The St. Johns College Great Books Reading List at a Glance

St. John's College is best known for its reading list and the Great Books curriculum that was adopted in 1937. While the list of books has evolved over the last century, the tradition of all students reading foundational texts of Western civilization remains. The reading list at St. John's includes classic works in philosophy, literature, political science, psychology, history, religion, economics, math, chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, music, language, and more.

Freshman Year Reading List

• Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
• Archimedes: “On the Equilibrium of Planes,” “On Floating Bodies”
• Aristophanes: Clouds
• Aristotle: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
• Avogadro: “Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Particles of Bodies”
• Berthollet: Excerpt from “Essai de Statique Chimique”
• Black: Extracts from Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry
• Cannizzaro: Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy
• Dalton: Extracts from A New System of Chemical Philosophy
• Driesch: The Science and Philosophy of the Organism
• Euclid: Elements
• Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae
• Fahrenheit: Experiments on the Degree of Heat of a Few Boiling Liquids
• Gay-Lussac: Excerpt from Investigations on the Expansion of Gases and Vapours
• Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
• Herodotus: Histories
• Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
• Lavoisier: Excerpt from Elementary Treatise on Chemistry
• Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
• Mariotte: Essays
• Mendeleev: “The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements”
• Nicomachus: Arithmetic
• Pascal: Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids
• Plato: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
• Plutarch: “Lycurgus,” “Solon”
• Proust: Excerpt from “Sur Les Oxidations Metalliques”
• Ptolemy: Almagest
• Sappho: Poems 1 and 31
• Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax
• Spemann: “The Organizer-Effect in Embryonic Development” (Nobel Lecture 1935), “Embryonic Development and Induction”
• Thomson: Extracts from “A System of Chemistry”
• Thucydides: Peloponnesian War
• Virchow: Excerpts from “Cellular Pathology”
• Woolf: “On Not Knowing Greek”

Sophomore Year Reading List

• Anselm: Proslogium
• Apollonius: Conics
• Aquinas: Summa Theologiae
• Aristotle: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
• Augustine: Confessions
• Bach: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
• Bacon: Novum Organum
• Behn: “The Disappointment”
• Bradstreet: Poems
• Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
• Copernicus: On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres
• Dante: Divine Comedy
• Descartes: Geometry, Discourse on Method
• Donne: Poems
• Elisabeth: The Correspondence Between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes
• Epictetus: Discourses, Manual
• Haydn: Quartets
• Kepler: Astronomia Nova
• Livy: Early History of Rome
• Locke: Poems
• Machiavelli: The Prince, Discourses
• Maimonides: Guide of the Perplexed
• Marvell: Poems
• Montaigne: Essays
• Monteverdi: L’Orfeo
• Mozart: Operas
• Murray: Stomping the Blues
• Pascal: Generation of Conic Sections
• Plotinus: The Enneads
• Plutarch: “Caesar,” “Cato the Younger,” “Antony,” “Brutus”
• Ptolemy: Almagest
• Sappho: Poems
• Schubert: Songs
• Shakespeare: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Sonnets
• Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
• Tacitus: Annals
• Viète: Introduction to the Analytical Art
• Virgil: Aeneid
• Beethoven: Third Symphony
• Wroth: “A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love”
• Hebrew Bible: New Testament

