Name:   Great books of the Western World
Author(s)
 
 
Mortimer J. Adler, Clifton Fadiman, Philip W. Goetz
Topics
 
 
Reading Lists, Social Studies
Source
 
 
Encyclopedia Britannica
Copyright
 
 
1994
URL
 
 
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/gbww.html
Description
 
 

This collection of books represents a large portion of the Western canon: Homer, the Athenian playwrights, the early Greek philosophers, Rome, early Christianity, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, early American political philosophy, and Victorian literature up until the end of the twentieth century. This series provides extensive original documents on science, mathematics, government, philosophy, literature, and much more.

The Great Books of the Western World has been acclaimed as the greatest publishing venture of the 20th Century. The set now consists of 60 volumes, with 517 works by 130 authors spanning 30 centuries, on a total of 37,000 pages containing 29 million words. Among the Great Books` 130 authors, 47 are writers of imaginative literature; 29 are masters of mathematics and/or the natural sciences; 28 are historians or social scientists, and 28 or more are philosophers and/or theologians.
Average Rating
 
 
Last Updated
 
 
9/1/2006
 
Comments

Contributed by: Parent of Davidson Young Scholar  
Rating:
This set is so huge that I cannot imagine anyone ever reading it all (though some must have); still, by the same token, it contains many books with which everyone should be familiar, and many more which will prove useful background or supplement to other studies. Also, using original sources rather than textbooks tends to encourage independent and critical thinking, since there is no one narrator whose word we might take for granted.
 
The appearance of any information in the Davidson Institute's GT-CyberSource does not imply an endorsement by, or any affiliation with, the Davidson Institute. All information presented is for informational purposes only and is solely the opinion of and the responsibility of the author. Although reasonable effort is made to present accurate information, the Davidson Institute makes no guarantees of any kind, including as to accuracy or completeness. Use of such information is at the sole risk of the reader.
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