Saturday, March 16, 2024

The Essential French, British, and American Novels

What are the essential novels of a country? I surely don’t know, but these are my top 20, for the three nations I’ve read the most (at least 50 authors) and feel the most comfortable sorting. Note: No author appears more than once, so I went for my favorite by each - some had multiple brilliant novels, but I wanted a diversity of voices. The lists are also chronological, not hierarchical. Without further ado, here’s what I think are the 20 best novels for those three nationalities: providing a sampler to familiarize yourself with their literature.

France

Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais, 1564

Candide, Voltaire, 1759

Jacques the Fatalist, Diderot, 1796

The Red and the Black, Stendhal, 1830

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo, 1831

Old Goirot, Balzac, 1835

Madame Bovary, Flaubert, 1857

The Immoralist, Gide, 1902

The Gods Will Have Blood, France, 1912

Swann’s Way, Proust, 1913

The Desert of Love, Mauriac, 1925

Journey to the End of the Night, Celine, 1932

The Thibaults, Martin Du Gard, 1940

The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery, 1943

The Plague, Camus, 1947

The Memoirs of Hadrian, Yourcenar, 1951

Missing Person, Modiano, 1978

Segu, Conde, 1984

The Prospector, Le Clezio, 1985

The Years, Ernaux, 2008

 

Britain

Pride and Prejudice, Austen, 1813

Frankenstein, Shelly, 1818

A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens, 1859

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll, 1865

Middlemarch, Eliot, 1872

The Way of All Flesh, Butler, 1903

A Passage to India, Forster, 1924

Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf, 1925

Brave New World, Huxley, 1932

Right Ho Jeeves, Wodehouse, 1934

Brideshead Revisited, Waugh, 1945

1984, Orwell, 1948

The Lord of the Flies, Golding, 1954

The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, 1955

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark, 1961

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carre, 1963

The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles, 1969

Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons, 1987

Atonement, McEwan, 2001

Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro, 2005

 

America

Moby Dick, Melville, 1851

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain, 1885

The Ambassadors, James, 1903

The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway, 1926

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather, 1927

Light in August, Faulkner, 1932

All the King’s Men, Warren, 1946

Native Son, Wright, 1946

Go Tell It on the Mountain, Baldwin, 1953

On the Road, Kerouac, 1957

Pale Fire, Nabokov, 1962

Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut, 1969

Play It as It Lays, Didion, 1970

Housekeeping, Robinson, 1980

Blood Meridian, McCarthy, 1985

Beloved, Morrison, 1987

Maus, Spiegelman, 1991

The Corrections, Franzen, 2001

Fun Home, Bechdel, 2006

The Underground Railroad, Whitehead, 2016

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

NaNoReMo 2024

Once again - it's National Novel Reading Month!

(Or, at least, it will be on Friday, March 1st.)

National Novel Reading Month - thought up and/or popularized by John Wiswell (whose own novel is debuting the month after) - is a time to read a novel or author you've long meant to get to. Usually some classic that you've wanted to read but just never found the time... In March you set aside excuses and, before the month is out, read it.

I've just completed two major reading goals, so it's an odd time to contemplate classics. I finished Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the last of the 80-set Penguin Little Black Classics. I also finished A Dance to the Music of Time, the epic twelve-volume novel by Anthony Powell, which I began reading eleven years ago. As far as my 2024 reading accomplishments go, I'm doing really well.

So this year, for March, I've decided to read an author I've long meant to get to - Octavia E. Butler. One of America's best sci-fi authors, I've put her off for too long. This will also be the perfect time to read the novel I've chosen, Parable of the Sower, since it's set in a dystopian 2024, when America is on the brink of collapse...

Happy NaNoReMo (almost!) and happy reading!

Saturday, February 24, 2024

National Recording Registry Omissions

The National Recording Registry is the archive of important American recordings – from historic speeches to popular bops. It is not exclusively American in content – for example artists like The Beatles and David Bowie are in the Registry – since the focus is on impact on American culture. It is incredibly wide in scope – from zydeco to Delta blues, and obscure classical recordings to Metallica.

