility, beauty. He deconstructs leisure as a form of
social control, spanks surrealism for its turning away from reality, and attempts to get past the "mystification" inherent in
bourgeois life by analyzing Chaplin's films, Brecht's epic theater, peasant festivals, daydreams, Rimbaud and the rhythms of
work and relaxation.

Lehman, Godfrey, American, 1925?-.

We the Jury: The Impact of Jurors on Our Basic Freedoms. Rec: Counterpunch NF (politics)

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, Russian, 1870-1924.

Selected Works. Rec: Ward
The State and Revolution. Rec: Adler Colcc91 Counterpunch Trans
What is to be Done?. Rec: Ward
Imperialism. Rec: Colcc91

Lincoln, Abraham and Stephen Douglas, American, 1809-1865 and 1813-1861.

(See also Lincoln, Abraham)
Debates. Rec: Aquinas

Lincoln, Abraham, American, 1809-1865.

(See also Lincoln, Abraham and Stephen Douglas)
Selected Speeches. Rec: SJC

Locke, John Second Essay of Civil Government(1690)

This book, published two years after the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, validated and justified it to English Whigs. The last
section on the "right of revolution" was influential on Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. See
PHILOSOPHY

Lukács, Georg, Hungarian writing in German, 1885-1971.

History and Class Consciousness. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (politics)

Machiavelli, Niccolo The Prince (1514) ! Handbook for enlightening despots stands as a classic analysis of the relationship
between means and ends.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, Italian, 1469-1527.

The Prince. Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Col37 Colcc91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Good Reading
Rex Seymour-Smith SJC
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 (Selections) SJC (Selections)
Mandragola. Rec: Bloom

Mackenzie, W. J. M. Politics and Social Science (1967)

What the academic study of politics is about. Also: Biological Ideas in Politics; Political Identity; Power, Violence, Decision

Malcolm, Janet, American, 1935?- .

The Journalist and the Murderer. Rec: ML Nonfiction (journalism)

Mannheim, Karl Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Flawed but noble attempt not only to comprehend the nature of ideology but also to analyse how far there could be an
intellectual resolution of the schisms in European society. Also: Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning; Man and Society in
an Age of Reconstruction; Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge

Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), Chinese, 1893-1976.

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung ("Little Red Book"). Rec: Boston PL NYPL Seymour-Smith
On Guerrilla Warfare. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Selected Works. Rec: Ward

Marcos, Subcomandante, Mexican, 1957- .

Shadows of Tender Fury. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Utne

Marx, K. and Engels, F. The Communist Manifesto (1848) !* 12,000 words, the liveliest and most influential in all their
voluminous writings. though Marx's witty 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon runs it close. Also: German Ideology; The
Condition of the Working Class in England, etc. See ECONOMICS; SOCIOLOGY (Bottomore. Marx)

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, German, 1818-1883 and 1820-1895.

(See also Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels)
The Communist Manifesto. Rec: Adler Aquinas Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Rex Seymour-Smith
Selected Works. Rec: Colcc91 (Selections)
German Ideology. Rec: Aquinas

Matthiessen, Peter, American, 1927- .

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Rec: Counterpunch NF (politics)

McCoy, Alfred, American, 1945- .

The Politics of Heroin. Rec: Counterpunch NF

McGinniss, Joe, American, 1942- .

The Selling of the President 1968. Rec: LAT

Michels, Robert Political Parties (1913)

The "iron law of oligarchy" book. Michels argued that all organizations, but particularly political parties and pressure groups,
however democratic in origin and intent, succumb to oligarchic tendencies. See DIARIES (Crossman)

Mill, John Stuart On Liberty (1859)

Mill's attempt to define the limits of individual behaviour and state interference is liberal thought at its rounded peak. See
ECONOMICS; FEMINISM; PHILOSOPHY

Montesquieu, Baron de The Spirit of Laws (1734-48)

Classic treatise by great political observer and thinker on the relationship between the spirit of a people and their laws.
Analyses such apparently irrelevant matters as economic system, climate, history, morals and habits, sports and diversions.

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de, French, 1689-1755.

Spirit of the Laws. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward
Persian Letters. Rec: Adler

Moore, Barrington The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1906)

Were the relationships between lords and peasants fundamental in shaping modern parliamentary democracy, communism and
fascism? Excellent combination of social science and history. Also: Infustice; Political Power and Social Theory; Soviet
Politics and the Dilemma of Power, etc

Namier, Lewis, English, 1888-1960.

The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III. Rec: TLS

Neumann, Franz, German-American writing in German, 1900-1954.

Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS

Niebuhr, Reinhold Moral and Immoral Society (1932) r Seminal work of political philosophy, influential on many
present-day European politicians and political movements. Niebuhr (a religious philosopher) analyses moral stances of
individuals and groups, and holds that ethical standards appropriate to individuals are not necessarily appropriate to groups.
Also: The Nature and Destiny of Man; Children of Light and Children of Darkness; An Interpretation of Christian Ethics

Niebuhr, Reinhold, American, 1892-1971.

The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Nixon, Richard, American, 1913-1994.

The Real War. Rec: LAT (politics)

Nizam al-Mulk, Hasan ibn Tusi, Persian, 1018-1092.

The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings. Rec: Ward (politics)

Oakeshott, Michael Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962) Subtle, elegant essays by one of the outstanding British
conservative political thinkers of the century. Also: Experience and Its Modes; On Human Conduct

Oakeshott, Michael, English, 1901-1990.

Rationalism in Politics. Rec: National Review

Orwell, George Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Orwell's personal, devastating account of the Spanish Civil War, with an excellent chapter on trench warfare. Forerunner of
1984; Orwell encounters both the Soviet Union and rats. See FICTION/NOVELS; HISTORY/BRITISH; LITERARY
CRITICISM
Owen., Robert A New View of Society and Other Writings (1813-21)
Owen was one of the greatest English utopian socialists—his kibbutz-like programme still merits consideration. His son went
to America and established a socialist community at New Harmony, but discord soon set in.

Piven, F. F. and Cloward, R. A. Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (1977)
A study of four movements in the US to delimit the possibilities of power for the poor in representative democracy.
Challenging conclusion is that success comes through mass defiance rather than formal organization. Also: Regulating the Poor

Plato The Republic (c. 380 BC)

Masterpiece of political philosophy argues for a hierarchical society in which everyone performs only the function for which he
is fitted by nature and education. Very special pleading in the guise of a dispassionate intellectual exercise. (For provocative
critique see Karl Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies). Good translation: Cornford. See PHILOSOPHY

Popper, Karl, Austrian-English writing in English, 1902-1994.

The Open Society and Its Enemies. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review TLS

The Open Society and its Enemies K.R. Popper Historical Dialectic
Marx: Selected Writings D. McLellan Historical Dialectic
Karl Marx F. Wheen Historical Dialectic

Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (1971) **

Key book in the argument among contemporary political theorists and moral philosophers concerning distributive justice.

Rawls, John, American, 1921-2002.

A Theory of Justice. Rec: Colcc91 LAT ML Nonfiction TLS

Rich, Adrienne, American, 1929- .

On Lies, Secrets and Silence. Rec: Hungry Mind

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The Social Contract (1762) i S

More attractive, challenging and puzzling than the other social contract theorists, Hobbes and Locke. Participatory democracy,
socialism and modern despotism start here. Also: Emile. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, French, 1712-1778.

On the Origin of Inequality. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 GBWW SJC
On the Political Economy. Rec: Adler GBWW
Émile. Rec: Adler Bloom
Social Contract. Rec: Adler Aquinas Colcc91 GBWW Good Reading SJC

Sa'adawi, Nawal el, Egyptian (Arabic), 1931- .

Memoirs from the Women's Prison. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Said, Edward, Palestinian writing in English, 1935-2003.

Culture and Imperialism. Rec: Utne
Orientalism. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Sartori, Giovanni Parties and Party Systems (1976)

Schattschneider, E. E. The Semisovereign People (1960)

Major contribution to the debate about the pluralist nature of Western democracy. "The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the
heavenly chorus sings with a strong upperclass accent." Also: Politics, Pressures and the Tariff

Schelling, Thomas, American, 1921- .

The Strategy of Conflict. Rec: TLS

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, American, 1944- .

Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Schumpeter, Joseph Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943) P Critique of classical democracy. Schumpeter reluctantly
recognizes that if capitalism is to survive it must transform itself into a version of social democracy. He is best known,
however, for his "minimal concept of democracy": that it provides at periodic elections, a choice between competing elites.
Also: Business Cycles; Imperialism and Social Classes; History of EconomicAnalysis

Simon, Herbert, American, 1916-2001.

Models of Man, Social and Rational. Rec: TLS

Situationist International, Various, 1957-1972.

On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: Situationist International 1957-1972. Rec:
Counterpunch Trans

Skinner, Quentin, English, 1940- .

The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Rec: TLS

Smith, Anna Deveare, American, 1950- .

Twilight, Los Angeles 1992. Rec: Utne
Anna Deavere Smith's stunning new work of "documentary theater" in which she uses verbatim the words of people who
experienced the Los Angeles riots to expose and explore the devastating human impact of that event.

Sorel, Georges Reflections on Violence (1912) *

"Violence is the only practical political method.- Sorel had no way of knowing how right—and wrong—he would be proved in
the succeeding 60 years. See T. E. Hulme: Speculations (1924)

Sorel, Georges, French, 1847-1922.

Reflections on Violence. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
In this controversial text, Sorel, a noted revolutionary, voices his belief in class warfare as a means of effecting lasting social
change.

Sowell, Thomas, American, 1930- .

Ethnic America. Rec: National Review

Starr, Kenneth W., American, 1946- .

The Starr Report. Rec: National Review

Steffens, Lincoln, American, 1866-1936.

Autobiography. Rec: NYPL
The Shame of the Cities. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Stern, J. P. Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People (1975)

Concise, brilliant book focuses on Hitler's use of language as a method of domination. Far more searching and penetrating than
most "weightier" books about the Hitler phenomenon. Also: Thomas Mann; On Realism. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Speer);
BIOGRAPHY (Bullock); HISTORY/EUROPEAN (Ryder)

Stern, Fritz, American, 1926- .

The Politics of Cultural Despair. Rec: TLS

Sun-tzu (Sunzi), Chinese, ca. 450-380 BCE.

The Art of War. Rec: Fadiman 4

Talmon, J. T., Israeli, 1916-1980.

The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. Rec: TLS

Tocquevllle, Alexis de Democracy in America (1835 -40)

Excellent as history and social science; but its enduring value is as political theory. Tocqueville's notion of the "tyranny of the
majority" highlighted the dominance of beliefs and codes of behaviour that ensured conformity and stifled dissent. Also:
L'Ancien Regime

Tocqueville, Alexis de, French, 1805-1859.

Democracy in America. Rec: Adler Aquinas Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW SJC (Selections)
The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Rec: Aquinas

Troeltsch, Ernst, German, 1865-1923.

The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Trotsky, Leon The History of the Russian Revolution (1932 -33) The revolution described and interpreted by one of its major
participants. Partisan but never bigoted; patchy but compulsive.

United Nations, Various, Pub. 1945.

United Nations Charter. Rec: NYPL
United States documents, See American State Papers

United States Supreme Court, American, 1789- .

Opinions. Rec: Colcc91 (Selections) SJC (Selections)

Walzer, Michael, American, 1935- .

Spheres of Justice. Rec: TLS
Walzer's framework provides a powerful tool for non-philosophers to understand, and then speak-up directly and intelligently
for equality and democracy.

Weaver, Richard, American, 1910-1963.

Ideas Have Consequences. Rec: National Review
“In what has become a classic work, Richard M. Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy.
He asserts that the world is intelligible, and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of
unintelligent choice. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an
absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas--like actions--have consequences.” (amazon)

White, Theodore H. The Making of the President, 1960 (1961)

A famous election brilliantly described and analysed. Exemplary political journalism. Also: The View from the Fortieth Floor,
The Making of the President, 1968, etc

White, Theodore H., American, 1915-1986.

The Making of the President 1960. Rec: LAT

Wilson, Edmund To the Finland Station (1940)

Delightful, moving and literate study of the development of Western socialist thought. Also: Axers Castle; The Wound and the
Bow; The Shores of Light See DIARIES; HISTORY/AMERICAN; LITERARY CRITICISM

Wilson, Edmund, American, 1895-1972.

The Shores of Light. Rec: Bloom
Patriotic Gore. Rec: Bloom LAT ML Nonfiction
To the Finland Station. Rec: Counterpunch NF Hungry Mind National Review

Wittfogel, Karl, German-American writing in English, 1896-1988.

Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS

Woodward, B. and Bernstein, C. All the President's Men (1974) Two reporters on the Washington Post uncover Watergate
and win a Pulitzer Prize. A study of political corruption which will live as one of the greatest and most hyped scandals in
politics. Also: The Final Days

Woodward, C. Vann The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955)

Best short account of the politics and history of segregation in the USA. Also: The Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. See
HISTORY/AMERICAN

Woodward, C. Vann, American, 1908-1999.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Wright, Martin, English, 1930- .

Power Politics. Rec: TLS

Graham T. Allison

Graham T Allison is the dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also the Don K. Price Professor of
Politics, having served as a professor at Harvard since 1972.
Professor Allison's teaching and research concentrate on political analysis, American foreign policy, and ethics and public
policy. His works include Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War and Essence of Decision:
Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A North Carolinian educated at Harvard and Oxford, Dean Allison is a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, special
adviser to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and a consultant to various government agencies.

Raymond Aron. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (1962). Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox, trans.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
A magisterial overview of the stuff of international relations.

Winston S. Churchill. History of the English-Speaking Peoples

(1956-58). 4 vols. New York: Dodd-Mead, 1983. (Pb)
A simple, stirring account of the progress of modern civilization spearheaded by "the English speaking peoples."

Winston S. Churchill. The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
An insider's account of the West's failure to prevent the most avoidable world war.

Thomas C. Schelling. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. (Pb)
The heart of the logic of both conflict and conflict resolution.

Frans De Waal. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. Janet Milnes, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. (Pb)
Insightful analysis of our closest relatives—with whom we share more genes than horses do with zebras.

Hale Champion

Hale Champion continues his many-faceted Harvard career, now as executive dean of the John F Kennedy School of
Government and faculty chairman of the Senior Executive Fellows Program. He began his career as a reporter. In 1958 he
joined Governor Edmund Brown of California as press secretary and then became director of finance. He served as
undersecretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington, D. C from 1977 to 1979.

The challenge of every century (and I hope the twenty-first will not be wholly different) is to keep humanity's ever-increasing
capacity for self-destruction within bounds, and to shape political behavior and governance to that end. Our one best hope is to
understand the human condition better and give it an appropriate politics.

Anthony Powell. A Dance to the Music of Time (1962-75). 12 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
This is the life of a modern man in urban society (London), his sensibility, his relationships, his experience and his reflections
over most of the same decades in which I lived. It has, for me, all the values of comparative studies. It is also wonderful
reading.

James MacGregor Burns. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963. (Pb)
This may not be the most scholarly Roosevelt (FDR) biography, but it came early and strongly shaped my sense of the
intersections of politics and governing at a time that both became permanently part of my emotional life.

Herman Melville. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857). Herschel Park, ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. (Pb)
Most Melville authorities will tell you that this is one of his worst books; and, indeed, I suppose I would not miss Moby Dick
for it. But its black humor is that of the spirit of American political life, outrageous, surrealistic, and full of promises, false and
true, kept and unkept, often not even intended. It is the torturous truth about that side of the American political character that
produced Andrew Jackson, Lyndon Johnson, Warren G. Harding, Ronald Reagan, and thousands of others.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1966.
In my view, the most memorable statement of the relationship between men and history, between individuals and events, in all
fiction. This is passionate objectivity.

Richard E. Neustadt. Presidential Power (1960). New York: Wiley, 1980. (Pb)
This is the revised version: the first edition was the first time political science ever really spoke to me with a sure sense of both
large societal purpose and the nuances of institutional responses.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist [Papers] (1788). Benjamin F. Wright, ed. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1961.
Most of our intergovernmental literature is a kind of shifting Sargasso Sea not worth ploughing through. There aren't better
insights or more ingenious polemics anywhere than in these originals.

John T. Dunlop

John Dunlop is the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. A mediator and arbitrator in labor-management matters,
Mr. Dunlop served as the secretary of labor from 1975 to 1976. He was director of the Cost of Living Council during 1973 and
1974, prior to which he was dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The books all deal, I believe, with persistent and continuing issues, with reflection and action, with reflection and expression,
and with individual and group relations.

Alfred North Whitehead. Science and the Modern World (1925). New York: Free Press, 1967. (Pb)
The lectures consider the aspects of Western culture that have been influenced by the development of modern science. "The
mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the
communities.- I have often cited Whitehead's emphasis that "the new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate
interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts.-

Samuel Eliot Morison. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (1942). Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1983. (Pb)
The detailed account of Columbus's voyages of discovery are inherently interesting, but they also provide a suggestive
counterpoint to the opportunities and the problems of other voyages of discovery—in the realm of the mind or in organizational
building. The process of discovery is of consuming interest and importance.

Talcott Parsons. The Structure of Social Action (1937). New York: Free Press, 1968. (Pb)
The relations of economics to other systems of social analysis and social behavior is a continuing problem of the first
magnitude to anyone concerned with the economic aspects of behavior. The comparative study of the thought of Alfred
Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber is instructive to this continuing problem of the relations of
economics to other social analysis. Modern economists too seldom consider these issues.

Joyce Cary. Art and Reality: Ways of the Creative Process (1958). Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970.
This volume has helped me to understand and to appreciate the necessary gap between intuition and expression, between the
privacy of creation and imagination and the attempt to express in concept and in language. This is a continuing problem of
creativity of ideas or institutions.

Roscoe Pound. Social Control Through Law (1942). Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968.
Irrespective of this analysis, the problem of social control of individual and group or organizational behavior is a continuing
problem of tension in all societies and particularly in Western societies with their values. The secularization of control and its
consequences is a persistent concern.

Theodore Reik. Listening with the Third Ear (1948). Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Books, 1951.
In the work of dispute resolution, as well as in common discourse, interpreting what parties say and what they really mean is of
fundamental importance. Reflection on this process of distinguishing the two is of continuing significance to reflection and
action.

Christopher Edley

Professor Edley's primary areas of teaching and research at the Harvard Law School are administrative law and public policy.
He is also actively involved in a number of projects related to racial justice and poverty. He served in the Carter administration
as assistant director of the White House domestic policy staff responsible for income-maintenance and social-services policy.
He joined the Harvard faculty in 1981, and hopes to spend much of his career in the public sector.

Of the genuinely uncertain questions facing the United States, the problem of color and social justice seems to me more urgent
and demanding than any, except avoidance of nuclear and environmental catastrophe. Three of these books offer important
insights on that problem. But instead of preaching a policy program, they teach a creative sensitivity. Justice Accused and
Simple Justice do this while portraying law and lawyers in works that should be required reading for anyone remotely involved
or interested in law.

Robert M. Cover. Justice Accused. Antislavery and the Judicial Process (1975). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. (Pb)
The project and its execution are deeply important: the tension between the formal demands of the rule of law, and an
individual's sense of truer justice. Cover's wonderful exploration of the judicial administration of slavery offers both moving
accounts of individuals pressed to apply laws they abhorred, and an enlightening exploration of underlying themes concerning
legal positivism, natural justice, and the failings of legal science. Justice Accused is only incidentally about a historical subject,
because contradictions between law's stated commitment to justice and the realities of oppression are so familiar. Finally,
Cover's powerful methodology can serve as a model for examination of contemporary legal and social questions. He has
greatly influenced my own views about law and about scholarship.

Richard Kluger. Simple Justice (1975). New York: Random House, 1977. (Pb)
This is what "a life in the law" is supposed to be about. Kluger gives a historical account of the litigation battles leading up to
the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but it reads like a best-selling novel. It's a rich, instructive,
and inspiring account of noble lawyering. For me as a black lawyer a generation and a half too young to have been in those
battles, it's a compelling exploration of my professional and political roots. Just in telling a story and introducing some genuine
heroes, Simple Justice speaks mountains of truth.

Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
Even if I had not been a teenager, my first reading of Malcolm X would have served as something of a lightning rod,
dramatically focusing a variety of impressions, frustrations, angers and hopes. I doubt that it actually had concrete effects on
my sense of values or my life goals—too many other forces were at work to isolate any one or two books. But even if it did not
change me, this book helped me to know myself and to appreciate better the conditions of Black America.

Josef Maria Jauch. Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968.
I offer this book not for itself, but for what it represents. As an undergraduate at Swarthmore College I majored in mathematics
(though I always planned on law school). Jauch's was one of several books that brought me face to face with my intellectual
limits. I worked for hours to understand half a page, and for weeks to understand just a handful of pages, feeling myself
stretched to the maximum, yet often falling short. My well-worn excuses (too tired, too busy; unprepared, uncommitted) were
unavailable. It was a pure test of a certain kind of ability. The experience of the testing, as much as the results, proved crucial in
my constitution. I gained new stores of patience, humility and, strangely, confidence. Mathematics has a pure aesthetic, and is
cruelly judgmental when your inadequacies are bared. It may be that not all fields offer such pure tests, but they should be
sought out wherever available.

Martin A. Linsky

Martin Linsky. a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former Massachusetts
state representative and newspaper editor. specializes in teaching and research in the areas of the press and legislatures. His
most recent work is Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policy Making (1986).
Plato. The Republic (370-360 B.C.). James Adam, ed. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
I read Plato's Republic in a seminar the second semester of my sophomore year at college. It taught me that there are some
important questions to ask, that just because there are questions it doesn't mean that there are answers, and that even if there
are. the questions and the questioning might be more important anyway.

Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion (1922). New York: Free Press, 1965. (Pb)
No one before Walter Lippmann or since has understood as well the dilemmas in a free society which arise out of the complex
relationships among the governors, the governed and the mass media. When I finished Public Opinion, I knew that somehow it
would be with me the rest of my life, and so it has.

James D. Barber. The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adaptation to Legislative Life (1965). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press. 1980.
As a legislator, I was always frustrated by the gap between my own view of the integrity and inherent worth of the legislative
process and what I perceived to be the conventional wisdom about how awful legislatures were. The Lawmakers, which Barber
wrote originally as his Ph.D. thesis at Yale, was the first book I found that tried to understand legislators and legislatures on
their own terms as they really are, rather than as they might be in some theoretical world conjured up by academics or good-
government types. Barber listened to what legislators had to say. Even though the book was published back in 1965, it still is
unique in illuminating my favorite part of government.

Henry Beetle Hough. Country Editor (1940). Greenwich, Conn.: Chatham, 1974. (Pb)
Country Editor made me realize that one could live an intense, engaged professional life and a calm, secure private life at the
same time. I'm not sure that I really believed it was possible before, and the book has become a kind of guidepost for
maintaining the balance.

Richard Harris. Freedom Spent. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976 (out of print). Appeared in The New Yorker. 17 and 24
June 1974; 18 August 1975; 3, 10 and 17 November 1975; and 5, 12 and 19 April 1976.
Freedom Spent is important to me for two reasons: first, it is the most powerful reaffirmation of the values inherent in the Bill
of Rights that I have ever read. Second, it is brilliant writing and reporting—my own model of great journalism, where the
author drives you to the conclusion not by rhetoric or exhortation, but by the power of the reporting, the facts and the narrative.

George C. Lodge

George Lodge has been a member of the Harvard Business School faculty since 1961, after service in the Eisenhower and
Kennedy administrations. He is the author of six books discussing labor unions, change in Latin America, ideology and social
change and ideological transition. He continues to research, write about and teach issues regarding ideology and social change.
His books include U.S. Competitiveness in the World Economy, edited with Bruce R. Scott, and a forthcoming work with Ezra
Vogel on comparative ideology.

I have found these books especially useful in understanding both the obstacles to change in various communities and the means
of overcoming those obstacles. Whatever the twenty-first century brings it will certainly include change.

F. S. C. Northrop. The Meeting of East and West. New York: Oxbow, 1979. (Pb)
Northrop showed me how to perceive the effects of religious, scientific, philosophical and other traditions in the practices of
nations. He was particularly helpful to me in my early efforts to develop the concept of ideology for the integrated study of
national systems.

Louis Hartz. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962. (Pb)
From Hartz I learned of the pervasive influence of John Locke in the development of government and business in the United
States.

Samuel P. Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies (1968). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. (Pb)
Here is a beautifully clear analysis of the historical roots of different nations and of how those roots flowered into various
institutional forms and behavior.
Crawford B. MacPherson. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1962. (Pb)
This book was especially helpful in its analysis of how Locke overcame his original constraints on the rights to and the uses of
property. It helps to explain contemporary arguments about the purposes of the corporation.

Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Pb)
Kuhn's use of the notion of a "paradigm" helped me to develop a comparable one of ideology, and to explore its uses in
understanding the environment of business.

Karl Mannheim. Ideology and Utopia (1929). L. Wirth and G. Shils, trans. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. (Pb)
This book gave me a definition of ideology and a way to use it in the systemic analysis of communities which has been most
useful in my thinking and teaching about the roles and relationships of government, business and labor.

Roderick MacFarquhar

Roderick MacFarquhar has been a print, radio and TV journalist (1955-67), editor of The China Quarterly (1959-68) and
member of the British Parliament (197479). He is now professor of government in Harvard's Department of Government.
Some—but not all—of the following books are classics which will last. Each individual and generation has their own
signposts. But taken together, my books underline the urgency of getting our act together so that we actually reach the twenty-
first century, while the Fairbank volume indicates the nature of a nation that will be increasingly important on the world scene
after A.D. 2000.

C. E. M. Joad. Introduction to Modern Political Theory (1924). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953.
C. E. M. Joad's Introduction to Modern Political Theory was published by Oxford University Press in 1924 in "The World's
Manuals" series. I borrowed it from my father when I was sixteen and found myself quickly persuaded of the virtues of
socialism (and leaning toward guild socialism), which I suspect may have been Joad's objective. Although Britons were already
beginning to complain at the shortages and the controls the Labour government had to introduce in the difficult postwar years,
socialism simply seemed fairer than the prewar system, and more likely to free Britain of the shackles of the class system. I
eventually joined the Labour party, became a Labour member of Parliament, and only left the party for the Social Democrats
after its post-1979 swing toward the Marxist left.

Emery Reyes. The Anatomy of Peace (1945). Magnolia, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1969.
I read Emery Reves's Anatomy of Peace when I was seventeen and became a lifelong convert to the ideal of world government
as the only sure way to avert international warfare. It seemed to me that the Europeans, who had invented the modern nation-
state and used it as the vehicle of wars that had spread far outside their continent, had a special responsibility in striving to end
the nation-state era. I became an activist in British organizations set up to persuade our countrymen to participate in the
emerging European institutions, the ultimate objective of which was to prevent any further European wars.

Arthur Koestler. Darkness at Noon (1940). Daphne Hardy, trans. New York: Bantam, 1970. (Pb)
Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon inoculated me and a whole generation of Oxford students (who had not lived through the
Moscow purges of the 1930s) against any illusions about Soviet communism.

W. Olaf Stapledon. Last and First Men (1930). Boston: Gregg, 1976.
Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. which was one of the first science-fiction works I read, predicted the first world state
being formed after a Sino—American war and then collapsing in an energy crisis, leading to the disappearance of the "first
men," us. It made me realize that if one thinks in a long enough perspective (in his case millions of years), the disappearance of
civilization as we know it was far from unthinkable.

William G. Golding. Lord of the Flies (1954). New York: Putnam, 1978.
Robert Jungk. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (1954). James Cleugh, trans. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1970. (Pb)
I was reminded vividly of Stapledon's grim vision a decade later when reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding and
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk, a sobering read for a summer holiday. Golding pointed to a darkness of the
soul buried within us, Jungk to the human frailties of the scientists who are our guides in the nuclear era. These books
underlined for me the urgency of seeking disarmament agreements between the superpowers.

John K. Fairbank. The United States and China (1958). 4th ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. (Pb)
John Fairbank's United States and China was my first window on the magnificence of Chinese civilization and its modern fate.
I think it remains the best short introduction to the subject for student and general reader alike.

Thomas K. McCraw

Thomas McCraw was educated in Mississippi and Wisconsin. He taught history at the University of Texas from 1970 to 1976,
then went to the Harvard Business School. There, he teaches courses in business-government relations and writes books and
articles that take cross-disciplinary and cross-national approaches to this same broad subject. His most recent book, Prophets of
Regulation, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1985.

Obviously, the list I have presented below is a very personal one. My advice to any student, of any age, is to read widely but
selectively, discovering for yourself the books that resonate with your own experiences and aspirations. For the twenty-first
century, some of these books obviously have not yet been written. Some actually may have to be done not by others but by you
yourself.

David E. Lilienthal. TVA: Democracy on the March (1954). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1977.
Written by a New Deal technocrat, this book represented a wartime effort to demonstrate that American democracy could be as
"efficient" as Fascism. For that reason, Lilienthal oversold his subject and drifted into the realm of propaganda. Even so, when
I read the book, I realized for the first time that I myself had grown up in the midst of a genuine American epic. My father, an
engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority from 1933 until 1971, had been wholly dedicated to his many TVA projects and
had become a master of the difficult art of managing giant construction works. He had done this at the personal cost of
spending his life in an endless series of small towns in Appalachia—a cost shared by the rest of the family. Lilienthal's book,
flawed though it is, made me understand that the sacrifices endured by our own family, and many like us, had been well worth
the cost. When I became a historian, I wrote two small books on the TVA myself: partly to redress the imbalance created by
Lilienthal's own volume, and partly to explore the complex subject of business—government relations in modern America.

Richard Hofstadter. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). New York: Random House, 1966. (Pb)
Though not the best of Hofstadter's many influential books, this one helped me determine my own vocation. I read and reread it
as a young naval officer contemplating careers in law, medicine or college teaching in history or literature. Hofstadter's
approach in this book, though condescending and off-putting, demonstrated for me that one could be a historian without losing
touch with literature: that, indeed, any such separation would be nothing less than stupid, because it would tend to separate
ideas from behavior and individuals from historical movements.

David M. Potter. People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1954. (Pb)
In this brief, highly interpretive book, Potter attempts to synthesize the meaning of America around the theme of comparative
affluence. Although his quantitative data are now obsolete, his book will endure, for several reasons. First, Potter insisted on a
cross-disciplinary approach. He became one of the first important historians to draw systematically on other social sciences
such as sociology and anthropology, in addition to economics and political science. Second, People of Plenty is an explicitly
cross-national study. Potter broke the traditional mold of histories focused solely on the United States, and tried to place
American culture in its broader world context. In the process, he drew brilliantly not only on other disciplines, but also on
foreign commentaries concerning the American character, such as the great work of de Tocqueville. Overall, the book provides
a model of open-minded wisdom and bold but unpretentious interpretation.

Walker Percy. The Last Gentleman (1966). New York: Avon, 1978. (Pb)
. The Moviegoer (1961). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)
These two books, together with several subsequent ones by Percy, represent attempts to express modern philosophy through the
literary form of the novel. Such a fusion, long a central aspect of European culture, has remained underdeveloped in the United
States. Percy himself came to it only in middle age, after a noncareer as a dilettante and physician who declined to practice
medicine. Influenced by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the French existentialists of the 1940s, Percy immersed himself
simultaneously in an odd amalgam of European literature and American popular culture. For many years, he experimented with
different literary forms, until finally he developed, through his novels, a poignant, powerfully affecting way of articulating the
central paradoxes of modern life: that affluence, for those who have achieved it, does not necessarily lead to a more satisfying
emotional condition; that the impact of science on humanistic values has proved of little help and considerable harm; and that
the very nature and purpose of man remain as elusive and mysterious now as they were in premodern times.
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Strategy and Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1962. (Pb)
More than any other single work, this one shows how certain types of corporations grew to giant size, then diversified their
product lines, all the while remaining under the control of a new class of salaried managers. The book is made up of four
careful case studies, followed by a much larger sample, of which Chandler asks a series of simple but penetrating questions. In
carrying off this ingenious inquiry, the author framed a model of comparative organizational evolution that, in turn, has
profoundly influenced research and teaching in many disciplines: history, sociology, economics, and business administration.
Chandler himself is the greatest scholar with whom I have worked (for more than a decade now), and his influence continues to
exert itself not only through the "organizational school" of historians, of which he is the dean, but equally in his own great
books written after Strategy and Structure. These include The Visible Hand and a forthcoming cross-national study tentatively
titled Scale and Scope.

Robert H. Bork. The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself (1978). New York: Basic Books, 1980. (Pb)
Although I found myself offended by Bork's arrogant neoconservative viewpoint, his powerful argument jelled much of my
thinking about the historical ironies of antitrust. As I have now begun to suggest in my own books, antitrust policy in America,
though quite often as misguided as Bork asserts, frequently produced unintended but therapeutic effects that made American
business more efficient: not through any replication of the Smithian model of perfect competition—the presumed theory behind
antitrust—but instead by forcing American corporations to innovate organizationally, as a means of avoiding illegal car
telization. In this way, antitrust actually helped to turn certain American companies into the world's most efficient economic
organizations between 1880 and 1960. During and after the 1960s, the advent of global competition made the story a good deal
more complex, and this is the focus of my own current work.

Mark Moore

Mark Moore is the Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy and Management. He is also faculty chairman of the
Executive Programs at the Kennedy School of Government. His policy interests lie in the area of crime and the criminal justice
system—the design of police strategies and the use of deceptive and coercive investigative methods. He is the author of Buy
and Bust: The Effective Regulation of an Illicit Market in Heroin.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who live off of institutions, and those who build the capacity of institutions to
perform and develop the talents of other individuals. These books are designed to equip one to become the second kind of
individual.

Aristotle. The Politics (ca. 335 B.C.). Carnes Lord, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
This is the classic statement of why men form institutions and the benefits they derive from them. It includes the heretical idea
that one of the purposes of institutions is to encourage virtue among those who live within them.

Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Pb)
This book establishes the social basis of all knowledge and understanding of the world. It pays tribute to scientific
"revolutionaries" who insist on seeing the world differently and reveals the crushing power of "normal" science. But it reminds
us that, in the end, even science is a social and political process.

Robert M. Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). New York: Morrow, 1979. (Pb)
This book brilliantly evokes the intellectual and personal challenges of seeking to integrate "technical" and "aesthetic"
intuitions in the pursuit of understanding what "quality" is all about.

Richard E. Neustadt. Presidential Power (1960). New York: Wiley. 1980. (Pb)
This book is important primarily as a text in "public" management—as potentially useful to state welfare commissioners as to
presidents. It is also a model of both method and style for all those who would write about public management.

Richard E. Neustadt

Richard E. Neustadt is the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and
formerly a professor of government at Columbia University. He is a foreinost scholar on the American presidency, having
served on the White House staff under President Truman and as consultant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on various
problems of organization and operation, both domestic and international. His writings include: The Epidemic that Never Was
(with Harvey Fineberg), Alliance Politics, Presidential Power, and his most recent work, Thinking in Time, coauthored with
Ernest May.

Whatever their relationship to governance, whether doing it or subjects of it, readers need to understand the essence of the
thing as it has seemed to be up to their time.

Nicollo Machiavelli. The Prince (1513). Peter E. Bondanella and Mark Musa, trans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
A plea, in the form of a guide, for maximizing political power on sixteenth-century Tuscan terms by an Italian patriot out of
office, wishing he were in, concerned for strength to rally the Italian city-states against the dangers of French domination. His
realistic acceptance of the evil in political means and its inevitability, indeed indispensability, in striving for heroic ends has
shocked critics of politics for five hundred years, yet gain the book its status as what Isaiah Berlin called the first work of
modern political science.

Max Weber. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946). H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979. (Pb)
Particularly the essay on "Politics as a Vocation": a moving characterization of the ethical dilemma of the human being called
to exercise political power over other humans . . a Machiavellian dilemma, the Prince being human too, not divine. Weber
distinguishes "living for" politics, the calling, from living off it, a mere job. A commensurate "ethic of responsibility" is
distinguished from ethics for private life; their ultimate convergence is portrayed with tragic feeling.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist [Papers] (1788). Benjamin F. Wright, ed. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1961. (Pb)
Papers rationalizing and justifying the U.S. Constitution of 1787 (to influence debates over ratification), these constitute
collectively a profound assessment of the nature, uses, needs for, dangers in, correctives to—and, by implication, ineradicable
dilemmas of—human governance in secular societies legitimized by popular sovereignty.

Henry Adams. The Education of Henry Adams (1907). Ernest Samuels, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. (Pb)
A rich, knotty, idiosyncratic evocation of what time, as it speeds up with the industrial and scientific revolutions, does to
values, attitudes, institutions and elites in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, and to the terms and conditions of
employment on which political power can be held, and by whom —all from the standpoint of a specially invested historian,
grandson of the sixth, great-grandson of the second U.S. president.

David B. Truman. The Governmental Process (1951). New York: Knopf, 1968.
An indispensable clarification of the roles of potential and organized interests in American public life—and by extension in any
political system—taking off from insights in "Federalist 10." Multiple membership in overlapping and competing interest
groups, and attitudes amounting to rules of the game, keep citizens from splitting into wholly separate groups and groups from
splitting into wholly separate governments.

William Shakespeare. Henry IV, parts I and 2 and Henry V (1596-99). Arthur Quiller-Couch et al., eds. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1965. (Pb)
The terms and conditions of employment for kings and crown princes (whether monarchical or not)—pleasures and pains,
uncertainties and fears, pains and frustrations included—couched in sixteenth-century terms but evocative of twentieth-century
counterparts. Personal, intellectual, moral and managerial dilemmas associated with the wielding of supreme political authority,
or waiting in the wings for it, are strikingly portrayed.

Richard D. Parker

Richard Parker is a professor of constitutional law and criminal law at the Harvard Law School. He is well known to his
colleagues for his eclectic interests and voracious reading. Before joining the Harvard Law faculty he practiced law in Paris
and clerked for Justice Potter Stewart.

Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy (1872). Walter Kaufmann, trans. New York: Random House, 1967.
A "scholarly" discourse on Greek tragedy that boldly celebrates the passionate, the lyrical, the personal—as contrasted to the
dryly rational, the "soundly" balanced, the impersonal "virtue" of mainstream scholarship.
Alan J. P. Taylor. English History, 1914-1945 (1965). New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Exemplifies a kinetic vision of politics and history expressed idiosyncratically and provocatively and joining detailed
sensitivity to contingencies with insistence on simple, deep structural tendencies.

Roberto M. Unger. Knowledge and Politics. New York: Free Press, 1975. (Pb)
An amazingly comprehensive, ambitious and mind-opening critique of liberalism combining (once again) systematics and
bold, passionate commitment.

Alexander M. Bickel. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics (1962). New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986.
The best book so far on American constitutional law, exploring—in a highly personal style—the politics at the heart of the law.

James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). New York: Ballantine, 1974. (Pb)
A cumulatively stunning expression and evocation of passionate, lyrical, personal idealism, embedded in a concrete description
of the texture of sharecroppers' lives.

Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita (1955). Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Press, 1984. (Pb)
A beautiful novel-of-authenticity, fusing romantic and empirical sensibilities in a way rather like the first two, otherwise
dissimilar, books I have listed.

Robert B. Reich

Robert B. Reich teaches political economy and management at Harvard's John E Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Reich is
the author of numerous books and articles concerning the relationships among law, politics and economics. Among his most
recent books are New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American System and The Next American Frontier. A former
Rhodes Scholar, Professor Reich has served in Washington as assistant to the solicitor general and as director of policy
planning for the Federal Trade Commission.

Whether the immediate problem is described as arms control, Soviet expansionism, economic growth and competitiveness or
social justice to the poor and disadvantaged—the deeper issue is the same. That is, how should we define the border between
"us" and "them"? Our overarching goal must be to expand the first realm ("us"), and contract the second ("them"). These books
suggest how we might begin this formidable task.

Fernand Braudel. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (1967, 1982-84). Sian Reynolds, trans. 3 vols. New York:
Harper & Row, 1985, 1986. (Pb)
Braudel weaves detailed threads into stirring tapestries. These volumes reveal the fragility of our societies—their
vulnerabilities to war, plague and human misery—but also, wondrously, their capacity to endure. Braudel is a master.

Ellis W. Hawley. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, 1934-1938 (1959). Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966. (Pb)
Hawley unwraps politics and finds economics. He then unwraps economics and finds ideology. He peers through ideology and
discovers our most basic hopes and fears for ourselves, our families and our nation. His insights explain much of our current
condition.

Joseph A. Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). New York: Harper & Row, 1983. (Pb)
This rich inkblot of a book is many different things to many different people. But above all else it suggests that the political and
economic universe we inhabit is in flux: it grows on itself, reaching outward in many directions at once, like organic matter.
Instead of equilibrium, there is omnipresent disequilibrium. Instead of secured values, there is the constant danger that values
we hold dear will be subsumed.

