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Note: This great books index is a personal interest project, and is not sponsored by or associated with the Encyclopaedia Britannica corporation. It is not the same list of authors and works that was included in the Great Books of the Western World. Nonetheless it has been suggested and inspired by the work of Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, who were the editors of the 1952 edition of the GBWW. This index is at attempt to guide readers to available online editions of those and other great books.

Mortimer Adler, in his book "A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror", has talked about the difficulty of selecting "great books" for a collection. It is a particularly difficult problem with recent works, until we have some perspective.

Adler notes that the criterion for selection of a great book is not its "truth". Among these works are to be found opinions, backed up by careful reasoning or illustrations from life, on at least two sides of every one of the great questions. This is not to say that all views are equally correct, or that which views you adopt is of no consequence. Quite the contrary. But, you may only benefit by learning from mankind's greatest minds and, by contrasting and thinking for yourself, accepting the challenge to reconcile their reasonings with your own views.

What are the criteria for selecting great books? Adler lists three criteria:

• the book has contemporary significance; that is, relevance to the problems and issues of our times;
  
• the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit; and
  
• the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.
  (Adler, "Second Look", pg 142)

See also Adler's additional comments on the process of selecting works for the 1990 edition of GBWW.

My own selection of great books for this online great books index has been guided by the following considerations:

• The book must be available online, in a free-access edition. That, unfortunately, excludes a large number of works by recent authors. It also excludes many scientific and mathematical works which, unlike literature and philosophy, have not yet been made available in online editions.
  
• The book must be generally considered to be a "great book", having shown up on one or more lists of the world's great books. I am not personally familiar with all of those works (but I keep reading, as we all should), and have deferred to the expertise of others in selecting works for this index.
  
• If one book of an author was selected for this index, then other works are also listed if they are also online. If an author wrote one book that is considered to be great and part of our human heritage, then other less well-known writings of that author are also relevant. Not all writings linked through this index are themselves "great", but they will generally be interesting.
• If a book is available in alternative formats (e.g. hypertext, flat text file, divided into chapters or entire work in one file, with annotations, different translations, etc), an attempt has been made to provide links to those alternative editions.

I am not a bookseller and cannot advise on the value of old or new books, special bindings, places to buy or sell books. Also, as a matter of policy, I will not respond to requests for help with school essays. I am providing this index for people who have, in most cases, finished their initial schooling, and are mature adults interested in reading for their own benefit.

Most of the online editions to which this index links are on other web page servers, were prepared by someone else with an interest in that particular author, and are maintained by that person. From time to time a link will not work because the material has been moved. Please inform me of any such problems so that they may be resolved if possible.

People sometimes ask for reading suggestions, i.e. advice on how to get started reading the great books. I have no particular advice. My general advice would be that you browse among the available books and select something that looks interesting. One book or topic leads to another. You can join a online discussion group; see the Links page for some possibilities. And you might like to take a look at the First Reading List which has been suggested by the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas. Finally, don't feel shy. Very few people have read all, or even most of, the great books. I have not. We are all self-directed students in this activity. You can proceed at your own pace, read light fiction whenever you want a break, and, most importantly, enjoy and think during this intellectual journey. You have my best wishes in your reading.

I'll close with a quotation from Mortimer J. Adler which describes the opportunity before you:

"Suppose there were a college or university in which the faculty was thus composed: Herodotus and Thucydides taught the history of Greece, and Gibbon lectured on the fall of Rome. Plato and St. Thomas gave a course in metaphysics together; Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill discussed the logic of science; Aristotle, Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant shared the platform on moral problems; Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke talked about politics.

"You could take a series of courses in mathematics from Euclid, Descartes, Riemann, and Cantor, with Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead added at the end. You could listen to St. Augustine, Aquinas and William James talk about the nature of man and the human mind, with perhaps Jacques Maritain to comment on the lectures.

"In economics, the lectures were by Adam Smith, Ricardo, Karl Marx, and Marshall. Boas discussed the human race and its races, Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey the economic and political problems of American democracy, and Lenin lectured on communism.

"There might even be lectures on art by Leonardo da Vinci, and a lecture on Leonardo by Freud. A much larger faculty than this is imaginable, but this will suffice.

"Would anyone want to go to any other university, if he could get into this one? There need be no limitation of numbers. The price of admission -- the only entrance requirement -- is the ability and willingness to read and discuss. This school exists for everybody who is willing and able to learn from first-rate teachers."
("Only Adults Can Be Educated", interview of Mortimer J. Adler with Max Weismann, in "Philosophy is Everybody's Business: Journal of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas", Vol 3, No 1, 1996.)

E-Mail: Ken Roberts ken2@mirror.org

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Last revised January 11, 1999 by Ken Roberts e-mail ken2@mirror.org
Copyright (c) 1997-1999 by Ken Roberts. All rights reserved.