Doing research for another project, I encountered some really stunning omissions, though. I’d looked into this back in 2013, but this is an updated list, presented categorically and by importance of stars, or chronologically by genre.

Finally, to be added to the registry the recording must be at least ten years old. More than one induction is extremely rare. Anything since 2014 is fair game. Without further ado:

 

Biggest Stars – Male

 

Elton John

Weird, right? One of the most celebrated and popular musicians ever.

Induction: “Candle in the Wind 1997,” 1997. Alternate: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, 1973.

 

Eric Clapton

Generally considered one of the greatest guitarists ever, he is also a best-seller, and an unmatched three-time Rock Hall of Fame inductee. I’ll also allow Cream to be added, instead (or in addition).

Induction: “Layla,” 1970. Alternate: “Wonderful Tonight,” 1977.

 

James Taylor

Taylor’s work helped launch the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s.

Induction: “Fire and Rain,” 1970. Alternate: Sweet Baby James, 1970.

 

Van Morrison

The innovative artist who helped to blend rock and jazz and so much more.

Induction: Astral Weeks, 1968. Alternate: Moondance, 1970.

 

Aerosmith

Oddly, the ‘bad boys from Boston,’ despite selling out stadiums, haven’t gotten into the Registry.

Induction: “Dream On,” 1973. Alternate: Rocks, 1976.

 

AC/DC

Rock gods and top-sellers, it’s bizarre that they’ve not gotten in already.

Induction: Back in Black, 1980. Alternate: Highway to Hell, 1979.

 

Garth Brooks

One of America’s best-selling artists, and a landmark country musician.

Induction: “Friends in Low Places,” 1990. Alternate: Ropin’ the Wind, 1991.

 

Biggest Stars – Female

 

Dionne Warwick

The muse of Burt Bacharach’s song-writing, with a slew of popular 1960s hits.

Induction: “Walk on By,” 1964. Alternate: “I Say a Little Prayer,” 1967.

 

Gladys Knight

Hall of Famer, Kennedy Center Honoree, and generally-lauded artist.

Induction: “Midnight Train to Georgia,” 1973. Alternate: Imagination, 1973.

 

Sinead O’Connor

Her work should have probably been added a long time ago, before she died…

Induction: “Nothing Compares 2 U,” 1990. Alternate: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990.

 

Mary J. Blige

Blige’s 90s soul recordings resuscitated the genre a full three decades ago.

Induction: My Life, 1994. Alternate: What’s the 411?, 1992.

 

Alanis Morrissette

Frankly, it feels like a matter of ‘not if, but when’ that her best-selling album gets added.

Induction: Jagged Little Pill, 1995. Alternate: “Ironic,” 1995

 

Sleater-Kinney

The most-visible of the riot grrrl bands, capturing an important rock subgenre of the 90s.

Induction: Call the Doctor, 1996. Alternate: Dig Me Out, 1997.

 

Adele

Yes, it has been thirteen years since Adele exploded on the scene.

Induction: 21, 2011. Alternate: “Hello,” 2015 [next year].

 

Iconic Songs

Sometimes a particular song, rather than an artist, is just so important it needs induction.

 

1911: “Aloha Oe,” sung by Nani Alapai

Arguably the most famous song from Hawai’i, in one of the earliest recordings.

 

1949: “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” Stan Jones and his Death Valley Rangers

A seminal song of the Western genre, in the earliest recording by its author.

 

1967: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Procul Harum

Late-sixties anthem, it’s become a standard, and covered a whole lot of times.

 

1970: “In the Summertime,” Mungo Jerry

The third-best-selling song of all time, featuring a tune that practically everyone knows.

 

1977: “Birdland,” Weather Report

The mix of pop and jazz fusion on an album that unexpectedly sold a half million copies.

 

1997: “My Heart Will Go On,” Celine Dion

One of the best-selling songs ever by one of the best-selling artists ever.

 

1998: “Believe,” Cher

The autotune classic!

 

Broadway!

The most recent album, chronologically, they’ve inducted is from 1979 – 45 years ago. There’s some serious catching up to do.