Samuel P. Huntington. American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (1981). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
(Pb)
Huntington skillfully identifies the yearnings at the heart of American politics. As a nation, we are always "to be," we never
are. We feel, alternatively, guilt, anxiety, anger and resolution about our ideals. But we are animated by myths that can never be
fulfilled. A powerful and critically important book.
John Kenneth Galbraith. The Affluent Society (1958). New York: New American Library, 1978. (Pb)
As fresh and insightful today as it was thirty years ago. Galbraith reconfigures our way of thinking about a nation's economy
and the society of which the economy is but a part. How do we define economic success? What do we want for ourselves,
anyway? The influence of this book, and of the towering figure behind it, cannot be overstated.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Pb)
I have learned more about American society, and, not incidentally, human nature, from reading and rereading Huck's accounts
of life on the Mississippi River than I have from any other single source. His knowledge always runs deep; his insights are on
target; he can smell duplicity from a mile away.

Michael J. Sandel

Michael J. Sandel is an associate professor of government at Harvard, where he teaches political philosophy. He is the author
of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. His course 'justice" consistently fills Sanders Theater, and he is regarded by
undergraduates as one of Harvard's best lecturers.

These seem to be among the books that can help us reflect on the moral and political conditions of liberal democracy in
contemporary America.

Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition (1958). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Pb)
Arendt offers the most compelling modern case for the ancient claim that politics is essential to the good life, not merely
instrumental to the pursuit of private interests and ends.

Sir Isaiah Berlin. Four Essays on Liberty (1969). New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. (Pb)
Berlin grounds liberalism in the idea that the human good is ultimately plural, that there is no single, overarching value that
orders all the rest. To acknowledge the tragic possibility that inheres in moral and political life is to respect above all people's
freedom to pursue their own ends, to negotiate their own moral circumstance.

G. W. F. Hegel. Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophic des Rechts, 1821). T. M. Knox, trans. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1965.
Hegel contrasts the idea of a civil society, where people cooperate to further their interests, with the idea of a political
community as an ethical life that enlarges the self-knowledge of the participants.

Fred Hirsch. Social Limits to Growth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. (Pb)
Hirsch recasts economics as political economy, and political economy as moral economy. Cost-benefit analysis to the contrary,
he shows that the market is not a neutral way of evaluating goods. Not all values can be translated without loss into commodity
values, nor does all economic growth produce greater welfare.

Michael J. Oakeshott. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962). New York and London: Methuen, 1981. (Pb)
Oakeshott's romantic conservatism contrasts powerfully (and eloquently) with more familiar libertarian versions. Against a
philosophy of abstract principles and natural rights, he conceives politics "as the pursuit of intimations."

John Rawls. A Theory of Justice (1971). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Rawls provides the most important philosophical defense of liberalism in our time. Individual rights cannot be overridden by
utilitarian considerations, he argues, and the principles of justice that specify our rights do not presuppose any particular
conception of the good life.

Samuel Thorne

Fifty-five years ago, Sam Thorne graduated from the Harvard Law School, where he now serves as the Charles Stebbins
Fairchild Professor of Legal History Emeritus. He has lectured "to generations" on medieval legal history. He wonders if
today's parents read to their children as his parents read Sir Walter Scott to him.
The books listed had a significant influence on me, sixty years ago, opening up a new field. They are superseded and out of
date today, their place being taken by more recent studies.
H. A. L. Fisher. Frederic William Maitland, Downing Professor of the Laws of England: A Biographical Sketch. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1910.
A biography of the great legal historian, which awakened and then nurtured my interest in the field on which my life has been
spent.

Edward Pollock and Frederic W. Maitland. The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (1895). 2 vols. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1968. (Pb)
A magnificent survey of the field, which may be understood by any literate layman, written in a style that is sure to enthuse the
reader.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Common Law (1881). Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. (Pb)
A valuable account of some of the great formative ideas of English law. It was one of the eye-opening books on law; one that I
read a number of times with the greatest interest.

C. H. Mcllwain. The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (1910). J. P. Mayer, ed. Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1979.
A work which threw new light on the history of Parliament and set its history in a new frame. It provided a fresh point of
departure and set the stage for much new and exciting work.
Heinrich Brunner. Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte (1871). Aalan (Germany): Scientia Verlag. 1967.
An epoch-making treatise. For many years the best authority on the history of the jury which set the much-disputed question in
a new light.

James Q. Wilson

James Wilson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University and professor of management at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to these appointments, Professor Wilson was chairman of Harvard's Task Force on
the Core Curriculum from 1976 to 1977; chairman of the Department of Government from 1969 to 1973; and director of the
Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT. and Harvard from 1963 to 1966. An expert on crime and the penal system, Professor
Wilson has served on numerous commissions and task forces including the attorney general's 1981 Task Force on Violent
Crime and the 1967 White House Task Force on Crime.

Aristotle. The Politics (ca. 335 B.c.). Carnes Lord, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
The greatest statement of human nature and political life ever written.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist [Papers] (1788). Benjamin F. Wright, ed. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1961. (Pb)
A brilliant subtle argument for a non-Aristotelian regime.

Chester I. Barnard. The Functions of the Executive (1938). Thirtieth anniversary ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1968. (Pb)
After nearly fifty years, it is still the best account of what it means to maintain cooperative human activity.

Philip Selznick. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation (1957). Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983. (Pb)
The runner-up to Barnard.

James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). New York: Random House, 1964. (Pb)
A brilliant account of how a man may sustain a powerful moral vision in an imperfect world.

Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (1915). Andrew MacAndrew, trans. New York: Bantam, 1981. (Pb)
An eerie foretelling of the notion of ideological fanaticism and totalitarianism.
Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt "K. Butzer, L. Freeman" The State
The Sources of Social Power M. Mann The State
Chiefdoms T.K. Earle The State

Peoples and Empires A. Pagden One-World Government

The Empire of the Steppes R. Grousset One-World Government
Millennium F. Fernandez-Armesto One-World Government

Hammurabi's Laws M.E.J. Richardson Law Codes

The Babylonians H.W.F. Sagg Law Codes
Babylon J. Oates Law Codes

A Matter of Principle R. Dworkin Equality of Humans

"Anarchy, State and Utopia" R. Nozick Equality of Humans
The Book of Chuang TzuChuang Tzu Equality of Humans

Why Do People Hate America? "Z. Sardar, M. Wyn" Anti-Americanism

Granta 77: What We Think of America Granta Anti-Americanism
The Paradox of American Power J.S. Nye Anti-Americanism

Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China A. Waley Law and Order

Masters of Chinese Political Thought S. De Grazia Law and Order
The Chinese Machiavelli "C. Ping, D. Bloodworth" Law and Order
The World of Thought in Ancient China B.I. Schwartz Law and Order

Republicanism P. Pettit Republican Government

Citizenship and Community A. Oldfield Republican Government
Civic Virtues R. Dagger Republican Government

William Beveridge J. Harris Universal Welfare

The Evolution of the British Welfare StateD. Fraser Universal Welfare
The Welfare State Reader "F.G. Castles, C. Pearson" Universal Welfare
Seeing the Stars J.C. Scott Universal Welfare

Hayek and Modern Liberalism C. Kukathas Spontaneous Social Order

Hayek's Social and Political Thought R. Kley Spontaneous Social Order
Hayek on Liberty J. Gray Spontaneous Social Order
The Economics of Friedrich Hayek G.R. Steele Spontaneous Social Order

Little Red Book of Quotations Mao Maoist Communism

Mao J. Spence Maoist Communism
The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung S. Schram Maoist Communism
Wild Swans J. Chang Maoist Communism

Alfred Nobel K. Fant Nuclear Weapons

The Making of the Atomic Bomb R. Rhodes Nuclear Weapons
The Struggle Against the Bomb L.S. Wittner Nuclear Weapons
Red Alert P. George Nuclear Weapons
Dr. Strangelove S. Kubrick Nuclear Weapons

"Nietzsche's Ethics and His War on ""Morality""" S. May Might is Right

"Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality"R. Schacht Might is Right
On the Genealogy of Morality "K. Ansell, Nietzsche" Might is Right

On War C. von Clausewitz Total War

Reading Clausewitz M. Howard Total War
The Shield of Achilles P. Bobbitt Total War
The Age of Terrorism W. Laqueur Terrorism
The Guerrilla Reader W. Laqueur Terrorism
The Terrorism Reader W. Laqueur Terrorism
Political Terrorism P. Wilkinson Terrorism
The Secret Agent J. Conrad Terrorism
The Honorary Consul G. Greene Terrorism

Nationalism E. Gellner Nationalism

Imagined Communities B. Anderson Nationalism
The Invention of Tradition "E. Hobsbawm, T. Ranger" Nationalism
"Romanticism, Nationalism and the Revolt aganst Theory" D. Simpson Nationalism
La Cocarde Tricolore H. Cogniard Nationalism

The Socialist Idea "L. Kolakowski, S. Hampshire" Socialism

The Utopian Alternative C.J. Guarnieri Socialism
Left Luggage C. Northcote Parkinson Socialism

Reflections on the Revolution in France E. BurkeConservatism

Melincourt T.L. Peacock Conservatism
Rationalism in Politics M. Oakeshott Conservatism
The Meaning of Conservatism R. Scruton Conservatism

American Suffrage from Property to Democracy C. Williamson Representative Democracy

Democracy in America "H.C. Mansfield, D. Winthrop" Representative Democracy
The American Commonwealth J. Bryce Representative Democracy

Utopia T. More Utopia

The Faber Book of Utopia J. Carey Utopia
The Origins of Inequality J.-J. Rousseau Utopia
The Fourth Great Awakening R.W. Fogel Utopia
Inequality Reexamined A. Sen Utopia

The Republic Plato Rule by Elite

The Open Society and its Enemies K. Popper Rule by Elite
Philosopher-Kings C.D.C. Reeve Rule by Elite
Saving the City M. Schofield Rule by Elite

Man and the State J. Maritain Separation of Church and State

Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages R.W. Southern Separation of Church and State
Hadrian VII F.W. Rolfe Separation of Church and State
In the Shoes of the Fisherman M. West Separation of Church and State

The Divine Right of Kings J.R. Figgis Divine Right of Kings

The Problem of Sovereignty in the Middle Ages M. Wilks Divine Right of Kings
Foundations of Modern Political Thought Q. Skinner Divine Right of Kings

Renaissance Thought P.O. Kristeller Meritocracy

Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy R. BlackMeritocracy
Essays M. de Montaigne Meritocracy

The Social Contract J.-J. Rousseau General Will

The General Will A. Levine General Will
The General Will before Rousseau P. Riley General Will

Demanding the Impossible D. Morland Anarchism

Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism C. CahmAnarchism
Memoirs of a Revolutionist P. Kropotkin Anarchism
Mikhail Bakunin A. Kelly Anarchism
Hegel's Theory of the Modern State S. Avineri Unchallengeable State
Hegel and the State E. Weil Unchallengeable State
1984 G. Orwell Unchallengeable State
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich A. Solzhenitsyn Unchallengeable State

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience H.D. Thoreau Civil Disobedience

A Testament of Hope J.M. Washington Civil Disobedience
Gandhi and Civil Disobedience J.M. Brown Civil Disobedience
The Rebel A. Camus Civil Disobedience

The Sword and the Scepter G. RitterWar Improves Society

Militarism V.R. Bergahahn War Improves Society
The German Idea of Militarism N. Stargardt War Improves Society
The Man on Horseback S. Finer War Improves Society

Fascism and the Far Right in Europe M. Blinkhorn Fascism

Three Faces of Fascism E. Nolte Fascism
Der Europaische Burgerkrieg E. Nolte Fascism
Mussolini D. Mack Smith Fascism
Hitler I. Kershaw Fascism
Goodbye to Berlin C. Isherwood Fascism

The Machiavellian Moment J.G.A. Pocock Citizen-Warrior

Conscription and Democracy G.Q. Flynn Citizen-Warrior
Why the West Has Won V. Davis Hanson Citizen-Warrior

Conciliarism and Papalism "J.H. Burns, T. Izbicki" Social Contract

The Apostolic Conciliarism of Jean Gerson J. Ryan Social Contract
Marsilius of Padua A. Gerwith Social Contract
A Theory of Justice J. Rawls Social Contract

The Prince "D. Wootton, Machiavelli"State Interest

Machiavelli's Virtue H.C. Mansfield State Interest

"The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic" J.C.A. Gaskin State of Nature
Nature and Politics A. Rapaczynski State of Nature
Lord of the Flies W. Golding State of Nature

Emile J.-J. Rousseau Human Rights

The Rights of Man T. Paine Human Rights
To Kill a Mockingbird H. Lee Human Rights
An American Dream N. Mailer Human Rights

Paine, Thomas, English, 1737-1809.

Rights of Man. Rec: Good Reading Ward
Common Sense. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Hugo Grotius and International Relations H. Bull International Order

Vitoria: Political Writings "J. Laurence, A. Pagden" International Order

Apologetica historia sumaria B. de las Casas Human Unity

The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the New World L. Hanke Human Unity
Melincourt T.L. Peacock Human Unity
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: THEORY
Denis Derbyshire

Whatever our views about the way we are governed and the people who occupy positions of power, the business of government
is something we cannot avoid: it is all-pervading. Despite this, there is an alarming degree of ignorance and apathy about the
institutions and workings of government and the political process itself. The teaching of government in schools is generally not
well done, apart from some notable exceptions. The dilemma facing teachers and educational authorities is that of achieving
impartiality and balance. They feel they must lean over backwards to avoid charges of political bias and yet, in truth, to try to
understand government without considering the dynamic political process is like studying the human body by visiting a
mortuary.
There are many books about government in Britain and other individual countries but relatively few that attempt to cover a
wider canvas. The dearth of books on politics as an activity is also evident.

I ... could not help reflecting in my way upon the singular ill-luck of this my dear
country, which, as long as I can ever remember it, and as far back as I have read,
has always been governed by the only two or three people, out of two or three
millions, totally incapable of governing, and unfit to be trusted.
4TH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

In Defence of Politics (1982) by Bernard Crick. The most perceptive, and readable, description of the political process.

The Nature of Politics (1965) by J D B Miller. Covering much the same ground as Crick but less of a polemic, and hence, not
quite as readable.

The English Constitution (1867) by Walter Bagehot. The definitive account of the British system of government in the 19th
century, which became the model for parliamentary democracy all over the world. The Fontana edition 1988 has a perceptive
foreword by R H S Crossman.

The Penguin Dictionary of Politics (1985) by David Robertson. A useful compilation of contemporary political ideas and
institutions.

World Political Systems: An Introduction to Comparative Government (1991) by J Denis Derbyshire and Ian Derbyshire.
An assessment of the political systems and political ideologies of all the world's nation states, assuming no prior knowledge.

Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction (1987) by Rod Hague and Martin Harrop. A useful introduction to
comparative government, again assuming little or no prior knowledge.

Comparative Government (1986) by Roger Charlton. Another introduction to comparative government. Designed primarily
for school sixth-formers or first-year non-specialist undergraduates, but also suitable for the general reader.

BRITISH POLITICS: 20TH CENTURY

Ian D Derbyshire

Unique in Western Europe in being free from invasion for more than 900 years and having escaped violent revolution during
the last three centuries, Britain is unusual in having an unwritten constitution or external `supreme court' watchdog, a
hereditary monarch as head of state, an unelected, substantially hereditary, upper chamber, and a `winner-takes- all' first-past-
the-post, rather than proportionally based, electoral system. As a consequence, the political executive, when backed by a clear
party majority in the House of Commons, has unrestrained authority to make considerable changes to the direction of national
life. This was seen in the cases of the Liberal administration 1906-14, the Attlee Labour government of 1945-51, and the
Conservative Thatcher administration of 1979-90, which carried out sweeping pro-grammes of constitutional, social, and
economic reforms. During other periods, although the Conservatives have dominated a predominantly two-party system, a
largely centrist consensus had been adhered to.

I'm sure I was wrong on a number of occasions, but I cannot

think of anything immediately.
MARGARET THATCHER
The British Polity (1994) by Philip Norton. An excellent, lucid, and accessible text on the institutions and processes of
contemporary British politics, written by one of the country's foremost political scientists. Norton, in his coverage of the
political culture, the constitution, Parliament, the monarchy, the electoral and party systems, and the roles of interest groups
and the mass media, draws attention to elements of continuity and change, and makes insightful comparisons to the US
political system.

The British Prime Minister (1985) edited by Anthony King. An outstanding collection of essays by leading political scientists
analysing the changing role of the key office in the British political system, that of prime minister. With the growing influence
of the mass media and the development of a sophisticated `Number Ten' private office, the position has become almost
presidential, with power being notably concentrated by Margaret Thatcher.

Britain since 1945: A Political History (1992) by David Childs. A popular, read-able, and reliable overview of political
developments in Britain, covering the period from the election of Clement Attlee's Labour administration in the July 1945
postwar general election to the re-election of John Major's Conservative Parry in April 1992. Organized in chronological
chapters, based around the 11 postwar administrations, the book also includes useful information on the changing social
backcloth.

Ruling Performance: British Government from Attlee to Thatcher (1987) edited by Peter Henessy and Anthony Seldon.
This fine work contains eight separate chapters, written by distinguished political scientists and historians, analysing the
records of the Labour and Conservative administrations that held office between 1945 and 1987, as well as two general
background and overview chapters. Particular attention is given to differing cabinet styles, interministerial relations, the degree
to which manifesto pledges were redeemed, and the treatment of public expenditure.

Churchill (1993) edited by Robert Blake and William Roger Louis. This volume complements the multivolume official
biography by Martin Gilbert of Britain's greatest 20th-century statesman, its outstanding war leader, and one of its most
colourful politicians, who held ministerial office as first a liberal and then a Conservative. 29 chapters, contributed by leading
political scienrists and historians, analyse various aspects of Churchill's career, ideology, and record.

Labour in Power 1945-1951 (1985) by Kenneth 0 Morgan. An outstanding account of the achievements and failures of
Clement Attlee 's Labour administration of 1945-51, which, with its welfare state and nationalization initiatives, set the agenda
for the postwar era until a Thatcherite `counter-revolution' was launched from 1979. Morgan provides expert analysis of the
policies, programmes, and personalities of the administration.

One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (1991) by Hugo Young. A towering figure in the postwar political landscape,
Margaret Thatcher, the century's longest-serving prime minister (1979-90), shattered the centrist `Butskellite' consensus that
had prevailed between the 1950s and 1970s and sought to impose a new free-market, individualist, and nationalistic right-of-
centre consensus. A controversial figure, Thatcher has been the subject of numerous biographies and has also written her own
lengthy account, The Downing Street Years (1993), of her terms in office. This is the definitive biography.

Conservative Century: the Conservative Party since 1900 (1994) edited by Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball. Alone or in
coalition, the Conservative Party has held power for almost two-thirds of the period since 1900, establishing itself as the
'dominant party' in a somewhat skewed two-and-a-half-party system. This edited volume provides a comprehensive analysis of
the structure of the Conservative Party, its sup-port base, social and regional, its internal factional and ideological divisions, its
public image, its leaders, and its record in power.

A Short History of the Labour Party (1993) by Henry Pelling. An excellent, succinct account of the Labour Party, from its
founding at its February 1900 conference to its defeat in the April 1992 general election and the appointment of John Smith as
leader, heralding a revival in the party's fortunes. Pelling, a social historian, discusses the role of trade unions within the party,
the relationship of the rank and file with the parliamentary leadership, the record of Labour administrations, and the ideological
divisions that, periodically, have led to electorally crippling splits.

A Short History of the Liberal Party 1900-92 (1993) by Chris Cook. An engaging analysis of the changing fortunes of the
country's `third force'. Up to the close of World War I, the Liberal Party, under the leadership of Asquith and Lloyd George,
was the country's leading progressive, centre-left force and the predominant parry of government. Subsequently eclipsed by the
rise of Labour, as the franchise was extended, the liberals regressed into third-parry oblivion until the 1962 by-election triumph
in Orpington signalled something of a revival, and in the 1983 general election the liberal-led lib-SDP Alliance attracted a
quarter of the national vote.
US POLITICS: 20TH CENTURY
Ian D Derbyshire

The US political system, with its distinct separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers and its strong federal system,
has been copied by a number of newly emergent states, but remains in many ways unique. It is characterized by a classic two-
party system, but one in which parry discipline is notoriously weak, as is ideological cohesion. Instead, the political process is
highly atomized, with politicians acting largely as `freelances', raising their own finance to fight hugely expensive election
contests and working in Congress to promote the interests of their own constituencies. At the apex of the political system
stands the president, who, as both the constitutional head of state and the chief executive, provides unity, vision, and direction
to the political process. Strong presidents, through force of personality and empathy with changing national sentiment, have
been able to transform the direction of US politics. This was true of F D Roosevelt, who launched the New Deal during the
1930s, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, who oversaw the Great Society reforms of the 1960s, and Ronald Reagan, who
re-established the Republicans as the dominant force in the 1980s. At other times of weak presidential leadership, Congress has
asserted itself, resulting in a gridlocked political process.

In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment

is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out very sharply
against self-centred opinion, the common interests very largely elude public
opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose
personal interests reach beyond the locality.
WALTER LIPPMANN

The Government and Politics of the United States (1993) by Nigel Bowles. A broad-ranging textbook introduction to
American political institutions and processes, set in their historical context. The particular focus is on the evolving
constitutional framework and the federal government system.

The Uncertain Power: A Political History of the United States since 1929 (1990) by Robert Garson and Christopher J
Bailey. A succinct history of American political developments, economic social changes, and the country's role in international
affairs between the Great Depression and the Bush presidency.

Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (1990) by Richard
Elliott Neustadt. A classic, subtle study of the modem presidency. Neustadt, a Harvard professor, notes that the USA has a
'government of separated institutions sharing powers' and shows, consequently, president and Congress to be locked in a
complex relationship of mutual dependence. The underlying theme of the work is presidential weakness - that is, the gap
between what is expected of presidents and their capacity to deliver - and the attempts by such strong presidents as Roosevelt,
Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan to bridge this gap through their personalities.

The New American Political System (1990) edited by Anthony King. This excel-lent work, comprising analytical chapters
written by leading American political scientists, explains the key changes which have taken place in the US political system
during recent decades, in the post-Watergate era. There are chapters on the presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court of Warren
Burger and William Rehnquist, political parties, the electorate, the media, interest groups, federalism, and ideology.

The US Congress (1989) by Christopher J Bailey. A clear, analytical description of the organization and procedures of the US
Senate and House of Representatives, which treats Congress as a dynamic institution whose structure has varied over time.
Bailey focuses on membership and leadership of Congress, the role of parties, and the constitutional framework, and explains
why the committee system is so powerful and how it works.

The Power Game: How Washington Works (1988) by Hedrick Smith. A fascinating, vivid account which takes the reader
deep into the corridors of power in Washington and shows how Washington really works, describing the pressures exerted by
lobbyists, the `constant campaign', the influence of money from political action committees, the emphasis on image and
presentation, and the weakening of party discipline.

Franklin D Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (1963) by William E Leuchtenburg. A classic account of the
transformation brought about in American politics and society by the Democratic president F D Roosevelt, who responded to
the challenge of the Great Depression by instituting an interventionist programme of federal government support for farmers,
the unemployed, and the aged. In the process, Roosevelt achieved an electoral coalition that established the Democrats as the
majority parry in the country for five decades.

President Kennedy: Profile of Power (1993) by Richard Reeves. A detailed narrative account of the `thousand days'
presidency of the charismatic Democrat John F Kennedy between 1961 and 1963. Reeves reveals Kennedy, the first Roman
Catholic to become president, to have been an enormously ambitious, charming, and risk-taking politician, but one who lacked
a clear vision from the outset of what he sought to achieve during his administration.

Nixon (1987-91) by Stephen E Ambrose. A definitive account in three volumes of the dramatic political career of the
Republican professional politician Richard M Nixon, the only US president to be forced to resign from office. Volume 1 covers
the period 1913-62, when Nixon's career seemed to have been finished by defeats in challenges for the US presidency and
governorship of California. Volume 2, 1962-72, encompasses Nixon's two victories in the presidential elections of 1968 and
1972. Volume 3, 1973-90, covers the Watergate scandal, which brought about his fall from power, and his later recovery in the
1980s as an `elder statesman' and a prolific writer.

President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (1991) by Lou Cannon. A detailed biographical account of the career and
presidency of Ronald Reagan, the movie star turned politician, by a political correspondent for the Washington Post, who had
earlier `tracked' Reagan when he was governor of California. Cannon believes the major contribution of Reagan, the `Great
Communicator', to have been a revival of national confidence, but criticizes him for taking his role as president `too lightly'.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Ian D Derbyshire

International relations is a term used to cover all interactions between state-based actors across state boundaries. The subject is
multidisciplinary, encompassing inter-national politics and history, military and strategic studies, transnational economic
relationships, and international law. During recent centuries the focus has been on
Great Power relationships, the balance of power, and the an of diplomacy. Between 1945 and 1991, during what became known
as the Cold War era, international relations were dominated by the global ideological, political, and military battle between
communism and liberal democratic free-market capitalism. More recently, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet
empire, the focus has shifted to international inter-dependencies, as regional economic and political power blocs have become
more developed, and the attention of the `developed world' has been redirected towards the policing of relatively localized
national and ethnic conflicts within the periphery and semiperiphery.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon

real favours from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience
must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
GEORGE WASHINGTON

An Introduction to International Relations (1994) by P A Reynolds. This popular text explores the nature and structure of
international relations. Reynolds examines both `microinternational relations' - that is, individual national objectives and
motivations - and `macrointernational relations', or international state systems and behavioural systems. The author emphasizes
the increasing complexity of international relations as non-state actors, notably multinational corporations, have grown in
imponance and interdependencies have developed.

The Structure of International Society (1995) by Geoffrey Stern. An up-to-date multidisciplinary historical analysis of the
origins, development, and early networks of international relations, and exposition of the diverse ways in which modem
'international society' has been defined and interpreted. Such key concepts as sovereignty, nationalism, balance of power,
national interest, and interdependence are expertly addressed.

Classic Readings of International Relations (1994) edited by Phil Williams, Donald M Goldstein, and Jay M Shafritz. A
collection of extracts from classic books and articles by major political thinkers, statesmen, and academics. The 58 readings
include pieces by Sun Tzu, written in the 4th century BC, Machiavelli from the early 16th century, von Clausewitz from the
18th century, Hobson and Lenin from the early 20th century, and Immanuel Wallerstein and Paul Kennedy in the late 20th
century.
Diplomacy (1994) by Henry Kissinger. A magisterial overview of the history of diplomacy over the course of three centuries,
from Cardinal Richelieu, the founder of the modem state system, to the contemporary `New World Order', by one of the 20th
century's greatest exponents of the an. Kissinger, secretary of state under the US Republican presidents Nixon and Ford and an
adherent to pragmatic realpolitik, based on a hard headed analysis of the balance of regional and global power, argues that
America, protected by its own idealistic streak, has, in other times, pursued a unique, transformatory foreign policy.

The Struggle for Mastery in Europe (1954) by A J P Taylor. A classic account, by one of Britain's greatest historians, of Great
Power rivalries in Europe between the failed revolutions of 1848 and the close of World War I, with the associated collapse of
the Austrian Habsburg, Russian tsarist, and Turkish Ottoman ancien regimes. Taylor analyses the material, military, and
ideological motivations behind the shifting alliances of this period, and sketches the characters of the leading personalities,
notably Otto von Bismarck.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1988) by Paul
Kennedy. A hugely popular and influential work which, based on an analysis of five centuries of world history, argues that the
rise and fall of great military powers is ultimately determined by the material resources at their disposal. Seized upon at the
time as a critique of the adverse economic consequences of 'imperial America's' high defence burden, it can be seen, in
retrospect, as providing a compelling explanation for the sudden collapse of the Soviet empire between 1989 and 1991.

The World that Came in from the Cold (1993) by Gabriel Pantos. A very readable account of the Cold War era, between
1945 and 1991, based on around 200 interviews for a BBC World Service radio series. The major themes and events of the
decades after World War II are surveyed, encompassing the spread of the Soviet Union's global influence into Africa and W
Asia to the late 1970s, the detente era and the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991. Participants from both East and
West tell their own stories.

The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989) by Zbigniew Brzezinski. An
influential and prophetic book by one of the USA's leading strategic thinkers, secretary of state during the Democrat Carter
administration. Completed in 1988, this work anticipated the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, as a result of its
economic failures, and the dangerous resurgence of nationalism in Eastern Europe. Characterized as 'the twentieth century's
most extraordinary political and intellectual aberration', communism has been one of the century's most influential ideologies,
leading to an exaltation of the state and the division of the world into two contending blocs.

International Politics: States, Power and Conflict since 1945 (1992) by G R Berridge. This introductory text focuses on
states, the conflicts that divide them, the instruments they employ to pursue their ideals and secure their interests, and the
system of rules and institutions through which conflicts are worked out. There are chapters on United Nations peacekeeping
and welfare works, secret intelligence, propaganda, the world economy, and economic statecraft.

World Conflicts: Why and Where They Are Happening (1992) by Patrick Brogan. A regionally arranged historical account
of the genesis and development of international and ethnic conflicts in more than 40 states and disrupted territories in the
world. The work includes coverage of the collapse of the Soviet empire 1989-91, the Gulf War of 1990-91, and the outbreak of
civil war in 1991 in the former states of Yugoslavia. Valuable, informative, and readable.

HUMAN RIGHTS
Nigel Wright

It is an impossibly difficult task to select the best books on human rights. I could have drawn up dozens of lists of `must-read'
books. From Martin Luther King to Gandhi and Mandela, prison has inspired some of the world's best minds to produce some
of the world's best literature. It is an unfortunate fact that good literature, by its power, makes its authors a target of tyrannical
regimes. With almost painful reluctance I was forced to discard some truly great works. Much of my inspiration for human-
rights work comes not only from accounts of the terrible ordeals that people suffer, but also from fiction that depicts the
strength and individuality of human beings. My list includes the relatively obscure Hanging Tree, and a comic novel to help
you get through some of the others. The dazzling flashes of humour from Sachs assured his inclusion, and Keenan's account of
his ordeal as a hostage is simply among the best-written work to be produced in the 1990s.

Words like freedom', justice', `democracy' are not common concepts;

on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what
these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive
at the respect for other people that these words imply.
JAMES BAu wIN

The Hanging Tree (1994) by Vic Gatrell. Compelling study which explodes the myth of the mob, revealing what the British
people really thought about executions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

I, Rigoberta Menchu: Indian Woman in Guatemala (1983) by Rigoberta Menchti. The riveting story of the Guatemalan
Nobel Peace laureate.

A Boy's Own Story (1982) by Edmund White. A beautifully written story of how a young boy tries to grow and develop in his
own way and, as often happens, his family and society cannot cope with anything that is `different'.

The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1978) by Albie Sachs. A brilliant account of his ordeal in solitary confinement in South Africa.

An Evil Cradling (1992) by Brian Keenan. The pick of the Lebanese hostage books.

The Periodic Table (1975; translated 1984) by Primo Levi. Marvellously written novel from someone who experienced at first
hand life and near death in a Nazi concentration camp.

Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler. A grim, but compelling, account of how a totalitarian system is not satisfied with
imprisoning or executing dissent, but tries to destroy an individual's will to live.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera. A novel that vividly portrays totalitarian society-.

The Songlines (1991) by Bruce Chatwin. A moving description of a people and their culture and what happens when others,
who do not understand them, persecute and try to destroy them instead.

Brrm! Brrm! (1991) by Clive James. Not an obvious human-rights choice, but very funny. It shows how much can be
misunderstood between different cultures. It also represents the author's desire to understand and appreciate a culture that has
caused his family great suffering as a result of the war against Japan.
Psychology

Psychology, like sociology, has been a characteristic 20th-century study, with political, social and artistic implications beyond
the horizons of formal science. At one extreme, it is a physical science, the study of the mechanisms of the brain. emotion and
instinct. (The comparative study of animal behaviour is a branch held by many "human" psychologists to be irrelevant.) At the
other extreme, it concerns the analytical observation of behaviour, particularly that of the individual in his relationships with
himself and his environment. In the work of many psychologists (including some of the most controversial) science is
inextricably blended with philosophy: observation of behaviour and response leads to programmatic theories. The books here
collected reflect but can never comprise the whole spectrum from scientific detachment to prescriptive dogmatism: their style
is accessible; their subject is nothing less than the wellsprings of man himself.
See BIOGRAPHY (Jones); MEDICINE (Freud, Laing, Kovel. Sutherland, Szasz, Wing); NATURAL HISTORY (Aitchison,
Ardrey, Lorenz); PHILOSOPHY (Ryle, Schopenhauer); SOCIOLOGY (Jacoby, Mead, G. H.); RELIGION (James)

Adler, Alfred, Austrian, 1870-1937.

Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation. Rec: Boston PL

Argyle, M. Bodily Communication (1975)

Soberly written, effective demonstration that social psychologists can help us to understand the unspoken messages our bodies
send out whenever we are with other people. Also: Person to Person; Social Skills and Mental Health. See ANTHROPOLOGY
(Hall)

Ariès, Philippe, French, 1914-1984.

The Hour of Our Death. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
This remarkable book--the fruit of almost two decades of study--traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes
toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day.

Aronson, Elliott The Social Animal (1976)

Social psychology is one of the fastest-growing (and most obviously practical) areas of psychology today. "Fun" text; delicious
pictures (by Saul Steinberg). Serious science presented in a winning way.

Baddeley, A. D. The Psychology of Memory ( l 976)

Comprehensive review of what experimental psychologists can tell us about the way our memories work. Not an easy read, but
the practical nature of the subject makes it an important book. See also Francis A. Yates: The Art of Memory (1966)

Berne, Eric Games People Play (1964)

This popular book by a prominent Californian psychiatrist is readable at two levels: for its amusing accounts of the games
people really do play with one another (sometimes without being aware of it), and for its insights into typical human behaviour
patterns. You'll certainly recognize your friends (if not yourself) in these pages.

Bettelheim, Bruno, Austrian-American writing in English, 1903-1990.

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Imporantance of Fairy Tales. Rec: NYPL

Birren, J. E. The Psychology of Ageing (1964)

Despite its own increasing age, still one of the best single sources of information about an area in which psychologists have
made a vital contribution.

Brown, Norman O., American, 1913-2002.

Love's Body. Rec: LAT
Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Brown, Roger Social Psychology (1965) a Lucid treatment of some key topics in social psychology. Choice of themes is
idiosyncratic, but the discussion is elegant and entertaining.

Burton, Robert Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

In this, one of the great and curious books of the English literary past, Burton undertook to analyse the symptoms, causes, and
cure of "this atra bilis, this melancholy," which was one of the favourite medical concerns of his time. His book is filled with
digressions and quirky asides on every subject, but its ideas are surprisingly up-to-date. Endorsed by Johnson. Sterne and
Lamb.

Burton, Robert, English, 1577-1640.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Rec: Bloom

Clarke, A. M. and A. D. B. Early Experience: Myth and Evidence (1976)

Devastating attack on the idea that what happens to you in the first few years of life has a disproportionate influence on what
sort of person you turn out to be. Difficult, challenging. Also: Mental Deficiency: The Changing Outlook

Donaldson, Margaret Children's Minds (1978)

Clear account of how children's minds develop. Essential reading for all interested in education; style tempered to non-
specialists (parents?). Also: A Study of Children's Thinking

Erikson, Erik Childhood and Society (1950)

An influential work: Erikson's calm common sense comes as a relief after some of the extravagances of the psychoanalysts.

Eysenck, H. J. Psychology Is About People (1972) a Psychological angle on a number of controversial issues: pornography,
politics, sex, the effectiveness of psychotherapy, etc. Excellent advertisement for the usefulness of the social scientific
approach. Like all popularizers. Evsenck seems frivolous to some specialists, heterodox and simplistically propagandist to
others. But he has a gift for clear exposition: a useful start. Also: Uses and Abuses of Psychology; Fact and Fiction in
Psychology; Know Your Own IQ, etc

Frankl, Victor, Austrian, 1905-1997.

Man's Search for Meaning. Rec: Boston PL

Freud, Sigmund, Austrian, 1856-1939.

Selected Works. Rec: Colcc91 (Selections)
The Case of Dora. Rec: Harvard
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Three Case Histories. Rec: National Review
Major Works. Rec: GBWW
The Interpretation of Dreams. Rec: Adler Boston PL Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 National Review NYPL Seymour-Smith Ward
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (General Introduction to Psychoanalysis). Rec: Adler Aquinas Good Reading SJC
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Fadiman 4
Civilization and Its Discontents. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 TLS
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Rec: Adler

Fromm, Erich, German-American writing in German, 1900-1980.

Fear of Freedom (Also known as Escape from Freedom). Rec: TLS

Goffman, Erving, Canadian, 1922-1982.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Rec: TLS

Gray, John, American, 1951- .

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Rec: Boston PL

Groddeck, Georg The Book of the It

Extraordinary book about the unconscious—what Groddeck calls the It—that was written independently, so the story goes, of
Freud's work (Freud called It the Id). Funny, touching, undeniable.

Hilgard, E. R. and Atkinson, R. C. Introduction to Psychology (1953) IPa

Comprehensive introductory textbook, used by a generation of first-year students. Regularly updated (7th edition, 1979,
recommended); clearly written.

Hillman, James, American, 1926- .

The Dream and the Underworld. Rec: LAT
We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--and the World's Getting Worse (With Michael Ventura). Rec: Utne
James, William, American, 1842-1910.
The Principles of Psychology. Rec: Adler Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW
Psychology, Briefer Course. Rec: SJC

Jaynes, Julian, American, 1923- .

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Rec: LAT

Jones, Ernest, Welsh, 1879-1958.

The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Jung, Carl Psychology and Religion: East and West (1958) P *

Jung is the psychotherapist of our century who was most open to religion and to other subjective (non-scientific?)
considerations. This volume shows the immense range of his sympathies, and includes such classics as his "Answer to Job" and
"Aron". Also: Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; Man and His Symbols, etc

Jung, Carl Gustav, Swiss writing in German, 1875-1961.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS
Psychological Types. Rec: Seymour-Smith
Psychology of the Unconscious. Rec: Boston PL
Analytical Psychology. Rec: Aquinas

Kamin, L. J. The Science and Politics of 10 (1974)

Savage, influential attack on the idea that K2 is largely inherited. The subject is a major one for specialists: laymen will find
this glimpse into the professional jungle riveting; they may find Eysenck (qv) a helpful guide.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, Swiss-American writing in English, 1926-2004.

On Death and Dying. Rec: NYPL (psychology)

Laing, R. D., Scottish, 1927-1989.

The Divided Self. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Lindsay, P. H. and Norman, D. A. Human Information Processing (1977) da

Standard textbook both on how we perceive and what we do with what we perceive. Scientific basis for psychology usefully,
clearly explored. Should be read with Oatley (qv).

Lorenz, Konrad, Austrian, 1903-1989.

On Aggression. Rec: Boston PL TLS
King Solomon's Ring: New Light on Animal Ways. Rec: NYPL
Man Meets Dog. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Luria, A. The Working Brain (1973)

The physiology of the brain: essential background to all psychological study, clearly laid out. Neuropsychology is a vital area
today; Luria is one of the leading and most lucid practitioners.

McLeish, John Soviet Psychology (1975)

Straightforward account of some notably neglected and even vilified figures in the 20th-century history of psychology.
Undogmatic, unpolitical and clear accounts of theories. Also: The Science of Behaviour

Mandler, G. Mind and Emotion (1975)

Emotion is not precisely "sited" in the brain—so where or what is it7 Mandler, a well known cognitive psychologist, sets out
the necessary clues, including the view that interpretation of emotion maybe the essential key to the understanding of the
balance between heart and mind.

Maslow, Abraham, American, 1908-1970.

Motivation and Personality. Rec: Boston PL

May, Rollo, American, 1909-1994.

Love and Will. Rec: Hungry Mind
Miller, G. A. and Buckhout, R. Psychology: the Science of Mental Life (1970) Pa*
Excellent general introduction; technical, but accessible with perseverance.

Miller, Alice, Swiss writing in German, 1923- .

The Drama of the Gifted Child. Rec: Utne

Murphy, Gardner Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology (1972)

Psychology is one of the oldest studies of mankind although modern researchers often ignore or despise earlier discoveries,
insights and concepts. This worthy account of the history of the subject is a good balance to other volumes on this list.

Oatley, Keith Perceptions and Representations (1978)

Accessible, if demanding adjunct to Lindsay (qv).

Pavlov, Ivan, Russian, 1849-1936.

Conditioned Reflexes. Rec: Boston PL

Piaget, Jean, Swiss writing in French, 1896-1980.

Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. Rec: Boston PL

Rogers, Carl R., American, 1902-1987.

On Becoming a Person. Rec: LAT

Rutter, Michael Maternal Deprivation Reassessed (1972)

Effective debunking of the idea that young children will inevitably suffer unless brought up exclusively by their own mothers.
Describes the quality of mothering a child requires to develop normally. Aggressive; dogmatic; stimulating. See
ANTHROPOLOGY (Kitzinger)

Skinner, B. F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) P*

Skinner is the controversial exponent of behaviourism (the doctrine which rejects assessment of subjective or introspective
accounts of individual response in favour of exclusive concentration on theobjectively measurable). He treads ably and
thrillingly the borderline between psychology and philosophy: a stimulating, heterodox figure. Also: Science and Human
Behaviour, Walden Two (novel)

Skinner, B. F., American, 1904-1990.