Junior Year Reading List

• Ampère: Essays
• Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Emma
• Bernoulli: “On the Vibrating String”
• Coulomb: Excerpts from “Coulomb’s Mémoires sur l’électricité et le magnétisme”
• Cervantes: Don Quixote
• La Fayette: Princess of Clèves
• La Fontaine: Fables
• La Rochefoucauld: Maximes
• Dedekind: Essays on the Theory of Numbers
• Descartes: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
• Eliot: Middlemarch
• Euler: “Remarks on the Preceeding Papers by Mr. Bernoulli”
• Faraday: “Experimental Researches in Electricity”
• Franklin: Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity
• Galileo: Two New Sciences
• Gilbert: “De Magnete”
• Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
• Hobbes: Leviathan
• Hume: Treatise on Human Nature
• Huygens: Treatise on Light, “The Motion of Colliding Bodies”
• Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
• Leibniz: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Principles of Nature and Grace, Essays
• Locke: Second Treatise of Government
• Maxwell: “On Faraday’s Lines of Force,” “On Physical Lines of Force,” “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”
• Milton: Paradise Lost
• Molière: Le Misanthrope
• Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro
• Newton: Principia Mathematica
• Nollet: “Observations on Several New Electrical Phenomena”
• Ørsted: “Experiments concerning the efficacy of electric conflict on the magnetic needle”
• Pascal: Pensées
• Racine: Phèdre
• Rousseau: Social Contract, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
• Spinoza: Theologico-Political Treatise, Ethics
• Smith: Wealth of Nations
• Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
• Taylor: “On the Motion of the Stretched String”
• Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Volta: “On the Electricity excited by the mere contact of conducting substances of different kinds”
• Wagner: Tristan and Isolde
• Wordsworth: The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
• Young: “On the Nature of Light and Colours”
• Articles of Confederation Constitution of the United States of America Declaration of Independence