 

1971-1986: Andrew Lloyd Webber: Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera

No, really: Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t in the National Recording Registry. It’s astounding.

 

1976: A Chorus Line and Chicago

A great year for widely-popular musicals, neither of which has made it into the collection.

 

1978: Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture

Including one of the best-selling songs of all time, “You’re the One That I Want,” Grease is polled as the most popular American musical.

 

1996: Rent

The first half of the 90s was rough for Broadway – this rock musical helped bring back some status to the Great White Way.

 

1997: The Lion King

The Disney-fication of Manhattan in a nutshell, but also a great musical, especially the standout “He Lives in You.”

 

2001-2011 Funny Musicals: The Producers, Hairspray, Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon

A slew of popular, comedic, musicals came out between 23 and 13 years ago, any one of which could be inducted as representative of the era. Or, you know, more than one.

 

2003: Wicked

The musical that erupted onto the pop culture scene, and launched one of the most well-known Broadway ballads of the past quarter-century: “Defying Gravity.”

 

Rap

An under-appreciated genre, to be sure. The Blueprint, from 2001, is the most recent inductee. So many classics aren’t there – in fact, only 14 recordings have been added, total. Missing highlights:

 

Eric B. and Rakim

The debut of the internal rhyme in rap – which became a standard by which the best artists would be judged.

Induction: Paid in Full, 1987. Alternate: “Eric B. Is President,” 1987.

 

Beastie Boys

Masters of remixing and sampling, the Beastie Boys helped bring rap to more diverse audiences.

Induction: Paul’s Boutique, 1989. Alternate: “Sabotage,” 1994.

 

Notorious BIG

Ready to Die is widely hailed as one of the finest rap records ever released.

Induction: Ready to Die, 1994. Alternate: “Juicy,” 1994.

 

Outkast

The group more than any other put the South on the map of the rap scene, breaking the East Coast / West Coast stranglehold.

Induction: Aquemini, 1998. Alternate: Stankonia, 2000.

 

Eminem

One of the most talented rappers of all-time, and one of the best-selling artists ever.

Induction: The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000. Alternate: “Lose Yourself,” 2002.

 

Missy Elliott

Elliott is the most recent rapper inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and with good reason: she is a pioneer and a tremendously popular artist.

Induction: “Work It,” 2002. Alternate: “Get Ur Freak On,” 2001.

 

Kanye West

*ugh* West is a walking dumpster-fire these days, but there was a time when he was the best rapper in America, and the most innovative.

Induction: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 2010. Alternate: The College Dropout, 2004.

 

Electronica

I get it. Electronica is the least-American of the musical genres in the Western world. We invented jazz, the blues, rock, R&B, soul, rap… But electronica goes, predominantly, to the Germans and the Brits. That said, there should be, you know, some in the registry. Currently there’s none at all – just a couple of experimental classical works. Here are seven recordings to form the nucleus of an Electronica collection:

 

1977: Kraftwerk, Trans-Europe Express

The Big Bang of the electronica genre out of Germany.

 

1978: Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports

A milestone of the ambient electronic field.

 

1996: DJ Shadow, Endtroducing….

The first-ever album created entirely from samples.

 

1998: Fatboy Slim, “Praise You”

A big beat classic, Fatboy Slim became a crossover sensation in pop music.

 

1999: Moby, Play

The double-platinum phenomenon was a breakthrough, and captures an iconic late-90s sound.

 

2001: Daft Punk, Discovery

The French duo helped popularize electronica as a mainstream dance genre.

 

2010: Skrillex, “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”

Yes, Skrillex emerged on the scene 14 years ago. This track became a landmark in the popularity of electronica, and EDM in particular, in America.

 

Historical Recordings

 

1893: Benjamin Harrison

A wax cylinder of Harrison, the first recording of a President.

 

1912: Theodore Roosevelt Campaign Speech

“The Right of People to Rule” was recorded in Roosevelt’s failed reelection bid.

 

1937: Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy First Radio Broadcast

The start of a popular 11-year run of the famous ventriloquist and dummy act.

 

1948: H.L. Mencken Speaks

First interview of immensely popular columnist and commentator H.L. Mencken.