Walden Two. Rec: NYPL
Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Rec: Boston PL LAT Seymour-Smith

Walker, S. Learning and Reinforcement (1975) a

Representative title from the Essential Psychology series (herewith recommended): short, crisp summary introductions to all
aspects of the subject.

Warr, P. and Wall, T. Work and Well-being(1975)

Sober, sensible discussion of research findings in an area of enormous significance as we consider the post-industrial age.

Watson, John, American, 1878-1958.

Behaviorism. Rec: Boston PL

Watson, R. I. The Great Psychologists: From Aristotle to Freud (1971) a

Zimbardo, P. G. and Ruch, F. L. Psychology and Life (1975) Mammoth review of the subject; not only describes what
psychologists have discovered about human behaviour but also demonstrates the relevance of laboratory work to everyday life.
Also: Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It

Robert Coles

Robert Coles is a research psychiatrist for the Harvard University Health Services, as well as professor of psychiatry and
medical humanities at the Harvard Medical School. Since 1963, he has served as a consultant to the Southern Regional Council
on "Psychiatric Aspects of Desegregation in the South." Among his thirty-five books are Children of Crisis (in five volumes)
and Erik H. Erikson: The Growth of His Work. In May 1981, Dr. Coles received a grant from the John D. and Catherine
MacArthur Foundation. He is now working in countries such as Northern Ireland and South Africa on the question of political
socialization, studying the way children of various nations obtain their political convictions and moral values.

The Bible.
I keep the Bible on my desk, and go back again and again to the Psalms, to certain passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah, to Matthew
and Luke, to passages in St. Paul's letters—Corinthians, Romans.

George Eliot. Middlemarch (1871-72). New York: Bantam, 1985. (Pb)

George Eliot's Middlemarch has been a companion since college days. I've read it three times—at different times in my life. I
teach it at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. Its moral power is compelling: it makes one stop and think about
what this life's purposes ought to be.

Walker Percy. The Moviegoer (1961). New York: Avon, 1979. (Pb)
Similarly with Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, a wonderfully comic yet intensely serious examination, in the tradition of
Kierkegaard, of this "present age." I use The Moviegoer, too, in teaching undergraduates and medical students, and find it quite
helpful in a course I teach at the Harvard Business School—an examination of ethical issues through certain novels and short
stories.

Georges Bernanos. The Diary of a Country Priest (1936). Pamela Morris, trans. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1984. (Pb)
Ignazio Silone. Bread and Wine (1937). Harvey Ferguson, Jr., trans. New York: New American Library, 1980. (Pb)
The Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos and Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone are long-standing favorites of mine
—their evocation of the pastoral (as opposed to the prophetic), a constant help against certain occupational hazards that
accompany writing and teaching.

Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit (1857). Harvey P. Sucksmith, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. (Pb)
The later novels of Dickens mean a lot to me—especially Little Dorrit. I grew up hearing Dickens read aloud by my parents,
and I still go back to him—even teaching certain novels of his which offer glimpses of lawyers and the law at Harvard Law
School. His moral energy never fails to get us all going in class.

Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886). Aylmer Maude,

trans. New York: New American Library, 1960. (Pb)
Finally, there is The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy—a powerfully wrought, ever-so-affecting reminder of what moral matters
we had best try to settle before we take leave.

Clare Dalton

Clare Dalton is an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches contracts and legal history. Her special
interests are legal and feminist theory. With her husband she is raising two sons for the future.

My initial response to this invitation was to think about reading that might help others toward the future world I like to imagine
us living in. Then I considered the different possibility of reading that would be valuable to people of the future, whether or not
they lived in that world. Finally, however, it seemed to me that the list, on either interpretation, should be the same. However
those people of the future turn out, they would benefit from knowing what some of their forebears thought about, and aspired
to, back in the latter part of the twentieth century.
The piece of my reading that I am taking this opportunity to share has to do with women—how some, by the 1980s, had begun
to reconceive themselves, and bring themselves, reconceived, into a dialogue with men about how they should together
conceive of the world.

G. W. F. Hegel. "The Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Master and Slave." Chapter IV.A. of Die
Phiinomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807). Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977. (Pb)
This is Hegel's classic account of the individual's unavoidable dependence on others for recognition. From this perspective,
independence or autonomy, usually understood as separation from others, is in fact achieved only through connection with
others—through dependence. In our own time object-relations psychology, with its emphasis on "mirroring" as a key to identity
formation, contains the same core insight. But the starkness of Hegel's account, and its reminder of our potential domination of
those who depend on us for recognition, gives it added force.

Margaret S. Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and
Individuation. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Working within object-relations theory, Margaret Mahler describes children as struggling to reconcile their longing for
independence and autonomy with an equally strong longing for fusion with and surrender to mother. She describes the child's
tendency to grandiosity or omnipotence (denial of mother's otherness) and suggests that psychological wholeness depends on
the child's developing an appropriate sense of mother as separate. Her work provides an account of the central struggle of
childhood that is quite different from Freud's. It also suggests that the master / slave dynamic intuited by Hegel is in fact the
very psychological dynamic through which our individual identities are forged.

Dorothy Dinnerstein. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Harper & Row,
1976. (Pb)
Dorothy Dinnerstein shares Margaret IVIahler's understanding that separation-from-mother is the key to later individual
development. But she argues that our society systematically subverts that possibility, leaving men and women differently
situated, but allied in a residual (subconscious) hatred and fear of mother, and of women. She suggests the consequences of this
malaise for relations between men and women, and for the society at large. She urges a radical sharing of parenthood, which
would present children with the same need to separate from father that they now experience only in relation to mother, as the
road to human progress.

Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine, eds. The Future of Difference (1980). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1985. (Pb)
Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine's powerful collection of feminist writing begins in the same general territory as
Dinnerstein's book—the psychological dynamics that differentiate women from men. The theme of difference is pursued in
sections devoted to current French feminism (strongly influenced by the post-structuralism of such writers as Derrida and
Lacan) and recent feminist literary criticism. Finally, the book projects the theme of difference out into the world, exploring its
potential for social and political transformation.

Suzette Haden Elgin. Native Tongue. New York: Donald A. Wollheim, 1984. (Pb)
Suzette Haden Elgin writes a science-fiction novel both grim and inspirational. The society in which it is set reflects a playing
out of some of the most dehumanizing tendencies of our own, including the firm relegation of women to a subordinate status in
the service of men. But the women, invisibly, are fighting back—through the development of their own language. In its
dramatic portrayal of the negative potential of our cultural values, and its celebration of the positive potential of difference, this
book makes a fitting postscript to my list of suggested reading for the future.

Jerome Kagan

Jerome Kagan is a professor of psychology at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Professor Kagan holds a Ph.D.
from Yale University and has written many works, most notably Infancy; The Nature of the Child; and Birth to Maturity.
These books should generate a tolerance for others and appreciation of the power of historical contexts to create our deepest
assumptions about human nature.

Maurice H. Mandelbaum. History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1971.
Mandelbaum's analysis of the relation between the European conception of human nature and historical events in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries helped me to understand why American intellectuals, and especially twentieth-century
social scientists, were so strongly committed, until recently, to a belief in the power of the environment and the malleability of
human characteristics, as well as resistant to all sentimental arguments that did not rest firmly on reason. The basis for our
idealistic view of perfectible children, sculpted by education in home and school to make rationally based moral decisions in
times of conflict, becomes an almost inevitable outcome of the blend of egalitarianism, evolutionism, and material science that
has dominated thought since the eighteenth century.

Alasdair C. Maclntyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981). Notre Dame, Ind,: University of Notre Dame Press,
1982. (Pb)
After Virtue extends Mandelbaum's conclusions to the domain of ethics by arguing that historical conditions determine many of
the moral premises of a society. Maclntyre points out, for example, that our acceptance of the naturalness of individual rights is
not a universal, for there is no word or phrase in ancient or medieval languages that refers to an individual's right to a particular
resource. This assumption is not made until the close of the Middle Ages. I learned from Maclntyre that a society's views of
right and wrong are fragmented survivals of a series of economic and political events that lead the community to treat social
facts as moral imperatives. Thus, the role of history is a common theme that unites the books by Maclntyre and Mandelbaum.

Par Lagerqvist. The Eternal Smile (1934). Erik Mesterton et al., trans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1971.
A single sentence in this story by a Swedish novelist captures the idea that Maclntyre was trying to develop. After an
interminably long search, a large group of dead people find God and the leader steps forward and asks him what purpose he
had in creating human beings. God replies, "I only intended that you need never be content with nothing." After reading that
line I saw the meaning of the tree-of-knowledge allegory in Genesis. Human beings are prepared by their nature to believe that
there are right and wrong acts, but history and the nature of the society in which persons live will determine more exactly those
categories of intention and action that will be treated as moral or immoral.

Ernst E. Mayr. The Growth of Biological Thought (1982). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. (Pb)
Mayr's history of biological thought over the past few centuries helped me see more clearly the relation between categories in
biology and those in psychological development. Mayr notes that biology, unlike physics, deals more often with qualitative
categories, rather than continua. Thus, biology is a unique science that is not easily reduced to physical concepts. Mayr
understands that in biology the most useful categories are those that have been inductively derived from phenomena, rather
than posited a priori. I believe that modern psychology is in a phase of development in which it can benefit from the inductive
strategy that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biologists used with such profit. Such a frame is present in Darwin's great
insight that evolution should not be viewed as a series of variations on a set of ideal types, but rather as a series of
transformations on ancestors.

Jean L. Briggs. Never in Anger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. (Pb)
The central message in this ethnography of the Eskimo of Hudson Bay is that despite the fact that this culture is characterized
by a continual suppression of anger and aggression, none of the systems that are typically associated with denial of anger in
Western society occurs among the Eskimo. Thus, this culture provides a refutation of the Freudian hypothesis that repression of
anger must lead to symptomatology. The obvious implication is that the validity of the psychoanalytic hypothesis is restricted
to certain cultures. It follows, then, that there are no universal outcomes of either the suppression or expression of anger,
independent of the social context.

Nicole LeDouarain. The Neural Crest. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
This monograph by a distinguished neuroembryologist describes the growth and transformation of the cells that begin as a
small necklace around the embryo's spinal column and migrate to their final homes in the central nervous system of the
newborn. The main point is that although all the cells are alike originally, they become transformed over their journey into
structures that cannot be changed. The different transformations each type of cell undergoes is a function, in part, of the cells
that are encountered on the way. This story of the migration of the neural crest cells furnishes a useful metaphor for the
psychological growth of a human being, who is also transformed through the contacts he or she has in the life journey. A salient
theme in the six books noted above is that absolutes are hard to find in nature; most laws are constrained by particular contexts.
But there must be a small number of universal relations that trace their way back to biology. The final book supplies one of
these mechanisms.

Georg Von Bekesy. Sensory Inhibition (1965). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. (Pb)
This book, which I read as a young psychologist, is the one exception to the relativism contained in the first six volumes. One
basic biological mechanism is that brain and mind are constructed to maximize contrasts and to improve the signal-to-noise
ratio. The mind rebels against the ambiguity and relativity in nature and tries to create simple, prototypical conceptions. If one
idea is a little more salient than another, the mind tends to exaggerate the former and minimize the latter. Hence, there is a
biological basis for our attraction to stereotype and to single ideas that mute the gradations that are inherent in nature. As a
result, we are seduced into believing in absolutes, when nature contains only families of relations among events.

John E. Mack

John E. Mack, M.D. is a child and adult psychoanalyst and is a professor of psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital, Harvard
Medical School. He has been devoted to the development of community-based mental health services and to the application of
psychoanalytic insights to biographical studies and to a variety of social and political issues, most recently in relation to the
nuclear arms race and the U.S.—Soviet relationship. In 1977 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his biography: A Prince of
Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence.

All of these books speak to the importance of self-awareness and the transformations that can follow from it. Survival, and the
realization of our possibilities in the coming century, may depend on a new level of awareness and of responsibility for both the
darker side and the loving and creative dimensions of the human spirit.

Childhood stories.
It is much later, if ever, that we discover why a particular story of childhood has had such a powerful impact.

Carlo Lorenzini. Adventures of Pinocchio (1882-83). New York: Penguin, 1974. (Pb)
Pinocchio, in addition to being a spine-tingling adventure story, demonstrated that there was hope that an incorrigible small boy
might, in the end, turn out all right and be properly appreciated by his parents.

L. Frank Baum. The Wizard of Oz (1900). New York: Penguin, 1983. (Pb)
This story, which at first reading I experienced largely as the triumph of good over evil, contained, I learned much later, another
important idea: it is unnecessary to look elsewhere for what we think we lack. The potential for courage, love and even
intelligence ("brains") lies within ourselves. This proved to be a valuable message for someone who would one day be
committed as a psychotherapist trying to enable other people to discover the possibilities within themselves.

W. Somerset Maugham. Of Human Bondage (1915). New York: Penguin, 1978. (Pb)
This novel about the torments of misdirected love revealed to me how prone we are to form irrational attachments which hold
us in their grip, even while we know that our sense of self—life itself—is being undermined.

Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). New York: Avon, 1980. (Pb)
The vast world of irrational behavior and unconscious impulse, feeling and motivation was opened up to me through Freud's
writings.

T. E. Lawrence. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1919). New York: Penguin, 1976. (Pb)
I had not believed that a military leader would speak so frankly of the less attractive dimensions of his motivation. This gave
me hope that we might some day understand and master the human proclivity to indulge in war making and war following.

Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes from Underground (1864). Jessie Coulson, ed. and trans. New York: Penguin, 1972. (Pb)
These obsessional ruminations of a prisoner impressed me with the extremes of self-doubt and their paralyzing effect. The
world of inner conflict and its determining power were vividly revealed.

Nadezhda Mandel'shtam. Hope Against Hope (1970). Max Hayward, trans. New York: Atheneum, 1976.
Written in the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union, this is the remarkable testimony of a Russian widow who has preserved the
memory and the writings of her poet husband, Osip Mandershtam, one of Stalin's countless victims. Through the painful detail
—only everyday detail can really illuminate the monstrousness of totalitarian regimes—there emerges an optimistic voice of
hope and possibility, evidence that a better human spirit may yet prevail in our blighted century.

B. F. Skinner

B. F Skinner is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Harvard University. A pioneer in the field of operant
behavior, Dr. Skinner began his work primarily with rats and pigeons, extending his techniques to the human organisms in the
study of psychotic behavior, the analysis of verbal behavior. the design of instructional devices, the care of infants and the
analysis of cultures. The author of more than eighteen books, he published volume three of his autobiography, Upon Further
Reflection, in the summer of 1986.

Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence. Bacon is Shakespeare. London and New York: Gay & Hancock, 1910.
Asa Gray. How Plants Grow: A Simple Introduction to Structural Botany. 3d ed. New York: Ivison and Phinney; Chicago:
Gregg, 1859.
Ivan P. Pavlov. Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex. G. V.
Anrep, ed. and trans. London: Oxford University Press, 1927.
Bertrand Russell. The Problems of Philosophy (1911). New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. (Pb)
John B. Watson. Behaviorism (1925). New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. (Pb)
. Psychology, from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919). 3d ed. Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott, 1929.
The books that have been most important in leading me to my present position as a behaviorist are not books that I would
recommend to anyone seeking to understand that position. They were important, not so much because of their content, but
because of their bearing on my life at the time I read them. A mere accident sent me to Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence's Bacon is
Shakespeare, and that book sent me in turn to all I could find of, and about, Francis Bacon. I have acknowledged the role of
three great Baconian principles in my life, but I would not send anyone to Durning-Lawrence to discover them.

Gray's How Plants Grow, my high-school botany text, taught me, with the example of the radish, how living things pass on to
the future the contributions they have received from the past. Later I found the same theme in Hervieu's "La Course du
Flambeau," but I would not send anyone there for further instruction. I was greatly influenced by the first third of Bertrand
Russell's Problems of Philosophy. According to his biographer it was "written at speed for the American market," and it
certainly is not regarded as one of Russell's great books. Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes taught me the importance of
controlling laboratory conditions, but I soon departed from the Pavlovian paradigm. John B. Watson was important, of course,
but I read only his Behaviorism, a book written for the general public. I am not sure I ever read his Psychology, from the
Standpoint of a Behaviorist.
This is all perfectly reasonable, since, after all, if anything I have done is "creative," should we expect to find it in anything I
have read?

The Interpretation of Dreams S. Freud The Unconscious

Freud: A Life for Our Time P. Gay The Unconscious
The Assault on Truth J.M. Masson The Unconscious
Despatches from the Freud Wars F. Forrester The Unconscious

The Child's Conception of Physical Causality J. Piaget Child Development

Piaget M. Boden Child Development
Perception and Understanding in Young Children P. Bryant Child Development
Alternatives to Piaget L.S. Siegel and C.J. Brainerd Child Development
A History of Private Life (5 vols) "P. Aries, G. Duby" Child Development
The History of Childhood L. de Mause Child Development
Reference

We have elsewhere suggested lists of useful reference books for the British and American home. The books recommended here
offer access to a larger body of knowledge—indeed, in a more or less compact form, they offer all knowledge. But this is by no
means a comprehensive list; it is, rather, a personal choice. We have tried to offer a selection of available titles rather than
settling for definitive works in each area; each of the books listed has specific attractions, which mark it out from the
competent run of information books. Encyclopaedias and dictionaries of specific areas of knowledge (eg economics or music)
will be found in the appropriate lists.
See ARCHAEOLOGY (Bray); ARCHITECTURE (Colvin, Fleming); ART (McGraw-Hill, Murray, Osborne); CHILDREN'S
BOOKS (Uden); FILM (Bawden. Halliwell); FOOD (Johnson, Lichine, Montagne); HISTORY/ANCIENT (Heyden,
Lempriere, Radice); HISTORY/WORLD (Barraclough, Grun); HOME (Brittain. Encyclopaedia, Frewing, Hay);
MATHEMATICS (Larkin, Moore, Norton): MEDIA (Berry); MEDICINE (Gray. Parish); MUSIC (Cross, Greenfield, Hadley,
Hindley, Logan, Osborne, Sadie); MYTHOLOGY (Dowson. Larousse); NATURAL. HISTORY (Fry); RELIGION (Crosse);
SOCIOLOGY (International)

Adler, M. J. and Van Doren, C. Great Treasury of Western Thought * Massive collection of classic quotations from leading
authors and thinkers of the Western tradition. See BIOGRAPHY (Van Doren); PHILOSOPHY (Adler)

Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italian (1968)

One of the finest single-volume atlases, though this edition is dating fast. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1855)
Soon after its first publication this book became the standard American collection of quotations, chosen on the basis of
familiarity. Useful; dependable. 13th edition (1955) recommended.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870)

Literally fabulous; an indispensable mine of information; even its cross-references entertain ("scrambled egg see brass hat").
But be warned: there is no such thing as a quick dip into this book. Its pool has only a deep end. Also: The Reader's Handbook
of Allusion; Dictionary of Miracles

Britannica Atlas (1979)

A superb one-volume atlas, perhaps the most recommendable of them all.

Bullock, A. and Stallybrass, O. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1977)

This book handily sets out to define, in as few clear words as possible, over 4,000 of the key terms in 20th-century thought (eg
cybernetics, OECD, retro-rocket, turnpike theorem). It is, in part, a guide to jargon, immensely useful for the layman; but it is
also wide enough and detailed enough in scope to act as a brief encyclopaedia of how our century thinks.

Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1901)

It is meant as a compliment to call this a straightforward, no-nonsense dictionary ("hello. Same as hallo"). Its main indulgence
in the current edition is the inclusion of words normally only to be found in the vocabulary of crossword puzzle compilers and
other lexical antiquarians.

Craigie, W. A. and Hulbert, J. R. A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles (1938-1944)

Thorough, scholarly treatment of the history of English in America up to the end of the 19th century, extending and
supplementing The Oxford English Dictionary.

Crowley, E. T. Acronyms, Initials and Abbreviations Dictionary (1960) Not a beautiful book, but a serviceable one. containing
thousands of stunted word-forms. American, but includes British, European and other entries. Can never be completely up-to-
date, but regular supplements (latest 1978) ensure that it is never too far behind.

Ekwall, E. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (1936)

Scholar's handbook of English place-names, with no rivals in its class. 15,000 place-names painstakingly traced through early
records back to their original meanings. Magisterial. Also: English River Names

Encyclopedia Americana
30 volumes, 27,000 pages, 53,500 articles, 353,000 entries, 31,141,000 words, 21,500 illustrations including 1,194 maps.
Although, as its name implies, it is American in origin and written in American English, it is no more parochial in its coverage
than Britannica. Lack of colour makes it look dull; but the articles on the whole are well researched and well written. More
adult and comprehensive than World Book (qv), less specialized and easier to read than Britannica (qv). Alphabetically
arranged; good index.

Encyclopaedia Britannica
33,000 pages, 106,500 articles, 25,200 illustrations including 1,100 maps. Authoritative work for educated adults; in two main
parts, 19-volume Macropaedia containing long articles and 10-volume Micropaedia with short, quick reference articles; all
volumes have A to Z arrangement of subjects. So-called index (the Micropaedia) is deficient and cumbersome. Latest edition
(15th) essential.

Various authors, Various writing in English, Pub. 1910.

Enclopædia Britannica, 11th ed.. Rec: Counterpunch NF National Review Utne

Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926)

A model of persuasive prescriptivism notorious for its capacity to delight one reader and infuriate the next, yet universally
acclaimed for its enlightening scholarship. Fowler's outspoken adherence to the rule of law in written English is tempered by
the benign, firm authority of Sir Ernest Gowers in the 1965 revision. M. H. Nicholson produced its analogue, A Dictionary of
Modern American Usage. Also: The King's English (Fowler); The Complete Plain Words(Gowers)

Fowler, Henry Watson, English, 1858-1933.

Modern English Usage. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Fowler, H. W. and F. G. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1911)

Precision and reliability of a Swiss watch; more information per page than in any comparable dictionary. 1976 facelift has
added a great deal of new vocabulary without greatly disturbing the important Fowlerian imprint on which the greatness of the
book still (ultimately) depends.

Gran Atlas Aguilar (3 vols, 1969)

This magnificent Spanish work, the third volume of which is an incredibly thorough index, first appeared in 1969. A new
edition has been announced for an undetermined date but the original is still enormously useful and beautiful. If your funds are
unlimited, buy this and the Times (qv); if not, nag the local library—it's a gorgeous book.

Johnson, Dr Samuel Dictionary of the English Language (1755) Not the first English dictionary, far less the first dictionary of
a European language. Dr Johnson's definitions are often insular ("oats"), idiosyncratic ("lexicographer") and prejudiced
("patron"). But a work to be preserved and perused forever as the only English dictionary compiled by a writer of the first rank.
See BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Boswell, Krutch, Johnson); LITERARY CRITICISM; TRAVEL

Jones, Daniel English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917)

Guide to "Received Pronunciation", covering not only "dictionary" words but personal and place-names too. Foreign words are
given both anglicized and "correct" pronunciation; alternative, rare, and old-fashioned pronunciations are shown. Quite
technical: the reader must be prepared to learn the international phonetic alphabet.

Kaye and Ward (publishers) Official Rules of Sports and Games (1980) Immensely useful, and fascinating for the amateur
sportsman: clearly stated rules of everything from archery and athletics to volleyball and water polo. Regularly updated.

Curnonsky, French, 1872-1956.

Larousse Traditional French Cooking. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

McWhirter, R. and N. (eds) The Guinness Book of Records (1963) Treasury of fascinating information on the largest,
smallest, longest, fattest, most prodigious phenomena in nature. Records of every kind, from running the marathon to holding
one's breath. Some of the information is bizarre, much of it useless—all of it riveting. Annually updated.

Mathews, M. M. A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1951)

"Those words and meanings which came first into the English language in the United States" in 2 volumes: Adultery to
Lincolnism and Lincolnite to Zwieback. "Americanisms" is more restrictively defined than in Craigie (qv), but 20th-century
items and earlier illustrative examples are included.

Merit Students Encyclopedia (1980)

20 volumes, 12,000 pages, 22,000 articles, 20,700 illustrations including 1,500 maps. Written for the American school system;
suitable for home use, though expensive.

Mitchell Beazley Encyclopaedia (Random House Encyclopaedia) (1977)

Subtitled The Joy of Knowledge: 10 volumes, 3,350 pages, 26,000 articles,
15,000 illustrations including 300 maps. A unique concept in encyclopaedias, this work successfully combines the thematic
approach with an A to Z arrangement for quick reference. Eight volumes of Colourpaedia, arranged mainly as 2-page spreads
devoted to one topic; 8th volume has countries of the world (A to Z) and an atlas. Two volumes of Fact Index have mainly
short A to Z articles, illustrated and cross-referenced to each other and to the Colourpaedia. General volumes can be too diffuse,
index volumes too brief in their entries.

Mitchell Beazley New Concise Atlas of the Earth (1973)

105 pages of maps, preceded by a preliminary "world encyclopaedia". Lavish, large and lovely, though cumbersome to use.

New Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia

20 slimmish volumes, 4,000 pages, 1,000 articles, 5,500 colour illustrations. Large type for easy reading. Aimed at 7- to 11-
year-olds; more ambitious (though less bulky) than many such works. Although it carries Arthur Mee's name and pedigree, it is
a far cry from the original famous work. Subjects are handled thematically (with an adequate index), and an attempt is made to
capture some of the Mee nostalgia by including nursery rhymes and fairy stories (well illustrated). But gone are the prejudices
and blatant racism of its original creator.

New Columbia Encyclopedia

1 volume, 3,000 pages, 650 illustrations including 250 maps. Written in American English, Columbia has hardly any
illustrations and is pitched at an adult level, although it is still the best single-volume straight reference encyclopaedia; not for
browsers. Suffers from lack of an index, in spite of A to Z arrangement, because cross-references are not as profuse as they
might be. New edition badly needed, as last edition (1975) is rapidly becoming dated.

Onions, C. T. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966) Advances the claims of etymology to be a science rather
than a lexical sub-art or a branch of folklore. Anyone interested in the origins of words should not be put off by its austere
scholarly presentation; these definitions are often fun. Also: The Oxford Shakespeare Glossary

Opie, I. and P. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951)

The nursery rhyme accorded full scholarly treatment—"detailed without being tedious", as the authors claim. Standard,
authoritative work, delightfully and relevantly illustrated. Also: The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren; Children's Games
in Street and Playground; Classic Fairy Tales, etc

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (1948)

A byword for lucidity and clarity of explanation, this book has served learners and foreign users of English everywhere from
Calais to Krakatoa; even native speakers will occasionally admit to using it in preference to a conventional dictionary. Also: A
Guide to Patterns and Usage in English

Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1941)

Some of the most interesting quotations are, as you'd expect, anonymous, and these have a section that steals the day.
Shakespeare as usual gets nearly half the book but he does deserve it; Shaw is, if anything, under-represented. A serviceable
book: both this edition and the unsatisfactory 1979 updating are required.

Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1884-1928) With Webster's (qv), a monument both to scholarship and to
the richness, strangeness and sheer magnificence of our language. The history and meanings of each word are documented and
fully illustrated by precisely dated quotations for literary and other works down the centuries. New supplements in progress.
For home use, The Concise Oxford Dictionary is recommended.

Various authors, Various writing in English, First ed. pub. 1884-1928.

The Oxford English Dictionary (Edited by James A. H. Murray).

Oxford Home Atlas of the World (1960)

Excellent short atlas, of mainly physical and political maps.
Partridge, E. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937) All-inclusive collection of English slang through the
ages. Jargon, cant and obscenity dated and documented where possible, often in idiosyncratic ways: quotations from printed
sources rarely have page references and dating can be based on a letter, a reminiscence, or the author's recollections of 50 years
ago. Delightful, personal authority, a browser's joy. Also: Usage and Abusage; A Dictionary of Cliches; A Dictionary of Catch
Phrases, etc

Pascoe, L. C. (ed) Encyclopaedia of Dates and Events (1968)

Each double-spread is divided into four columns covering respectively History, Literature, the Arts and Science. The key
events of each important year (5000 BC-AD 1970) are covered, with brief cross-references and a full index. Did you know
when the Treaty of Aix was signed? When wallpaper was invented? What Thierry did? At one level, a quiz-addict's delight; at
another, a serious and useful reference tool. Regularly updated: seek latest edition.

Procter, P. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978) Stimulating, enterprising dictionary that lives up to its title
and goes a step further than exemplification by including comments on usage of a kind that you will need if you don't know the
difference between already and all ready.

Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1966)

Massive dictionary, the result of new lexical principles. A fine work which hardly ever fails the diligent searcher. Good small
atlas included in unabridged edition. Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases(1952)
"A commodious succour to dissertators searching their pockets for the well-pitched locution" is how Roget could lead you to
express it, but most of us would say that it is a useful aid to writers seeking the exact word in a forest of apparent synonyms.
See Webster.

Smith, W. G. and Heseltine, J. E. The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1935)

Thorough documentation of the history rather than the significance of everything in written English that can be regarded as
proverbial. Weak points are inadequate standards of bibliographical citation, a poor grasp of the classical sources, and a
shortage of quotations after about 1800.

Stewart, G. R. American Place-names(1970)

Selective: only well-known, repeated, or unusual names are included. Explanations, each with a cameo of American history, are
untechnical—look elsewhere for (eg) exact Indian etymologies. But names like Enough, Enola ("alone" backwards) and Cape
Nome (a misreading of a query on a map) are of its essence.

Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E. B. The Elements of Style(1935)

In 1919 Strunk was White's English professor at Cornell and his The Elements of Stylewas a required text known only to his
students, Sixteen years later, White introduced to the general public Strunk's attempts to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric
down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin. A must for students, the good professor's advice includes
everything from "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused" to "Write with verbs and nouns not adjectives and adverbs."
See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (White); DIARIES (Garnett, White); HUMOUR (White)

Tilley, M. P. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1950)
Full of wise saws and modern instances, with painstaking scholarship expended alike on the homely, the humorous, the bawdy,
and the consoling ("there is a difference between staring and stark mad", etc). Concludes with detailed bibliography and index
to proverbial uses in Shakespeare, some previously unsuspected.

Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (1980)

Huge (240 maps); hugely expensive; worth every penny. For those with slim purses, its little brother The Times Concise Atlas
of the World (143 maps) is an excellent alternative.

Van Der Meer, Frederic Atlas of Western Civilization (1960)

Maps, profuse and spectacular photographs, informative text, superb index—the superlatives pile up. For ancient world
equivalent, see HISTORY/ANCIENT (Heyden)

Wallechinsky, D., Wallace I. and W. (eds) The Book of Lists (1977) This is one of those serendipitous ideas that, once
thought of, seem so obvious and so obviously right. The editors have commissioned and compiled lists of every kind: 20
largest lakes in the world, 12 writers who ran unsuccessfully for public office, 8 cases of spontaneous combustion, Orson
Welles' 12 best movies of all time ... Not a serious reference work—a delight. Should be on everyone's shelf—but keep a few
spare copies if you have light-fingered visitors. It's irresistible.

Webster's New Collegiate Thesaurus(1976)

The first entirely new thesaurus since Roget. This one, based on a different principle, is in many situations simpler and more
effective to use. There should be room for both this and Roget on any reasonable shelf of reference books.
Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms (1942)
Aimed at those who daren't admit they use Roget. Arranged alphabetically under key-words, with elaborate cross-referencing;
scores by giving examples in use of many of the synonyms listed. Most quoted authors are American.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961)

One of the greatest of all reference works in (and on) English: only the Oxford English Dictionary (qv) has anything like the
same authority. 1961 updating covers many 20th-century additions to the language, makes this an indispensable book for every
library. For home use, Webster's Nov Collegiate Dictionary is recommended.

Merriam Company, American, Pub. 1961.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Rec: LAT

World Book Encyclopedia

26 volumes, 16,000 pages, 22,500 articles, 30.000 illustrations including 2,500 maps. Well-established American
encyclopaedia with 2 British Isles volumes added on, this work uses A to Z arrangement but with copious cross-references.
Level of the text is aimed at high school students; design and pictorial layout are old-fashioned by modern European standards.
The only major encyclopaedia that is thoroughly revised each year.

Yule, H. and Burnell, A. C. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases (1886)
Sprawling and undisciplined repository of the priceless vocabulary (bundobast, gymkhana, shikaree, etc) that sprang from the
association of English and Indian peoples down to the end of the 19th century. The curious title, for example, is an
anglicization of Ya Kasen! Ya Husayn! ("0 Husan! 0 Husain!") chanted by Muslims as they beat their breasts in the Muharram
procession.

Mary V. Chatfield

Mary V. Chatfield has been the head librarian at the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School for eight years. Her
association with the Harvard community began as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College. She earned her M.B.A. at the
Business School while continuing her duties as head librarian. She tries to read one book a week.

God, democracy, and food should prepare anyone for any century.

The Book of Common Prayer (1549), New York: Oxford University Press, 1928.
As a daily or occasional guide to behavior or as a source of comfort and guidance, it is without peer. The beauty of the
language alone is sufficient reason for a nonbeliever to read it.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist [Papers] (1788). Benjamin F. Wright, ed. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1961.
An ever-current and germane discussion of the rewards of a democratic form of government and the difficulties encountered in
implementing it.

H. H. Munro. The Short Stories of Saki (1894-1916). New York: Doubleday, 1976.
Reminds you that life is complex as are people. Justice is frequently meted out when it is least expected, and a sense of humor
leavens almost all situations.

Barbara Pym. Excellent Women (1952). New York: Harper & Row, 1980. (Pb)
. Quartet in Autumn (1977). New York: Harper & Row, 1980. (Pb)
The daily life of ordinary people is as rich and varied as that of any exotic tribe, but the discovery of this richness requires
careful study.

Any good cookbook.

The most soothing of all reading. The rational is still achievable in the most chaotic of worlds.

Judith Martin. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (1982). New York: Warner, 1983. (Pb)
For guidance, sustenance and correction.
John Williams Collins III

John Collins is the librarian of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard. His professional interests include bibliographic
instruction, information access, and database searching.

Apart from individual titles in particular disciplines, books such as A Guide to Reference Books, 9th ed. (1976), which open the
doors to information access and the printed word at large, will provide readers with the tools and skills necessary to find the
information that will enable them to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Graham T. Allison. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. (Pb)
For its insight into the decision-making process.

Jack Kerouac. On the Road (1957). New York: Penguin, 1979. (Pb)
For its depiction of an era and a life-style.

Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Complete Poetical Works (1813-21). New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
For the beauty of the poems.

Philip Gaskell. A New Introduction to Bibliography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Offers an opportunity to gain an understanding and appreciation of the books as a material object.

Eugene Paul Sheehy. A Guide to Reference Books. 9th ed., 2d suppl. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982. (Pb)
Because it provides access to reference books basic to research.

Sheldon Glashow

Sheldon Glashow is the Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard. His research centers on building models for elementary
particles. His Nobel Prize was for his work on the unification of weak and electromagnetic forces. In addition to his thoughtful
writings and frequent public television appearances, his course "From Alchemy to Particle Physics" is well known on campus.
Americans love to be told what to do. "You are what you eat!" sells innumerable quack diet books, just as "You are what you
read!" brought us the Great Books, the Five-Foot Shelf, and now this colossal act of hubris: the mind-shaping favorites of a
hundred professors, annotated. See them astride Plato, Darwin and Freud. Read what they read and be what they be.

I have no list to submit. I care not for this cargo cult. Books are cheap and readily available. To read is the thing, voraciously
and eclectically. No guide is needed. Was Moby Dick more important to me than the latest Len Deighton thriller, or is browsing
through my Oxford English Dictionary even more significant? And who should care?
Scientists are often regarded as illiterate oafs, unable to write and unwilling to read, captives of their narrow expertise,
deserving candidates for humanists' contempt. Yet, most of us are well-read and can hold our own with historians, literary
critics and whatever. Humanists, on the other hand, are often (though not always) scientifically and mathematically inept and
proudly so. Our conversations must turn on matters of their concern, not ours. We are disadvantaged because we are compelled
by their ignorance to match wits on their territory.
Membership in the community of educated men and women demands competence in science and awareness of its history.
Many would dispute this claim. Here, I say, lies one explanation for the decline of American intellectualism. We have strayed
from the path set by Franklin and Jefferson, who both admired and appreciated Lavoisier as much as they did Shakespeare.

Patricia Albjerg Graham

Patricia Albjerg Graham is dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Charles Warren Professor of the History
of Education at Harvard University. She has served as dean of the Radcliffe Institute and vice-president of Radcliffe College. In
1977 she was appointed by President Carter as director of the National Institute of Education, the federal government's
educational research agency. She resigned in 1979 to return to Harvard, to her teaching and research activities.

Sigrid Undset. Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22). C. Archer and J. S. Scott, trans. 3 vols. New York: Bantam, 1978. (Pb)
Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, which I first read as a young wife and mother, captured my imagination, my ancestry and
my hopes for my own future. This long tale of a formidable medieval Norsewoman who fought for her ideals, embodied as
they were in her family and political allegiances, enthralled me as I pondered what the twentieth-century equivalent of her life
as an American woman would be.

Gunnar Myrdal, with Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy (1944). 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. (Pb)
I discovered Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma some years after it was originally published. I read it while a graduate
student in history of American education at Columbia University. As a resident of Manhattan's Upper West Side I was living for
the first time in a racially mixed environment. I found two elements of Myrdal's book fascinating: the analysis of what he
called "the Negro Problem" and the response of "modern democracy" to it, and the introduction of a new generation of black
scholars and the legitimization of their research on black issues.

Myrdal, Gunnar, Swedish, 1898-1987.

An American Dilemma. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review

James Hodgson

James Hodgson has been associated with the Harvard library system for twenty years. Currently he is the head librarian at the
Frances Loeb Library at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, committed to improving the quality and scope of the collection.
Prior to joining the Graduate School of Design he managed acquisitions for the Fine Arts Library of Harvard's Fogg Museum.

I would likely recommend any book that enriches the human spirit . . . that is likely to help us keep jolly, sane and, in some
way, safe from so many others who will recommend books that champion personal power and profit.

Anthony Powell. A Dance to the Music of Time (1962-75). 12 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
A roman fleuve in twelve parts. Suggests that a life of reflection and observation is to be prized as much as a life of action and
that life's meaning is to be found in the accumulation of small events and triumphs (often only dimly perceived) rather than in
high moments of bombast and tangible riches.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Pb)
The essential American novel. Bleaker explorations of the same, uniquely American spirit of risk, adventure and profit—i.e.,
entrepreneurship—can be found in lesser, but still good books such as The Godfather, by Mario Puzo, and Catch-22, by Joseph
Heller.

Julius Caesar. The Gallic Wars (ca. 40 a.c.). Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.
Read as a teenager (and just reread in a modern translation with maps, illustrations and notes published by David Godine) this
book introduced me to the remarkable fact that history really did happen!
Richer books, read later and enjoyed more, that similarly reveal the spirit of their times: the journal of Eugene Delacroix; the
daybooks of Edward Weston: Bound for Glory, by Woody Guthrie.

Antoine de Saint Exupery. The Little Prince (1943). Katherine Woods, trans. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
"Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far. . . ."

Gregory Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972). New York: Ballantine, 1975. (Pb)

Kate Wilhelm. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976). New York: Pocket, 1981. (Pb)

Walter M. Miller, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). New York: Bantam, 1976. (Pb)
Two very good science-fiction novels, which suggest that man is not on an inevitable path to perfectability.
Harold Howe II

Harold Howe is a senior lecturer in administration planning and social policy at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. He
describes himself not as a professor but as a retired educator who has found a restful place at Harvard University. He has been a
history teacher, a school principal, a school superintendent (in Scarsdale, New York), a state education planner (in North
Carolina), US. Commissioner of Education, and a foundation official (vice-president of the Ford Foundation). He has served as
a trustee of Yale, Vassar and the College Board and is now a trustee of Teachers College at Columbia University. He has written
what he describes as "quite a lot of dull prose" about education affairs.

A. E. Housman. The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman (18671936). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. (Pb)
As the world gets more complicated, and it certainly has during my sixty-seven years, a new resolve is needed to deal with the
unexpected. Housman conveys a somewhat pessimistic message, which I find sustaining.

Gunnar Myrdal, with Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy (1944). 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. (Pb)
For understanding the issue of race in the American experience, there is no book to equal this. It has influenced a generation of
scholars and the Supreme Court of the United States, and through them it helped create the civil-rights movement of the
twentieth century. Myrdal recognizes the moral aspects of the problem and weaves them together with the analysis of a social
scientist to create a magnificent insight. Much of my time and effort have been spent on racial issues in education, both schools
and colleges, and this book is the bedrock I return to on the subject. Myrdal's basic view is still relevant. "The American Negro
problem is a problem in the heart of the American. It is there that the interracial tension has its focus. It is there that the
decisive struggle goes on."

