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Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
James Mustich
Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett’s first performed play, written in French and then translated by the author into English. It is one of the signal accomplishments in twentieth-century theater and one of the touchstones of modern literature. It is also, as one contemporary critic said of its two ...show more
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Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot
Written in the years before and during World War II, the Quartets consist of four long poems, each cohering around a season, one of the four natural elements (earth, air, water, fire), and a place: “Burnt Norton,” an English manor house and garden; “East Coker,” a village in Somerset, home to Eliot’...show more
The Iliad
Homer
The Iliad is a narrative of divine stratagems and military exploits, of fierce courage and heroic endeavor—a tale, clearly, of epic imagination. Yet the sense of pageantry the poem evokes obscures what may be its most telling characteristic: the peculiar angle from which Homer chooses to view antiqu...show more
The Odyssey
Homer
What can one say about a story that has been entertaining, enchanting, and educating the human race from the very border of recorded history until today? Homer’s epic poem of the wandering and homecoming of Odysseus (aka Ulysses) is a grand adventure, where fact, myth, gods, and people meet, settle,...show more
Confessions
Saint Augustine
Of all the saints of the early Christian church, Saint Augustine of Hippo possesses, for the modern reader at least, the most interesting mind. His ideas on language, time, and the mysteries of personality, humanity, and divinity are still provocative—after sixteen centuries!—and his genius for expr...show more
Bulfinch's Mythology
Thomas Bulfinch
Published in America in the middle of the nineteenth century, Thomas Bulfinch’s retellings of Greek, Roman, and medieval myths have been popular since their first appearance, and deservedly so: They offer a splendid, leisurely tour through the landscape of fable on which so much of our literature, a...show more
Complete Poems, 1904–1962
E. E. Cummings
There is something inexplicably joyful about the poetry of E. E. Cummings—not happy, exactly, but vivid and exuberant. Simultaneously intimate and expansive, his poems achieve what the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry labeled “a magnificent, subversive smallness.” His many sonnets, eccentric though...show more
Foundation: The Foundation Trilogy, Book 1
Isaac Asimov
As a writer, Isaac Asimov’s reputation rests solidly on his ambitious Foundation Trilogy, which was awarded a special Hugo Award in 1966 as best science fiction series of all time. And although he would bow to fan pressure and resume the franchise nearly thirty years after publishing its initial ins...show more
The Book of Job
As translated by Stephen Mitchell
Job’s tale is the Bible’s profound and unsettling meditation on suffering, justice, and the inscrutability of life. It begins in prose (as it will close), introducing the legend of the pious man from the land of Uz and revealing what Job himself never knows: that the miseries visited upon him result...show more
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
Having been a printer’s assistant, teacher, and newspaperman in New York and New Orleans, in 1855 a largely self-taught and unknown man named Walt Whitman self-published—not just footing the bill but designing the cover and setting the type—a small book called Leaves of Grass. Containing twelve unti...show more
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Writing with vigor and clarity, with a directness that captures the narrative sweep of events, and with hands-on intelligence of the strategies and tactics described, Grant unexpectedly penned one of the most remarkable and compelling volumes in American history. Focusing almost entirely on his mili...show more
The Bible
In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis—in just thirty-one short verses—the world is given form, light is summoned into being, Day and Night are named, Heaven hatched, the stars invoked, and Earth fashioned into land and sea, seeded with plants and populated with creatures. All in less than eigh...show more
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett may have invented the hardboiled detective story, but nobody wrote it better than Raymond Chandler. With his stylized prose and flair for similes, he gave his detective Philip Marlowe a voice that would become the hallmark of the genre. Marlowe is the protagonist in all of Chandler’...show more
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
Dense and deeply erudite, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not an easy read, yet the provocative themes it articulates repay a reader’s pondering. Kuhn argues that science is not a gradually and logically advancing discipline, but rather a “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intel...show more
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
It is everything a novel should be and more. It is a participation in history. I found helpful though to use a family tree to track people.
Madeline
Ludwig Bemelmans
In this first of seven Madeline tales written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans, our heroine, a French charmer whose special blend of moxie and mischief wins the hearts of all who meet her, proves her mettle. Madeline and her world— including Pepito (the boy next door), the dog Genevieve, Miss Cla...show more
Second Foundation: The Foundation Trilogy, Book 3
Isaac Asimov
Asimov’s penchant for discursive logic and brains over brawn does not prevent the Foundation series from being enthralling. Even today, ranked against all that has followed, it glows with quiet majesty.
Foundation and Empire: The Foundation Trilogy, Book 2
Isaac Asimov
While Asimov’s saga nowadays seems less original than when it first appeared, the sweep of its conception maintains a thrilling freshness. Humanity spreads throughout the galaxy (there are, notably, no aliens to contend with) and reaches a developmental peak after 12,000 years, typified by the uber-...show more
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
For science fiction, the 1950s represent a peak of achievement seldom matched before or since—a combination of innocence and ambition never quite equaled in decades to come, despite the dawning of a plethora of more sophisticated and elaborate speculative worlds. Alfred Bester, certainly the preemin...show more
The Book of Common Prayer
The Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer was first published in 1549, and, while it has gone through several revisions in response to shifts in political power and fluctuations in ecclesiastical fashion, it has been in continuous use ever since. To be sure, one wouldn’t read the Book of Common ...show more