Senior Year Reading List

• Baldwin: Stranger in the Village, The Fire Next Time
• Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal
• Beadle & Tatum: Essays
• Bishop: Poems
• Bohr: “On the Spectrum of Hydrogen”
• Boveri: Essays
• Broglie: “Matter Waves”
• Brooks: “The Children of the Poor”
• Conrad: Heart of Darkness
• Darwin: Origin of Species
• Davisson: Essays
• Beauvoir: The Second Sex
• Tocqueville: Democracy in America
• Dickinson: Poems
• Dostoyevsky: Brothers Karamazov
• Douglass: Speeches
• DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk
• Eliot: Poems
• Faraday: “On the Absolute Quantity of Electricity Associated with the Particles or Atoms of Matter”
• Faulkner: Go Down Moses
• Flaubert: Un Coeur Simple
• Freud: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Mourning and Melancholia, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Goethe: Faust
• Hamilton, Madison, & Jay: The Federalist Papers
• Hardy: “Mendelian Proportions in a Mixed Population”
• Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind
• Heidegger: Basic Writings, “The Word of Nietzsche: God is Dead,” An Introduction to Metaphysics
• Heisenberg: “Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Particle Picture”
• Husserl: Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
• Jacob & Monod: Essays
• Kierkegaard: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
• Lamarck: “Zoological Philosophy”
• Lincoln: Speeches
• Lobachevsky: Theory of Parallels
• Marx: Capital, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
• Melville: Benito Cereno
• Mendel: “Experiments with Plant Hybridization”
• Millikan: “The Electron”
• Minkowski: “Space and Time”
• Morgan: “Evolution and Genetics,” “The Chromosomes and Mendel’s Two Laws,” “The Linkage Groups and the Chromosomes,” “Sex-Linked Inheritance,” “Crossing-Over”
• Morrison: Song of Solomon
• Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
• O’Connor: “Good Country People,” “Revelation,” “The Displaced Person”
• Planck: “The Quantum Hypothesis”
• Plath: Poems
• Plato: Phaedrus
• Rimbaud: Poems
• Rutherford: “The Scattering of α & β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom”
• Schrödinger: “Four Lectures of Wave Mechanics—First Lecture”
• Stevens: Poems
• Sussman: Essays
• Sutton: Essays
• Thomson: “Cathode Rays”
• Tolstoy: War and Peace
• Valéry: Poems
• Wagner: Tristan and Isolde
• Washington: “Atlanta Exposition Address,” “Our New Citizen,” “Democracy and Education”
• Watson & Crick: Essays
• Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own
• Wordsworth: The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
• Yeats: Poems
• United States Supreme Court Decisions
• Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
• Ampère: Essays
• Anselm: Proslogium
• Apollonius: Conics
• Aquinas: Summa Theologiae
• Archimedes: “On the Equilibrium of Planes,” “On Floating Bodies”
• Aristophanes: Clouds
• Aristotle: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories, Poetics, Physics, Meta physics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
• Articles of Confederation Constitution of the United States of America Declaration of Independence
• Augustine: Confessions
• Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Emma
• Avogadro: “Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Particles of Bodies”
• Bach: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
• Bacon: Novum Organum
• Baldwin: Stranger in the Village, The Fire Next Time
• Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal
• Beadle & Tatum: Essays
• Beauvoir: The Second Sex
• Beethoven: Third Symphony
• Behn: “The Disappointment”
• Bernoulli: “On the Vibrating String”
• Berthollet: Excerpt from “Essai de Statique Chimique”
• Bishop: Poems
• Black: Extracts from Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry
• Bohr: “On the Spectrum of Hydrogen”
• Boveri: Essays
• Bradstreet: Poems
• Broglie: “Matter Waves”
• Brooks: “The Children of the Poor”
• Cannizzaro: Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy
• Cervantes: Don Quixote
• Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
• Conrad: Heart of Darkness
• Copernicus: On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres
• Coulomb: Excerpts from “Coulomb’s Mémoires sur l’électricité et le magnétisme”
• Dalton: Extracts from A New System of Chemical Philosophy
• Dante: Divine Comedy
• Darwin: Origin of Species
• Davisson: Essays
• Dedekind: Essays on the Theory of Numbers
• Descartes: Geometry, Discourse on Method, Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
• Dickinson: Poems
• Donne: Poems
• Dostoyevsky: Brothers Karamazov
• Douglass: Speeches
• Driesch: The Science and Philosophy of the Organism
• DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk
• Eliot: Middlemarch, Poems
• Elisabeth: The Correspondence Between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes
• Epictetus: Discourses, Manual
• Euclid: Elements
• Euler: “Remarks on the Preceeding Papers by Mr. Bernoulli”
• Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae
• Fahrenheit: Experiments on the Degree of Heat of a Few Boiling Liquids
• Faraday: “Experimental Researches in Electricity,” “On the Absolute Quantity of Electricity Associated with the Particles or Atoms of Matter”
• Faulkner: Go Down Moses/p>
• Flaubert: Un Coeur Simple
• Franklin: Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity
• Freud: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Mourning and Melancholia, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Galileo: Two New Sciences
• Gay-Lussac: Excerpt from Investigations on the Expansion of Gases and Vapours
• Gilbert: “De Magnete”
• Goethe: Faust
• Hamilton, Madison, & Jay: The Federalist Papers