Christopher Fry. The Lady's Not for Burning (1949). New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. (Pb)
A romantic drama in extravagant language, which I read at least once a year. It helps me to stay young at heart, and it's just
plain fun in its combination of comic and serious themes of life and death and human foibles ranging from lust to moralistic
bureaucracy. Who else but Christopher Fry would call the moon, "A circumambulating aphrodisiac divinely subsidized to
provoke the world into a rising birthrate" (p. 67)?

Mark Twain. The Writings of Mark Twain. Author's National Edition. 25 vols. New York: Harper, 1899-1918. (Also
subsequently published letters and other writings by the same author.)
Twain will carry you from youth through adulthood with novels, stories, essays and social commentary. Quintessentially
American, he opens our eyes to our peculiarities and to our ways of life. His warning against the dangers of staying in bed
because so many people die there combines with deep insights into racial issues in Huckleberry Finn to provide an almost
endless cafeteria of delightful reading. For Americans who want to know who they are and how they got that way, Twain is
center stage.

Rudyard Kipling. Collected Works (1886-1932). 22 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1927.
I started with the Just So Stories ("way down by the great, grey, green, greasy, Limpopo River"), The Jungle Book, Kim, and
Stalky and Co.; progressed through The Barrack Room Ballads and other verse where I learned that "the sins that ye do by two
and two, ye must pay for one by one"; and graduated to the endless tales of India, the empire, and British society. Most critics
think an interest in Kipling is a sign of a juvenile mind. If so, I plead guilty. But if you haven't read "The Taking of
Lungtungpen" (from Plain Tales from the Hills) or "The Strange Ride of Marrowbie Jukes" (from Under the Deodars), you're
missing something.

Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat (early twelfth century). Edward Fitzgerald, trans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, n.d. (Pb)
A slight strain of perversity in regard to my inheritance as the son of an educator and Presbyterian minister and the grandson of
missionaries in nineteenth-century Hawaii probably leads me to the affection I hold for this delightful verse. It punctures
pomposity, praises wine, women and song, and gently derides religion. I enjoy it. I have always felt the need to joke about the
things I was most serious about. Hence my life spent in education is for me joyfully teased by Omar Khayyam.

John D. Montgomery

John Montgomery is a professor of public administration at Harvard's John E Kennedy School of Government. Professor
Montgomery is currently interested in research dealing with developing countries. their agricultural productivity,
entrepreneurial behavior and central government support to urban development as well as U.S. foreign policies and
international politics.

P. G. Wodehouse. Money for Nothing (1928). London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976.
Wodehouse demonstrates how to write.

J. S. Bach. The Goldberg Variations (1747). R. K. Kirkpatrick, ed. New York: Schirmer, 1938.
Bach enriches the soul; Kirkpatrick develops the techniques for giving the soul expression.

Thomas Mann. Joseph and His Brothers (1933-43). H. T. Lowe-Porter, trans. 4 vols. New York: Knopf, 1948.
Mann provides the philosophical insights into human experience in their most palatable form.

Thorstein B. Veblen. Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). New York: Penguin, 1979. (Pb)
Veblen shows the outer reaches of hypocrisy.

Samuel P. Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies (1968). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. (Pb)
Huntington presents the most reasonably packaged definition of development.

Reginald Phelps

Dr. Phelps attended public schools in western Massachusetts, received his A.B. in 1930 from Harvard and spent the following
year in Europe, primarily in Germany. He has led a life of educational administration, teaching and scholarship chiefly at
Harvard University. During the stresses of the 1930s, his early interest in German literature developed into the study of
European and American history. His writings include many articles, largely on twentieth-century Germany. He has also written,
with Jack Stein, a useful reading text entitled The German Heritage.
I don't know that these books prepared me for the challenges of the twentieth century, and I doubt that they would prepare our
successors for those of the twenty-first century. What they did was to help me to understand the European and American past
and present.

As introduction: any such list is subjective and temporary. The books are chosen from my present view of my experience, and
are not necessarily the books I would have selected ten or thirty years ago. Mostly they have affected me by their literary
qualities, not their "messages," since most philosophies and (quasi-)theologies sound equally persuasive if skillfully presented.
These are books that have stayed with me for years, hence the absence of contemporary writing.

William Shakespeare. King Lear (1605). New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
Macbeth (1606). Maynard Mack and Robert E. Boynton, eds. New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
William Shakespeare's plays; specifically King Lear and Macbeth, both read in G. L. Kittredge's famous course. Close to them,
Othello, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. Among these Lear seems greatest, perhaps because of seeing an overwhelming
performance of it in London during the war.

The Bible. King James version (1611).

The Bible, specifically the Psalms, in the King James version, as we heard and sometimes recited them in Massachusetts public
schools from the first grade on; and in Luther's German translation. Why? The beauty of the words, and, I suppose, the
religious Urerlebnis they express. And, like so many writings, musical associations enhance their effect—American, English,
German hymns; Brahms's Requiem, with Toscanini conducting, heard in the Salzburg church fifty years ago.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust, part I (1770). John Prudhoe, trans. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974. (Pb).
Goethe, Faust I (not Faust II) and many of his youthful lyric poems. A word artist who matches Shakespeare, and a drama that
somehow symbolizes occidental man, with its theme of eternal striving; and a personal tragedy of such force that it might well,
like Goethe's second major emotional creation, The Sorrows of Young Werther, have wrung tears from stones. Beside these,
even young Schiller's splendid dramas, the artistic beauties of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke, the rhetoric of German
expressionist drama, and the arts and crafts of Thomas Mann, all of which once appealed very strongly, do not quite stand
equal.

John Dos Passos. Nineteen Nineteen (1932). New York: New American Library, n.d. (Pb)
Sidney B. Fay. The Origins of the World War (1928). 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1954.
Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front (1928). New York: Fawcett, 1979. (Pb)
John Dos Passos's powerful novel Nineteen Nineteen came quite early in the wave of revisionism and disillusion with World
War I that reached these shores well before the Depression. For the scholarly world, Sidney B. Fay's The Origins of the World
War led to revisionism. For the general reader, such works as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and the
magnificent film made from it, led to disillusion. If you want to know why my generation was so reluctant to go to war in the
1930s, these books will help you find out.

Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward. Angel (1929). New York: Scribner's, 1982. (Pb)
For my generation, perhaps the great American novel—its rooted/rootless hero, its ironic naturalism, its waves of stunning
rhetoric; coming of age in this century m the small towns of eastern America. Less "literary" than Faulkner. A wider range than
that almost perfect novel about Harvard, George Weller's Not to Eat, Not For Love. Not as universal, doubtless, as Herman
Melville's Moby Dick but a clearer, more human, less strained presentation of such American themes as wandering, roots,
grand visions.

Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason (1781). New York: St. Martin's, 1969. (Pb)
. Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (1788). Lewis Beck, trans. New York: Garland,
1977.
The philosopher who, like his medieval precursor Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus, defines and sets limits for human capacities and
presents, one may hope, guidelines for ethics and behavior more satisfying than those provided by hubris and wills to power.

David Riesman

David Rieman is a professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University. One of the world's leading sociologists, his opinion
is often sought on a wide range of topics, frequently the sociology of American higher education. His most notable works
include The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character and Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in
Character and Politics. He may well be the most prolific letter writer on Harvard's campus. The following comments are
excerpted from Ries-man letters to the editors of this guide.
It seems to me that in many cases it is not a particular book, though often of course it is just that, but a particular author who
opens new visions and impels new curiosities.

Louis Auchincloss. The Rector of Justin (1964). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. (Pb)
Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince (1513). Peter E. Bondanella and Mark Musa, trans. New York: Oxford University Press,
1984.
Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (1835-40). G. Laurence, trans. New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
I was thinking about Louis Auchincloss the other day. He is an unduly deprecated author because, while a full-time practicing
lawyer and responsible New York citizen, he has written a large number of novels dealing, as did much of Henry James and
Edith Wharton, with the upper class, or at least the upper professional class, such as old Wall Street law firms. His novel The
Rector of Justin is about a private-school headmaster of an earlier clay and, I think, a wonderful book. But it is perhaps less
relevant to some than one of his books dealing with Wall Street life and its ethical problems, similar to those faced in other
professional callings.
It is the author, not the particular book, to whom one would want to call the reader's attention. You will recall, of course, that
the Bible is itself a collection of books, poetry, history and much else. There are of course salient books, whether Machiavelli's
The Prince or de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but in these cases it is the author whom one would want also to bring to
the reader's attention.

Ihor Sevcenko
Ihor Sevcenko is a byzantinist in Harvard's Department of the Classics. His principal interest is Byzantine cultural history. The
first entry in his own extensive bibliography —a translation into Polish of an excerpt from Voltaire—was written when
Sevcenko was a sixteen-year-old student in Warsaw. His Harvard career as a professor of Byzantine history and literature has
been spent in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.; and as a visiting professor at colleges around
the world. As an avid dreg trout fisherman those same travels permit his pursuit of the Arctic grayling.
The books by Souvarine and de Man will be forgotten. The others will continue yielding insights into the minds and feelings of
men and into the behavior of groups with a depth and immediacy that cannot be gotten from treatises on psychology or
sociology. St. Mark's Gospel will remain a concise message that helps explain the appeal of the most successful mass
movement of our civilization to date.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431-404 B.C.). Richard Livingstone, ed. New York: Oxford University
Press. 1960. (Pb)
The most difficult Greek prose author I had previously encountered. Absorbing the whole of Thucydides was painful, but the
task, once accomplished, determined my choice of Greek texts as subject of study for the rest of my life. Reading Thucydides
was a make-or-break enterprise. I never encountered a more difficult, more concise and more deeply thinking Greek author in
my subsequent career as a classicist or a byzantinist. The Melian Dialogue and the passages devoted to Alcibiades' career stuck
with me for the duration.

The collected works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1844-1880) (no standard collection in English).
Reading Dostoevsky is like going through an imaginary illness of late adolescence and early adulthood that, when overcome,
increases the chances of survival for the rest of one's life. The novel that produced the greatest impact was The Demons. I
looked at it (and most of my friends did the same) as a distorted but magic and prophetic mirror that revealed the doings of
those who were to stage the Revolution of November 1917 and of those whom the Revolution was to topple. The quest after
the meaning of human existence—a query to which I later chose a negative answer—first became an "accursed question"
during the reading of Dostoevsky. Critics say that Dostoevsky's prose is drab. I did not feel it at all in this second of my
massive immersions in Russian literary prose (the first was Gogol) and I was overawed by it.

Rainer Maria Rilke. Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1897-1923). Stephen Mitchell, ed. New York: Random House,
1982.
Rilke has been my companion throughout my life. My preferred collection of poems include: Neue Gedichte (1907) and Neue
Gedichte Anderer Teil (1908). They represnt my life's most intimate contact with poetry. As with all intimate contacts, it is
difficult to put in words. Rilke led to my discovery of German as a language in which modern poetry can be written, admiration
for subdued elegance of form and economy of linguistic means, and for the languid subtlety of the message. I translated some
of Rilke's poems into Polish and Ukranian. All of it was lost in 1945.

Boris Souvarine. Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism (1935). New York: Arno, 1972.
How could the Revolution have been betrayed and perverted? How could its "pure" message be discerned and preserved?
These, along with the problem of right and might, were the preoccupying questions of my late adolescence. Souvarine's book
gave a scholarly and, on the surface, dispassionate answer to those emotional questions, that both made sense of the past and
satisfied the expectations for the future (expectations not borne out by events, of course). At the time, I did not know the extent
of Souvarine's engagement in the Trotskyite movement. Still a book to read.

James Joyce. Ulysses (1918-20), New York: Random House, 1976. (Pb)
This was the second major English prose classic I worked through in the original, Vanity Fair having been the first. Ulysses's
role in my biography as a reader was analogous to the one Thucydides had played some ten years earlier: it was a make-or-
break affair. I had no conception of Dublin or its pubs, but was by my own makeup attuned to the stream of consciousness and
went along with Joyce on his heroes' rounds. Result: a lasting admiration for the flexibility of English and for the author's own
virtuoso play on that instrument (and on other languages as well: remember the list of ambassadors!). Mrs. Bloom's inner
monologue, a model of empathy, will remain the kind of text I wish I were able to write.

Gospel According to St. Mark. The Bible.

I chose the shortest among the Gospels, for I wanted to read one of them in Greek. Two insights resulted from the reading:
realizing the power and universal appeal of the Christian message at a time when its ethical elements were questioned by word
and deed all around me: understanding that there was more to antiquity, in terms of "lasting" values, than high classics. This
was the starting point for my ultimately opting for the science of antiquity and its aftermath rather than pure classical philology.

Hendrik de Man. The Psychology of Socialism (Die sozialistische Idee. 1933). Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, trans. New York:
Arno, 1974.
At a time that seemingly "eternal" values were contradicted by reality, relativized, or made into constructs that expressed the
social interest of those who propounded them, de Man offered reasoned and scholarly solutions to a young man's doubts: stress
on the writings of young Marx; the concept of intellectuals as a "free-floating" stratum, not shackled in their perceptions by
their social backgrounds; the relative autonomy of ideas; the relativization of Marxism; the derelativization of the notions of
Truth, Beauty and Justice; viewing conscience as an instinct rather than as interiorized ideology.

Sigmund Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). Joan Riviere, trans. London: Hogarth, 1930.
. The Future of an Illusion (1926). James Strachey, ed. and trans. New York: W.W. Norton, 1961.
. Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901). A.A. Brill, ed. and trans. New York: Macmillan, n.d.
. Totem and Taboo (1913). James Strachey, ed. and trans. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962.
Otto Immisch. Wie studiert man klassische Philologie? (1909). 2d ed. Stuttgart: W. Violet, 1920.
Plato. The Republic (370-360 B.c.). James Adam, ed. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
If it were possible to enlarge to ten, I would add the following three names: (1) Sigmund Freud, whose writings influenced me
more than several of the books I discussed in some detail above. I just did not think of him when I was taking down the names
of "influential" books as they were spontaneously coming to mind; I wonder why. I record this Fehlleistung here as a tribute to
his delightful Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901). Other books by him that determined my intellectual climate for years
were Totem and Taboo (1913) (even if based on assumptions no longer shared by anthropologists); The Future of an Illusion
(1927); and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). (2) Plato, Republic. Book 1 for its insights into the mechanisms of naked
power. (3) Otto Immisch, Wie studiert man klassische Philologie?, merely for autobiographical reasons: this sensible small
book confirmed me in the resolve to study the classics and helped map out the beginnings of my study program.

Judith Shklar

Judith Shklar was born in Riga, Latvia. She describes herself as having attended, off and on, various useless schools, but was
educated at McGill and Harvard Universities. She became interested in political theory as an undergraduate and has taught it at
Harvard since 1954. She is the John Cowles Professor of Government. In 1984, she was a recipient of the MacArthur Award.
Among her books are Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory and her most recent work, Ordinary Vices.
These books do not prepare anyone for anything in particular. They can only enhance our intellectual imagination and
understanding.

Plato. The Republic (370-360 B.c.). James Adam, ed. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
The first book I read in my late adolescence which I had to recognize as both perfect and wholly alien. It set me off to asking
the question that has preoccupied me as a political theorist since then: How are we to think about our personal lives and
experiences in a world order that is entirely remote from us, but nevertheless impinges upon us constantly and often
incomprehensibly? All the other books I list play upon this theme.

St. Augustine. The City of God (A.D. 413-426). David Knowles, ed. New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
Both as an account of what Christian religiosity implies and also as the most extreme vision of a moral and material order in
which we must fail especially when we think that we are behaving well.

Michel de Montaigne. Selections from the Essays (1595). Donald M. Frame, ed. and trans. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan
Davidson, 1973. (Pb)
The question of how a skeptic can live his life as a social and political agent is often asked, and here it is examined in
"attempts," or thought experiments. Nothing is asserted and everything can he doubted without despair or destructiveness. For
me it is the model of how to think.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (1865-69). Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, trans. George Gibian, ed. New York: W.W. Norton,
1966.
I read it when I was very young and have reread it many times. It is both a complete world in which one lives while one reads
on and the most successful of all attempts to integrate public history and private lives.

Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain (1924). H.T. Lowe-Porter, trans. New York: Random House, 1969. (Pb)
The political novel achieves the same effect as War and Peace, but in a different way. It allows us to rush helplessly into the
First World War, not knowing why but how the European world committed collective suicide.
In some indefinable way the mass of historical novels I read as a child turned me into a historian. Everything from Alexandre
Dumas, Sir Walter Scott and Dickens's Tale of Two Cities to an endless number of far less distinguished romances, not least
those of Rafael Sabatini, inspired an enduring passion for history. The mixture of this inbred taste for the past and the need to
explain the events of my childhood, as a refugee in and out of the Europe of the Second World War, have structured my work
as a political theorist from the first.

Zeph Stewart

Zeph Stewart's career at Harvard began in the 1940s as a graduate student and later as a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows.
He recently assumed a new position as director of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He continues as
the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Classics Department. Throughout his professional life, he has written
on the literature, philosophy and religion of the Greek and Roman world. His current pursuit focuses on religion of the
Hellenistic period.

These works give one some understanding of the human condition, of man's place in the world and of the marvel of human
creativity.

Homer. The Iliad (ca. 800 B.c.). Robert Fitzgerald, trans. New York: Doubleday, 1975. (Pb).
My choice of career was partly influenced by a comparatively early reading of Homer's Iliad (probably in an abridged form).
The cast of distinct and memorable characters, the essentially simple but deftly contrived plot, the sombre atmosphere of the
opening and closing scenes, the wonderful balance of crowds in action and intimate detail, all picture a whole civilization and
yet endure both as types and symbols and as a very human story. I felt in touch with the beginnings and grandeur of both the
literature and the history of my own world.

The Bible. Books of Genesis and Exodus.

Perhaps I felt some of the same appeal in these simply and beautifully crafted ideas and anecdotes from the earliest parts of the
Bible as I found in Homer, but here the mystery of things unseen and of man's dependence on his faith (whatever it is) come
through much more clearly. I was thrilled by the sense of motion and purpose in history, whereas change and motion in the
Iliad are more personal and psychological.

Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain (1924). 11. T. Lowe-Porter, trans. New York: Random House, 1969. (Pb)
Having been brought up on traditional English and American nineteenth-century novels, I was gripped by the inner world and
its outward reflections that seemed so modern and powerful in Mann's writing, even when it was most wordy. Such a tour de
force as the entrapping snowstorm was frightening and full of meaning, giving character to the physical world and to exterior
experience like that found in the post-Impressionists. It led me not only into more reading of Mann but also into an
appreciation of much other contemporary literature and art.

Cleanth Brooks. Modern Poetry and the Tradition. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1970. (Pb)
This critical survey, now a little passé, opened a door for me just at the moment that I was looking for ways to appreciate the
new poets (Yeats and Eliot in particular). I found in the New Criticism some of the same methods applied to modern poetry that
were familiar in classical scholarship, and Brooks's analyses and connection-making brought me deeper appreciation, but also
showed me the limitations of his method in his treatment of Frost.

William Shakespeare. King Lear (1605). New York: Penguin, 1984. (Pb)
Many plays and films, from Aeschylus to the present, have moved me deeply, but perhaps none more than King Lear in the
three superb performances that I have seen. The power of speech to evoke man's most subtle and contradictory insights, the
interplay of good and evil in the world, the terror of the irrational and the unknown and the healing power of hope and love are
all woven into a single drama.
In the course of my professional work I have of course occasionally read books that have had an enormous impact at the time
on my thinking and understanding, but which could often not be recommended to a general audience, particularly an English-
reading one. I think of Erwin Rohde's Der griechische Roman, or E. R. Dodds's The Greeks and the Irrational (fine for a
general audience), or of A. J. Festugiere's La revelation d'Hermes Trismegiste. To someone who is seeking to understand the
thinking and literature of another people in another time such books can light up a whole cultural landscape.

Sidney Verba

Sid Verba is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library. He is also on the
board of the Harvard University Press but, as a serious political scientist, reserves time to teach government at Harvard.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Pb)
It taught me about being an American—about growing up, about whites and blacks, about escape, about big rivers.
Chaim Grade. Rabbis and Wives (1982). Harold Rabinowitz and I. H. Grade, trans. New York: Random House, 1983. (Pb)
It describes the world of the Eastern European sktetl—the world of my grandparents. Grade, like Dickens, gives the texture of
life.

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (1835-40). G. Laurence, trans. New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
Probably still the greatest book about American society and politics.
William Shakespeare. Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (1596-97). Arthur Quiller-Couch et al., eds. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1965. (Pb)
. Richard II (1595). New York: Penguin, 1981. (Pb)
All the Histories—especially these two—are great treatises on politics, maturity and responsibility.

V. O. Key, Jr. and Alexander Heard. Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949). Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
1984. (Pb)
The first book that taught me to think like a social scientist. Still a classic account of a past political world.

Luise Vosgerchian

Luise Vosgerchian is the Walter W Nautnburg Professor of Music at Harvard University. She has been a teacher and active
contributor to the musical life at Harvard University for twenty-six years. In 1971 she became a professor of music, and was
appointed to her present chair in 1974. She subsequently served for four years as chairman of the Music Department.
As a concert pianist, Luise Vosgerchian has appeared with major orchestras. including the New York Philharmonic and the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as with numerous chamber and ensemble groups in both the United States and Europe.
Her recordings include nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by such coinposers as Brahms. Schumann, Debussy, Ives and
Bartok.

I hope the spiritual and intellectual comprehension of the creative process so beautifully expressed in these books will fire
young students to act against all that is now and will be potentially destructive.
The following books from my reading list have strongly influencecl my teaching from several points of view:
1. The importance of discovering.
2. Awakening the responsibility to the artistic conscience.
3. The importance of total commitment to learning.
4. Stimulating the creative use of knowledge.

Alfred North Whitehead. The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929). New York: Free Press, 1967. (Pb)

Wendell Berry. Recollected Essays, 1965-1980. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981. (Pb)

Ben Shahn. The Shape of Content. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. (Pb)

D. W. Prall. Aesthetic Analysis. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1936.

Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet (1929). M. D. Herter Norton. trans. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963. (Pb)

D. H. Lawrence. Studies in Classic American Literature (1923). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)

Gordon R. Willey

Gordon Willey is the Bowditch Professor of Mexican and Central American Archaeology and Ethnology Emeritus and,
currently, a senior professor in anthropology at Harvard University. He has long-time research interests in Mesoamerican
archaeology, especially in Mayan studies, and has conducted fieldwork in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. He has also had
field experience in Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

In selecting the following books I have tried to strike a balance between the impact they made upon me at first reading and the
impressions they have left with me ever since. It is a very personalized list, most of it closer to me than to my profession.
Indeed, only one of the six books is strictly archaeological, and four of the six are works of fiction. I shall take them up in the
chronological order of my first reading them.

Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). New York: Dodd, Mead, 1979.
My first reading of this was in 1922, when I was nine years old; since then I have reread it on several occasions. The magic of
this fascinating fable of good and evil never fails. While as a youngster I was undoubtedly first captured by its "mystery and
horror" aspects, I think even then I was aware of the moral tragedy Stevenson depicted so wonderfully.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby (1925). New York: Scribner's, 1981.
I read this first at the right time—as an undergraduate in college—but it continues to be an old and dear favorite. Fitzgerald's
lyric masterpiece tells us about the dreams, desires and heartbreaks that "float in the wake" (to use a good Fitzgeraldian phrase)
of the search for money and power. The whole narrative is also pervaded by the ever-present concern for social class and status
that lay—and still lies—just below the surface of American life.

Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West (1919-22), Charles Francis Atkinson, trans. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1975.
I was bowled over by this vast, absurd, learned, pretentious book when I read it in 1936.1 suppose it was the first "Big Book" I
had ever read. I don't go back to it much now. As an archaeologist I am interested in many of the things Spengler has to say,
though I think many of Spengler's ideas are wrongheaded and even bad. At the same time, the book has value.

Vere Gordon Childe. The Danube in Prehistory (1929). New York: AMS Press, 1976.
This was read as part of my graduate professional education in 1939-40.1 select it as one of the finest professional and
technical works of this greatest of modern archaeologists. In it Childe shows the way archaeological syntheses should be
written. It made an initial and a lasting impression upon me and my career.

Anthony Powell. A Dance to the Music of Time (1962-75). 12 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
I read the twelve volumes of this splendid novel serially as they appeared, and since then I have reread the whole series twice,
each time with new pleasure. I seem never to tire of it. Perhaps it is not up to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, but I like it
better. It is witty, sensitive, involved yet remote; my sense of empathy with Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, seems always
complete.

Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire (1962). New York: Putnam,1980. (Pb)

This is a very strange book, and I do not really understand why I am so entranced by it. Many of Nabokov's other things I don't
care for, but I have read this at least three times. One thing about it is that Nabokov is an extraordinarily visual writer. The
imagery is superb; it is like dreaming in Color-Vision. The story is ridiculous, poignant, and enchanting, but it opens up a world
of the imagination that becomes more real than the real world,

SPORT
Andrew Ward

Sport is a worldwide phenomenon that bonds nations by its rules and yet provides a basis for competition. Major sporting
events, such as Olympic Games and World Cups, attract record television audiences and generate enormous interest. But sport
also gives people fun and friendship at the grass-roots level, and it is a great source of stories. This reading list concentrates on
nonfiction books, but there is also a vast amount of fictional work that provides an emotional feel for sport; in particular, see
the work of P G Wodehouse (golf), Bernard Malamud and W P Kinsella (baseball), Frederick Exley (American football), David
Storey (rugby league), Jack London (boxing), and Dick Francis (horse racing). In recent years, as sport gains more credence as
a subject of serious study, it has become a fertile ground for sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, and historians, who have
all shown that sport can teach us a lot about society and relationships.

Sport may have to be explained in terms of things beyond itself

but it has also to be enjoyed for its own sake.
RICI TARO HOLT

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938; translated from Dutch 1949) by Johan Huizinga. A classic
study of the philosophy of play.

The Football Man: Passions and People in Soccer (1968) by Arthur Hopcraft. Hopcraft provides a highly readable overview
of the traditional roles of soccer people. Concentrating on Britain, where soccer has its roots, he captures what the game means
to all participants, from players to spectators.
The Boys of Summer (1971) by Roger K. A journalist tells of his love affair with the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the
1950s. Kahn not only describes the players, interviewed 20 years on, but also explains how he was captivated by sport through
his father's interest.

Sports in America (1976) by James Michener. A sports enthusiast and best-selling novelist, Michener reviews the pains and
pleasures of sport in the late 20th century.

The Oxford Companion to Sports and Games (1976) edited by John Arlott_ A comprehensive paperback which documents
the history of every sport and has entries on key people and venues.

Sport and the British (1989) by Richard Holt. Holt's book examines sport as part of the general history of Britain. He
describes the origins of fair play and amateurism, and traces the development of gambling and professionalism.

Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (1990) by Thomas Hauser. A wonderfully researched book which reconstructs the life of
the world's greatest ever boxer in the words of those who knew him during his career.

Information Sources in Sport and Leisure (1992) edited by Michele Shoebridge. A book for serious students researching
specific aspects of sport.

The Complete Book of the Olympics (1992) by David Wallechinsky. A massive compendium which gives the result of every
Olympic final event since 1896 and documents the most fascinating stories of the Games.

Bouton, Jim, American, 1939- .

Ball Four. Rec: Counterpunch NF NYPL

Pelé, Brazilian, 1940- .

My Life and the Beautiful Game. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Religion

The Introduction to Occult and Paranormal could stand, unaltered, here. The fact that it does not—and that making it do so
would seem both frivolous and provocative—is perhaps an indication of the abiding authority and strength of religious studies,
if not of the claims of religion itself. Certainly, whatever follies and barbarities have been inherent in religious practice, its
principle has often synthesized the best moral, ethical and philosophical thought (to say nothing of poetry and other arts) of
which the human mind is capable. Hence, the bias of the books on this list is less towards the detail of specific religions
(though some outstanding works of Christian apologetics are included) than towards discussion of those spiritual and
philosophical dilemmas to which religious thinkers have notably and regularly addressed themselves. There are, in fact, very
few recommendable books on the validity and transcendental potentiality of "paganism," or on systems of moral, philosophical
and artistic life which exclude the religious initiative—and this lack focuses attention on two fundamental questions. Is
religious belief an essential prerequisite of such matters, and are those who think they can manage without it therefore deluded?
Or does the flaw in objectivity—crucial at least philosophically—tell us something about the exclusive nature of religious
belief itself?
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Dodds, Lewis, Lienhardt, Radin); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Augustine, Fox, Gosse); BIOGRAPHY
(Bain-ton, Renan); DIARIES (Kierkegaard, Kilvert, Pope John, Teilhard de Chardin, Woodforde); DRAMA (Sayers);
HISTORY/BRITISH (Bede, Tawney, Thomas); HISTORY/ EUROPEAN (Barraclo ugh, Cohn, Ladurie); MYTHOLOGY
(Branston, Burland, Dowson. Eliade, Frazer, Harrison, Huxley, Weston); PHILOSOPHY (Aquinas, Gilson, Marcel. Spinoza);
POETRY (Gardner); PSYCHOLOGY (Jung); SOCIOLOGY (Berger)

Abu Bakr Muhammad bin 'Abdulmalik ibn Tufail, Arab in Islamic Spain, ca. 1105-1185.
Awakening of the Soul (Hayy ibn Yaqzan). Rec: Ward

Adams, Henry Mont St Michel and Chartres (1904)

Extraordinary study of 13th-century Catholicism in France, its cathedrals and its Mariolatry. The book could also be
recommended under Architecture; either way Adams is delicious (and malicious) on the Virgin and her worship. See Warner;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; HISTORY/AMERICAN

Aletrino, N. Six World Religions (1968)

Brief sketch of the origin, growth and meaning of each of six great non-Christian religions of the world. Unpolemical;
thorough; readable.

Amar Chitra Katha comics

$2.50 per episode
From
Vedic Resource, importer of Vedic, Hindu, and Indian culture books and artifacts
The Ramayana, full scan of Amar Chitra Katha comic book
Amar Chitra Katha, Publishers of Indian comic books

Anselm, St., Italian-English writing in Latin, 1033-1109.

Proslogium. Rec: Aquinas SJC
Reply to Gaunilo. Rec: Aquinas

Ashvaghosha, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 1st-2nd C CE.

Buddha-charita. Rec: StJE

Athanasius, St., Byzantine Greek, ca. 297-373.

On the Incarnation. Rec: Aquinas

Augustine, St., North African writing in Latin, 354-430.

Works. Rec: Adler (Selections)
Confessions. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Col37 Col61 Collh91 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC Ward
City of God. Rec: Aquinas Bloom Colcc91 (Selections) GBWW
On Christian Doctrine. Rec: Aquinas GBWW
On the Teacher. Rec: Aquinas
On the Spirit and the Letter. Rec: Aquinas
On Nature and Grace. Rec: Aquinas
On the Gift of Perserverance. Rec: Aquinas
On the Predestination of the Saints. Rec: Aquinas

Anonymous, Indian (extant only in Chinese translation), 5th-6th C.

Awakening of Faith in Mahayana. Rec: Oriental

Barbour, Ian G. Issues in Science and Religion (1968)

Masterly contribution to the debate between science and religion; issues discussed with exemplary clarity and fairness. Also:
Science and Religion. See MATHEMATICS (Koestler)

Barth, Karl, Swiss writing in German, 1886-1968.

The Word of God and the Word of Man. Rec: GBWW
Credo. Rec: TLS

Barthélemy St.-Hilaire, Jules, French, 1805-1895.

The Buddha and His Religion. Rec: Lubbock

Beck, Charlotte Joko, American, 1917?- .

Everyday Zen. Rec: Utne

Bernstein, Marmite Nuns (1976)

What are nuns? Why? How? Where? This book is jolly and journalistic in places, but also manages to document the need for
solitude, celibacy and a life of worship in the contemporary West. No history; concentrates mainly on modern British and US
convent life.

Bettenson, Henry Documents of the Christian Church (1963) 0

Selection runs from the Neronian persecution (AD 64) to the revised constitution of the World Council of Churches (1961).
Useful if you want to know exactly what Luther nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral or what the Council of Trent said
about original sin.

Anonymous, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 200 BCE.

The Bhagavad Gita. (See also Vyasa. Mahabharata) Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Oriental Rexmo StJE Ward

Bible PP *V
Those approaching the Bible as a central plank in their Christian faith and practice will probably use a modern translation;
those approaching it as one of the seminal books of the Western literary tradition will be more familiar with the words of the
Authorized Version (1611). There are no really good recensions for children, preserving both the poetry and the mystery:
Edwards and Steen: A Child's Bible (1973) comes nearest. See Bultmann; MYTHOLOGY (Hooke)

Various Authors, Jews writing in Hebrew, 13th-2nd C BCE.

Bible. Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament"). (See also Apocrypha) Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good
Reading Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
Genesis. Rec: Col61 Colcc91 Collh91
Exodus. Rec: Colcc91
Isaiah. Rec: Colcc91 Utne
Amos. Rec: Col61
Job. Rec: Col61 Collh91 Meaningful Rex
Song of Songs. Rec: Rexmo
Revised Standard Version. Rec: NYPL

Various Authors, Jewish Christians writing in Greek, 1st C CE.

Bible. New Testament. (See also New Testament Apocrypha) Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading
Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections) Ward
Gospels. Rec: Collh91
Matthew. Rec: Col61 Colcc91
John. Rec: Col61
Acts. Rec: Colcc91
Romans. Rec: Col61 Colcc91
James. Rec: Colcc91
Revelation. Rec: Colcc91
Revised Standard Version. Rec: NYPL

Various Authors, Jews writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, 2nd C BCE-1st C CE.
Apocrypha. Rec: Bloom

Various Authors, Christians writing in Greek, 2nd C.

New Testament Apocrypha. Gospel of Truth (Survives in Coptic translation). Rec: Seymour-Smith

Bodhidharma (Daruma), Indian-Chinese, ca. 470-543 .

Selected Writings. Rec: StJE

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Letters and Papers from Prison (1953)

Bonhoeffer, a martyr to the cause of Christian resistance to Hitler, propounded the idea of "religionless Christianity"; Letters
and Papers is one of the most-quoted Christian documents from World War H. Also: Ethics; The Cost of Discipleship; Life
Together, etc

Anonymous, Egyptian, Ancient, 23rd-16th C BCE.

Book of the Dead. Rec: Bloom

Browne, Sir Thomas, English, 1605-1682.

Religio Medici. Rec: Bloom
Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall. Rec: Bloom
Garden of Cyrus. Rec: Bloom

Buber, Martin I and Thou (1923)

The core of Buber's philosophy of religion, education, society and politics; concise and sensitive. Also: Between Man and Men;
Good and Evil; Paths in Utopia

Buber, Martin, Austrian, 1878-1965.

I and Thou. Rec: Boston PL Seymour-Smith TLS

Buckley, William F., American, 1925- .

God and Man at Yale. Rec: National Review

Various Authors, writing in Pali and Sanskrit, Indians writing in Pali and Sanskrit, 100-400 CE.
Buddhist Scriptures. Rec: Ward

Bultmann, Rudolph Jesus Christ and Mythology (1960)

Bultmann is concerned to "demythologize" the Christian faith, to make it intelligible and relevant to those who can no longer
take literally statements about a supernatural world. Also: Jesus and the Word; Primitive Christianity; Theology of the New
Testament

Bunyan, John, English, 1628-1688.

Pilgrim's Progress. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock Rex Seymour-Smith

Burkert, Walter, German, 1931- .

Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Butler, Joseph, English, 1692-1752.

The Analogy of Religion. Rec: Lubbock

Butterfield, Herbert Christianity and History (1949)

Influential views on the meaning of history, and the relation of historical processes to Christian thinking; light in touch;
graphic; provocative. Also: The Origins of Modern Science, etc

Calvin, John, Swiss writing in Latin, 1509-1564.

Institutes of the Christian Religion. Rec: Adler Colcc91 GBWW Seymour-Smith
Castaneda, Carlos The Don Juan Trilogy (1969– 1972)
These three volumes— The Teachings of Don Juan; A Separate Reality; Journey to Ixtlan—by a young anthropologist who met
a wise old Yaqui Indian in the New Mexico desert, created a sensation in the early 1970s and also some controversy: was the
whole affair a complicated hoax? Anyway, the books are excellent and thought provoking—the religion of peyote, out of time
out of place.

Castaneda, Carlos, American, 1931-1998.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Rec: LAT

Chadwick, Henry The Early Church (1967)

A good account of the way in which the Christian church, having taken root in the cracks of the Roman Empire, came to tower
over every aspect of life and culture. Also: Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition

Various Authors, Chinese, 6th-10th C (with commentaries from the 16th-20th C).
Ch'an and Zen Teaching. Rec: Ward (religion)

Charvaka, Indian, ca. 600 BCE.

Selected Writings. Rec: StJE (religion)

Conze, Edward (trans) Buddhist Scriptures (1959)

Comprehensive selection, including many of the best-known Buddhist texts. Also: Buddhism. See Humphreys.
Crosse, F. L. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1957) DI Everything from Original Sin to Last Judgement,
lucidly and alphabetically explained.

D'Annunzio, Gabriele, Italian, 1863-1938.

Maia: In Praise of Life. Rec: Bloom

Darwish, Mahmud, Palestinian (Arabic), 1942?-.

The Music of Human Flesh. Rec: Bloom

Davies, Horton Christian Deviations (1954)

Compassionate but hard look (from a position of inexorable orthodoxy) at such "fringe" movements as Spiritualism, Christian
Science and Moral Rearmament. Also: Puritan Worship. See ANTHROPOLOGY (Lewis)

Deanesly, Margaret The History of the Mediaeval Church, 590-1500 (1925)

Splendid guide to the medieval Christian church; particularly good on the more human (and less political) subjects like friars,
hospitals and heretics. Also: The Lollard Bible

Various Authors, Indians writing in Hindi, 15th-17th C.

Devotional Poetry of North India. (See also Indian Devotional Poetry, Kabir) Rec: MW Asian

Sayings of Gautama Buddha, Indian writing in Pali, ca. 300 BCE.

Dhammapada. Rec: Oriental Seymour-Smith StJE Ward

Anonymous, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 1st C CE (translated into Chinese ca. 400).
Diamond Sutra. Rec: StJE

Dodd, C. H. The Founder of Christianity (1971) 1111 Award-winning book by British New Testament scholar who
directed the translation of The New English Bible; result of a life-time's meditation on the text of the New Testament. Also: The
Apostolic Preaching and Its Development; The Parables of the Kingdom; The A uthority of the Bible

Dogen, Japanese, 1200-1253.

Shobo-Genzo (Sermons). Rec: StJE

Dunham, Barrows The Heretics (1961)

Fascinating study of heresy in the last 2000 years, concentrating on specific figures but addressing itself to the general
proposition that heresy and persecutions are dynamic elements in the evolution of thought. Challenging and authoritative on
what orthodoxy is and how it is made and remade. Dunham knows what he's talking about: he conceived this book when he
was arraigned by Senator McCarthy. See HISTORY/EUROPEAN (Ladurie)

Epstein, Isidore Judaism (1970)

This book does not deal exclusively with religion, but also covers political, social and economic issues. Provocative;
authoritative.

Ferraby, John All Things Made New (1957) a Comprehensive introduction to the history and teachings of the Baha'i
faith, usefully incorporating many quotations from Baha'i holy writings.

Feuerbach, Ludwig, German, 1802-1874.

Essence of Christianity. Rec: Aquinas

Gaunilo, French writing in Latin, 11th C.

On Behalf of the Fool. Rec: Aquinas (religion)

Various Authors, Christians writing in Greek, 1st-2nd C.

The Genuine Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers (Translated and published by William Wake (1657-1737)). Rec: Lubbock

Ghazzali, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-, Arab, 1059-1111.

Deliverer from Error. Rec: App Oriental Ward (Sufism)

Guenon, Rene (personal rec)

Guillaume, Alfred Islam (1954)

The resurgence of Islam as a world force makes a book for Westerners on the subject of great importance. This one is excellent:
clear, thorough, unprejudiced.

Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, Armenian, 1866-1949.

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Various Authors, Arab, 9th C.

Hadith (Traditions of Islam). Rec: Ward

Hakuin, Japanese, 1689-1769.

Writings. Rec: Oriental

Happold, F. C. Mysticism (1963)

Good introduction to, and anthology of, the writers and seers (of all spiritual traditions) who have sought to penetrate the heart
of being, if it has one. Also: Religious Faith of Twentieth-century Man

Harrison, Jane E., English, 1850-1928.

Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Anonymous, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 1st C CE? (translated into Chinese ca. 400).
Heart Sutra. Rec: StJE

Hebblethwaite, Peter The Christian-Marxist Dialogue and Beyond (1976)

A book of capital importance for those who want to understand some of the apparently odd ecclesiastico-political alignments in
the Third World. Knotty contents; easy style. Also: Runaway Church

Various Authors, Chinese, ca. 1000.

Hekigan Roku (Pi Yen Lu; Blue Cliff Record). Rec: Ward (religion)

Hick, John Death and Eternal Life (1976)

Comprehensive examination of contemporary attitudes to death in literature, empirical "evidence" of survival, parapsychology,
the doctrines and attitudes of religion. Christian bias does not unbalance a generally fascinating, eclectic book. Also: Evil and
the God of Love; Faith and Knowledge
Hildegard of Bingen, German writing in Latin, 1098-1179.
Scivias. Rec: Utne (religion)

Hirsch, Edward, American, 1950- .