 

1950: William Faulkner Nobel Prize Speech

Faulkner’s brief speech reflects the political moment of his time.

 

1971-73: Nixon Tapes

The problematic secret recordings of the President.

 

1984: Cesar Chavez: California Commonwealth Club Address

One of Chavez’ more well-known late-period speeches.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

2024 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts!

Once again, we make a pilgrimage to an indie theater (this time in Santa Cruz), to see the nominees for Best Animated Short. This was, by far, the most depressing year I’ve ever seen.

Like, it was really grim. The least depressing is about school girls in Iran.

They are all *good* examples of animation. I won’t be sad for any of them to win - nor am I thrilled for any to win. Spoilers, of course, ahead.


Our Uniform

I’m not sure why this was made. It was showing that students who had to wear the hijab when in school in Tehran didn’t like it, and wanted to be known as more that just female. Which… we knew already, right? It’s a neat idea, doing it on clothing, but it was my least favorite.

 

Letter to a Pig

A Holocaust survivor tells his story to a bored classroom in Israel. He tells of hiding in a pigsty, but turns to a story of vengeance to reengage his audience. In the end, of course, that’s bad. The style, blending simple lines and colors with film footage, works nicely.

 

Pachyderm

With picture-book imagery, we see a girl suffer trauma from abuse at the hands of her family. The visuals are beautiful. The story is heart-breaking. Of the options, this might be the one I want most to win, since it's the most subtle, and perhaps the most visually striking.

 

Ninety-Five Senses

A prisoner on death row reflects on his five senses – each one animated in a different style. It’s a nice story, and the styles are all well-done. Its message is on bad choices and fatal mistakes. Of course, like all the others, it is, in the end, depressing.

 

War is Over

War is pointless – underscored by WWI-style trench warfare, a dead dove (well, carrier pigeon), and generals treating people like chess pieces. The classic song plays at the end, which is a sort-of feel good coda to a really grim series of shorts, I guess? This had the most conventional animation, and was the safest choice.

 

Highly Commended

 

After the main nominees, this year the Highly Commended films were back. We got two, this year:

 

Wild Summon

What if women were salmon? Their life would be thrown into a grim perspective, that’s what.

 

I’m Hip

This was sort of funny and fun, with a nice animation style, but the ending (people throwing stuff at the cat and eventually, presumably, crushing it) sucked.


There you go! Another year down, with a lot of very depressing shorts. Hopefully next year's crop will be less consistently grim.

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Great Books of the Western World

Way back in 1952 the fist edition of The Great Books of the Western World was published. Then, during the heyday of the Great Books debate in America, in 1990, they published a revised edition. This edition had some improvements, namely 1) it went past 1900, and 2) had female authors - four - since the original publication had none. All of the authors in the revised edition were still white, however.

The 1990 edition also removed some older material, but included some newer material, which, thirty years later, seems just as obsolete and unlikely to be read today. It was very uneven: For example, even at the time of publication, the editors regretted the lack of Islamic inclusion. 

So I've decided to rectify the errors, and present a hopefully coherent, and most importantly, accessible to lay audience, edition of The Great Books of the Western World - punched up from 60 to 100 volumes.

Disclaimer: This list has a few works I've not read on it, but which I still feel relatively confident in including, given their near-universal acclaim. I've marked them with an underline. (If multiple works are listed, in the cases of Feynman and King, I've read at least one work - just not all listed.)

Without further ado, here, then, is my updated Great Books of the Western World:


1.       Epic of Gilgamesh

2.       Bible (Selections)

3.       Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey

4.       Greek Drama: Aeschylus (Oresteia), Sophocles (Theban Trilogy), Euripides (Medea and Bacchae), and Aristophanes (Lysistrata and Clouds)

5.       Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War

6.       Plato: The Apology, Sympossium, and The Republic

7.       Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics and Prior Analytics

8.       Greek Mathematics: Nicomachus (Arithmetic), Euclid (Elements), and Archimedes (Sand Reckoner, On Floating Bodies, and The Method)