• Hardy: “Mendelian Proportions in a Mixed Population”
• Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
• Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
• Haydn: Quartets
• Hebrew Bible: New Testament
• Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind
• Heidegger: Basic Writings, “The Word of Nietzsche: God is Dead,” An Introduction to Metaphysics
• Heisenberg: “Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Particle Picture”
• Herodotus: Histories
• Hobbes: Leviathan
• Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
• Hume: Treatise on Human Nature
• Husserl: Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
• Huygens: Treatise on Light, “The Motion of Colliding Bodies”
• Jacob & Monod: Essays
• Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
• Kepler: Astronomia Nova
• Kierkegaard: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
• La Fayette: Princess of Clèves
• La Fontaine: Fables
• La Rochefoucauld: Maximes
• Lamarck: “Zoological Philosophy”
• Lavoisier: Excerpt from Elementary Treatise on Chemistry
• Leibniz: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Principles of Nature and Grace, Essays
• Lincoln: Speeches
• Livy: Early History of Rome
• Lobachevsky: Theory of Parallels
• Locke: Poems, Second Treatise of Government
• Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
• Machiavelli: The Prince, Discourses
• Maimonides: Guide of the Perplexed
• Mariotte: Essays
• Marvell: Poems
• Marx: Capital, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
• Maxwell: “On Faraday’s Lines of Force,” “On Physical Lines of Force,” “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”
• Melville: Benito Cereno</p>
• Mendel: “Experiments with Plant Hybridization”
• Mendeleev: “The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements”
• Millikan: “The Electron”
• Milton: Paradise Lost
• Minkowski: “Space and Time”
• Molière: Le Misanthrope
• Montaigne: Essays
• Monteverdi: L’Orfeo
• Morgan: “Evolution and Genetics,” “The Chromosomes and Mendel’s Two Laws,” “The Linkage Groups and the Chromosomes,” “Sex-Linked Inheritance,” “Crossing-Over”
• Morrison: Song of Solomon
• Mozart: Operas, The Marriage of Figaro
• Murray: Stomping the Blues
• Newton: Principia Mathematica
• Nicomachus: Arithmetic
• Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
• Nollet: “Observations on Several New Electrical Phenomena”
• O’Connor: “Good Country People,” “Revelation,” “The Displaced Person”
• Ørsted: “Experiments concerning the efficacy of electric conflict on the magnetic needle”
• Pascal: Generation of Conic Section, Pensées, Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids
• Planck: “The Quantum Hypothesis”
• Plath: Poems
• Plato: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
• Plotinus: The Enneads
• Plutarch: “Caesar,” “Cato the Younger,” “Antony,” “Brutus,” “Lycurgus,” “Solon”
• Proust: Excerpt from “Sur Les Oxidations Metalliques”
• Ptolemy: Almagest
• Racine: Phèdre
• Rimbaud: Poems
• Rousseau: Social Contract, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
• Rutherford: “The Scattering of α & β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom”
• Sappho: Poems
• Schrödinger: “Four Lectures of Wave Mechanics—First Lecture”
• Schubert: Songs
• Shakespeare: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Sonnets
• Smith: Wealth of Nations
• Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax
• Spemann: “The Organizer-Effect in Embryonic Development” (Nobel Lecture 1935), “Embryonic Development and Induction”
• Spinoza: Theologico-Political Treatise, Ethics
• Stevens: Poems
• Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
• Sussman: Essays
• Sutton: Essays
• Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
• Tacitus: Annals
• Taylor: “On the Motion of the Stretched String”
• Thomson: “Cathode Rays”
• Thomson: Extracts from “A System of Chemistry”
• Thucydides: Peloponnesian War
• Tocqueville: Democracy in America
• Tolstoy: War and Peace
• Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• United States Supreme Court Decisions
• Valéry: Poems
• Viète: Introduction to the Analytical Art
• Virchow: Excerpts from “Cellular Pathology”
• Virgil: Aeneid
• Volta: “On the Electricity excited by the mere contact of conducting substances of different kinds”
• Wagner: Tristan and Isolde
• Washington: “Atlanta Exposition Address,” “Our New Citizen,” “Democracy and Education”
• Watson & Crick: Essays
• Woolf: “On Not Knowing Greek”
• Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own
• Wordsworth: The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
• Wroth: “A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love”
• Yeats: Poems
• Young: “On the Nature of Light and Colours”
• Arendt: The Human Condition
• Borges: Ficciones
• Camus: The Stranger
• Duchamp: Essays
• Einstein: “Relativity”
• Feynman: QED
• Flaubert: Madame Bovary
• García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Gibbon: History of the Decline and FP21-22all of the Roman Empire
• Hardy: A Course of Pure Mathematics
• Hegel: Philosophy of Nature
• Heidegger: What is Metaphysics?
• James: The Portrait of a Lady
• Laozi: Dao De Jing
• Laxness: Independent People
• Lorenz: Studies in Animal and Human Behavior
• Mājah: The Sunan
• Manet: Art
• Melville: Moby Dick
• Morrison: Beloved
• Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro
• Nietzsche: Gay Science
• O’Connor: Wise Blood
• Piketty: Capital
• Proust: Remembrance Things Past
• Rilke: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
• Russell: Mathematical Philosophy
• Sévigné: Letters
• Spengler: The Decline of the West
• Stravinsky: Music
• Voltaire: Candide
• Zhuangzi: The Works of Zhuangzi
• Computation Computing Technology and Human Society