Earthly Measures. Rec: Bloom
A collection of meditations on the manifestations of the divine in everyday life.

Huineng, Chinese, 638-713.

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. (See also Ch'an and Zen Teaching) Rec: App Fadiman 4 Oriental StJE

Humphreys, Christmas Buddhism (1962) a

Anonymous, Chinese, 12th C BCE?.

I Ching (Yijing; Book of Changes). Rec: Counterpunch Trans Seymour-Smith StJE

Inca and others, Peru, Pre-Columbian, 12th-15th C.

. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indian.

Indian Devotional Poetry. Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Indian.

Indo-Islamic Poetry. Rec: Oriental

Isvarakrsna, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 4th C.

Samkhyakarika. Rec: StJE

Jacobus de Varagine, Italian writing in Latin, ca. 1227-1298.

Golden Legend. Rec: Ward (religion)
A collection of lives of the saints that became a medieval bestseller.

James, William The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) There has been much new thought since this study of religious
conversion first appeared; but it remains a classic in its field. Also: Psychology; The Will to Believe

Jayadeva, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 12th C.

Gitagovinda. Rec: MW Asian Oriental StJE Ward (religion)

John Damascene, St., Syrian Greek, ca. 675-ca. 749.

An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Rec: Aquinas

John of the Cross, St. (Juan de la Cruz), Spanish, 1542-1591.

Complete Poetry. Rec: Bloom Ward

John Paul II (Pope), Latin, 1920-2005.

On the hundredth anniversary of Rerum novarum: encyclical letter Centesimus annus. Rec: National Review

John XXIII (Pope), Italian writing in Latin, 1881-1963.

(See also Vatican II)
Encyclicals of Pope John XXIII. Rec: Boston PL

Jonas, Hans, German-American writing in German, 1903-1993.

The Gnostic Religion. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Various Authors, Jews in Provence, Spain, and Palestine writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, 12th-16th C.
Kabbalah (Includes the Zohar and many other books). (See also Zohar) Rec: Seymour-Smith

Kabir, Indian writing in Hindi, ca. 1430-ca. 1518 .

Poems. (See also Devotional Poetry of North India) Rec: Ward
Kalidasa, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 400 .
The Cloud Messenger. Rec: Fadiman 4 MW Asian
Sakuntala. Rec: App Fadiman 4 Lubbock Meaningful MW Asian Oriental StJE
Birth of the War God. Rec: StJE

Kanada, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 2nd C BCE.

Vaisheshika-Sutra. Rec: StJE

Kapleau, Philip The Three Pillars of Zen (1966)

The cult of Zen among the rootless young of the 1960s has tended to leave in our minds a barely understood, misguided and
partial view of a serious and coherent religious philosophy. Zen is a mystic system (derived in Japan from the Ch'an Buddhist
sect of China): its aim is personal tranquillity, and its methods are austerity and the encouragement of the fine arts and
education. This book ignores Western hippy accretions and concentrates on the central pillars of the original philosophy.

Keble, John, English, 1792-1866.

The Christian Year. Rec: Lubbock

Kempis, Thomas a, German writing in Latin, 1380-1471.

Imitation of Christ. Rec: Lubbock

Kukai, Japanese, 774-835.

Kukai and His Major Works. Rec: Oriental Ward (religion)

Küng, Hans, Swiss writing in German, 1928- .

On Being a Christian. Rec: TLS

La Barre, Weston, American, 1911-1996.

The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion. Rec: LAT

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 5th C (Chinese translation).

Lankavatara Sutra. Rec: Oriental

Lao-tzu (Laozi), Chinese, ca. 604-ca. 531 BCE.

Tao te Ching (Daodejing). (See also Texts of Taoism) Rec: App Good Reading Oriental Rexmo Seymour-Smith StJE Utne

Leo XIII (Pope), Italian writing in Latin, 1810-1903.

Aeterni Patris. Rec: Aquinas
Rerum Novarum. Rec: Aquinas

Lewis, C. S., English, 1898-1963.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Rec: NYPL Time
The Abolition of Man. Rec: National Review
Mere Christianity. Rec: National Review

Anonymous, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 255.

Lotus Sutra (Saddharma-Pundarika Sutra, also known as Sutra of the Lotus of the True Law).
Rec: App Oriental Ward

Luther, Martin, German, 1483-1546.

Table Talk. Rec: Adler
Three Treatises. Rec: Adler
Freedom of a Christian. Rec: SJC
Secular Authority. Rec: SJC
Commentary on Galatians. Rec: SJC (Selections)
Sincere Admonition. Rec: SJC
On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Various Authors, Indians writing in Pali, 480 BCEff.

Mahaparinibbana Sutta. Rec: StJE
Various Authors, Indians writing in Pali, 4th C BCE?.
Mahasatipatthana Sutta. Rec: Oriental

Manu, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 2nd Millennium BCE? .

Institutes of Manu. Rec: StJE

Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd century)

If there are any spiritually mature books on "paganism- (see introduction to this list), these calm, rigorous Stoic reflections
head the list. This was the seedbed of Christian morality, too.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman writing in Greek, 121-180.

Meditations. Rec: Adler Col37 Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Lubbock Rex Seymour-Smith Utne Ward

Merton, Thomas, American, 1915-1968.

The Seven Storey Mountain. Rec: Boston PL Hungry Mind National Review

Milarepa, Tibetan, 1052-1135.

Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Rec: Ward

Anonymous, Indian writing in Pali, 2nd-1st C BCE.

Milindapañha, . Rec: Oriental Ward

Revealed to Muhammad, Arab, ca. 610-632.

Qur'an. Rec: App Bloom Fadiman 4 Good Reading Lubbock (Selections) Oriental Seymour-Smith Ward

Nagarjuna, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 2nd-3rd C.

Vigrahavyvartani. Rec: StJE

Newman, John Henry Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864)

Charles Kingsley had said that truth had never been a virtue of the Roman Catholic clergy. Newman replied by defending his
own intellectual integrity and commenting, in splendid prose, on his spiritual history. Also: An Essay on the Development of
Christian Doctrine, etc. See BIOGRAPHY (Strachey)

Newman, John Henry, English, 1801-1890.

Apologia pro Vita Sua. Rec: Bloom
Grammar of Assent. Rec: Bloom
Idea of a University. Rec: Bloom
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Rec: Aquinas

Nisargadatta, Maharaj, Indian writing in Marathi, 1897-1981.

I Am That. Rec: Utne

Oman, John Grace and Personality (1917) 9

Classic exploration of one of the most important of all theological problems, the relationship of divine grace and human free
will. Also: Vision and Authority

Padma Sambhava, Tibetan, c.717-c.762.

Tibetan Book of the Dead. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Pagels, Elaine, American, 1943- .

The Gnostic Gospels. Rec: ML Nonfiction Utne

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 5th C.

Panchatantra. Rec: Oriental Ward

Pannenberg, Wolfhart, German, 1928- .

Systematic Theology. Rec: National Review
Pascal, Blaise Pensees (1669) *V
Pascal's luminous notes for an unfinished apology for Christianity which would confound the followers of Descartes. Also:
Provincial Letters

Pascal, Blaise, French, 1623-1662.

Pensées (Thoughts). Rec: Adler Aquinas Bloom Fadiman 3 Fadiman 4 GBWW Lubbock Seymour-Smith SJC (Selections)
Ward
Provincial Letters. Rec: Adler GBWW Ward

Patañjali, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 300 CE.

Yogasutra. Rec: Oriental StJE Ward

Pelikan, Jaroslav, American, 1923- .

The Christian Tradition. Rec: National Review

Phillips, Margaret Mann Erasmus on His Times (1967) a

Shortened version of The Adages of Erasmus. The original bedside book, full of urbane wit and charm. See BIOGRAPHY
(Huizinga)

Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Alexandrian Greek, ca. 20 BCE-ca. 50 CE.

Allegorial Expositions of the Holy Laws. Rec: Seymour-Smith

Pius X, St. (Pope), Italian writing in Latin, 1835-1914.

Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Rec: Aquinas

Pius XI (Pope), Italian writing in Latin, 1857-1939.

Quadragesimo Anno. Rec: Aquinas

Pius XII (Pope), Italian writing in Latin, 1876-1958.

Humani Generis. Rec: Aquinas
Pizan, Christine de, See Christine de Pizan

Anonymous, Maya (Mexico and Central America), 1519 ff..

Popol Vuh. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 1st C CE (translated into Chinese from 179).
Prajnaparamita. Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Various, 16th C.

Protestant Reformation (Ed. by Hans J. Hillerbrand). Rec: Colcc91

Various Authors, Various, 20th C.

Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach (Ed. By William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt). Rec: Good
Reading

Renan (personal rec)

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 12th-8th C BCE.

Rig Veda. (See also Vedas) Rec: StJE

Rumi, Jalal ad-Din, Persian, 1207-1273.

The Divan of Shams-i-Tabriz. Rec: Utne
Mathnawi. Rec: Meaningful Oriental Ward
Discourses. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indians writing in Gurumukhi, 15th C.

Sacred Writings of the Sikhs. Rec: Ward

Schiffmann, Erich, American.

Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness. Rec: Utne

Scholem, Gershom, Israeli, 1897-1982.

The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Rec: TLS
Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Shantideva, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 7th/8th C.

Bodhicaryavatara. Rec: Oriental

Smart, Ninian The Phenomenon of Christianity (1979)

Fresh approach to Christianity as a religious phenomenon. The author slaps a "phenomenological grid" over it, and describes
the many facets into which it is then broken up. Also: The Religious Experience of Mankind; Philosophers and Religious Truth

Smith, Margaret, English, 1884-1970.

Rabia the Mystic & Her Fellow Saints in Islam. Rec: Utne (religion)

Somadeva Bhatta, Indian writing in Sanskrit, 11th C.

Kathasaritsagara. Rec: Ward

Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan, 1946?.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Rec: Utne

Various Authors, Chinese, 10th C BCE-20th C CE.

Sources of Chinese Tradition. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indian and Pakistani, 15th C BCE-20th C CE.

Sources of Indian Tradition. Rec: Ward

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 5th C (Chinese translation).

Srimaladevisim-hanada Sutra. Rec: Oriental

Struve, Nilcita Christians in Contemporary Russia (1963)

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 2nd C CE (Chinese translation).

Sukhavativyuha Sutra. Rec: Oriental

Suzuki, D. T., Japanese, 1870-1966.

Zen Buddhism. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Various Authors, Mesopotamian Jews writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, 2nd to 6th C.
Talmud (Babylonian). Rec: Ward
Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth). Rec: Bloom

Taylor, Jeremy, English, 1613-1697.

Holy Dying. Rec: Bloom
Holy Living and Dying. Rec: Lubbock

Traditional, Various, Earliest times-19th C.

Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (Edited with commentaries by
Jerome Rothenberg). (See also Shaking the Pumpkin) Rec: LAT

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre The Phenomenon of Man (1959) P*1.4

Published exactly 100 years after Darwin's The Origin of Species, this book Christianized evolution. Despite some theological
and philosophical cavils, Teilhard's great and humane vision has attracted a multitude of followers, and some critical disdain.
Also: The Future of Man, etc. See DIARIES: NATURAL HISTORY (Darwin, Huxley, Lack, Medawar, Smith)

Teresa of Avila, St. (Teresa de Jesús), Spanish, 1515-1582.

Life of Saint Teresa. Rec: Ward
Various Authors, Chinese, 6th C ff..
Texts of Chinese Buddhism. Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Japanese, 6th C ff..

Texts of Japanese Buddhism. Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Chinese, 6th-4th C BCE.

Texts of Taoism. (Includes Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu) Rec: Ward

Tillich, Paul The Boundaries of Our Being (1966)

Collection of addresses together with autobiographical sketch; theme is how the human predicament, seen against "divine
reality", challenges man to become a new being. Also: The Courage to Be; The Shaking of the Foundations

Tillich, Paul, German-American writing in English, 1886-1965.

The Courage to Be. Rec: NYPL

Various Authors, Indians writing in Pali, 5th C BCE.

Tripitaka (Tipitaka). Rec: Oriental

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, ca. 1000-500 BCE.

Upanishads. Rec: App Oriental Seymour-Smith StJE Ward

Valmiki, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 300 BCE.

Ramayana. Rec: Bloom Fadiman 4 Lubbock (Selections) Meaningful MW Asian Oriental StJE Ward

Various clerics convened by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, Latin, Pub. 1962-1965.
(See also John XXIII)
Vatican II. "Lumen Gentium". Rec: Aquinas

Anonymous (Badarayana?), Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 4th C BCE-2nd C CE.

Vedanta Sutra (with the commentary of Shankara 788-820). Rec: Oriental StJE

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 12th-8th C BCE.

Vedas. (See also Rig Veda) Rec: Oriental

Vidler, A. R. The Church in an Age of Revolution (1961)

Pithy, wide-ranging study of the Christian church as it faces the political, social and theological revolutions of our time. Also: A
Variety of Catholic Modernists; 20th-Century Defenders of the Faith; Soundings

Anonymous, Indian Buddhist writing in Sanskrit, 2nd C CE.

Vimalakirti Sutra. Rec: App Oriental StJE

Vyasa, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 200 BCE.

The Mahabharata. (See also Bhagavad Gita) Rec: App Bloom Fadiman 4 Lubbock (Selections) Meaningful MW Asian Oriental
Rex StJE Utne

Ward, Keith The Concept of God(1974)

Fresh, readable account of the philosophy of religion, holding that it is an integral part of human experience, the true focus of
which must be some concept of God. Also: Ethics and Christianity

Warner, Marina Alone of All Her Sex (1978)

Unshrill feminist history of Mariolatry—the Catholic Church's anti-female creation of the mother of God into a kind of
unattainable and unsexing model for women.

Wat, W. Montgomery Muhammad. Prophet and Statesman (1974) Well-researched biography; especially good on the
sociological perspectives of the man and his ministry.

Weil, Simone Waiting on God (1951)

Collection of letters and essays marking some of the stages in Weil's ascetic pilgrimage from revolutionary Marxism to the
threshold of the Catholic Church, but no further. Also: Gateway to God; Gravity and Grace; The Need for Roots

Wendel, Francoise Calvin (1963) a

Good introduction to the life and thought of a man who, apart from Augustine and Luther, had more influence than any other
religious thinker on Western secular society.

West, Cornel, American, 1953- .

Prophesy Deliverance!. Rec: Colcc91
Race Matters. Rec: Utne

Various Authors, Indians writing in Sanskrit, 6th C. .

Yogachara writings. Rec: StJE

Zaehner, R. C. Hinduism (1966)

Straightforward guide to the various epochs and styles of Hindu thought. Also: Hindu Scriptures; The Bhagavad-gita; The
Koran. See MYTHOLOGY (Narayan, O'Flaherty)

Various Authors, Parsis (Persian, later Indian) writing in Avestan, Parsis writing in Avestan, ca. 300 CE.
Zend-Avesta. Rec: Seymour-Smith Ward

Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), Chinese, 369-286 BCE.

Chuang Tzu. Rec: MW Asian Utne
Inner Chapters. (See also Texts of Taoism) Rec: Oriental StJE

Various authors probably including Moses de Leon (c. 1240-1305), Jews in Spain writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, 13th C.
Zohar. (See also Kabbalah) Rec: Utne

Clarissa Atkinson

Clarissa Atkinson is Professor of the History of Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School. Her field is the history of the
family as it intersects with the history of Christianity, particularly during late medieval and early modern Europe. Her next
book will look back at the Christian ideology of motherhood. She has written Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book of the World of
Margery Kempe (1983) and Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (1985), coedited with
Margaret Miles and Constance Hall Buchanan.

I hope these books will encourage people to think about the past in ways that are helpful in preparing for the future.

Margery Kempe. The Book of Margery Kempe. Hope Emily Allen and Sanford Brown Meech, eds. London: Oxford
University Press, 1940.
Hope Emily Allen edited this fifteenth-century spiritual autobiography by a woman of King's Lynn who was a mystic, a
housewife and a pilgrim. Margery Kempe's own story is wonderful, but when I first saw it with Allen's notes (written in the
1930s), what impressed me was Allen's sense of the existence of a women's history distinct from and connected to "history"
(that is, to men's history). Allen was not able to finish the work on Margery Kempe, unfortunately, but she was a pioneer hi the
perception of feminine experience.

William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. The Elements of Style (1959). New York: Macmillan, 1979. (Pb)
As far as I know, this is the only book on writing that can be read for pleasure, so that its wisdom is absorbed with delight.
Strunk and White make you want to write well: to be verbose, or to use jargon, would be to disappoint your friends. What's
more, E. B. White practiced what he preached, which fosters the comforting illusion that we can learn to write like him if we
follow these "simple" rules.
Virginia Woolf. A Room of One's Own (1929). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. (Pb)
In pointing to some of the connections between the poverty of women's institutions and the poverty of women's history, Woolf
illuminates questions that we have not yet managed to resolve, and creates a new character—Shakespeare's sister—to live in
our collective imagination. This brilliant, angry, inspiring work, despite (or perhaps because of) its blindness to the injustices of
class, prompts us to look for our own blind spots.

Edward H. Carr. What Is History? (1961). New York: Random House, 1967. (Pb)
I read this book at about the time that I started to prepare to be a professional historian—that is, when I entered graduate
school. Carr's images of the historian's selection of "facts" were so vivid and persuasive that I finally grasped the point that
there is no such thing as a history that is out there, waiting for us to discover it. National, class, ethnic and gender groups
constructed their own visions of the past, and have always done so. This may no longer be news, but it was news to me then,
and Carr's is still the best brief explanation of the subjectivity of historical interpretation.

Joan Kelly. Women, History, and Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Joan Kelly's reflections on the way in which women's history has changed "history" broke new ground for students of society
and culture. I had known and worked with each of these individual essays, but their cumulative effect in book form is more
than the sum of its parts: this is a body of interpretation that alters the ways in which we understand the past.

Constance H. Buchanan

Constance Buchanan is director of Women's Studies in Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. For the past decade, Constance
Buchanan has been engaged in developing and directing a Harvard center for research on religion, gender and culture.

These books are about the normative dimension of human life and thought, and about diversity. They are, in particular,
concerned with how we might be more self-conscious and self-critical, examining too often the unacknowledged values and
assumptions that shape what we see and do.

Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1390). New York: Penguin, 1951. (Pb)
The Canterbury Tales is like a verbal Brueghel—a huge canvas depicting medieval English society vividly and in rich detail.
What appears to be a simple tale of religious pilgrimage is really a study of the human condition, particularly the meaning of
goodness or holiness in human life. Both, Chaucer tells us, are seldom what or where human beings expect them to be. His
stinging social criticism warns that human piety and claims for righteousness are often in individuals and institutions the
occasion for human folly and corruption. Combining as it does a deep empathy for the foolishness as well as for the dignity of
human beings, Chaucer's social criticism imparted to me at an early age the value of observing, respecting, criticizing, and
always seeing the humor of our humanity.

Michael Walzer. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (1965). Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982. (Pb)
Walzer has a rare gift for understanding how individuals are oriented and motivated by religious ideas and how these ideas
interact with social, economic and political realities. Whereas many scholars assume religion has to do with another world,
Walzer understands it as a way of seeing and responding to this world. This study of the Puritan saints is a tremendously
skillful exploration of how in seventeenth-century England religion provided the tools for reconceptualizing and reconstructing
established social and political arrangements. All too often, modern biases against religion prevent us from seeing what is
obviously true historically and around the modern world—religion is a powerful force in public life.

Virginia Woolf. Three Guineas (1928). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. (Pt))
In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf deftly examined the relationship between gender and social values in education and the
professions, and the implications of this relationship for both individuals and society as a whole. In doing so, she anticipated a
central insight of contemporary analysis of gender, society and culture: that gender and value are deeply intertwined in a
culture and in the social arrangements cultural patterns shape. She also saw that the historical exclusion of women from
education and the professions—from public power—has given them "freedom from unreal loyalties" and a distinctive moral
voice, This freedom and distinctive moral perspective, she argued, if women can self-consciously sustain both as they gain
access to power, will be an important resource for transforming the basic value structure of contemporary society and the
orientation of that structure toward war.
Margaret R. Miles. Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture. Boston: Beacon,
1985.
This is one of those rare books that productively criticizes basic, too frequently unacknowledged assumptions in our ways of
thinking about the past. Image as Insight lets us see that our approach to understanding historical and contemporary reality is
fundamentally skewed by reliance on verbal texts. Arguing that the full task of historical understanding requires as well
interpretation of visual images, and of images and texts in relation to one another, Miles proposes a hermeneutics for
interpreting the visual as historical evidence. She demonstrates how this will alter our knowledge and conception of human
reality. Both have been restricted by traditional methods of historical interpretation which have led us to reconstruct the past as
the history largely of an unrepresentative, small elite of skilled, male language users and actors—as the history of the modern
subjective consciousness.

Diana Eck

Diana Eck is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University. She is the moderator of the World
Council of Churches program on "Dialogue with Proper Living Faiths." Her most recent book is Banaras, City of Light (1982),
which followed Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (1981).

The Bhagavad Gita (ca. A.D. 1). Franklin Edgerton, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944.
The Bhagavad Gita is a basic resource for understanding the spiritual life of India. and in my reading and rereading of it
through the years, it has become a resource for my own life as well. I first read it in the mid-1960s and was put off by the
setting: a battlefield, where the warrior Arjuna recoils at the prospect of fighting his cousins, and throws down his weapons.
His charioteer Krishna takes him to task for renouncing his duty to fight. It took me some time to see what Hindus have seen
here—that this is not a treatise on war, but a treatise on the nature of responsible action. Krishna teaches the yoga, or discipline,
of action: to act and be involved in the world, without personal or egotistical attachment to the fruits of those actions. It is a
scripture that has challenged and engaged Hindus for many centuries and has given rise to generations of interpretation and
commentary.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith. The Meaning and End of Religion (1962). New York: Harper & Row, 1978. (Pb)
This book completely changed my understanding of "religion." Here Smith argues that the noun "religion," as it is used today
in the West, has come to refer to a sphere of activities or beliefs that can somehow be circumscribed and distinguished from
other spheres of life, such as politics, economics, or social life. Not only does this miss the point of what it means and has
meant to be "religious" in the West, but it seriously misrepresents the nature of human religiousness in the Hindu, Buddhist, or
Muslim traditions. In essence, Smith suggests that we drop the word "religion" as a noun, and use the adjective "religious," that
quality which conditions all the activities of religious people. Of course there are objective facts to be studied in attempting to
understand the great, ever-changing cumulative religious traditions of humankind. But as students of these traditions we are
challenged, even further, to understand "faith," that is, the engagement and commitment of the people for whom they have been
meaningful. In my own work, this has reminded me repeatedly that I am not trying to understand some abstract thing called
"Hinduism," but I am trying to understand Hindus and the life, meaning and transcendence that they perceive.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Yakshas (1928-31). 2 vols. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971.
I first read this book when I was doing fieldwork in Banaras. India in 1973. It opened my eyes to an entire ancient Indian world
view that was not readily apparent from the study of classical Hindu texts. It had little to do with the renunciation of "this
shore" for the "far shore" of liberation, moksha. It was focused, rather, on the vibrant life-force deities of "this shore" —the
yakshas, associated primarily with the generativity of trees, and the ragas. associated with rivers and pools. The existence of
these ancient deities could be intimated from the classical texts, since the Buddha, Shiva, and Krishna all conquered and
subsumed them in their rise to popular prominence. The nature and history of these deities, however, was clearer from art-
historical sources. Coomaraswamy, a great cultural and art historian, helped me come to value the indispensable importance of
art and image in the study of religious traditions, especially popular traditions which have been excluded in textual sources.
Even more important, he helped me to see the persistence of the yaksha/naga deities even in the popular traditions of India
today.

M. K. Gandhi. Gandhi, an Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927-29). Mahadev Desai, trans. 2 vols.
New York: Dover, 1983. (Pb)
This was my first introduction to Gandhi, and I still think it is the best introduction. Gandhi was a prolific writer; his collected
works fill over eighty volumes. Here Gandhi tells his own story, reflecting on his life as a man in his fifties, who had already
spent twenty years in South Africa, had worked out his philosophy of nonviolent social change, and had been actively involved
for ten years in the freedom struggle in India. Since it was written to be serialized in Gandhi's newspaper, Young India, this
autobiography has something of a didactic and episodic quality. What I love about this book is that here one encounters a
person, with all his foibles and faults, with his views on food and sewing machines, on social justice and political change.
Gandhi reveals so much of himself that I can say I met Gandhi here. I argued and quarreled with him, but eventually he won
my heart.

Mary Daly. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation. Boston: Beacon, 1973.
This is a powerful and important book, not only in feminist theological thinking but in feminist analysis more generally. Daly
looks clearly and critically at the patriarchal symbols that have shaped the thought and culture of the West. In this book, Daly
begins to move beyond the Christian tradition into a post-Christian feminism. In a sense, she had already made this move when
she preached at Harvard's Memorial Chapel in 1971, the first woman to preach at a Sunday service in 336 years. At the end of
the sermon, she led a dramatic walkout, inviting the congregation to affirm its faith by "rising and walking out together.- Daly's
work has had a tremendous impact on women and men, inside and outside the church, for whom the symbol of "God the
Father" has been changed forever. When I first heard and read Daly, I had already spent time in India, and the sovereignty of
my old familial notion of God the Father had already been questioned by the insights and critiques of Hindu friends and
teachers. Daly helped me to see the same key issues of Christian patriarchy and chauvinism from a feminist perspective within
my own culture. I too walked out in 1971, but walked back in almost immediately—into a church that, I think, needs to be
challenged to a larger and more inclusive theological vision.

Carney Gavin

Carney Gavin, a priest in the archdiocese of Boston, has served as curator and associate director of the Harvard Semitic
Museum since 1973. Trained in classics at Boston Latin School (founded a year before Harvard), he pursued classical
archaeology at Oxford before philosophical and theological studies in the German and Austrian university systems. As a Syro-
Palestinian archaeologist, he has been involved in excavations in the Middle East since 1962.

The Bible.
As both a priest and a Syro-Palestinian archaeologist, my involvement with the Bible renders it the paramount book in my life.
Its basic message, fascinating puzzles, and its existential significance (as the artifact of our history) have permeated my adult
studies and require daily rereadings, retranslations, and analytical explications for me to function usefully in liturgical as well
as academic contexts.
Because the Bible actually provides the atmosphere from which I draw breath as well as the excitingly mysterious world which
it is my job to explore professionally, the Bible has long ceased to seem to be "a book" for me.
Although my training (in languages, text criticism, and various exegetical disciplines) was largely directed toward reading the
Bible, its day-by-day utility for me (in bringing good news to Brighton or curating Semitic Museum mummies) together with
my life in Bible lands have transformed what I do with its pages (or what its pages do to me) from "reading" in any normal
sense. . .
Beyond permitting time travel, personality encounters and sensory flashbacks, or providing illuminating clues and criteria (for
judging present-day piety, wisdom, or pursuits of truth and goodness), "Bible reading" for me means passing back and forth
through otherwise impenetrable barriers between the finite and the infinite.
Irrespective of any deference due to realms of mystical contemplation or theological speculation, Bible reading provides me
practically with a very handy tool, a two-edged sword, for dealing simultaneously with the abstract and the concrete, the
objective and the subjective, the ideal and the real, the immediate and the perennial.

Kristina, Queen of the Swedes, the Goths, and the Vandals. The Works of Christina, Queen of Sweden (late seventeenth
century). Anonymous English trans. London: Wilson and Durham, 1753.
Usually on my night table, this book never fails to provide a chuckle or to propose a neatly turned truism before I drift off to
sleep. The Pensees of Queen Kristina of Sweden is an assemblage of over fifteen hundred short sayings, written during the last
decade of her life amid Rome's baroque intrigues. Originally, because of Innsbruck's tiny Silver Chapel (hidden way up above
the Hafkirche and almost always locked) where Kristina took her life's most decisive step (by becoming a Catholic and thereby
relinquishing the Vasa throne), her Pensees intrigued me. I, too, had chosen the Silver Chapel for one of life's decisive moments
—to celebrate Mass for the first time after ordination. Just as I had no previous idea of that chapel's link with Kristina, I had no
suspicion of how much mingled irony and hope, sardonic humor and simplicity of heart, stylistic pretense and true wisdom
were to be found in her musings during her final years.

G. K. Chesterton. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904). New York: Paulist Press, 1978. (Pb)
Tom Palmer. La grande compagnie de colonisation: Documents of a New Plan (1937). Worcester, Mass.: Clark University
Press, 1981.
Two twentieth-century "Utopian" fantasies have helped my own struggles to make sense of phenomena and theories of
Realpolitik as well as of economics. Chesterton's first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, was addressed in 1904 to "the
human race to which so many of my readers belong." Set in the London of 1984 (amid familiar scenery utterly contrasting with
Orwell's projections for that same year) Chesterton's tale of brilliant banners, quixotic but bloody struggles, and bafflingly
poetic dialogues focuses on the romance and potential dynamism of little neighborhoods.
This paean to localism—wherein micro-autonomy is proclaimed by each tiny region's glorious gonfalons and the small-group
therapy of grassroots governance—was prompted by Chesterton's disgust at the Boer War and Cecil Rhodes's conviction that
"the one thing of the future would be the British Empire." Rejecting both H. G. Wells's mechanistic predictions and Tolstoy's
Humanitarian Return to Nature, Chesterton suggested that "eighty years after the present date, London is almost exactly like
what it is now" except for the radical change that people "had lost faith in revolutions."
Tom Palmer is a pseudonym chosen in 1937 by an extraordinarily wise financial wizard, already then expert in the international
metals industry, for La grande compagnie de colonisation is written as a scrapbook of the future, with various telegrams,
memos, organizational charts, and short notes interspersed with newspaper clippings from Paris-Soir, La Stampa, the Atlantic
Monthly, the Daily Telegraph, and the Luxemburger Zeitung, from the years 1938 to 1970.
La grande compagnie was written on the eve of World War IL by a foresighted Prussian who had already exiled himself in
1933 from a Germany going mad. In 1938, after recognizing that his appeal simultaneously to self-interest and to idealism was
falling upon ears deafened by war drums, the author left Europe to launch five decades of international efforts that were
eventually quite successfully parallel to some of La Grande Compagnie's projects.
From several points of view, each book's simple formulas contradict the other's: Palmer's far-flung development projects
(however mutually advantageous for both developers and those areas being developed) starkly contrast with Chesterton's
neighborhood chauvinism. Dynamically, the solutions represent humanity's centripetal versus centrifugal movements, yet each
book gleams with more than a few gems of truth and beauty.

John Kao

John Kao is a performing musician, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and business school professor. The road toward these goals has
taken many turns: the study of philosophy and social science in college, psychiatry in medical school, and general management
in business school. Currently, he teaches and does research on the topics of entrepreneurship and corporate creativity at the
Harvard Business School, and "is rewarded by the annual opportunity to teach these topics to M.B.A. students."

As our technological and social milieux change at an increasing rate, our thinking as a species must be anchored by a profound
understanding of human behavior and values. Our success in addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century will be
influenced by our wisdom and by our ability to blend human skills: intuition, a tolerance for ambiguity and a comfort with
paradox combined with the deepest compassion.

A. E. Van Vogt. The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1939). New York: Woodhill, 1977.
I first read this book at age eleven, and have reread it several times since. It is an enthralling science fiction, an outer-space
version of Darwin's original journey. What particularly captured my attention was Van Vogt's creation of a new science of
human behavior. Called "nexialism," it was a sophisticated blend of psychology, medicine and organizational politics which
allowed the protagonist to help his parochial colleagues and save their mission from disaster. Seeds of an interest in human
behavior, interdisciplinary studies, "underlying knowledge" and iconoclastic people were sown by this book.

Carl G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963). Aniela Jaffe, trans. New York: Random House, 1965. (Pb)
While all of Jung's work had a deep influence on me, I was particularly struck by this work, his autobiography. Jung writes
with the excitement of a detective, the skill of an artist, and the flair of a mystic as he develops a new vision of human
personality. I was particularly struck by his humanity as a clinician, which led me to follow his path into clinical psychiatry.
Jung inspired me as someone who was not afraid to confront the mysteries of life, art, dreams and the unconscious through the
"science" of human personality.

Erich Neumann. The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949). R. F. C. Hall, trans. New York: Pantheon, 1954. (Pb)
Reading Neumann provided an important complement to my work with Jung. He extended Jungian psychology on a grand
scale to show the beauty and logic inherent in a wide range of human experience: dreams, art, mythology, social organization,
history, culture.
Joseph Needham, with Wang Ling. Science and Civilisation in China (1954). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Joseph Needham is a particular hero of mine for his erudition and intellectual scope. Science and Civilization in China presents
a vast panorama of the emergence of scientific and technological thinking in China over three millennia, no mean achievement
by any standard. Needham approaches his subject as a historian, sinologist, natural scientist, sociologist, philosopher. The
result is a delicious and enormous banquet.

Lao Tsu. Tao Te Ching. Witter Bynner, trans. New York: Putnam, 1944.
Any work that can capture science, philosophy and human nature in eighty stanzas of verse deserves special comment. The Tao
Te Ching has been a bedside companion of mine for many years. Its relevance is never-ending; always surprising. For example,
when I studied psychology it was a valued text on human behavior. As an organizational specialist, I learned a great deal from
it about politics and leadership. I use it as a favorite present to friends who are entrepreneurs and senior managers. The book
says it all.

Gordon D. Kaufman

Gordon Kaufman is a professor of theology at the Harvard Divinity School. As a Mennonite conscientious objector in World
War II, and thus as a member of a cognitive minority in a time of intense emotion, Professor Kaufman early became aware (a)
of the relativity and plurality of all human convictions about right and truth, and (b) of the great power of religion in human
affairs, and also its extremely problematic character. Most of his intellectual life, he writes, has been devoted to attempting to
understand and address these issues, and the following books have been important in pursuing that quest.

These books explore fundamental questions about human nature and the nature of truth, about the role of religion in human
affairs and the meaning that faith in God can have today; they have been particularly important to me in my struggle with the
significance of modern cultural and religious pluralism, a problem that can only become increasingly urgent as we move into
the twenty-first century.

Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason (1781). New York: St. Martin's, 1969. (Pb)
. Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Lewis Beck, trans. New York: Garland, 1977.
I read the first Critique in its entirety at age eighteen, and have done so probably about twelve times since. Kant's "Copernican
revolution" taught me (a) that what we call "knowledge" is no simple matter of "external objects" leaving their imprint on the
mind, but is rather a complex process of interaction between subject and object; and (b) that all intellect, morality and religion
are grounded on the creativity and freedom of the human agent. These positions have helped to provide a philosophical basis
for my views on the social and historical relativity of all knowledge and also on the function and importance of religious
symbols.

George H. Mead. Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934). Charles W. Morris, ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1967. (Pb)
My understanding of the social and personal relativity of all human thought and practice was especially influenced by Mead's
theory of selfhood and mind as social and linguistic through and through. rather than fundamentally individualistic and
rationalistic. I first encountered Mead at about age twenty-three, and his ideas have provided a reference point for virtually all
my subsequent reflection on human nature.

Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity (1841). E. Graham Waring and F. W. Strothmann, eds. New York: Frederick
Ungar, 1975. (Pb)
Feuerbach's claim that all theology is actually disguised anthropology, that all religion is really a projection of human
subjectivity and feelings onto a cosmic screen, is the fountainhead of much modern interpretation of religion. This view has
usually been understood as essentially destructive of religion and theology, but it has provided me with fundamental insights
without which I would not have been able to develop my own reconception of theology as essentially "imaginative
construction."

H. Richard Niebuhr. The Meaning of Revelation (1941). New York: Macmillan, 1967. (Pb)
. Radical Monotheism and Western Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1960. (Pb)
Niebuhr, through articulating a thoroughly sociohistorical conception of selfhood (influenced by Mead), showed that, precisely
because all our experience and thinking is historically and culturally relative, both selves and societies need systems of value
and meaning to orient themselves in the world; faith in God has special significance because of the sort of orientation it can
provide. Niebuhr thus showed me both that theology is still important in our modern pluralistic world and how theology can
best be done today. Of all my teachers he probably influenced me the most.

R. G. Collingwood. The Idea of History (1946). T. M. Knox, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. (Pb)
. An Essay on Metaphysics (1940). Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984. (Pb)
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on "The Problem of Relativism and the Possibility of Metaphysics," and Collingwood (along
with Wilhelm Dilthey and Paul Tillich) was a principal resource. Collingwood helped me to understand both that all our
thinking is inescapably historical and that all history is the work of human imagination. With his conception of "absolute
presuppositions" he helped me see what metaphysics and theology can be in a historicist world.

Karl Barth. The Epistle to the Romans (1918). Edward C. Hoskyns, trans. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
(Pb)
Barth's greatest book, powerfully showing how human religiousness—especially Christian religiousness—instead of relating to
God in fact turns us away from God, showed me that the theological critique of religion is actually more profound and
devastating than any secular critique, for it can take up into itself all the insights of a Feuerbach and a Marx, a Nietzsche and a
Freud, and go beyond them. Theology, thus, has an autonomy and a unique significance of its own, and it need not be
constrained by any specific commitments to religiosity.
Henry N. Wieman. The Source of Human Good (1946). Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964. (Pb)
This book, read for the first time shortly after its publication, enabled me to understand from very early on that the importance
of the idea of God is to be seen principally in terms of the functions it performs in human life and thought (rather than in terms
of its putative "meaning"); and those functions may well be more effectively performed in the contemporary world by a
conception utilizing metaphors like "creative event" rather than the more traditional personalistic and political metaphors of
"father," "lord." and "king." These insights of Wieman have become increasingly important for my recent work.

Margaret R. Miles

Margaret Miles is a professor of historical theology at the Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of many works, most
notably Augustine on the Body (1979); Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism (1981); Image as Insight:
Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (1985); and coeditor with Clarissa W Atkinson and
Constance Hall Buchanan of Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (1985).
The books I chose all challenge settled impressions of the "natural" inevitability of North American life-styles, assumptions,
language and social practices. They expose the extent to which all of these are constructions requiring examination and
reevaluation in the face of the issues of social injustice, the nuclear world and the crisis of meaning as we approach the twenty-
first century.

St. Augustine. The Confessions (ca. A.D. 400). Rex Warner, trans. New York: Penguin, 1961. (Pb)
This book provided my first intimation of the massive conditioning of social, sexual and religious attitudes by the culture of
one's birth. I also got from it both Augustine's sense that destructive aspects of one's conditioning can be changed, and his
realistic respect for the difficulty of change—the stability of the social neuroses.

Jonathan Schell. The Fate of the Earth. New York: Avon, 1982. (Pb)
Schell's description of the possibility and results of nuclear war emphasizes the necessity of rapid and fundamental social
change if the attitudes and ideology that have brought us to the nuclear world are not to lead to the destruction of human Fife
and of the planet that is our home.

Mary Daly. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978). Boston: Beacon, 1979. (Pb)
Daly here gives a vivid analysis of sexism, using cross-cultural examples to demonstrate the victimization of women's bodies
and psyches by patriarchal cultures. She also draws an alternative: women bonding in communities of support and
empowerment.

Daly, Mary, American, 1928- .

Gyn/Ecology. Rec: Utne

Nancy Chodorow. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978.
Chodorow analyzes the complex conditioning for motherhood in Western culture, destroying the myth of biological
naturalness. An important book for laying the foundation for egalitarian parenting.

Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison. New York: Random House, 1979. (Pb)
A powerful historical description of Foucault's thesis that it is not primarily submissive mentalities but docile bodies that social
and political power seek to achieve; the book asks how bodies are subtly or unsubtly coerced, and for what/whose ends.
Roland Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Richard Miller, trans. New York: Hill & Wang, 1975. (Pb)
"Pleasure is a critical principle," writes Barthes, "interpretation is passion." This book has been inspirational to me in its
insistence that the task of interpretation requires a dialectic between the passion of the interpreter and the pleasure of the text.

Richard R. Niebuhr

Richard Niebuhr has been teaching theology and the history of modern religious thought at the Harvard Divinity School since
1956. Because of his strong interest in undergraduate education, he was named chairman of the Committee on Study of
Religion when the undergraduate concentration was first established at Harvard in 1973-74. Besides his well-known book on
Friedrich Schleiermacher he recently delivered and published a series of lectures in Japan on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William
James and Jonathan Edwards. He also enjoys photography, particularly in Wyoming.

I have been a teacher of theology at the Harvard Divinity School for thirty years. The list of books I have chosen today for this
guide would likely have been different ten years ago and would probably be different five years hence. Some of the titles
represent specific works that have affected my thinking deeply and some represent authors more than the contents of a single
book. I believe these books assist in the one indispensable duty of obtaining self-knowledge.

Benedict Spinoza. Ethics (1675). New York: Scribner's, 1930.

Benedict Spinoza's Ethics, which I laboriously read at eighteen or nineteen in a student edition, introduced me to philosophy as
a way of living. Spinoza still defines for me "ethics" in its fullest and most proper sense.

Jonathan Edwards. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). New York: Baker, 1982. (Pb)
Stylistically, this is the finest of Edwards's works and probably of all American theology. In this and in many of his other
writings I value his acuity in observation of the soul as well as of the natural world, his passionateness, lyricism, and rigor of
thought. I first read Edwards at the age of twenty-three in a nineteenth-century edition and have been returning to him ever
since.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Aids to Reflection (1825). James Marsh and H. N. Coleridge, eds. Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich,
1840.
. Biographia literaria (1817). J. Shawcross, ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
. The Poetical Works (1796-1819). New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Coleridge the poet, critic, philosopher and theologian taught me that words are "living powers- and that our duty is "self-
superintendence"—the attaining of distinctness of consciousness. In addition to his poetry, Coleridge's Biographia literaria and
Aids to Reflection have been unfailing socratic interlocutors.

William James. Pragmatism (1907). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. (Ph)
Everything James wrote, from his Principles of Psychology to Radical Empiricism, remains fresh and provocative. James is my
antidote to all forms of reductionism and dogmatism,

Herman Melville. Moby Dick (1851). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. (Pb)
I can give no single reason for the abiding grasp this book, which I first read at the age of twenty-five, has on me. Ahab says,
"Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the
midst of Paradiser Melville is one of the few authors who has brought forth an authentic American myth.

James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), New York: Ballantine, 1974. (Pb)
This book is the only successful marriage of photographs and text I know and belongs to no genre. Its descriptive power (three
tenant families in Alabama, 1936) is unsurpassed in exhibiting "the cruel radiance of what is."
The Battle for God K. Armstrong Religious Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism Observed "M.E. Marty, R.S. Appleby" Religious Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism and American Culture G.M. Marsden Religious Fundamentalism
The Satanic Verses S. Rushdie Religious Fundamentalism

A Century of Social Catholicism A.R. Vidler Christian Socialism

Social Catholicism in Europe P. Misner Christian Socialism
Leo XIII and the Rise of Socialism L.P. Wallace Christian Socialism
Dorothy Day W.D. Miller Christian Socialism
Christian Socialism A. Wilkinson Christian Socialism

The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives C. Hillenbrand Sacred War

Holy War K. Armstrong Sacred War
Jihad G. Keppel Sacred War

Sacred Word and Sacred Text H. Coward Holy Scriptures

Sacred Writings G. Lanczkowski Holy Scriptures
World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology A. Wilson Holy Scriptures

Man and his Destiny in the Great Religions S.G.F. Brandon Reincarnation
Reincarnation "J.Head, S.L. Cranston" Reincarnation
Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions W. O'Flaherty Reincarnation

A History of God K. Armstrong Monotheism

God: a Biography J. Miles Monotheism
God of Abraham L.E. Goodman Monotheism
No Other Gods R.K. Gnuse Monotheism
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism M.S. Smith Monotheism

The Unchanging God of Love M.J. Dodds Divine Love

The Four Loves C.S. Lewis Divine Love
Basic Writings Mo Tzu Divine Love

The Nature of Love I. Singer Universal Love

The Four Loves C.S. Lewis Universal Love
Motse: The Neglected Rival of Confucius Yi-Pao Mei Universal Love

Incarnation G. O'Collins Divine Incarnation

Mystery of the Incarnation B. Hume Divine Incarnation
The Trinity S. Davis Divine Incarnation

The Definitions of the Catholic Faith W.H. Bright The Trinity

The Early Church H. Chadwick The Trinity
History of the Early Christian Doctrine J. Danoelou The Trinity

St. Paul M. Grant Grace

Paul the Convert A.F. Segal Grace
The Power and the Glory G. Greene Grace

The Light of the Mind R.H. Nash Illumination

What is Mysticism? D. Knowles Illumination

The Eucharist J. Emminghaus Christian Church

Real Presence R. DuffyChristian Church
Corpus Christi M. Rubin Christian Church

The Kuran: A Very Short Introduction M.A. Cook Religion as Law

Islamic Law in the Modern World J.N.D. Andeson Religion as Law
Taliban A. Rashid Religion as Law
The Satanic Verses S. Rushdie Religion as Law

Buddhism H. Dumoulin Zen

Zen Culture T. Hoover Zen
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance R. PirsigZen

Painting the Soul R. Cormack Icons

The Orthodox Church T. Ware Icons
Gates of Mystery R. Grierson Icons

Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe "P. Dykema, H. Oberman" Anticlericalism
Idol Temples and Crafty Priests S.J. Barnett Anticlericalism
The Enlightenment P. Gay Anticlericalism

The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal GospelR. Rolland Religious Pluralism
The Wider Ecumenism E. Hill Religious Pluralism
Inter-faith OrganizationsM. Braybrooke Religious Pluralism

Beyond Worlds J. Bowker Evil Creation

Gnosticism G. Filorano Evil Creation
The Body and Society P. Brown Evil Creation
Western Sexuality "P. Aries, A. Bejin" Evil Creation

A History of Christian Missions S. Neill Spiritual Conquest

The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico R. Ricard Spiritual Conquest
Black Robe B. Moore Spiritual Conquest

"God, Time, and Knowledge" W. Hasker Predestination

"Predestination, Grace, and Free Will" J. Farrelly Predestination
Divine Election G. Berkouwer Predestination

RELIGION: INTRODUCTION TO RELIGION

Elizabeth Breuilly (and members of ICOREC)

Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us builds our life and actions on belief and ritual, be they religious or secular. Much
of the study of religion has been as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, or Christian theology. There are many works dealing
with religion from these viewpoints, but this book list is intended to serve as an introduction to the study of religion in general,
as well as giving reference information about the world's faiths, their beliefs, practices, and distribution. The study of religion
as a human phenomenon is different from the study of any one particular religion, but each study feeds the other. The more we
know of the details of how a religion is lived and celebrated, and how it colours and shapes the lives of its adherents, the more
we can recognize similar dynamics at work in another faith. Conversely, the more we have studied how different religions
approach a particular aspect of life (the problem of suffering, for example, or what happens at death), the greater insight we can
have into the traditions of one particular faith.

In these our days it is almost impossible to speak of religion without giving

offence either on the right or on the left. With some, religion seems too
sacred a subject for scientific treatment; with others it stands on a level
with alchemy and astrology, as a mere tissue of errors or hallucinations,
far beneath the notice of the man of science.
F MAX MR

Sainsbury's Religions of the World (1993) by Elizabeth Breuilly and Martin Palmer. Although written for readers aged 10
upwards, this is of interest to anyone wanting a brief summary of the beliefs and practices of the major world religions. Fully
illustrated.
From Primitives to Zen (1967) by Mircea Eliade. A fascinating thematic source-book of religious writings, compiled by a
recognized pioneer of the systematic study of the world's religions. As the title implies, the material ranges from accounts of
preliterate religions, through historic religions, to the major world faiths. However, Christianity and Judaism are omitted, since
biblical material in English is readily avail-able elsewhere.

Contemporary Religions: a World Guide (1992) edited by Ian Harris, Stuart Mews, Paul Morris, and John Shepherd. Part I
contains essays on the history, beliefs, and current trends of five major religious traditions - Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
Buddhism, Hinduism - and new religious movements, together with a general survey, `Religions in the Contemporary World'.
Pan II is an alphabetical dictionary of religious groups and movements, and Pan III is a country-by-country summary.

A Handbook of Living Religions (1984) edited by John Hinnells. Detailed articles on the history, beliefs, and practices of
religion worldwide, including indigenous faiths and new religious movements as well as established religions.

Who's Who of World Religions (1991) edited by John Hinnells. An impressive and very readable A-Z reference to 1,500
religious figures, both contemporary and historical.

The Study of Religions (1977) by Jean Holm. A clear and readable introduction to the whole field of religious studies, what it
is, and what problems it presents, written for students.

Themes in Religious Studies Series: Worship, Sacred Writings, Making Moral Decisions, Attitudes to Nature, Myth and
History, Human Nature and Destiny, Picturing God, Rites of Passage, Women in Religion, Sacred Place (all 1994) edited by
Jean Holm and John Bowker. Each book takes a central theme which touches on a wide range of religions, and has an
introductory essay, followed by chapters from authorities on different religions.

The State of Religion Atlas (1993) by Joanne O'Brien and Martin Palmer. Thirty-four maps with notes illustrate the history,
distribution and present activities of world religions.

The World's Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations (1989) by Ninian Smart. A richly illustrated
exploration of all the major religions of the world - their beliefs and practices, and how they have shaped the history of the
world. The arrangement is by areas of the world, which gives a clearer picture than many books of the interaction and
development of religions in varying contexts.

BUDDHISM
Michael Carrithers

Buddhism is a system of spiritual practice and thought which arose 2,500 years ago in N India. The founder of Buddhism is
known as the Buddha, meaning 'awakened one', and this notion of awakening is central to Buddhism. It was a widely held
understanding in the Buddha's India that the experience of ordinary life is shot through with unsatisfactoriness and suffering.
The Buddha's solution to this problem stressed that a right understanding of human experience, combined with wisely guided
behaviour and meditation, allows one to wake up to the real character of experience and, in awakening, to escape its painful
character. By attending minutely to the nature of experience as it occurs moment by moment, the successful Buddhist meditator
learns that the fruits of our desires are transient and hence painful - that is the bad news - but also that the ultimate subject of
our desires, namely our self, is quite insubstantial and transient as well, and so is not pinned helplessly and eternally to a world
of pain. That is the good news, and leads to the cessation of suffering and to release.
Although Buddhism may seem to be a matter of thought, its realizations are in fact based on practice and the transformation of
oneself through practice. Buddhism now has a robust presence throughout the world and is making its way confidently in the
West. In the two and a half millennia since the Buddha taught, Buddhism has shown itself to be adaptable to almost any
cultural and social setting, and Buddhists have created a wealth of widely varying systems of thought and practice. Some
Buddhists come close to a Christian style of spirituality in their stress on sin and salvation, whereas others have taken a more
austerely intellectual path. The Buddha and many of his disciples down the ages were celibate monks, but Buddhists have also
developed forms of behaviour consistent with ordinary life in the world. And though the Buddha's teaching seems to stress
thought over feeling and contemplation over morality, in fact Buddhist ethics have proven to be a powerful and compelling
feature of Buddhist life wherever it is found.

As a can wheel follows the step of the ox, so suffering follows

him who speaks or acts with a blemished mind.
FROM THE DHAMMAPADA
The World of Buddhism (1984) edited by Heinz Bechert and Richard Gombrich. This handsome volume contains articles by
some of the world's leading scholars of Buddhism, and covers nearly every aspect of the religion, both in the past and present.
The illustrations are excellent, conveying a vivid impression of the variety of Buddhist an, architecture, and practice.

The Buddha (1983) by Michael Carrithers. This is a brief, clearly written, and accessible explanation of the Buddha, his times,
and his thought and practice, which can easily be read in bed.

The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka (1983) by Michael Carrithers. This is the most extensive and intimate account available
concerning the meditating monks of S and SE Asia who represent the living tradition that is closest to the Buddha's original
way of life. It has been used by Buddhists in the West as a basis for criticizing and commenting on their own practices.

Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (1988) by Richard Gombrich. This
well-written book demonstrates one strand in the complex and sometimes ironic fate that awaited Buddhism as it developed
into a widespread religion involved with ordinary affairs of the world.

An Introduction to Buddhism: Teaching, History and Practices (1990) by Peter B Harvey. This is a wide-ranging
introduction which includes an excellent list of further readings.

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1962) by Thera Nyanaponika. This is a classical account of the nature of meditation, the
central practice in Buddhism, from the perspective of southern Buddhism.

The Buddha (1979) by M Pye. This biography of the Buddha is written from a very different viewpoint than that of Carrithers
above. It shows how Buddhists themselves thought, and told stories, of the Buddha and how they preserved and expanded their
sense of who he was.

What the Buddha Thought (1967) by Walpola Rahula. This frequently reprinted volume conveys a sense of the Buddha's
teaching by weaving together admirably plain writing with quotations from the original scriptures. The overall effect is very
powerful.

The Buddhist Handbook: A Complete Guide to Buddhist Teaching and Practice (1987) by John Snelling. This book is
written by a committed British Buddhist who conveys a practical, no-nonsense flavour of Buddhism, both in the past and in the
West today. It is full of useful advice for those becoming personally committed to Buddhist practice and thought.

The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction (1982) by Richard Robinson and Willard Johnson. This is a quite superb
slender introduction to Buddhism, which can be recommended for its ability to convey in a graspable form some of the
complexities of Buddhist history.

Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy (1975) by Katsuki Sekida. Sekida conveys vividly and with unforgettable imagery
the approach to Buddhist practice taken by the Zen school. Contrast this with Nyanaponika's work.

The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900-1950 (1967) by Holmes Welch. This book could be read as a contrast to the book on
Sri Lankan monks by Carrithers, above, since it presents an alternative development which grew out of Buddhism.

CHRISTIANITY
Andrew Linzey

The Christian tradition is so multiform and so multifaceted that any attempt to represent it in a few volumes must appear
partisan, even eccentric. Almost everything we experience in Western culture has been influenced - for good or ill - by its
Judaeo-Christian roots. Despite the appearance of secularization, Christian forms of life still flourish and prosper in a wide
variety of guises: in an, literature, sculpture, poetry; in all forms of music from classical to gospel rock; in visual
communications, specifically Christian ideas and images still retain a powerful hold on our imagination, and in intellectual Life
generally, especially the humanities: literature, philosophy, politics, and, of course, theology, specifically Christian notions of
goodness, truth, and beauty still undergird and inform common notions even in their reactive anti-Christian forms. The truth is
that even, and especially, in its pluralist forms, Christianity still remains the dominant ideology of the West. This does not
mean, of course, that Christianity remains unchanged or immutable; precisely the reverse. One of the great strengths of the
Christian tradition is the way in which it merges, collides, incorporates, sometimeseven wholly assimilates, elements or
thoughts originally alien to itself. The line attributed to T S Eliot that Christianity is always adapting itself to what is credible is
ever more true of contemporary Christianity. I have selected a handful of the major accessible works that describe some of the
main features of this tradition and also some works that provide an insight into how this tradition is remoulding itself in the
light of contemporary challenges.

Christianity is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.

SYDNEY EVANS

A Dictionary of Judaism and Christianity (1991) edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok. The first dictionary to explain and compare
the key concepts, beliefs, and practices of both Judaism and Christianity. In a single volume the wealth of the Judaeo-Christian
heritage is uncovered - and in direct and simple language. Specifically, it shows how Christianity is vastly indebted to Jewish
ideas and how it made use of them. An invaluable guide for the general reader.

Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (1993) edited by Alister E McGrath. A wide-ranging `state of the art'
introduction to contemporary Christian thinking in its very diverse forms. Contains detailed consideration of main ideas and
issues as well as brief introductions to key thinkers. All admirably concise and - for the most part - well written and accessible
for the general reader.

Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society (1995) edited by P A B Clarke and Andrew Linzey. It is often suggested that
Western society has no coherent ideology left and that utter pluralism in faith and practice is now inevitable. But this view fails
to recognize the continuing indebtedness of Western society to the Judaeo-Christian tradition and the resultant synthesis with
political and social thought. This pioneering dictionary maps out the ethical, theological, and social influences which have
formed Western society. More than 250 contributions explore theoretical and practical topics from abortion to worship.
Appropriate for the student rather than the general reader, but indispensable as a work of reference.

The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross (1979) by Rowan
Williams. A much needed and much valued history of Christian spirituality. Takes the reader through the giants of the tradition:
Paul, John, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen,
Augustine, Maximus, Eckhart, and finally to Luther and St John of the Cross. Impressively illustrates the coherence of
Christian spirituality: `Christianity is born out of struggle because it is born from men and women faced with the paradox of
God's purpose made flesh in a dead and condemned man.' Not always an easy read, but compelling and inspiring.

Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ's Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (1980) by John Saward. In many ways the
natural counterpart to Williams's book. Saward recounts and explains the long tradition of `folly for Christ' found within
Catholic and Orthodox spirituality. `This is the story of those who have taken the Lord and his apostle [Paul] at their word and
received from God the rare and terrible charism of holy folly.' The `fools for Christ' described here range from the slightly dotty
to the classable insane who speak words of prophetic insight against the `wisdom of the age'. An audacious work on a very
serious subject but written with an enviable lightness of touch. A delight to read.

True God: An Exploration in Spiritual Theology (1985) by Kenneth Leech. The third in a series following his best-selling
Soul Friend (1977) and True Prayer (1980). Leech's starting point is the spiritual deprivation and impoverishment of the West.
This, according to Leech, is due to a false and inadequate picture of God as an intellectual abstraction unconcerned with, or
uninvolved in, the affairs of the world. Leech argues that orthodox belief requires a God intimately involved in human
suffering and determined to secure social justice. `The message of the crucified God includes the amazing truth that God allows
us to share in his passion and death. Made in his image, we are signed with his cross, healed by his wounds, set free by his
strange work of love.' Breathtakingly impressive vision of Christian spirituality and its relevance to contemporary philosophy,
politics, ecology, and feminism. A modem classic.

The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1981) edited by Donald Davie. The notion of `Christian' verse is problematical -
not only because most of the major poets have been religious but also because `good verse' is `good verse' no matter how much
- or how little - `Christian' it may be. Nevertheless, Davie insists that the content of some verse is explicitly Christian in that it
is concerned with the central narratives (creation, fall, incarnation, redemption) of the Christian faith. Davie assembles an
astonishingly wide range of poets (including John Donne, John Bunyan, Thomas Traherne, Isaac Watts, Wesley, William
Cowper, T S Eliot, Stevie Smith, W H Auden, and R S Thomas) who have made Christian themes their own and have done so
in a way that harmonizes both Christian faith and poetic insight. The result is not just an inspiring collection but also one that
introduces and illuminates the main Christian doctrines.
The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988) by Peter Brown. A masterful
and brilliant history of the development of Christian thinking about sexuality. Illustrates with unsparing detail the full depths
and heights of Christian preoccupation with sexuality - from apparent promiscuity to a horror of carnality. `If my book gives
back to the Christian men and women of the first five centuries a little of the disturbing strangeness of their most central pre-
occupation, I will consider that I have achieved my purpose in writing it.' Indispensable to understanding the Augustinian
legacy which has so damaged Christian attitudes to sexuality. A great work of historical scholarship: lucid, imaginative, and
compassionate.

Heaven: A History (1990) by Colleen McDannell and Bernard Lang. In case this may seem a rather unlikely subject for
historical study, the authors explain: We study heaven because it reflects a deep and profound longing in Christianity to move
beyond this life and to experience more fully the divine', and the `ways in which people imagine heaven tells us how they
understand themselves, their families, their society, and their God'. The result is an ambitious and fascinating social history
which illustrates how the imagination of heaven has influenced art, politics, literature, and philosophy as well as Christian
thinking throughout the ages. The book is copiously illustrated and easy to read.

The Foolishness of God (1970) by John Austin Baker. One of the major works of contemporary apologetics offering a unified
vision of the Christian faith. Baker argues that the case for Christianity is essentially a moral one - for or against love as the
ruling principle in one's life. God creates a world which is truly contingent and free. The offering of sacrificial love is the moral
heart of the universe and is revealed to be the very nature of God: `The crucified Jesus is the only accurate picture of God the
world has ever seen.' Its impressive biblical scholarship, wide.ranging sympathy and disarmingly simple style have made it a
contemporary classic.

HINDUISM
Veronica Voiels

The great variety of belief and practice expressed within Hinduism sometimes defies any attempts to reduce it to a simple
formula. The distinguishing features of this great world religion are its great antiquity; its cyclic view of existence
incorporating a belief in reincarnation not just of human beings but the whole created universe; its understanding of the nature
of the ultimate reality as Brahman in the abstract symbol 'Om'; its acceptance of the manifestation of god in many different
forms; its understanding of dharma as the moral law governing all aspects of social behaviour and cultural traditions. The depth
and sophistication of its religious philosophy is as fascinating as its rich variety of symbolism, ritual, and mythology. So in
order to appreciate fully the various dimensions of this religion it is necessary to explore its philosophy, history, anthropology,
and sacred an and mythology.

Half the world moves on the independent foundations which Hinduism supplied.
China, japan, Tibet and Siam, Burma and Ceylon look to India as their spiritual
home. Its historic records date back for over four thousand years and even then it
has continued its unbroken, though at times slow and almost static course, until the
present day. It has stood the stress and strain of more than four or five millennia of
spiritual thought and experience.
RA.DHAKRISHNAN

The Hindu World (1982) by Patricia Bahree. A good introduction intended for the general reader and young people. It
provides a very good insight and appreciation of the cultural context of Hinduism in India, with an easy-to-read text and
wonderful colour photography.

Teach Yourself Hinduism (1995) by Mel Thompson. This is suitable for the general reader as well as A-level and
undergraduate studies. It is part of a series on Teach Yourself World Faiths which provide good reference books to promote
understanding of world faiths in a multicultural society.

The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in its Continuity and Diversity (1981) by J L Brockington. This is a historical approach to
Hinduism and suitable for A-level and undergraduate study. It is a very readable text and very comprehensive and detailed in its
treatment of various developments in Hinduism in relation to the circumstances of the time.

The Upanishads (this edition 1989) translated by Alistair Shearer and Peter Russell (there are several other good translations
available). Part of the Hindu sacred writings of the Vedas, the Upanishads contain some of the most profound insights into the
ultimate questions of life. This edition selects various passages and presents them with some commentary and carefully
selected photographs to contribute to the meaning of the text. A delightful experience to read.

Hinduism: An Introduction (1989) by Shakunthala Jagannathan. A book intended for the general reader and written by a
Hindu woman to communicate the central teachings of Hinduism to both Hindus and non-Hindus. It provides a good insight
into Hinduism from a Hindu perspective, rather than a Western scholar's interpretation. The illustrations, photographs, and
colour plates contribute to one's understanding of this intriguing religion.

Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (1994) by Julius J Lipner. This book provides a wealth of knowledge about
both the philosophical traditions and popular religion. It approaches an understanding of Hinduism through some central
themes, including scripture, tradition, experience, time, space, and eternity.

The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (1992) by C J Fuller. An anthropological study which
explores in considerable detail the various aspects of village Hinduism. It gives some fascinating insights into the practice of
Hinduism in rural India, in the home and in the temples. It is very detailed in some of its accounts but unlike many
anthropological studies it is accessible to the general reader.

The Essential Teachings of Hinduism (1989) edited by Kerry Brown. This book collects together passages from various
Hindu scriptures related to key concepts of Hinduism, such as Brahman, the self, consciousness, and yoga. This is a valuable
resource for gaining an appreciation of Hindu teachings from their original source in scripture.

The Hindu Vision: Forms of the Formless (1993) by Alistair Shearer. An attempt to appreciate Hinduism through its sacred
an in the images of the deities and shrines and temples. The photography is splendid and provides a visual understanding of
Hinduism and the text is readable and of special interest to those who regard the visual image as the best medium for
understanding.

Indian Mythology (1967) by Veronica Ions. It is impossible to appreciate the Hindu world-view without reading some of its
mythology, and this book provides a good overview of the stories of the gods and the Mahabharata. It is well illustrated and
easy to read.

ISLAM
Mawil Izzi-Dien

The following brief selection of books tries to reflect the broad diversity of Islamic thought and experience. Diversity in any
religion can be one of the essences of the faith. In Islam, diversity is a key to understanding not only the books written about
Islam but also the culture that stems from it. Islam, as the youngest divinely inspired religion, offered all cultures a firm ground
from which they can present themselves without being lost within the main
Arabic culture which was the original cradle of Islam. When Muhammad started the call for Islam, the notion of `submitting to
God' represented a new and effective ground upon which human life and society was to be established. Submitting to God took
the place of race, wealth, or any other social underpinning. Yet, despite this ideal vision of life, the history of Islamic culture
contains examples of how distant theory can be from practice. Muslims, like the rest of the human race, seem to have ignored
Islamic instructions in many stages of history, raising the very interesting question of why man has always been a rebel, even
against what he appears to believe in.

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth; the likeness of His Light is as a
niche wherein is a lamp (the lamp in a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star)
kindled from a Blessed Tree, an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West
whose oil wellnigh would shine, even if no fire touched it; Light upon Light (God
guides to His Light whom he will).
A J ARBERRY, KORAN TRANSLATION

What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims (1979) by S Haneef. A well-written quick reference to Islam.
Written by an American Muslim, it is a comprehensive survey of the basic teaching of Islam for the Western reader with
emphasis on the significance of Islam's central concept, faith, and submission to the divine. The author is active in the field of
Islamic education and has travelled widely in the Muslim world.
Islam the Straight Path (1988) by John L Esposito. Combining the best of Western scholarship with an insider's
understanding of the Muslim world, the author has produced a well-written introduction to Islam from its origin in the 7th
century to the con-temporary resurgence. The book has the added advantage of a large number of excerpts from a wide range of
original sources.

The Legacy of Islam (1979) by Joseph Shacht and C E Bosworth. One of the classic analyses of the achievements of Islamic
civilization. The relationship of Islam to the rest of the world is examined with accuracy and scholarship. This includes a large
area of interests written by renounced Western scholars like the famous French scholar Maxim Rodenson, and the Indian Aziz
Ahmad.

Islamic Art (1989) by David Talbot Rice. A valuable book, describing and portraying Islamic an as a supreme triumph of
pattern and colour. These qualities of Islamic art are colourfully and elegantly presented in an academic and historical manner
that makes the book worthwhile reading.

A Popular Dictionary of Islam (1992) by Ian R Netton. This work is a unique dictionary and glossary of Islamic terms. It
provides a key general source on the popular area of Islam. A well-written, comprehensive, cross-referenced book intended for
the student, scholar, and general reader, whether Muslim or non-Muslim.

Islam: Its Meaning and Message (1976) by Khurshid Ahmad and others. A good general introductory book to Islam with a
pinch of specialized flavour written by a reputable range of Muslim academics and modern scholars. The editor is an
internationally established Islamic scholar who occupied academic ministerial posts in Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim
world. The book is divided into four parts covering the Islamic outlook to life, the prophet and the Koran, the Islamic system,
and Islam and the world.

The Eternal Message of Muhammad (1979) by `Abd ar-Rahman Azzam. This book discusses Islam through the life of the
prophet of the faith. He also offers a good account of Islam as a social religion that does not recognize either nationalism or
racism. The author was founder and first secretary general of the Arab League 1945-52.

Morals and Manners in Islam (1986) by M I al-Kaysi. A concise account of the unique area of Islamic culture that is often
unknown by the West. The book covers a large range of patterns of behaviour regulating Islamic conduct at personal, family,
and social levels. The book contents are derived mainly from Islamic legal sources. The author is a Jordanian university
professor and scholar who has travelled extensively in the Muslim world.

Shari'ah: The Islamic Law (1984) by A R I Doi. One of the few comprehensive standard books on Islamic law available in
English. Despite some topographical errors, the book offers an excellent detailed overview of Islamic law in general and in
relation to family, crime and punishment, inheritance and disposal of property, economics and external relationships.

An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964) by Joseph Shacht. This book is considered one of the best accounts of the history of
Islamic law. A fascinating book with its accuracy and detailed knowledge. Although the book is described by the author as not
intended for the specialists, many specialists find it extremely useful as a starting point within the complex phenomena of
Islamic law. The author, who died in 1969, was professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Columbia University, New York.

JUDAISM
Julia Neuberger

The books that follow are my absolute favourites. A complete reading list would have to include the Hebrew Bible (the Old
Testament), the main rabbinic works such as the Mishnah and Talmud, and a huge corpus of historical and philosophical works.
So what follows is an idiosyncratic selection, which I hope will give the reader some of the flavour of what Judaism is, and
what being Jewish might be like.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are

touched at all points and conscious everywhere.
LIONEL TRILLING
A Rabbinic Anthology (1938) edited by C G Montefiore and H Loewe. A collection of writings from the rabbis, with a
brilliant introduction. One of my favourites is from the Jerusalem Talmud: `The Holy Spirit only rests on someone who has a
joyous heart.'

Atlas of the Jewish World (1984) by Nicholas de Lange. The best of the atlases of Jewish history and modern existence, by
far. You get a feel for where Jews were, where they are, and why it is they moved from one country to another.

World of our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (1976) by
Irving Howe. Just what it says it is, but brilliantly expressed as a journey from one world to another, with a great deal of the
atmosphere of eastern Europe included.

The Jewish People: Their History and Religion (1987) by David J Goldberg and John D Rayner. Clear, concise, helpful. A
good one-volume treasury of information about who Jews are, what they practise, and what the varieties of Judaism are.

The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (1986) by Martin Gilbert. The authoritative book on the history of the Holocaust.
Painful reading, but essential to understanding present-day Jews.

Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism (1991) by Alexander Stille. A strange choice, but it
tells the tale so well of Italian Jews who had lived a peaceful life, very happily, utterly integrated into Italian life, and then were
betrayed. It raises lots of questions, and is beautifully written.

Konin: A Quest (1995) by Theo Richmond. Richmond researched and recreated in words the small town in Poland from which
his family came, and where the Jews were completely destroyed during World War II. It is a remarkable achievement, and
people long dead live again, as does a vanished world.

If This Is a Man (1960) by Primo Levi. Records what it means to be a Jew, and to experience the concentration camps.
Anything else by Levi is also recommended.

Spiegelman, Art, American, 1948- .

Maus: A Survivor's Tale. Rec: NYPL
Sex and Love

The attempt to apply a criterion of literary merit has kept this list short. But if reading turns you on .. .
See BIOGRAPHY (Masters); MEDICINE (Belleveau, Boston Women's Collective, Kaplan)

Anand, Margot, French-American writing in English, 1943- .

The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. Rec: Utne

Bataille, Georges, French, 1897-1962.

Visions of Excess. Rec: Harvard
Erotism: Death and Sensuality (Eroticism). Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Blue of Noon. Rec: Bloom

Boccaccio The Decarneron (1471)

Rumbustious, thigh-slapping medieval sexuality, like Brueghel with dirty bits. Exhausting to swallow whole; sampling makes
for appetite. Good translation: Burton.

Boccaccio, Giovanni, Italian, 1313-1375.

Decameron. Rec: Bloom Collh91 Good Reading Meaningful Smiley Ward

Brecher, R. and E. An Analysis of Human Sexual Response (1967) If more people read this book there would be more happy
— and successful—lovers around. A layperson's guide to Masters and Johnson's (qv) Human Sexual Response. Also: The Sex
Researchers

Cleland, John Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749) Has Westminster School ever recovered from producing
the author of what the British Dictionary of National Biography once described as a "scandalously indecent book"? A "novel"
but marvellously instructive in its lubricious vitality.

Comfort, Alex (ed) The Joy of Sex (1974)

Sub-title A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking might put off those who resist the "I-could-eat-you" school of modern practice; but
this refreshingly shameless and practical manual can only increase the pleasures of sex. Also: More Joy of Sex

Comfort, Alex, English, 1920-2000.

The Joy of Sex. Rec: Boston PL

Duffy, Maureen The Erotic World of Faery (1978)

So that's the appeal of all those folk tales about elves, goblins, toadstools and (if you'll pardon the expression) fairy rings!
Serious, delightful book; human sexuality at its most unexpected.

Ellis, Havelock, English, 1859-1939.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Rec: Counterpunch NF NYPL

Foucault, Michel The History of Sexuality (1979)

Polemic by a French philosopher against the idea that sexuality has been repressed and is now being liberated. He argues that
our obsession with analysing, investigating and discussing sex constitutes yet another form of guilt.

Foucault, Michel, French, 1926-1984.

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Rec: TLS
The History of Sexuality. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
Discipline and Punish. Rec: Colcc91 Counterpunch Trans

Genet, Jean Our Lady of the Flowers (1943)

In Genet's super-masculine world a "male who fucks a male is a double male". This "novel", composed while Genet was in
prison awaiting trial, describes an implacable society of homosexuality, crime, betrayal and oppression. See DRAMA (Esslin);
BIOGRAPHY (Sartre); TRAVEL

Haddon, Celia (ed) Venus Revealed(1977)

Too much pornography lacks wit, style, and an interest in anything but the sexual act. This book, a parody of Fanny Hill,
supplies them all, and is sexy too.

Hite, Shere The Hite Report (1977) 9

Based on a fairly wide, though allegedly unscientific, survey of American women, the results contribute to an understanding of
female sexuality. Compulsory reading for all males of the "Wham, barn, thankyou ma'am" school—though (like other readers)
they may find the rancorous, self-satisfied tone monotonous.

Kinsey, Alfred C. et al Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1949); Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953) J
;
Although now a little outdated and attacked for his research methods, the peeking Dr Kinsey produced what was in its time a
classic catalogue of the rich variations of human behaviour and a form of liberation through statistics from the secrecy and
falsehood which prejudices morality.

Kinsey, Alfred C., American, 1894-1956.

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Rec: Boston PL
The Kinsey Reports on Human Sexual Behavior (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, German, 1840-1902.

Psychopathia Sexualis. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Laclos, Choderlos de Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

For anyone who wants reassuring that sex is (a) pointless and (b) inevitable. A fine book on the corruption of innocence by
unmotivated evil. The hero, Valmont, spends a large part of his life writing finely drafted but tedious letters to his girlfriend.
Merteuil, about planning an expedition to climb yet another moos veneris just because it's there. Good translation: Baldick.

Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de, French, 1741-1803.

Dangerous Liaisons. Rec: Bloom Rexmo Smiley

Masters, W. H. and Johnson, V. E. Human Sexual Response (1966) 0

Detailed physiological and psychological facts, disproving fantasies, fallacies, myths and taboos which surround the subject of
orgasmic response. Zero for style, full marks for content. Also: Human Sexual Inadequacy

Masters, William H. and Virginia E. Johnson, American, 1915-2001 and 1925-.

Human Sexual Response. Rec: LAT

Meaker, Marijane, American, 1927- .

Shockproof Sydney Skate. Rec: Harvard
Sydney finds himself in a quandary when the girl he loves and his mother, a lesbian, develop crushes on each other. "Meaker
has written a very funny novel about our current preoccupation with sex and what it is doing to us," remarked PW.

Miller, Henry Tropic of Cancer(1931)

Miller was once described as "the first writer outside the Orient who has succeeded in writing naturally about sex on as large a
scale as novelists ordinarily write about the dinner table or the battlefield." Could be that he was also a whoremongering,
narcissistic bore. For excellent corrective to his scandalously chauvinistic hedonism, see Millet (FEMINISM). Also: Sexus;
Plexus; Nexus. See DIARIES (Durrell)

Miller, Henry, American, 1891-1980.

Tropic of Cancer. Rec: Hungry Mind ML Novels Radcliffe Time
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Nefzawi, Sheikh The Perfumed Garden (16th century) Alfa*

What sheikhs used to get up to before they discovered oil. Thorough, if over-poetic. Good translation: Burton.

Nin, Anais Delta of Venus (1978)

When Anais Nin started to write erotica for a dollar a page in the 1940s she was instructed "concentrate on sex. Leave out the
poetry''. Luckily, she was incapable of doing so. Also: The Diary of Anal's Nill; Little Birds
Nin, Anaïs, American, 1903-1977.
Diary of Anaïs Nin (7 vols.). Rec: LAT
Delta of Venus. Rec: Harvard Utne

Ovid The Art of Love (1st century BC) a

One of the oldest and funniest handbooks of amorous siege tactics. Deals with sexual one-upmanship with cynical, timeless
stylishness.

Partridge, Burgo A History of Orgies (1964)

Serious study of an extraordinary, rather repellent phenomenon.

Peel, J. and Potts, M. A Textbook of Contraceptive Practice (1969) J P

Reage, Pauline The Story of O(1970)

Much speculation has been whipped up about who actually wrote The Story of O. The way in which a woman, O, achieves
sexual gratification by voluntarily subjecting herself to male sadism convinces many people that a male imagination lurks
behind the words. Highly erotic; highly literary; Graham Greene called it "a rare thing, a pornographic book well written and
without a trace of obscenity".

Rechy, John City of Night (1963)

A meaty book in every sense, about male hustlers in New York City. Just the book for people with strong stomachs who cannot
imagine what drives homosexuals. Also: The Sexual Outlaw

Reich, Wilhelm The Sexual Revolution (1930)

When a Marxist, Reich analysed the family as the key institution within capitalist society responsible for economic repression
and sexual perversion. For his insistence on the political significance of sex he was expelled from the Freudian Psycho-
Analytical Association. He later became a committed anti-communist, finally dying in prison after being prosecuted by the
American Food and Drug Administration for fraud. Thorny style; influential book. Also: The Itnposition of Sexual Morality

Reich, Wilhelm, Austrian, 1897-1957.

The Function of the Orgasm. Rec: Boston PL
Character Analysis. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Sade, Marquis de Justine (1797) P*

Libertine, philosopher and pornographer extraordinary, the Marquis de Sade wrote books he expected to be banned. More read
about than read; a curiously enervating author, for all his disturbing zest. Compare Angela Carter: The Sadeian Woman. Also:
The Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom; Philosophy in the Bedroom, etc

Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de, French, 1740-1814.

Justine. Rec: Smiley
Letters from Prison. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Sanger, Margaret, American, 1879-1966.

My Fight for Birth Control. Rec: NYPL
Happiness in Marriage. Rec: Boston PL

Silverstein, C. and White, E. The Joy of Gay Sex (1977)

Intimate alphabetical guide to the pleasures of gaiety, ranging from "androgyny" to "wrestling". Less serious (and less helpful
and supportive) than the companion volume, The Joy of Lesbian Sex (1977) by Sisley and Harris. But is solemnity obligatory?

Southern, Terry Blue Movie (1973)

Scintillating, Hollywood satire: frivolity laced with splendid, poker-faced sex. They'll film this—and completely miss the point.
A funny, and a splendidly erotic, read. Also: Candy

Tannahil, Reay Sex in History (1980)

Gorgeous scholarly survey of the place of sex (as opposed to love, family life, patriotism, honour, etc) in societies from ancient
China and India (oh, those temple-carvings! What were they for? For fun, of course, says Tannahill) almost right up (but not,
thank goodness, all the way) to the Home Life of Dear Queen Victoria. This really is everything you never dared to ask, about
such matters as Greek homosexuality, those medieval girls and their unicorns, Victorian flagellation, even the rationale and
methods of castration in the Middle East. Thorough scholarship; deadpan wit; a lovely book. See FOOD

Vatsyayana The Kama Sutra (4th-6th century) a 00*

Classic Indian sex manual on the "art of love'; remarkable mixture of sophistication and urbanity. It might give you a headache
trying to work out what goes where in some of the sex positions described, just as putting them into practice will almost
certainly result in backache. Good translation: Burton.

Vatsyayana, Indian writing in Sanskrit, ca. 4th C.

Kama Sutra. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Ward

Wolff, Charlotte Love between Women (1971)

Using a case history approach, Charlotte Wolff, a psychoanalyst, gives a good, lucid account of the nature of lesbian
relationships. Also: An OlderLove (fiction)
Sociology

From its 19th-century beginnings, sociology has been an analytical rather than a dogmatic study: its role is to examine the
beliefs, principles and processes which control social behaviour, to codify them where possible, and to draw conclusions.
Increasingly, however, as the study develops, those conclusions are tending towards dogma, theories of social change becoming
recipes, blueprints for vast upheavals of human behaviour and organization. Many of the books on this list show a proselytizing
zeal for this or that political way; others, perhaps purer in sociological terms, take the detached stance of the observer.
preserving that coolness of analysis of ideas in action which, at its best, makes sociology a true counterpart of philosophy.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Dumont, Lloyd, Thrasher, Tiger); ARCHITECTURE (Newman); FILM (Durgnat); GEOGRAPHY
(Pahl); HISTORY/BRITISH (Blythe, Bragg, Thomas, Thompson): MEDIA (Hoggart, McLuhan, Packard, Williams); MUSIC
(Frith); POLITICS (Mackenzie, Mannheim. Mill, Moore, Niebuhr, Piven, Rousseau, Schumpeter); PSYCHOLOGY (Aronson,
Erikson)

Addams, Jane, American, 1860-1935.

Twenty Years at Hull-House. Rec: NYPL

Anderson, Perry Considerations on Western Marxism (1976) Lucid survey of "Western Marxist" theorists, including Lukacs,
Gramsci, Althusser, Sartre, and the Frankfurt School (Horsheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, etc). Their main common
feature for the uninitiated is their relative inaccessibility; Anderson's book eases initiation. Also: Lineages of the Absolutist
State

Andreski, Stanislav The Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

Are modern sociologists actually no more than ju-ju men? Andreski cuts wittily to the heart of the subject, and finds it not so
much a religion, more a passionate superstition.

Banton, M. P. Roles (1965) 9

One of the founders of the group of sociologists known as "role theorists", Banton here presents a clear case for the theory. For
reference, essential. See North.

Barnes, Barry Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (1977) Sound introduction to the sociology of knowledge. See
PHILOSOPHY (Mannheim)

Becker, Howard S. Outsiders (1963)

The book which launched "labelling theory-. Sensitive application of the interactionist viewpoint to such topics as marijuana
use and the culture of dance-band musicians.

Berger, Peter L. The Social Reality of Religion (1967)

The author looks at Western secularization and asks how theology is possible in an age without religious assumptions.
Neglected aspect of contemporary life; challenging treatment. Also: The Social Construction of Reality; A Rumour of Angels

Berlin, Isaiah, English, 1909-1997.

Four Essays on Liberty. Rec: TLS
Russian Thinkers. Rec: TLS
The Proper Study of Mankind. Rec: ML Nonfiction
The Hedgehog and the Fox. Rec: National Review

Billington, Ray Allen, American, 1903-1981.

The Genesis of the Frontier Theory: A Study in Historical Creativity. Rec: LAT (sociology)

Blattner, Robert Alienation and Freedom (1964)

Influential study of the way in which industrial experience influences the worker's sense of control and his feelings of purpose,
isolation and discontent. Blok, Anton The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960(1974) *..1 Stimulating blend of
sociology/history/anthropology, on an endlessly fascinating subject. Compare L. Barzini: The Italians; G. Maxwell: God
Protect Me from My Friends.

Borkin, Joseph, American, 1911-1979.

The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben: The Unholy Alliance Between Hitler and the Great Chemica Combine. Rec:
Counterpunch NF
Written in a style which can be enjoyed by academics and casual readers both, the book gives insight into the little known
capitalistic aspects of the holocaust. (amazon)

Bottomore, T. B. and Rubel, M. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (1963) 9
Marx would have been amused by present attempts to allocate his work to such narrow disciplinary categories as "sociology",
"economics", and "philosophy". However here is a useful "sociological" set of extracts from his work grouped under such
headings as "class", "alienation" and "ideology". See Marx; ECONOMICS (Marx); POLITICS (Marx)

Caillois, Roger, French, 1913-1978.

Man, Play, and Games. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
In this classic study, Caillois defines play as a free and voluntary activity that occurs in a pure space, isolated and protected
from the rest of life. Play is uncertain, since the outcome may not be foreseen, and it is governed by rules that provide a level
playing field for all participants. In its most basic form, play consists of finding a response to the opponent's action--or to the
play situation--that is free within the limits set by the rules.

Chesney, Kellow The Victorian Underworld (1970)

Horrifying, riveting account of lurks, lays, rookeries, rampsmen and muck snipes. Makes Dickens' fictionalized Hell seem like
Sunnybrook Farm. Even the magnificent Dore illustrations are dwarfed by the scabrous, squalid detail of the text. The
underside of Empire, brilliantly laid bare.

Coles, Robert, American, 1929- .

Children of Crisis (5 vols.). Rec: LAT ML Nonfiction (sociology)

Dodds, E. R., English, 1893-1979.

The Greeks and the Irrational. Rec: Counterpunch NF (sociology)

Dower, John, American, 1938- .

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Drucker, Peter F., American, 1909-2005.

The New Society: The Anatomy of the Industrial Order. Rec: LAT

Durkheim, Emile Suicide (1897) 9*

Perhaps the greatest work of one of the founders of sociology. Central argument, based on statistics available at the time, is that
the suicide rate can only be understood by reference to the structure of the society in which it prevails. The innovating origins
of a modern truism. Also: The Division of Labour in Society; The Rules of the Sociological Method; Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life

Durkheim, Emile, French, 1858-1917.

Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Rec: Counterpunch Trans NYPL

Elias, Norbert The Civilizing Process (1939) a*

How the development of manners in Europe since the Middle Ages is related to the growth of the State—in other words, how
the growth of social control leads to the growth of self-control, constraint to restraint. Neglected, stimulating classic. Also:
What Is Sociology?

Elias, Norbert, German, 1897-1990.

The Civilizing Process. Rec: Counterpunch Trans TLS

Fathy, Hassan, Egyptian (Arabic), 1900-1989.

Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Freyre, Gilberto, Brazilian, 1900-1987.

The Masters and the Slaves. Rec: Boston PL Ward
The Mansions and the Shanties. Rec: Ward
Order and Progress. Rec: Ward
Garfinkel, H. Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) P *
Despite its forbidding title (and even more forbidding prose), an important account of a new school of thought which insists
that the "organized activities of everyday life" provide the most appropriate focus for sociologists' attention.

Geertz, Clifford, American, 1923- .

The Interpretation of Culture. Rec: TLS

Georgakas, Dan, American, 1938- .

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: a Study in Early Revolution. Rec: Counterpunch NF (sociology)

Gerschenkron, Alexander, Russian-American writing in English, 1904-1978.

Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Rec: TLS

Anonymous, American, fl. 1971.

Go Ask Alice. Rec: Harvard (sociology)

Goffman, Erving Asylums (1961) *

Although this study of the social world of the inmates of a mental hospital has been widely employed as an attack upon closed
institutions, it is also a fine example of Goffman's pessimistic "world vision". Also: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life;
Stigma; Behaviour in Public Places

Goodman, Paul, American, 1911-1972.

Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System. Rec: Counterpunch NF LAT NYPL

Gouldner, Alvin W. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1971)

Interesting, somewhat self-serving attempt to describe the proper task of radical sociologists in the coming years. Perhaps more
a symptom of the "crisis" than a recipe for its solution. Also: Enter Plato

International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (17 vols, 1968)

One of the very best of the special-subject encyclopaedias. Contains some classic articles, making it unnecessary to wade
through less brief specialist tomes.

Jacoby, R. Social Amnesia (1975) P*

Stylish, polemical account of the various attempts by psychoanalysts, ego-psychologists and others to suppress the sociological
import of Freud's writings. Controversial discussion of Reich, Fromm, Marcuse, and Laing. Also: Critical Interruptions: New
Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse

Kotlowitz, Alex, American, 1955- .

There Are No Children Here. Rec: NYPL (sociology)
There Are No Children Here, the true story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, ages 11 and 9 at the start, brings home
the horror of trying to make it in a violence-ridden public housing project.

Krauss, Karl, Austrian, 1874-1936.

The Last Days of Mankind. Rec: Bloom
THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND, 'a play to be performed on Mars' is one of the most trenchant satires written this century.
Kraus compiled the play from newspaper articles, official bulletins, and overheard conversations during World War One in
Vienna.

Lasch, Christopher, American, 1932-1994.

The Culture of Narcissism. Rec: Counterpunch NF LAT (sociology)

Lewis, Oscar La Vida (1965)

La Vida— "the life" in the barrios of Puerto Rico and in their continental offshoots, the dim streets and alleys of New York's
East Harlem.

Liebling, A. J., American, 1904-1963.

The Sweet Science. Rec: ML Nonfiction (journalism)

Linebaugh, Peter, American, 1942- .

The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. Rec: Counterpunch NF (sociology)

Lipset, S. M. Class, Status and Power in Comparative Perspective (1966) Lipset is a leading analyst of class structure,
recommended for coolness, balance and readability. Also: Sociology; Revolution and Counterrevolution, etc

Lynd, R. S. and H. M. Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929)

Exhaustive sociological study of the inhabitants of a middle-sized Indiana town (Muncie, it is said) that reveals the best and
worst in them (and us?). Attacked for its methods as well as for the secrets it gave away, the work became a foundation stone of
American sociology.

Marcuse, Herbert One Dimensional Man (1964) r*

How does capitalist society manage to survive? What are the forces which may even yet break it apart? Marcuse's dramatic
attempts to update Marx informed and propelled the American student movement in the late 1960s: cf the sorcerer and his
apprentices. Also: Eros and Civilization; Reason and Revolution; Soviet Marxism

Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1959)

Written when Marx was 26, these essays attempt to clarify the relationship etween philosophy, economics and socialism—a
union of ideas which did much to fuel those humanistic revolutionary movements, which reached their peak in capitalist
societies in the late 1960s. See ECONOMICS: POLITICS

Matzo, David Becoming Deviant(1969)

Sparkling historical review of criminological theory; subtle demonstration of the inadequacies of causal determinism in the
understanding of human behaviour. Also: Delinquency and Drift

Mauss, Marcel, French, 1872-1950.

The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Maya, Maya (Mexico and Central America), 4th-15th C.

Works on the Maya. (See also Popol Vuh) Rec: Ward

Mead, G. H. Mind, Self and Society (1934) P

Collection of pieces by one of the founders of American social psychology. Superb essay on the creation of the human "self",
and an important introduction to "role"—the concept which was later so much used (and abused) by "role theorists".

Mead, Margaret Male and Female (1949) 0

Anthropologist's view of male and female roles in different societies, including 20th-century USA. Describes the inexorable
cultural pressure on both males and females to conform to specific gender rules of their societies. See ANTHROPOLOGY;
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Mills, C. Wright The Sociological Imagination (1959) a

Spirited essays about the purpose of sociology—Mills' effective, perhaps overrated response to those who were beginning to
make sociology a servant not a critic of the state. Also: The Power Elite

Mills, C. Wright, American, 1916-1962.

The Power Elite. Rec: Boston PL
Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Mises, Ludwig von, Austrian, 1881-1973.

Bureaucracy. Rec: National Review

Nash, Roderick, American, 1939- .

Wilderness and the American Mind. Rec: LAT

Nisbet, Robert, American, 1913-1996.

The Quest for Community. Rec: National Review (sociology)

North, C. C. Social Differentiation (1926)

Founding document of the role theorist school of thought. Important; interesting.
Nozick, Robert, American, 1938-2002.
Anarchy, State and Utopia. Rec: TLS

Pareto, Vilfredo, Italian, 1848-1923.

The Mind and Society. Rec: Counterpunch Trans Seymour-Smith

Post, Emily, American, 1873-1960.

Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home. Rec: NYPL

Raban, Jonathan Soft City (1974) a

Hustling study of city life, the nature of citizenship, the "feel" of a city man, especially in London and New York. Mixed-bag of
autobiography, anthropology and literary criticism (the city being a major character in fiction).

Reeves, Magdalen Pember Round about a Pound a Week(1913) itPa British working-class life before World War I, seen
through the eyes of the wives of London workmen. An almost incredible story of cramped, confined life on a meagre budget.

Riesman, D., Denny, R. and Glazer, N. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character(1962)
This book created a great controversy and its title passed instantly into the language. Its analysis of inner- and outer-
directedness may be finally somewhat superficial but was important for explaining how we felt (and feel?) about ourselves.

Riesman, David, American, 1909-2002.

The Lonely Crowd. Rec: LAT TLS

Riis, Jacob, American, 1849-1914.

The Battle with the Slum. Rec: NYPL
How the Other Half Lives. Rec: Boston PL

Roberts, Robert The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (1971)
Wonderfully detailed picture of life in a slum district of northern England. Particularly impressive account of the effects of the
Great War in bringing new attitudes and experiences into the lives of ordinary people.

Rougemont, Denis de, Swiss writing in French, 1906-1985.

Love in the Western World. Rec: National Review

Rourke, Constance American Humor: A Study of National Character (1931) 1$

The first serious book to connect the tall tale with the national character. Schutz, Alfred Collected Papers (3 vols, 1962)
Although Schutz's version of phenomenology has recently come under attack, his work still forms the best introduction to the
modern sociologist's obsession with the nature of "everyday life".

Schlosser, Eric, American, 1960- .

Fast Food Nation. Rec: Harvard

Shilts, Randy, American, 1951-1994.

And the Band Played On. Rec: NYPL

Silko, Leslie Marmon, American, 1948- .

Ceremony. Rec: Hungry Mind Utne

Simmel, Georg The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1890-1918 (1964)

Stylish essays (ed Kurt Wolff). Simmers unwillingness to provide the type of systematic analysis favoured by some of his
contemporaries has led to quite unreasonable neglect.

Simmel, Georg, German, 1858-1918.

The Philosophy of Money. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Slater, Philip E., American, 1927- .

The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point. Rec: LAT

Sumner, W. G. Folkways (1907)

Now classic compilation of social behaviour by a noted 19th-century American sociologist. Still fascinating; still relevant.

Suttles, G. D. The Social Order of the Slum (1968)

Fascinating accounts of the variety of groups who live on the West Side of Chicago, with analyses of the relations between
them. See Whyte.

Tawney, R. H., English, 1880-1962.

The Acquisitive Society. Rec: GBWW
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Rec: ML Nonfiction (sociology)

Terkel, Studs Working (1977) di a*

Taped interviews of ordinary Americans talking about their daily work: white-collar, blue-collar, executive, professional,
breadline. This is where sociology begins—and it makes often unexpected, hopeful reading. Also: Division Street. See
HISTORY/BRITISH (Blythe, Bragg)

Terkel, Studs, American, 1912- .

Working. Rec: LAT ML Nonfiction

Toffler, Alvin, American, 1928- .

Future Shock. Rec: LAT

Veblen, Thorstein The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) it *

Deliriously ironic study of the lifestyle and "conspicuous consumption" of the American upper classes, and of how such a
pecuniary culture became a model for all other groups in society. Also: The Instinct of Workmanship

Veblen, Thorstein, American, 1857-1929.

Theory of the Leisure Class. Rec: GBWW NYPL

Wallerstein, Immanuel The Modern World System (1974)

Outstanding example of the world of "dependency theorists" who in the last decade have shown that the situation of
underdeveloped countries is not to be understood by faults or weaknesses within their own social structure, but rather in terms
of their dependency—increasing and developing over several centuries—on the "developed" parts of a single "world-system".
See POLITICS (Fanon)

Weber, Max The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1921)

Weber, with Marx, has exerted a dominant influence over contemporary sociology and political studies. This book includes his
discussion of charismatic authority which has been as widely influential as it has been misunderstood. Also: The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology; On the Methodology of the Social Sciences, etc.
Good selection edited by Runciman (1978).

Weber, Max, German, 1864-1920.

Economy and Society. Rec: National Review
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Rec: Counterpunch Trans NYPL
Essays in Sociology. Rec: Colcc91 GBWW (Selections)

Whyte, W.F. Street Corner Society (1955) 0 Whyte spent three and a half years living in an Italian slum area of Chicago before
writing this sensitive, readable account of perhaps the most famous small group in sociological literature—"Doc and the
Nortons". See Suttles.

Willis, P. Learning to Labour(1977)

Why is it that working-class children end up not just taking dead-end jobs but actually appearing to want them? Unfashionable
subject; good treatment.

Willmott, P. and Young, M. Family and Kinship in East London (1957) CI

Examination of how modern housing developments affect the freedom of one generation to live near another; the starting point
of all contemporary studies of the British family. Also: Family and Class in a London Suburb

Wolf, Christa, German, 1929- .

Cassandra. Rec: Bloom
Kassandra is perhaps her most important book, re-interpreting the battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from
a matriarchal to a patriachal society. (wikipedia)

Wolfe, Tom, American, 1931- .

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Rec: LAT National Review
Bonfire of the Vanities. Rec: NYPL Radcliffe
The Right Stuff. Rec: ML Nonfiction
Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Rec: National Review

Culture and Practical Reason M. Sahlins Sharing Food

Food and the Status Quest "P. Wiessner, W. Schiefenhovel" Sharing Food
Feasts "M. Dietler, B. Hayden" Sharing Food

Sacrifice: its Nature and Function "H. Hubert, M. Mauss" Sacrifice

Sacrifice "M.F.C. Bourdillon, M. Fortes" Sacrifice
Ritual Sacrifice B. Ralph Lewis Sacrifice
Aztecs: An Interpretation I. Clendinnen Sacrifice

The Culture of Cities L. Mumford Reshaping Nature

Cities in Civilization P. Hall Reshaping Nature
Mesopotamia: the Invention of the City G. LeickReshaping Nature
Civilizations F. Fernandez-Armesto Reshaping Nature

The Oxford Book of Work K. Thomas Work-Leisure Divide

Stone-Age Economics M. Sahlins Work-Leisure Divide
Crops and Man J.R. Harlan Work-Leisure Divide

Women in Prehistory M. Ehrenberg Sexism

The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan B. and R. Allchin Sexism
Becoming Visible R. Bridenthal Sexism

Classics of International Relations J.A. Vazquez Massacre

The Territorial Imperative R. Ardrey Massacre
On Aggression K. Lorenz Massacre
A History of War J. Keegan Massacre
The Anthropology of War J. Haas Massacre
War Before Civilization L.H. Keely Massacre

The Islamic View of Women and the Family M.A. Rauf Marriage
History of the Wife M. Yalom Marriage
Pride and Prejudice J. Austen Marriage

The Egyptian Book of the Dead E.A. Wallis Budge Eternal Monuments
The Pyramids of Egypt I. Edwards Eternal Monuments
The Egyptians C. Aldred Eternal Monuments

Natural Relations T. Benton Human Superiority

Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals R.G. Frey Human Superiority
Beast and Man M. Midgeley Human Superiority
Animal Liberation P. SingerHuman Superiority
The Ape and the Sushi Master F. de Waal Human Superiority

Democracy in Plural Societies A. Lijphart Cultural Pluralism

A Different Mirror R. Takki Cultural Pluralism
Two Concepts of Liberty I. Berlin Cultural Pluralism
Isaiah Berlin J. Gray Cultural Pluralism
The Sense of Reality I. Berlin Cultural Pluralism

Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Science at Harvard. Besides writing articles and books in his field of
sociology, he cofounded The Public Interest, is on the Board of Editors of Daedalus, and is a contributing editor of the Partisan
Review. He is a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and a member of the National Research
Council's Board on Telecommunications and Computers. His most recent book is The Deficit: How Big? How Long? How
Dangerous? written with Lester Thurow, to be followed by a book funded by the National Science Foundation on the new
technology.

Mortimer J. Adler, ed. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (1952). Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1955. (Vols. 2 and 3 of Great Books of the Western World.)

Alan L. Bullock, ed. The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
My list would be constantly changing with new books being added all the time. Readers need to understand that no book stands
by itself. It is part of a continuing dialogue with its predecessors. Each book is a part of a river of books. Books are embedded
in a historical context; Aristotle's Metaphysics cannot be understood without an understanding of the pre-Socratics, for
example. You need to lead from one book to another—maybe using Mortimer Adler's Syntopicon. You don't have to go back
and read everyone that came before. Then you would be a part of an infinite regress. You have to start somewhere. The point is
to be aware that reading and ideas do not arise de nova. There is an element of history behind all reading—that continuing
dialogue again. Any intelligent reader has to keep in mind the question, What was it about previous answers and writings that
was unsatisfactory and insufficient and gave rise to the new formulation?

In picking books you cannot be a magpie picking one Aristotle, one Shakespeare. First, the reader must ask, What are the
relevant questions? and then, What books address themselves to those questions? If it's a question about the nature of justice
then proceed from Aristotle to John Rawls. Readers should have a sense of purpose for reading and they need to know how to
relate one book to another. Readers need to know ways of reading—how to trace out an idea by following its threads.
My own earliest reading was boy books—Nick Carter detectives. But they got me into the habit of reading. My own experience
of life on the Lower East Side of New York drew on one thematic and problematic definition that shaped my entire life. My
father died early and my mother was a factory worker. I was surrounded by slums, garbage scows, Hooverville. It was the
"why" and the "does it have to be this way" that led me and my reading to the socialist movement, and on to my profession of
sociology.

The answer to your question is more complex, rich and variegated than the notion that somewhere there is a set of books that
impressed you. It is too simplistic an approach. Maybe we should be urging people toward favorite encyclopedias as a
beginning point. A good one is Alan Bullock's Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought.

Archie C. Epps

Archie C. Epps, dean of students at Harvard College, is a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana. He came to Harvard as a graduate
student in 1958 after he received his A.B. degree from Talladega College in Alabama. He was awarded an S.T.B. by the
Harvard Divinity School in 1961. His main intellectual interests are sociology of religion and Afro-American literature and
history. He edited the speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard, which were published by William Morrow in 1968 and which
included an introductory essay entitled "The Paradoxes of Malcolm X." His forthcoming book, Coping with College: Issues
Faced by Students in the 1980s, will be published in the winter of 1987.

Each of these books illuminates an area of human thought that seeks to project man beyond the everyday. They were important
to me for the special vision of the future they contained.

Robert N. Bellah. The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial (1975). Minneapolis, Minn.: Winston
Press, 1976. (Pb)
Robert Bellah's seminal work, The Broken Covenant, was published just before the bicentennial of this country. It portrays an
American people who have interpreted their history as having a religious meaning. They saw themselves a chosen people.
Bellah traces the myths that helped shape the American identity and underscores how they were being reexamined in light of
the difficulties facing the nation. He shows the interplay between religion and secular myths. He achieves new perspectives on
the constant struggle in the republic to reclaim values and a true sense of freedom. This book will whet your appetite for more
Bellah, especially Beyond Belief and Habits of the Heart.

Harry A. Wolfson. Religious Philosophy (1961). New York: Atheneum, 1965. (Pb)
These secular essays are vintage Wolfson. A scholar in the ancient tradition, his studies range from Judaism to the patristic
Fathers and finally Islamic theology. His work lays the foundation for understanding the common threads and differences in the
three religious traditions that arose in the Middle East. Wolfson wrote books on many of the subjects discussed in the essays.
This book illuminates the whole corpus of his work and renders him somewhat more accessible to the nonspecialist.
I read Religious Philosophy because Professor Wolfson directed my attention to the last piece, a sermonette given in Appleton
Chapel, 17 March 1955. It is called "The Professed Atheist and the Verbal Theist," and begins with a quotation from Psalms
14:1: "The fool bath said in his heart, there is no God." Lasting less than six minutes in delivery, Wolfson's sermon summarizes
the history of religious philosophy and the misguided efforts to provide secular versions.

W. E. B. DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk (1903). New York: New American Library, 1969. (Pb)
This small book introduced me in a detailed way to the richness of black life at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its
marriage of a grasp of fact and soaring poetic prose makes it a tour de force that sweeps the reader along and immerses him in
the Negro world. It encouraged me to read other books by DuBois who was one of our pioneer sociologists. He must have
believed, as did F. R. Leavis, that scholarship should in part serve to produce an educated and informed public, because he
wrote for general consumption.

Ralph Ellison. Shadow and Act (1964). New York: Random House, 1964. (Pb)
If you want to understand the joy in black life despite suffering, this book will be an invaluable aid. This collection of essays by
the author of Invisible Man has been my guidepost since it was published, in the midst of a debate between Ellison and
Baldwin. Ellison stressed the particularity of black experience but also the way it embodied the universality of mankind. It
contains an important review of Leroi James's Blues People and a discussion of the centrality of black life in the American
experience. It held out the view that it is possible to live beyond race. Of course, Ellison is a superb craftsman, essayist and
conversationalist of charm, intelligence and force.

Gerald E. Frug

Gerald Frug teaches contracts, property, administrative law and local government law at the Harvard Law School. He teaches
all of them, he writes, in a way that demonstrates why the kinds of books he has mentioned here are essential to understanding
law. He has spent almost as much of his professional life as a government administrator as he has as a law teacher. He believes
that books of this kind are as important for government officials as they are for lawyers.

These are the six books that have most influenced my thinking.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Social Contract (1762). Maurice Cranston, trans. New York: Penguin, 1968. (Pb)
This book presents the most readable, passionate account I know of the promise and dangers of democracy, and it offers an
essential critique of the narrow meaning we give to the concept of democracy in America today.

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (1835-40). G. Laurence, trans. New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
Like Rousseau, de Tocqueville makes the democratic ideal come alive; his eloquence and insights make the book thrilling to
read. De Tocqueville's historical and sociological analysis, like Rousseau's political theory, help the reader get outside the
commonplace understandings of democracy prevalent today.

Karl Mannheim. Ideology and Utopia (1929). L. Wirth and G. Shils, trans. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. (Pb)
Mannheim shows us that the way people think about the world is contingent rather than universally shared. He argues that
thinking is not a way of getting at the truth about society from the outside; instead, ways of thinking are themselves products of
society. The difficulty that Mannheim has in coming to terms with his own thesis at the end of his book adds to the excitement
of reading it.

David Shapiro. Neurotic Styles (1965). New York: Basic Books, 1965. (Pb)
Shapiro, like Mannheim, describes how different people can understand the world in radically different ways, but Shapiro
relies on psychoanalytical rather than sociological insights in his account of the variable nature of thinking. His book makes
learning about alternative ways of experiencing the world fun; classifying yourself and your friends in terms of the obsessive-
compulsive, hysterical, paranoid and impulsive styles is irresistible.

Norbert Elias. The History of Manners (1978). Edmund Jephcott, trans. New York: Pantheon, 1982. (Pb)
Elias provides insight into the historically contingent nature of our own experience of the world through a historical analysis of
some of our most mundane experiences: using a fork, blowing one's nose, spitting. Elias's book is not only a fascinating social
history but it provides a valuable way to understand how our attitudes toward the world are formed.

Jacques Derrida. Of Grammatology (1976). Gayatri C. Spivak, trans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. (Pb)
The books listed above describe how not only democracy but also the normal routines of daily life can be lived in different
ways; Derrida's book focuses on the experience of difference itself. Derrida's book is difficult and often puzzling, but he
provokes his readers to think about their own ways of thinking in a powerful and insightful way.

Kenneth W. Haskins

Kenneth Haskins serves as both senior lecturer on education and codirector of the Principal's Center at Harvard's School of
Education. A trained social worker, Mr. Haskins has had extensive experience in administration and program development in
education. He has participated in the development of several national organizations and programs such as the National Black
Child Development Institute, and serves on advisory boards of trustees of numerous local science and educational agencies.

W. E. B. DuBois. Black Reconstruction in America (1935). New York: Atheneum, 1969. (Pb)
This book describes the attempt to recast the political and economic structures of the United States in a manner that offered
hope for a truly advanced society. It further depicts the events leading to the betrayal of the newly freed population's hopes.

John Langston Gwaltney, ed. Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America (1980). New York: Random House, 1981. (Pb)
This is a very sensitive presentation of the thinking of those the author considers "ordinary people." The wisdom and sensitivity
of black America is demonstrated in what is essentially a political commentary on American race relations.

William Hinton. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Random House, 1968. (Pb)
The work of a people attempting to put into practice the dreams of a revolution is portrayed by examining a small village. The
process of including the formerly excluded; the struggle to develop mutual respect and self-criticism; the substitution of
cooperation for exploration all are sketched in ways that point out the extreme difficulty in transforming ideas into programs.

Albert Memmi. The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957). Howard Greenfield, trans. Boston: Beacon, 1966. (Pb)
This work provides a frame of reference for examining current relations between the "haves" and the "have nots." The roles of
race and class are delineated as well as the recognition of everyone's contribution to the existence of these relationships.

Milton S. Mayer. They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
(Pb)
The title describes the major contributions of this book. An "advanced" nation, in which citizens enjoy their freedom often at
the expense of the freedom of others, discovers that it too (or at least a portion of it) is subject to domination and exploitation.
Although there are many other instances in our history, this one demonstrates the negative extremes of human behavior.

Winthrop Knowlton

Winthrop Knowlton is the director of the Center for Business and Government of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Mr. Knowlton, former chief executive officer of Harper & Row, Publishers, is the Henry R. Luce Professor of
Ethics, Business and Public Policy at the Kennedy School.

The books I have selected deal with the nature of tyranny and freedom and with scientific and cultural change (how they come
about and what they bring in their wake). None of them falls readily into a single category such as "economics" or "ethics."
Four of the six are about individuals. Their heroism provides insight into problems that endure across centuries and inspiration
about how best to lead one's life in the face of those challenges.

Maria Dermout. The Ten Thousand Things (1958). E. M. Beekman, ed., Hans Koning, trans. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1983.
Freeman J. Dyson. Disturbing the Universe: A Life in Science (1979). New York: Harper & Row, 1981. (Pb)
Friedrich August von Hayek. The Constitution of Liberty (1960). Chicago: Regnery, 1972.
Joseph A. Sehumpeter. Capitalism. Socialism, and Democracy (1942). New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
Andre Schwarz-Bart. The Last of the Just (1959). Stephen Becker, trans. Cambridge, Mass.: Richard Bentley, 1981.
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Ralph Parker, trans. Alexandria, Va.: Time—Life
Books, 1981.

Marc Roberts

Marc Roberts holds a joint appointment with Harvard's School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government as a
professor of political economy and health policy. He has taught primarily in the fields of industrial organization, cost-benefit
analyses, environmental economics and health economics. He is a consultant to public agencies, including the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and author of books that examine environmental and
health challenges in modern society.

Ernest Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). New York: Scribner's, 1982. (Pb)
I think almost everyone reads a novel when they are still young that first brings them face to face with the reality of life and
death. I read this my freshman year and argued about it endlessly late at night sitting in cafeterias while the traffic lights
glistened in the rain on the streets outside. Best of all, I liked the Spanish woman, Pilar, and years later felt vindicated in my
preference when I discovered Hemingway had named his favorite boat after her.

Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Pb)
I read this my first year in graduate school. For years I told people about the book, how much it had to say about all academic
work and the ways in which we all think. For years it was an underground classic and I was an ardent devotee. Now it has
received its well-deserved fame.

Max Weber. On the Methodology of the Social Science (190417). Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch, trans. Glencoe, Ill.:
Free Press, 1949.
I read this my last year in graduate school. Since reading Kuhn, I had been struggling with the question of how, if at all, social
science was "different." What role should numerical measurements play in such work? How could I make sense of the
tendency of economic models to oscillate from descriptive to prescriptive and back again? The translation was obscure, the
ideas flashed across my mind like skyrockets. I now urge every graduate student to read the essay "Science as a Vocation."
John Rawls. A Theory of Justice (1971). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. (Pb)
I have struggled with this book for the past ten years. It took two readings for me to figure out what it meant and one more to
find out where and how I disagreed with it. The effort to define my reactions has been extraordinarily educational but it is not
one for the faint-hearted nor a task to be undertaken lightly.

John A. McPhee. Encounters with the Archdruid. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971. (Pb)
Since I was introduced to McPhee five years ago, I have read almost everything. This is certainly one of the best. It is about
both people as individuals and people as representatives of ideas and causes. It reminds us that those we like most may not be
those we think are right and that there should be room in our lives for both kinds of regard. It reminded me why I used to
belong to the Sierra Club and made me unembarrassed by that youthful enthusiasm.

Ezra F. Vogel

Ezra Vogel is a professor of sociology at Harvard and director of the US. Japan Program at Harvard's Center for International
Affairs. He is well known in the United States and East Asia for his research and teaching on contemporary Chinese society,
Japanese society and economy, and industrial East Asia. He is the author of Japan as Number One and, most recently,
Comeback.
Talcott Parsons. The Social System (1951). Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1964. (Pb)
Talcott Parsons did not always find the simplest, most concise way to express his views, but he was constantly thinking about
the general characteristics of society, and his book The Social System was a powerful effort to think systematically about the
linkages between different parts of society. I have found his framework an extraordinarily stimulating general perspective from
which to think about all societies, present and future. It provides a broader framework for considering all the implications of
policies than the narrower, more mechanical perspectives provided by economics, decision-making theory, law and the like.

Daniel Bell. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973). New York: Basic Books, 1976. (Pb)
Daniel Bell is one of the best-read social scientists anywhere, and his work on the year 2000, and his thoughts about the
transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial society, though ten years old, still provide a powerful intellectual
framework for thinking about changes in the future.

Richard W. Bolling and John Bowles. America's Competitive Edge. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.
Dick Bolling for decades was one of the most knowledgeable and systematic thinkers in Congress, and his work with John
Bowles represents a deep understanding of how our national politics work and presents a vision of what might be possible
within our American system.

George C. Lodge and Bruce R. Scott, eds. U.S. Competitiveness in the World Economy. Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 1985.
The work that George Lodge and associates have done at the Harvard Business School, more than that of any other group that I
know, has charted the nature of the new competitive international economic climate in which we find ourselves, They have
been thinking systematically about the changing nature of business and of the world's political and economic climate from a
broad-gauged yet well-grounded perspective. These factors will have a far greater impact on the future than myopic Americans
realize, and they provide a framework for thinking about these issues.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Industrial Policy of Japan. Paris: O.E.C.D., 1972.
No country has done more to chart a meaningful program for guiding national economies than Japan. When Japan was
admitted to O.E.C.D. membership, they were asked to present a report to the O.E.C.D. explaining their industrial policy. This is
the result, MITI's classic statement about how it approached questions of economic strategy.
I know of no good book in any language that charts the future developments in Japanese commerce and industry, but I am
convinced that just as America in the 1960s and 1970s was the country to observe because it was at the cutting edge, so Japan
is the country to observe in thinking about the future because it is replacing us at the cutting edge. I am amazed how provincial
most American intellectuals are, how little they understand about the most dynamic part of the world and how blind they are to
the impact East Asia will have on the United States. I find that the best way to think about the world's future is to visit Japan
and know intimately the grassroots of Japanese research, industry, agriculture, business and government. Speaking the local
language and visiting these places frequently, I now find this field work far more useful in thinking about the future than any
book in Japanese or English.

Abraham Zaleznik

Abraham Zaleznik is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School. He has taught at
Harvard since 1947 and is known internationally for his research and teaching in the field of social psychology in the business
setting, and for his investigations into the distinguishing characteristics of managers and leaders. A psychoanalyst, Professor
Zaleznik maintains that he studied psychoanalysis because the way to advance in our understanding of people at work is first to
understand people. His courses not only examine leadership within the business organization but also address issues such as the
family, the individual's emotional life and the tension between career goals and personal aspirations. His works include: Human
Dilemmas of Leadership (1966), Power and the Corporate Mind (1975) and The Managerial Mystique: The Changing Realities
of Business Leadership (1985).

If you believe as I do that human beings change only microscopically in their biological and psychological structure, then you
will believe that the books I have listed will probably have enduring value into the next century.

Sigmund Freud. The Complete Psychological Works: Standard Edition. James Strachey, ed. and trans. 25 vols. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1976.
Sigmund Freud has had the most influence on my intellectual life. I cannot restrict myself to only one of his books. Among the
most important, I would list his The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on Sexuality, and his case studies, including Dora,
Little Hans, The Rat Man, and The Wolf Man. For those who want to study Freud seriously, I would recommend that they read
Ernest Jones's three-volume biography, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.

F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson. Management and the Worker (1934). Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1946.
This book was my introduction to the study of human relations in business, and it opened my eyes to a field of study as it
changed the way executives thought about their work and about themselves.

Bronislaw Malinowski. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1960). New York: Waveland Press, 1984. (Pb)
Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown. The Andaman Islanders. New York: Free Press, 1964. (Pb)
Conrad M. Arensberg. The Irish Countryman. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1968. (Pb)
William F. Whyte. Street Corner Society (1943). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. (Pb)
My third selection is a group of books. They were written by anthropologists and opened my eyes to the aesthetics of field
work in the scientific examination of social organization.

George C. Homans. The Human Group (1950). London: Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
. Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
George C. Homans wrote two books that taught me something about evidence and inference in social research.

Saul Bellow. Humboldt's Gift (1975). New York: Avon, 1976. (Pb)
Saul Bellow's novels lifted the veil that hides the dilemmas of modern man; the intellectual, the artist and the humanist.
Humboldt's Gift is a powerful book.

Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1966). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)
. The Price (1967). New York: Penguin, 1985. (Pb)
. A View from the Bridge (1957). New York: Penguin, 1977. (Pb)
The plays of Arthur Miller taught me about survival in a world that is for some tragic heroes a very unfriendly place. Three of
his plays are especially important to me: Death of a Salesman, The Price and A View from the Bridge.

Reden an die Deutsche Nation G. Fichte German Superiority

The Course of German History A.J.P. Taylor German Superiority
"Fichte, the Self and the Calling of Philosophy" A.J. La Vopa German Superiority

History of England T.B. Macaulay British Superiority

Rudyard Kipling D. Gilmour British Superiority
The Isles N. Davies British Superiority

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind D. Kopf Indian Westernization
Vidyasagar: a Reassessment G. Haldar Indian Westernization
Renaissance and Reaction in Nineteenth-Century Bengal M.K. Haldar Indian Westernization

Autobiography F. Yukichi Chinese Self-Strengthening

The Rise of Modern China I. Hsu Chinese Self-Strengthening
Transferring Technology to China S.A. Leibo Chinese Self-Strengthening

Masters of Chinese Political Thought S. De Grazia Chinese Superiority

Two Sons of Heaven Jung-shen Tao Chinese Superiority
East Asia at the Center W.I. Cohen Chinese Superiority
Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies "J. Harley, D. Woodward" Chinese Superiority

Sources of Chinese Tradition "W.T. de Barry, R. Lufrano" Chinese Popular Sovereignty

History of Chinese Political Thought Liang Chi-chao Chinese Popular Sovereignty
The Great Enterprise F. Wakeman Chinese Popular Sovereignty

Hecker Studies: Essays on the Thought of Isaac Hecker J. Farina American Exceptionalism
Keeping Faith P. Gleason American Exceptionalism
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald American Exceptionalism
The Right Stuff T. Wolfe American Exceptionalism
Race and Manifest Destiny R. Horsman American Expansionism
Under an Open Sky W. Cronon American Expansionism
How the West was Won L. L'Amour American Expansionism

Chivalry M. KeenChivalry
The Return to Camelot M. Girouard Chivalry
Chivalry and Exploration J. Goodman Chivalry
Don Quixote M. Cervantes Chivalry
The Code of the Woosters P.G. Wodehouse Chivalry

Of Heroes and Hero-Worship T. Carlyle Superman

Thus Spake Zarathustra F. Nietzsche Superman
The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century O. Chadwick Superman

Anti-Semitism D. Cohn-Sherbock Anti-Semitism

Europe's Inner Demons N. Cohn Anti-Semitism
The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria P. Pulzer Anti-Semitism
The Butcher's Tale H. Walser Smith Anti-Semitism
The Diary of a Young Girl A. FrankAnti-Semitism

The Inequality of Human Races A. de Gobineau Scientific Racism

Victorian Attitudes to Race C. Bolt Scientific Racism
"Race, Science and Society" L.K. Uper Scientific Racism

Essays in Eugenics F. Galton Eugenics

Population Politics in 20th-Century Europe M.S. Quine Eugenics
The Race Gallery M. Kohn Eugenics
Master Race M. Leapman Eugenics
Brave New World A. Huxley Eugenics

A Social History of the Fool S. Billington Over-Learning

In Praise of Folly D. Erasmus Over-Learning
Jesus the Holy Fool E.-A. Stewart Over-Learning
Intellectuals P. Johnson Over-Learning

A Short Cultural History of Japan G.B. Sansom Japanese Superiority

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword R. Benedict Japanese Superiority
Isles of Gold H. Cortazzi Japanese Superiority
The Cambridge History of Japan Japanese Superiority

A History of Private Life (5 vols) "P. Aries, G. Duby" Marriage for Love
Marriage and Society R. Outhwaite Marriage for Love
Romeo and Juliet W. Shakespeare Marriage for Love

Victorian Women E.O. Hellerstein Childhood and Womanhood

The History of Childhood L. de Mause Childhood and Womanhood
The Secret Garden F.H. Burnett Childhood and Womanhood

Humanist Anthology M. Knight Humanism

The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century O. Chadwick Humanism
God's Funeral A.N. Wilson Humanism
The Brothers Karamazov F. Dostoevsky Humanism
Towards a Psychology of Being A. Maslow Humanism

The Mind of Primitive Man F. Boas Cultural Relativism

A Franz Boas Reader G.W. Stocking Cultural Relativism
An Introduction to Social Anthropology J. Hendry Cultural Relativism

A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Ruby K. Payne, 1998, 204 pages, $22
Aha! Processing, Highlands, TX 77562, 800/424-9484

DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Deborah Eade

Strengthening people's capacity to determine their own values and priorities, and to organize themselves to act on these, is the
basis of development. It is about women and men becoming empowered to bring about positive changes in their lives; about
personal growth together with public action; about both the process and the outcome of challenging poverty, oppression, and
discrimination; and about the realization of human potential through social and economic justice. Above all, it is about the
process of transforming lives, and transforming societies.

The right to development is the right of individuals, groups, and peoples to

participate in, contribute to, and enjoy continuous economic, social, cultural,
and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms
can be fully realized ... Development is not only a fundamental right but a
basic human need, which fulfils the aspiration of all people to achieve the
greatest possible freedom and dignity both as individuals and as members of the
societies in which they live ... A development strategy that disregards or interferes
with human rights is the very negation of development.
UNITED NATIONS

The Open Veins of Latin America (1971) by Eduardo Galeano. A compelling account of colonialism in Latin America, and its
contemporary repercussions. Although the historical detail varies from one region to another, the legacy of deepening poverty
and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor lives on today through-out Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and also distorts
human development within the industrialized nations.

Where There Is No Doctor (1977) by David Werner. First written in Spanish for peasant farmers in the mountains of Mexico,
this influential manual is inspired by the belief that 'health care is not only everyone's right, but everyone's responsibility'. Its
lasting message is that even the poorest and most oppressed people can take control of their lives when given the means to do
so, and is a classic depiction of primary health care in practice.