9.       Roman Philosophy: Lucretius (On the Nature of Things), Marcus Aurelius (Meditations), Seneca (On the Shortness of Life), and Cicero (Philippics)

10.   Virgil: The Aeneid

11.   Tacitus: The Annals

12.   Church Writings: Augustine (The Confessions) and Benedict (The Rule)

13.   Quran (Selections)

14.   Medieval Literature: Beowulf, Njal’s Saga, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

15.   One Thousand-and-One Nights

16.   Arabic Poetry: Rumi (Selections), Saadi (The Orchard), and Hafez (Divan)

17.   Crusades: Comnena (Alexiad – Selections) and Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Selections)

18.   Dante: The Inferno

19.   Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

20.   Renaissance Thought: Machiavelli (The Prince) and Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier)

21.   Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel

22.   Humanism and Reformation: Erasmus (The Praise of Folly) and Luther (On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and On the Freedom of a Christian)

23.   Montaigne: Essays

24.   Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Henry IV, Henry V, and Sonnets

25.   Astronomy: Copernicus (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres) and Kepler (Epitome – Selections)

26.   Scientific Revolution: Galileo (Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems), Bacon (Novum Organum), and Harvey (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood)

27.   Spanish Golden Age: Cervantes (Don Quixote) and Calderon de la Barca (Life is a Dream)

28.   New World: Las Casas (Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies) and Ines de la Cruz (Loa of the Divine Narcissus)

29.   Early Modern Reasoning: Descartes (Meditations, Discourse on Method, and The Geometry), Viete (Introduction to the Analytical Art), Pascal (Essay on Conics), and Huygens (Treatise on Light and On the Movement of Bodies by Impact)

30.   Milton: Paradise Lost

31.   Locke: Second Treatise of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

32.   Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

33.   Swift: Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal

34.   Enlightenment Philosophy: Rousseau (The Social Contract) and Lahontan (New Voyages to North America)

35.   Enlightenment Politics: Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws) and Beccaria (On Crimes and Punishments)

36.   French Literature: La Rochefoucauld (Maxims), Racine (Phedre), Moliere (Misanthrope), Voltaire (Candide), and Diderot (Jacques the Fatalist)

37.   Smith: The Wealth of Nations

38.   American Revolution: Paine (Common Sense) and The Federalist Papers

39.   English Philosophy: Mill (Utilitarianism and On the Subjugation of Women) and Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women)

40.   Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Pure Reason

41.   Early Modern Science: Lavoisier (The Elements of Chemistry) and Faraday (The Chemical History of the Candle and The Various Forces of Matter)

42.   German Philosophy: Hegel (Reason in History) and Schopenhauer (On Suffering and The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion)

43.   American Politics: Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Lincoln (A House Divided, Cooper Union, Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural Address)

44.   German Literature: Grimm (Fairy Tales) and Goethe (Faust)

45.   Early Existentialism: Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) and Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)

46.   Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

47.   Italian Literature: Leopardi (Canti and Operetta Morali) and Carducci (Barbarian Odes)

48.   Darwin: Origin of Species

49.   French Literature: Flaubert (Madame Bovary) and Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)

50.   English Literature: Austen (Pride and Prejudice) and Eliot (Middlemarch)

51.   Transcendentalism: Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Emerson (Divinity School Address and Nature), and Thoreau (Walden and Civil Disobedience)

52.   American Literature: Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Raven) Melville (Moby Dick), Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), and Dickinson (Selections)

53.   African American Writing: Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), Washington (Up from Slavery), and Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folks)

54.   Marx: with Engels Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital (Selections)

55.   Russian Literature: Gogol (The Nose and The Overcoat), Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), and Chekhov (The Lady with the Dog, Ward No. 6, and A Dreary Story)

56.   Tolstoy: Death of Ivan Ilyich, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina

57.   Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov

58.   English Literature: Wordsworth (Two-Part Prelude and Tintern Abbey), Keats (Selections), Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Tennyson (Selections), and Hopkins (Selections)

59.   Psychology: Freud (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, The Future of an Illusion, and Civilization and Its Discontents) and Jung (Answer to Job)

60.   Modern Drama: Ibsen (A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabbler), Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author), and Shaw (Saint Joan)