A Quiet Violence: View f om a Bangladesh Village (1983) by Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce. A powerful case study
demonstrating how global, national, local, and household forces combine to consign millions to hunger and deprivation in a
world of plenty. Written from a grass-roots perspective, this study shows that in the context of skewed power relations, aid may
be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Woman at Point Zero (1975) by Nawal El Saadawi. This novel explores the real human suffering caused by class and gender
oppression. It is a terrible indictment of intolerance and the abuse of power as it affects all human development.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) by theUnited Nations. This comprehensive document remains
touchstone against which to measure the distance separating humankind from development. Stressing the universal and
indivisible nature of human rights, the Declaration underlines that all development is undermined as long as there is one
woman, man, or child whose rights are not fully realized.

Hunger and Public Action (1989) by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen. A ground-breaking examination of the role of
governments and of social actions by the public in eradicating famines and eliminating deprivations. It stresses how
discrimination against women creates a `sex bias in famine'. A free press is critical in ensuring that governments are exposed to
public scrutiny; and may be `the most effective early-warning system a famine-prone country can rely on'.

Rising from the Ashes: Development Strategies in Times of Disaster (1989) by Mary B Anderson and Peter J Woodrow.
Building on several case studies, this book shows that relief programmes are never neutral in their developmental impact. It
presents a deceptively simple framework for understanding the dynamic relationship between different people's needs,
vulnerabilities, and capacities. Criticizing most current relief practice, the authors show various ways in which it might be
improved.
Women and Development Series (1989-95). Prepared under the direction of the UN liaison service for nongovernmental
organizations. Consisting of ten volumes on topics including human rights, empowerment, employment, literacy, and refugees,
the series provides a detailed overview of women's exclusion from development, and of ways in which women's and other
organizations around the world, as well as the UN system itself, have attempted to `mainstream' women's rights.

Rural Development: Putting the Last First (1983) by Robert Chambers. A major work that has influenced recent
development thinking and practice, contending that poor people are themselves the best sources of information about their
poverty. 'Experts' have only a limited role to play, helping to articulate and give shape to the actions of the poor.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1973) by Paolo Freire. In this seminal book demonstrating the political nature of education,
Freire explicitly links literacy to popular empowerment and social mobilization. His work in Brazil has had an irrevocable
impact on adult education and social development work in Latin America and elsewhere.
Travel and Exploration

The catlike curiosity of the human race guarantees vivid interest in the people across the valley; the traveller, who turns that
interest into action, is a kind of outsider, a privileged scapegoat who breaks through the barriers of the local, the familiar, and
reports on what he sees. The more extraordinary his tales, the more matter-of-fact his narration—for he is not amazed, he is at
home with himself wherever he goes—and the more wide-eyed our listening amazement. For those who wish to sample the
new global village for themselves, a handful of standard guidebook series are recommended here (not Michelin, not Baedeker,
for they go without saying, everywhere—and who reads them in any case?); from the other books on the list, armchair
excitement is guaranteed.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Greenway); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Hudson); BIOGRAPHY (Morison. Parkman);
HISTORY/AMERICAN (Coleman, Parkman); HISTORY/ASIAN (Severin. Stanley); NATURAL HISTORY (Banks, Burton.
Cousteau_ Moorehead, Waterton)

Amundsen, Roald, Norwegian, 1872-1928.

The South Pole. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Bartram, William Travels (1791)

The author travelled through territory that is now Georgia and northern Florida and described the fabulous—real but almost
unbelievable—animals and plants that he saw. Deservedly a classic.

Bryson, Bill, American, 1951?-.

Made in America. Rec: Utne
The Lost Continent. Rec: Harvard

Botting, Douglas One Chilly Siberian Morning (1965) _I

To most people Siberia is a vast, cold wilderness peopled by inscrutable peasants and dissident intellectuals. Botting sees it also
as the seedbed for huge, dynamic change.

Burton, Sir Richard A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca (1855) 9
Victorian traveller uses his knowledge of the languages and cultures of the Middle East to travel in disguise to Muslim holy
cities in Arabia, forbidden to non-Muslims under pain of death. See NATURAL HISTORY; SEX (Boccaccio, Nefzawi,
Vatsyayana)

Burton, Sir Richard Francis, English, 1821-1890.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah. Rec: Ward

Byron, Robert, English, 1905-1941.

The Road to Oxiana. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Chadwick, Lee A Cuban Journey (1975)

Cuba since Castro: well-written, objective account of bow it seemed to one British traveller.

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley The Worst Journey in the World (1922) *Ita

Captain Scott's polar expeditions have, for the British, the perennial fascination of heroic failure. This classic account uses
letters, diaries and personal reminiscence to build an amazing picture of doggedness and heroism in appalling conditions.
Should be read in conjunction with two modern books, Elspeth Huxley: Scott of the Antarctic (1977) and R. Huntford: Scott
and Amundsen (1979).

Chitty, S. and Hinde, T. The Great Donkey Walk (1977)

The authors, with two small children, travelled from Spain to Greece by pilgrim roads and mule tracks. Lively, witty narrative,
escapist reading par excellence. Cook, Captain James The Journals of Captain Cook in His Voyages of Discovery (4 vols,
1955)
Great accounts of the sea voyage par excellence. All these marvels really happened, Captain Cook really did discover Hawaii
(the Sandwich Islands) and so forth. Engrossing armchair read.

Dana, Richard H. Two Years before the Mast(1840)

Dana worked his way from Boston round Cape Horn to California and back on a wooden sailing-ship in 1834; this classic
account of sailors' life compares interestingly with Newby's (qv) The Last Grain Race, on a modern sailing ship, and with
Preble's The Opening of Japan (HISTORY/ASIAN), on US navy life in 1853.

Dana, Richard Henry, American, 1815-1882.

Two Years Before the Mast. Rec: Bloom

Cook, James, English, 1728-1779.

Journals (Voyages). Rec: Lubbock Ward

David-Neel, Alexandra Tibetan Journey (1936) *

Undauntable Frenchwoman's adventures in eastern Tibet. Reminiscent, for style and liveliness, of Kingsley (qv). Fascinating,
too, to compare with Harrer's (qv) view of Tibet, at once more mystical and more pragmatic. Also: My Journey to Lhasa;
Magic and Mystery in Tibet

David-Neel, Alexandra, French, 1868-1969.

My Journey to Lhasa. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Durrell, Lawrence Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953) iS *

Durrell's travel books (of which this is the best) are informed with a poet's stylish intensity and a quirky eye for idiosyncrasies
of landscape or character. This book is a palimpsest of the history and manners of Rhodes. Prospero's Cell (about Corfu) and
Bitter Lemons (about Cyprus, and notably good on the 1950s "troubles" there) are equally enjoyable: Durrell writing with rare
power, discipline, clarity. See CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Durrell, G.); DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; POETRY

Evliya Celebi, Turkish, ca. 1611-ca. 1684.

Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa. Rec: Ward

Farre, Rowena The Beckoning Land (1969)

Oriental journey from Hong Kong to the Himalayas, in search of spiritual enlightenment. Unique combination of
autobiography and travel diary, in lighthearted, entertaining style. Also: Seal Morning

Fawcett, P. H. Exploration Fawcett(1953) *

Great classic of jungle exploration in the Mato Grosso, Brazil. Fawcett is at once the epitome of British Grit and a true
exemplar of explorer-as-mystic. Leeches, spiders and piranha fish play featured, lively roles— not a book to read in the Great
Outdoors.

Fermor, Patrick Leigh A Time of Gifts (1977)

18-year-old rebel in 1933 sets out to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople—a modern Grand Tour crucial to his
development, as unpredictable and as fascinating as any young sprig's of the 18th century. Also: Roume/i(travels in northern
Greece); The Traveller's Tree (journey through the Caribbean islands), etc

Fodor, E. and Curtis, W. (eds) Fodor's Guide to Islamic Asia

(1973) tila J./ Representative title (revised annually) from magnificent guidebook series; long on history and topography, clear
thematic arrangement, helpful attention to the needs of the unfamiliar visitor.

Gale, John Travels with a Son (1972)

Travels by jeep in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana. For those who like travel-as-
autobiography, a treat. Also: Clean Young Englishman (fine autobiography); The Family Man (novel)

Genet, Jean The Thief's Journal (1949)

Fascinating account of Genet's life in the 1930s underworlds of several European countries, as beggar and thief. Wonderful
incident when some French tourists discuss whether the beggars in Spain or Morocco are more picturesque, assuming that
Genet can't understand what they're saying. See BIOGRAPHY (Sartre); DRAMA (Esslin); SEX

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, German, 1749-1832.

Italian Journey. Rec: Bloom

Greene, Graham Journey without Maps (1936)

Colourful, unusually genial account of an expedition journey upcountry in Liberia. See FICTION/NOVELS
Harrer, Heinrich Seven Years in Tibet (1953)
Austrian mountain-climber trapped in India by the outbreak of World War II escapes across the Himalayas into Tibet, lives in
Lhasa, gives a vivid picture of pre-Chinese Tibetan life. See David-Nee.

Heyerdahl, Thor The Kon-Tiki Expedition (1948) *1' Six men sail across the Pacific from Peru on a raft of balsa wood, to
prove it can be—and could have been—done. Also: Aku-Aku; The Ra Expeditions. etc.

Heyerdahl, Thor, Norwegian, 1914-2002.

Kon-Tiki. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Hillaby, John Journey through Britain (1968)

Author walked from Land's End to John O'Groats, taking footpaths wherever possible. Also: Journey through Europe; Journey
to the Jade Sea

Humboldt, Alexander von, German, 1769-1859.

Travels. Rec: Lubbock

Ibn Batuta, Muhammad bin 'Abdullah, Arab, 1304-1369.

Travels in Asia and Africa. Rec: Ward

Johnson, Dr Samuel Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

The fascinating encounter of a disciplined 18th-century mind with the alien, half-barbarian civilization of the Hebrides. See
BIOGRAPHY (Bate, Boswell. Krutch, Johnson); LITERARY CRITICISM; REFERENCE

Kinglake, A. W. Eothen (1844)

Light-hearted account of one Englishman's middle Eastern travels in the 1830s, in the course of which, among other
adventures, he deliberately stayed in Cairo during an epidemic of plague.

Kingsley, Mary Travels in West Africa (1897) * l' Intrepid Victorian lady travels extensively in West Africa, discovers
vocation, writes engrossing, Jane Austenish account, a monument to unflappable competence and confidence. " `Senora, you
see more bare skin here than on a regiment of grenadiers!' I worried for a week at the awfulness of the pun." A perceptive,
funny book.

Lawrence, D. H. Sea and Sardinia (1921)

Another of Lawrence's potboilers—but this one a magical evocation of a beautiful place. Any reader will desire somehow,
some time, to visit Sardinia, preferably (if they read Lawrence) during February, when the almond trees are in bloom. See
DIARIES; FICTION/NOVELS; FICTION/SHORT STORIES; HISTORY/EUROPEAN; LITERARY CRITICISM; POETRY

Lawrence, T. E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) * Ostensibly a military chronicle, by an Englishman who took part in a
revolt in Arabia against the Turks. In fact a tapestry of memoirs, philosophy, travel writing, anthropology and fiction. The
opening of Chapter 121 tells all, about the style and about the Man: "Quiveringly a citizen awoke me, with word that Abd el
Kadir was making rebellion. I sent over to Nun Said, glad the Algerian fool was digging his own pit ..." Also: The Mint. See
BIOGRAPHY (Aldington)

Lewis, M. and Clark, W. The Journals of Lewis and Clark (1964)

The quintessential American journey, across the continent, seeking the Pacific. Lewis and Clark were a remarkable pair, and
their companions —Indians and white men—are no less interesting. These journals, read continuously, will take many winter
evenings; a one-volume selection (ed De Voto) appeared in 1953.

Ley, Charles David (ed) Portuguese Voyages, 1498– 1663 (1947) Contemporary accounts of the great age of Portuguese
discoveries in South America. Africa and Asia. See Morison; BIOGRAPHY (Morison)

Lindbergh, Charles The Spirit of St Louis (1953)

Rewrite—more thoughtful, more detailed, more dramatic—of bestselling We which Lindbergh published shortly after his 1927
flight. This later book is absolutely unputdownable—until the end, when the plane, too, puts down, to a great sigh of relief.

Liu E, Chinese, 1857-1909.

Travels of Lao Can. Rec: MW Asian
London, Jack The People of the Abyss (1903)
Horrifying picture of the poverty of most East End Londoners at the time; interesting comparisons between conditions in
London and those in American cities. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Chaplin); FICTION/SHORT STORIES; SOCIOLOGY
(Chesney, Roberts)

Maclean, Fitzroy A Person front England (1958)

English visitors to Turkestan, Central Asia, in the heyday of the British Empire. Travellers, spies, merchants, adventurers—the
factual stuff of every ripping yarn. For armchair travellers, a one-sitting book. Also: Eastern Approaches

McPhee, John Coming into the Country (1977)

Extraordinary account of travels in Alaska since 1950 (ie since Statehood). McPhee is one of the great travel-writing stylists of
our time, always interesting; his love for far Alaska irradiates this book. Also: The Crofter and the Laird; The Pine Barrens; The
Survival of the Bark Canoe

Magnusson, M. and Paisson, H. (trans) The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery ofArnerica (1965) 9 Two medieval
Icelandic accounts of the discovery by Norse seamen of Greenland and the land beyond.

Matthiessen, Peter Snow Leopard (1979)

Impressive account of a search for the legendary inhabitants of the Himalayas. Grand landscapes and honourable self-analysis
in the light of hardships and splendour. Rather a lot of Zen.

Mendele Mokher Seforim, Russian writing in Yiddish, 1835-1917.

The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third. Rec: Bloom

Meyer, Gordon The River and the People (1965)

An Etonian in Paraguay. Clear, dispassionate, fascinating; superb footnotes. Also: Summer at a High Akitude

Michener, James A. Iberia (1968)

In part an account of the author's many Spanish journeys, since he first visited the country in 1932. But stuffed with history,
topography, descriptions of literature and art—an aficionado's book, fat (800 pages) and enticing. Also: Tales of the South
Pacific

Moorehead, Alan Cooper's Creek (1963)

Burke and Wills expedition of 1860: first south-north crossing of Australia by white men, recounted in fine style, with excellent
use of original documents. Also: The White Nile; The Blue Nile; The Fatal Impact (modern man and the South Sea islands).
See NATURAL HISTORY

Moorhouse, Geoffrey The Fearful Void (1974)

Moorhouse crossed the Sahara from west to east, partly by camel and partly on foot. This book brings to life the hunger and
thirst, depression and fear that the author went through in the hostile desert universe. See Lawrence; Thesiger (for alternative
views of desert life); Cherry-Garrard (for life in an implacable desert of a different kind)

Morison, Samuel E. The Great Explorers (1978) aboa*.1

Selected from two massive tomes, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, AD 500-1600 and The
Southern Voyages, 1492-1616. Monumental record of voyages to the Americas; enthralling to read, scholarship at its
effervescent best. See BIOGRAPHY; HISTORY/AMERICAN

Morris, James The Great Port (1970)

One of Morris's lesser-known books, but filled with the same sharp perception and lucid style as all the others. Subtitled A
Passage through New York, it offers an unrivalled world-traveller's view of the horrors and charms of megalopolis. Also:
Venice; Oxford; Spain, etc. See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Morris, Jan)

Morton, H. V. A Traveller in Italy(1964) *

A book preserved in its own amber; dated, personal, inaccurate and wholly pleasurable. Cosy 1930s style, but Italy springs to
warm, enticing life. Also: Ghosts of London, etc

Muir, John The Mountains of California (1894)

Imagine being the first white man to see the Valley of the Yosemite! Muir was a great walker and a fine writer; the combination
is an exciting one, in a series of books of which this is the best. Excellent collection: The Wilderness of John Muir by Edwin
Way Teale (whose works are also herewith recommended).

Murphy, Dervla Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle (1965) Author pleasantly describes how she cycled across Europe
and Asia, meeting mishaps and dangers with unassailable verve and courage. A touch of the blarney—and none the worse for
that.

Naipaul, V. S. An Area of Darkness (1964)

Author, West Indian of Indian origin, lived for a year in India; this book vividly, caustically, describes his experiences, his
conclusions. Also: The Middle Passage; India: A Wounded Civilization, etc

Neatby, Leslie H. The Search for Franklin (1970) A -1 Franklin found the Northwest Passage and then got lost; the search
for Franklin took another 11 years (1848-59). This book is a well-told narrative of outstanding bravery, large personalities,
beautiful and hostile landscape. Also: In Quest of the Northwest Passage

Newby, Eric A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)

Newby is a contemporary traveller in the splendid British eccentric tradition. Absorbing narrative in excellent Boy's-Own-
Paper style. What's it about? Exactly what the title says. Also: The Last Grain Race (account of six months before the mast on
one of the last commercial square-rigged sailing ships)

O’Sullivan, Firmin The Egnatian Way (1972)

The Egnatian Way was the first Roman road built outside Italy, a vital highway across the Balkans which has been in
continuous use for over 2,000 years. Author sketches its history, offers guidance for those who wish to travel it now. Unusual,
even for travel books; absorbing.

Patterson, J. H. The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures (1907)
From the days of the British Empire, a gripping account of the hunt for man-eating lions preventing work on a railway in East
Africa.

Pausanias Guide to Greece (2nd century) P * Untiring antiquarian's tour of the ruins of classical civilization. Makes Baedeker
seem casual; but full of delectable nuggets for the occasional hellenophile. Good translation: Levi.

Pausanias, Greek, ca. 120-180.

Description of Greece. Rec: Ward

Polo, Marco The Travels (1298) *

Vivid description of the marvels of Asia, by Venetian merchant who travelled overland to China, lived there for years, and
came home via India. Fascinating to read in tandem with Ronay (qv).

Polo, Marco, Italian, ca. 1254-1324.

Travels of Marco Polo. Rec: Rex Ward

Various Authors, Portuguese, 16th-17th C.

Portuguese Voyages (1498-1663). Rec: Ward

Powell, Dilys An Affair of the Heart(1957) A

Books on Greece are something of an industry: this is one of the most stylish, most evocative, a memoir of visits spread over
several years to a small Peloponnesian village, and reflections on the changes brought about by politics, archaeology and the
shifting patterns of a peasant community evolving into the 20th century.

Ronay, Gabriel The Tartar Khan's Englishman (1978) A -/ By the mid 13th century Tartar armies occupied half
Europe, stood at the gates of Vienna. Their leader, Batu Khan (grandson of Genghis) depended on an English envoy, diplomat,
adventurer, spy. This book is the story of his life, his incredible travels, and his role in the convulsive conflict between
Christendom and the Mongol hordes.

Roy, Jules Journey through China (1965)

Sensitive, detailed account of a journey across China meeting ordinary people, official and unofficial. Style belle-lettriste, full
of aphorisms and general philosophical asides. At its worst, irritating; at its best, of the standard of Voltaire or Johnson (qv)
themselves.

Schultz, J. W. My Life as an Indian (1907)

Vivid autobiography of a 19th-century American trader in Montana who came to prefer the Blackfoot Indian way of life to that
of the whites. Fascinating detail of a vanished everyday life; no movie Indians here.

Slocum, Joshua The Voyages of Joshua Slocum (1958)

Slocum was the first man to sail, from Boston, alone around the world, in a small sailing vessel during the 1890s. At the time it
seemed an impossible journey, Slocum a madman to his friends. His books were immediately and deservedly popular.

Stark, Freya Riding to the Tigris (1959) *

Valiant British lady traveller, of our time, has journeyed everywhere in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and written wonderful
books about her journeys. This one is especially good; The Journey's Echo (1964) is a useful collection of her writings, with an
introduction by Lawrence Durrell. Also: Southern Gates of Arabia; Valleys of the Assassins; Dust in the Lion's Paw, etc

Stark, Freya, English, 1893-1993.

The Journey's Echo. Rec: Utne

Steinbeck, John Travels with Charley (1962) *?

Classic journey through the USA by distinguished author and undistinguished mutt. As vivid and personal (and as well written)
as Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey (herewith recommended). Steinbeck's love of his country never rose-tints his dry,
satirical vision of what is there, and why. See DIARIES: FICTION/NOVELS

Sterne, Laurence A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768)

18th-century tourist uses the incidents of his travels, as travellers will, to display sly, sardonic humour about the way of the
world. See FICTION/ NOVELS

Theroux, Paul The Great Railway Bazaar(1975)

Theroux set out to travel on as many trains in Asia as possible. The trains themselves are interesting (they include the trans-
Siberian Express, and the dismal Hue-Danang Express, across war-devastated Vietnam): but what makes the book is Theroux's
quizzical, captious eye for fellow-passengers and the people he meets when the trains stop, and his own WASPish
Massachusetts supercool. Also: The Grand Patagonia Express, etc

Thesiger, Wilfred Arabian Sands (1959) *i? Thesiger crossed the Arabian deserts with Bedouin companions, and his book
makes the reader feel both the hardships of the journey and the tension that builds up when there is nobody else around who
shares one's background and ways of thought. Also: The Marsh Arabs (and see Gavin Maxwell: A Reed Shaken by the Wind
for another version of the same events). See Lawrence, T. E.

Tomlinson, H. M. The Sea and the Jungle (1912)

Tomlinson's first book is an account of a 2,000-mile journey up the Amazon in a small boat captained by his brother-in-law. He
gives a sensitive account of the flora, fauna and people he saw; although he wrote many later books, none surpass this
perennial favourite.

Turnbull, Colin M. The Forest People (1961) *.1 Elegant memoir of author's encounters with the pygmies of central
Africa. Turnbull shares with Van Der Post (qv) an ability to enter the mind and spirit of the people he visits; but he avoids Van
Der Post's arachnoid philosophizing. Also: The Mountain People; Man in Africa

Trench, Richard, English, 1949- .

Forbidden Sands: A Search in the Sahara. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Twain, Mark Roughing It (1873)

Mark Twain's life as a young man. vagabonding around the American West in the middle of the 19th century. Wise, sly prose, a
one-sitting read. See Steinbeck (for modern equivalent); FICTION/NOVELS ; FICTION/SHORT STORIES;
HISTORY/AMERICAN; HUMOUR

Van Der Post, Laurens Journey into Russia (1964)

Author best known for books on the Bushmen of southern Africa: an eclectic mixture of travel-writing, anthropology and
mysticism. This book is a robust account of several months in Russia, seeking the essence of its people in their daily lives. Its
claims to open-mindedness are decidedly suspect (the style is a magnificent example of unvoiced bias); but the descriptions
and indeed the scope of his journey are remarkable. Also: Venture into the Interior, Lost World of the Kalahari, etc

Victory, Paul-Emile Man and the Conquest of the Poles (1962)

History of polar expeditions, from that of Pytheas the Greek (4th century BC) to the current voyages of American nuclear
submarines.

West, Rebecca, English, 1892-1983.

Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. Rec: ML Nonfiction National Review
“A 1,181-page classic of travel literature, largely pro-Serb in its point-of-view, giving an account of Balkan history and
ethnography, and the significance of Nazism, structured about her trip to Yugoslavia in 1937.” (wikipedia)

Wilson, Sloan Away from It All (1969)

Best-selling American novelist takes off for the new life-style cruising through the Bahamas in his own boat. Fast, funny
account of his trials and successes; he is a sort of wisecracking 20th-century Pooter. Splendid escapist fun.

Winks, Robin W. An American's Guide to Britain (1977)

Despite what may seem a patronizing title, this is an outstandingly helpful and detailed guide, full of necessary information and
unfussy advice. Concentrates on picturesque, "tourist" Britain (few satanic mills or stale canals in sight); ideal for first visit or
brief, basic stay.

Howard Green

Howard Green is a professor of cellular physiology and chairman of the Physiology and Biophysics Department at the Harvard
Medical School. He is a medical doctor who is a scientist—an award-winning cell biologist—doing skin research as it relates
to skin disorders, including burns.

Hermann Alexander Keyserling. The Travel Diary of a Philosopher (1912). J. Holroyd Reece, trans. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1928.
On the eve of the world's transition to modern times (1912), an aristocrat looked at the declining great civilizations and
attempted to extract the significance of what they had created.

Hermann Alexander Keyserling. The Recovery of Truth (1927). Paul Fohr, trans. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1929.
In the late 1920s, the same aristocrat put the meaning and eternal problems of human existence (problems of the mind,
problems of the soul) into a form assimilable by the thinking man of the twentieth century.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (1973). Thomas P. Whitney, trans. New York: Harper & Row,
1985.
The greatest witness to life in the world's most powerful totalitarian state gives his testimony. As he himself wrote, anyone who
reads and understands this book can no longer harbor illusions about communism.

Henry James. The Bostonians (1886). New York: New American Library, 1984. (Pb)
Apart from its quality as a novel, this book was prophetic: the author foresaw the disappearance from the world of the
masculine spirit and the sentiment of sex.

Fu Shen. Chapters from a Floating Life (ca, 1800). Shirley M. Black, trans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.
A beautiful and moving story of conjugal love.

EXPLORATION
Chris Murray
Exploration is an inevitable consequence of man's success as a species: as groups thrive, habitats are exhausted and new ones
have to be sought: having spread from the savannas of Africa to exploit every inhabitable corner of the Earth, man is now on
the point of exploring space. This need to explore is, consequently, a central theme in the early literature of most societies, the
search for new lands and the fascination of the unknown acquiring a mythic dimension; Homer's Odyssey is one of the best-
known examples. Books on exploration can be roughly divided into those that aim to convey its adventure and those that seek
to explain its social, economic, and cultural aspects.

…towards the North, as it were thick Cloudes, which did put us in some hope of Land; knowing how that part of the South Sea
was utterly unknowne; and might have Islands, or Continents, that hitherto were not come to light.
FRANCIS BACON

Travels (many editions) by Marco Polo. Recounting his travels (1260-95) across Asia and a 17-year stay in China as guest of
the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, this book remains one of the most colourful and fascinating accounts of exploration. It is all
the more remarkable for being - unlike so many early accounts of travel - largely true and accurate. Polo's account stimulated
an interest in the Far East that led eventually to the voyage of Columbus, and until the early 19th century it remained
(astonishingly) Europe's prime source of information about the Far East.

Mandeville's Travels (late 14th century; several modem editions available). The authorship of these travels is unclear; they
have their origins in several 14th-century French books based on much misinterpreted reports of the Crusades. This is largely
exploration in the mind, to worlds full of fantastical beasts; one of the ancestors of the Italian novelist Italo Calvin's Invisible
Cities.

Principal Navigation, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; several modem editions) by Richard Hakluyt.
Brings together salty accounts of early English exploration by such contemporaries as Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Martin
Frobisher, and Jacques Cartier. Exploration now goes hand in hand not only with trade, but also with piracy and colonization.

Age of Reconnaissance (1970) by John Parry. The economic, political, and religious aspects of the 'Age of Exploration' are
described in this scholarly but highly readable account of exploration, trade, and settlement beyond Europe from the 15th to the
17th century. The same period - the age of Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci,
Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, Francisco Pizarro, and others - is covered in the lavishly illustrated Time-Life Age of Discovery
(1966).

Christopher Columbus: The Dream and the Obsession (1986) by Gianni Canzotto. The story of the discovery of the `New
World'. Canzotto gives a vivid account of Columbus's many adventures, concentrating on what drove him on against all odds.

The True History of the Conquest of Spain (1632; several modem translations) by Bernal Diaz. An eye-witness account of
the Spanish in South America by Diaz, who accompanied Cortes on his fateful and bloody journey through Mexico.

In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire 1780-1801 (1985) by David Mackay. Looks at the broad context of
18th-century exploration and its close links with the rapid development of science, the growth of industry, and the economics
of empire.

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857; modem edition avail-able) by David Livingstone. A classic of
African exploration. It is still fascinating both as a vivid first-hand account and (for the modern reader) as a revelation of 19th-
century cultural imperialism.

Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad. The moral bankruptcy of the `opening-up' of Africa is exposed in this short
novel based on personal experience of the Congo. Here again exploration has taken on a mythic quality as exploration of the
terra incognita of the modern psyche.

Scott and Amundsen (1979) by Roland Huntford. A controversial account of Robert Falcon Scott's polar exploration, which
deflates the heroic image built up by largely uncritical earlier biographies.

The Myth of the Explorers (1993) by Beau Riffenburgh. The heroic role of 19th-century and early-20th-century explorers in
popular culture is examined in this book.

For the armchair explorer who wants to sample a wide range of the literature, the best selection is the Oxford Book of
Exploration (1993) edited by Robin Hanbury-Tenison.
For those who want a broad view of exploration, there is Discovery and Exploration: A Concise History (1982) by Alan Reid
and The Discoverers: An Encyclopedia of Exploration (1980), edited by Hellen.
Misc

The Mind Map Book, Tony Buzan with Barry Buzan Rec: cooltools
1996, 320 pages
$17

The Complete Animation Course: The Principles, Practice, and Techniques of Successful Animation
Chris Patmore
2003, 160 pages
$15

The Animation Book: A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking -- from Flip-books to Sound Cartoons to 3-D Animation
Kit Laybourne
1998, 426 pages
$16

Instant Period Costumes

How to Make Classic Costumes from Cast-Off Clothing
Barb Rogers
2001, 87 pages
$14

How to Cook Everything:Simple Recipes for Great Food

Mark Bittman
1998, 944 pages
$22

Beyond Bullet Points

Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations that Inform,
Motivate, and Inspire
Cliff Atkinson
2005, 223 pages
$16

The Self-Publishing Manual

Dan Poynter
2002, 430 pages
$20

The Tarantula Keeper's Guide

Stanley A. Schultz, Marguerite J. Schultz
1998, 208 pages
$10

Brower, David, American, 1912-2000.

For Earth's Sake. Rec: Counterpunch NF (geography)

Carnegie, Dale, American, 1888-1955.

How to Win Friends and Influence People. Rec: Boston PL NYPL

Various Authors, American, First pub. 1959.

Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (By the staff of Organic Gardening). Rec: Counterpunch NF

Hamilton, Alice, American, 1869-1970.

Exploring the Dangerous Trades. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Wheelock, Frederic M., American, 1902-1987.

Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors. Rec: Aquinas

Cameron, Julia, American, 1948- .

The Artist's Way. Rec: Utne

Capra, Fritjof, Austrian-American writing in English, 1939- .

The Web of Life. Rec: Utne
Spock, Benjamin, American, 1903-1998.
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Rec: Boston PL LAT NYPL

Surgeon General (U.S.), American, Pub. 1964 and 1979.

Smoking and Health (The Surgeon General's Report) (Pub. 1964). Rec: NYPL
Smoking and Health (Pub. 1979). Rec: Boston PL

Smiles, Samuel, English, 1812-1904.

Self-Help. Rec: Lubbock

Bach, George R. and Herb Goldberg, American, 1914-1986 and 1937-.

Creative Aggression. Rec: LAT

Tzara, Tristan, French, 1896-1963.

Seven Dada Manifestoes. Rec: Bloom

McCloud, Scott, American, 1960- .

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Rec: Counterpunch NF

W., Bill (Bill Wilson), American, 1895-1971.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA Big Book). Rec: Boston PL

Miyamoto Musashi, Japanese, 1584-1645.

Book of Five Rings. Rec: Counterpunch Trans StJE (martial arts)

Lamott, Anne, American, 1954- .

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. Rec: ML Nonfiction

Various Authors, Japanese, 1868-1912.

Literature of the Meiji Period. Rec: Oriental

Mirsky, D. S., Prince, Russian, 1890-1939.

A History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1900. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Various Authors, Yugoslavian, 20th C.

New Writing from Yugoslavia. Rec: Ward

Stanislavski, Konstantin, Russian, 1863-1938.

An Actor Prepares. Rec: Counterpunch Trans

Krol, Ed, American, 1937?- .

The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog. Rec: NYPL

Leach, Bernard, English, 1887-1979.

A Potter's Book. Rec: Counterpunch NF

Ueland, Brenda, American, 1891-1985.

If You Want to Write. Rec: Utne

Various Authors, American.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog (Ed. By Stewart Brand). Rec: LAT

Anonymous, Icelandic, fl. 1245.

Laxdæla Saga (Saga of the People of Laxardal). Rec: Smiley

Lissitzky, El, Russian writing in German, 1890-1941.

Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution. Rec: Counterpunch Trans (politics)

Graphic novels

Pekar, Harvey, American, 1939- .

New American Splendor Anthology. Rec: Utne

Moore, Terry, American, 1954- .

Strangers in Paradise. Rec: Harvard (comic book)

Mack, David, American, 1972- .

Kabuki, Circle of Blood (Edited by Connie Jiang). Rec: Harvard

Nobel Laureates

Deledda, Grazia, Italian, 1871-1936. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Eucken, Rudolf, German, 1846-1926. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Han Fei Zi (Han Fei Tzu), Chinese, ca. 280-233 BCE.

Works. Rec: Oriental Ward

Jarry, Alfred, French, 1873-1907.

Selected Works. Rec: Bloom

Jensen, Johannes V., Danish, 1873-1950. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Johnson, Eyvind, Swedish, 1900-1976. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Karlfeldt, Erik Axel, Swedish, 1864-1931. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Kertész, Imre, Hungarian, 1929- . Nobel Laureate

Works.

Martin Du Gard, Roger, French, 1881-1958. Nobel Laureate

Works.
Martinson, Harry, Swedish, 1904-1978. Nobel Laureate
Works.

Mistral, Frédéric, French, 1830-1914. Nobel Laureate

Works.
Mistral, Gabriela, Chilean, 1889-1957. Nobel Laureate
Works. (poetry)
Mommsen, Theodor, German, 1817-1903. Nobel Laureate
Works.

Pontopiddan, Henrik, Danish, 1857-1943. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Reymont, Wladyslaw, Polish, 1867-1925. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Rolland, Romain, French, 1866-1944. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Sachs, Nelly, German-Swedish writing in German, 1891-1970. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Sienkiewicz, Henryk, Polish, 1846-1916. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Sillanpää, Frans Eemil, Finnish, 1888-1964. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Spitteler, Carl, Swiss writing in German, 1845-1924. Nobel Laureate

Works.

Unknown works

Curtius, Ernst Robert, German, 1886-1956.

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Rec: Ward
Firdausi, Abolqasim Mansur bin Hasan, Persian, ca. 940-1020.
Shah Nameh (Epic of Kings). Rec: Fadiman 4 Lubbock Ward (epic)
Gellhorn, Martha, American, 1908-1998.
The Face of War. Rec: Counterpunch NF (journalism)
Ginzburg, Natalia, Italian, 1916-1991.
Family. Rec: Bloom
Hariri, Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-, Arab, 1054-1122.
Assemblies. Rec: Oriental Ward
Herbert, George, English, 1593-1633.
The Temple. Rec: Bloom
Ibn Hazm, 'Ali Ahmad, Arab in Islamic Spain, 994-1064.
Ring of the Dove. Rec: Oriental Ward
Lord, Albert Bates, American, 1912-1991.
The Singer of Tales. Rec: Counterpunch NF
McCourt, James, American, 1941- .
Time Remaining. Rec: Bloom
McWilliams, Carey, American, 1905-1980.
Factories in the Field. Rec: Counterpunch NF
Michaux, Henri, French, 1899-1984.
Selected Writings. Rec: Bloom
Miyazawa, Kenji, Japanese, 1896-1933.
Spring and Asura. Rec: Utne
Nagai Kafu, Japanese, 1879-1959.
Kafu the Scribbler. Rec: Ward
Nakanoin Masatada no musume, Japanese, b. 1258.
Confessions of Lady Nijo. Rec: MW Asian
Németh, Laszlo, Hungarian, 1901-1975.
Guilt. Rec: Bloom
Nirala, Suryakant Tripathi, Indian writing in Hindi, 1898-1961.
A Season on the Earth. Rec: Ward
Anonymous, Japanese, ca. 1200.
Okagami. Rec: Ward (history)
Sa'di, Musharrif ad-Din bin Muslih, Persian, ca. 1208-ca. 1292.
Bostan. Rec: Meaningful
Gulistan. Rec: Ward
Anonymous, Armenian, 11th-12th C traditions (first pub. 1874).
Sasuntsi Davith (Saga of Sassoun; Daredevils of Sassoun; Daredevils of Sassoun). Rec: Ward
Shahar, David, Israeli, 1926- .
The Palace of Shattered Vessels. Rec: Bloom
Anonymous Authors, Arab, 1080-1400.
Sirat 'Antar (Adventures of Antar). Rec: Ward
Stafford, Jean, American, 1915-1979.
The Mountain Lion. Rec: BOMC
Tokutomi Kenjiro, Japanese, 1868-1927.
Footsteps in the Snow. Rec: Ward

URL: http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtalphaw.html

Others:

From Jorge Luis Borges

The Library of Babel

1. Jack London, The Concentric Deaths

2. Jorge Luis Borges, August 25 1983
3. Gustav Meyrink, Cardinal Napellus
4. Léon Bloy, Discourteous Tales
5. Giovanni Papini, The Escaping Mirror
6. Oscar Wilde, The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile
7. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, The Guest at the Last Banquet
8. Pedro de Alarcón, The Friend of Death
9. Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
10. William Beckford, Vathek
11. H. G. Wells, The Door in the Wall
12. P'u Sung-Ling, The Tiger Guest
13. Arthur Machen, The Shining Pyramid
14. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Island of the Voices
15. G. K. Chesterton, The Eye of Apollo
16. Jacques Cazotte, The Devil in Love
17. Franz Kafka, The Vulture
18. Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter
19. Leopoldo Lugones, The Statue of Salt
20. Rudyard Kipling, The House of Desires
21. The Thousand and One Nights, according to Galland
22. The Thousand and One Nights, according to Burton
23. Henry James, The Friends of Friends
24. Voltaire, Micromegas
25. Charles H.Hinton, Scientific Romances
26. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Great Stone Face
27. Lord Dunsany, The Country of Yann
28. Saki, The Reticence of Lady Anne
 29. Russian Tales
30. Argentine Tales
31. J. L. Borges & A. Bioy Casares, New Stories of Bustos Domecq
32. Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Dreams
33. Jorge Luis Borges, Borges A/Z

A Personal Library

1. Julio Cortázar, Stories

2. & 3. The Apocryphal Gospels
3. Franz Kafka, Amerika; Short Stories
4. G. K. Chesterton, The Blue Cross and Other Stories
5. & 7. Wilkie Collins, Moonstone
6. Maurice Maeterlink, The Intelligence of Flowers
7. Dino Buzzati, The Desert of the Tartars
8. Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt; Hedda Gabler
9. J. M. Eça de Queiroz, The Mandarin
10. Leopoldo Lugones, The Jesuit Empire
11. André Gide, The Counterfeiters
12. H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; The Invisible Man
13. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths
14. & 17. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

1. E. Kasner & J. Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination

2. Eugene O'Neill, The Great God Brown; Strange Interlude; Mourning Becomes Electra
3. Ariwara no Narihara, Tales of Ise
4. Herman Melville, Benito Cereno; Billy Budd; Bartleby the Scrivener
5. Giovanni Papini, The Tragic Everyday; The Blind Pilot; Words and Blood
6. Arthur Machen, The Three Imposters
7. Fray Luis de León, tr., The Song of Songs
8. Fray Luis de León, An Explanation of the Book of Job
9. Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether; Heart of Darkness
10. Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
11. Oscar Wilde, Essays and Dialogues
12. Henri Michaux, A Barbarian in Asia
13. Hermann Hesse, The Bead Game
14. Arnold Bennett, Buried Alive
15. Claudius Elianus, On the Nature of Animals
16. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
17. Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Anthony
18. Marco Polo, Travels
19. Marcel Schwob, Imaginary Lives
20. George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra; Major Barbara; Candide
21. Francisco de Quevedo, Marcus Brutus; The Hour of All
22. Eden Phillpots, The Red Redmaynes
23. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
24. Gustav Meyrink, The Golem
25. Henry James, The Lesson of the Master; The Figure in the Carpet; The Private Life
26. & 44. Herodotus, The Nine Books of History
15. Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
16. Rudyard Kipling, Tales
17. William Beckford, Vathek
18. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
19. Jean Cocteau, The Professional Secret and Other Texts
20. Thomas De Quincey, The Last Days of Emmanuel Kant and Other Stories
21. Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Prologue to the Work of Silverio Lanza
22. The Thousand and One Nights
23. Robert Louis Stevenson, New Arabian Nights; Markheim
24. Léon Bloy, Salvation for the Jews; The Blood of the Poor; In the Darkness
25. The Bhagavad-Gita; The Epic of Gilgamesh
26. Juan José Arreola, Fantastic Stories
27. David Garnett, Lady Into Fox; A Man in the Zoo; The Sailor's Return
28. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
29. Paul Groussac, Literary Criticism
30. Manuel Mujica Láinez, The Idols
31. Juan Ruíz, The Book of Good Love
32. William Blake, Complete Poetry
33. Hugh Walpole, Above the Dark Circus
34. Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, Poetical Works
35. Edgar Allan Poe, Tales
36. Virgil, The Aeneid
37. Voltaire, Stories
38. J. W. Dunne, An Experiment with Time
39. Atilio Momigliano, An Essay on Orlando Furioso
40. & 71. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; The Study of Human Nature
41. Snorri Sturluson, Egil's Saga
42. The Book of the Dead
43. & 75. J. Alexander Gunn, The Problem of Time