61.   Science Fiction: Shelley (Frankenstein), Wells (The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds), and Stoker (Dracula)

62.   European Literature: Rimbaud (A Season in Hell), Conrad (Heart of Darkness), Kafka (Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and The Trial), and Rilke (The Duino Elegies)

63.   Mann: Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain

64.   Mathematics: Lobachevsky (The Theory of Parallels), Minkowski (Space and Time), Dedekind (Essays on the Theory of Numbers), and Hardy (A Mathematician’s Apology)

65.   Science: Planck (On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum), Millikan (The Electron), Einstein (Relativity), Heisenberg (The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory), and Schrodinger (What Is Life)

66.   Economics: Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class), Lenin (Imperialism), and Keynes (The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money)

67.   Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses

68.   Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own) and Eliot (The Wasteland and Ash Wednesday)

69.   English Politics: Pankhurst (Freedom or Death and Speech from the Dock) and Churchill (Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat, Finest Hour, We Shall Fight on the Beaches)

70.   English Literature: Huxley (Brave New World) and Orwell (Animal Farm, Why I Write, Books vs. Cigarettes, and 1984)

71.   Spanish Literature: Lorca (Gypsy Ballads and Poet in New York), Jimenez (Platero and I), and Cela (The Family of Pascual Duarte)

72.   American Literature: Cather (Death Comes for the Archbishop), Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury), and Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)

73.   Scandinavian Literature: Hamsun (Hunger) and Lagerkvist (Barabbas)

74.   Holocaust: Herzl (The Jewish State), Celan (Poems), Wiesel (Night), Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem), and Levi (The Periodic Table)

75.   Theology: Niebuhr (The Nature and Destiny of Man), Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning), and Tillich (The Courage to Be and The Dynamics of Faith)

76.   Existentialism: Heidegger (What is Metaphysics?), Sartre (No Exit and Portrait of an Anti-Semite), Camus (The Plague and The Rebel), and Beckett (Waiting for Godot)

77.   Education: Dewey (Experience and Education), Piaget (The Language and Thought of the Child), and Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

78.   De Beauvoir: The Second Sex

79.   Russell (On Denoting and Why I Am Not a Christian) and Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations)

80.   Yourcenar: The Memoirs of Hadrian

81.   Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings

82.   Grass: The Tin Drum

83.   Post-Colonialism and North Africa: Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), Salih (Season of Migration to the North), Mahfouz (Children of Gebelawi), and Achebe (An Image of Africa)

84.   Genetics: Mendel (Experiments in Plant Hybridization), Watson (The Double Helix), Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), and Carroll (Endless Forms Most Beautiful)

85.   Astronomy: Hubble (A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae), Sagan (Cosmos), and Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

86.   Feynman: Six Easy Pieces, Six Not-So Easy Pieces, and QED

87.   Italian Literature: Montale (Cuttlefish Bones and The Occasions) and Calvino (Invisible Cities)

88.   Portuguese Literature: Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet), Rosa (Grande Sertao: Veredas), and Saramago (Blindness)

89.   Soviet Literature: Pasternak (My Sister, Life), Solzhenitsyn (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), and Alexievich (Voices from Chernobyl)

90.   Latin American Literature: Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), Borges (Ficciones), Rulfo (Pedro Paramo), Paz (Eagle or Sun?), and Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

91.   Cultural Criticism: Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), Sontag (Against Interpretation and Notes on Camp), Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem), and Berger (Ways of Seeing)

92.   Cultural Philosophy: Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), Foucault (Discipline and Punish), and Said (Orientalism)

93.   Carson: The Sea Around Us and Silent Spring

94.   Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

95.   Rawls: A Theory of Justice

96.   Civil Rights: King (Why We Can’t Wait and Letter from Birmingham Jail), X (The Autobiography of Malcom X), Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Lorde (Sister Outsider), and Coates (Between the World and Me)

97.   African American Literature: Wright (Native Son), Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain), Ellison (Invisible Man), and Morrison (Beloved)

98.   Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

99.   Economics: Van Neumann and Morgenstern (The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior) and Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century)

100. History: Burke (Connections), Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and Graeber and Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything)