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Martin Luther
1500s
Ninety Five Theses
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It had to come. Here is one of the simplest documents we know, certainly
the shortest work of any of the Great Books... yet one very profound.
It is one showing the abuses of some of the clergy of
the 16th Century church. This is the document that changed Christianity
forever, ripping it asunder into all of the diverse denomenations
of today's world. It condemns the selling of indulgences as 'tickets
to heaven.' Due to the peoples' reception of Luther's 95 Theses,
'The Church,' became the 'Catholic Church' which was set against
the Lutheran,' and then Calvinist, in a matter of only a few decades. Religious
wars were begun over the nature of Christ. An ordeal by fire.
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John Calvin
1500s
Institutes of the Christian Religion
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Calvin was a man defiant. He defied the Church as
Luther did, and while his doctrines also stress the individual's
relationship to God and Calvinist churches still reflect a kind
of plain or non-ornamental (bland) appearance in comparison to Catholic,
his doctrine of going back to the soil for a simple and hardy life
is very powerful and very profound. The Pilgrims that settled the
shores of America were Calvinist. The famous protestant work ethic
was perfected by Calvin. The rigor and piety of the Christian workingman
makes the Institutes one of the founding documents of the American
Republic.
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Desiderius Erasmus
1500s
In Praise of Folly
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The ultimate wit, the ultimate critic and the ultimate
humanist of the Renaissance, reading Erasmus is like waking up from
a dream, but on a beach with the surf washing on your face to snap
you back into reality. In Praise of Folly, like its funny title,
skewers the establishment with just the right humor to show that
yes, people are still people, concepts like 'The Church' are fine
but sometimes the people who make them up can be more... human than
their ideal. Erasmus is one of those rare writers who terrorises
the establishment not because he is a revolutionary with a new idea,
but because he is a simple writer with a sharp enough mind to use truth to destroy
pretention and the petrified nature of the institution.
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Nicholas Copernicus
1500s
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
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Sometimes called 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,'
this was the greatest science book in a thousand years. On his deathbed
in Frombork Cathedral, Poland, Copernicus got a package containing
his life's most important work, this book, the content of which
"Stopped the Sun and moved the Earth." The Scientific
Revolution began with this book. For the first time, mankind knew
that what was apparently a no-brainer, that the Sun moved around
the Earth every 24 hours, was completely wrong. From Ptolemy's Amalgest
to Copernicus, this was the rule. "The book that nobody read,"
told us that we were not the center of the universe. And we had to rethink...
EVERYTHING.
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St. Thomas More
1500s
Utopia
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Utopia means, 'That which cannot exist.' Yet, More wrote
this book to tell us what should exist. Its a story of an island
society- isolated, with no crime, no vice, all virtue and good,
with all Christian people seeking the eternal salvation and loving
each other. A powerful critique of his society in England at the
time, the real lesson of Utopia is that there is not a truly perfect
way to construct 'a masterpiece society.' The best we can do is
strive for a just and honorable way of life, and if a majority of
us do it, our lives will be grand- but let's not be perfect,
just work on being better first!
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St. Ignatius Loyola
1500s
The Spiritual Exercises
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In 1535 this masterwork of the Catholic counter-reformation was
born. The influence was nothing less than an astounding rebuke of
Luther's crusade against the church. In fact, it glorifies the church
and the individual Christian's unification with the true house
of the Lord God. Organized into 5 books: The Creation, Mankind,
the Kingdom of God, Christ Jesus and The Trinity, Loyola leads you
on the supreme 'finding yourself' session, no yoga or mysticism
is needed for a real Christian, instead, read St. Ignatius to find the relationship
of your life to the greater whole of the world of God.
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Johannes Kepler
1571-1630
The Harmony of the Worlds
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Science. Revolutionized the heliocentric theory of Copernicus-
proving it by applying Kepler's three laws of motion. Elliptical
orbits not circular ones are the cause, and the planets move faster
as they are nearer to the sun.
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Galileo Galilei
1564-1642
Discoveries and Opinions
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Science. He writes about the telescope that he invented, and
how he saw the moons of Jupiter. Proving for non-math oriented people
that the Earth was not at the center of the universe. He also tries
to convince the church to adopt the Heliocentric universe model.
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William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Complete Works
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Literature. Possibly the most powerful and famous writer of all
time.
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Sir Francis Bacon (Viscount of St. Albans)
1561-1626
Essays
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Philo. Bacon wrote about everything- all of the great ideas:
truth, death, religion, adversity, family life, envy, love, nature,
goodness, troubles, nobility, supersitition, travel, wisdom, innovation,
seeming wise, friendship, expense, true greatness of kingdoms and
estates, health and more.
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Thomas Hobbes
1588-1679
Leviathan
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Philo. Hobbes argues that people are brutish and animalistic
in the State of Nature, and that the effective state will use force
to compel its people to behave and they better appreciate it because
anything, even absolutism is better than anarchy and the mob mentality.
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Rene Descartes
1596-1650
A Discourse on Method
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Philo. Descartes questions everything. Humans have a mind and
a body, they are distinct from each other, and because of this,
our mind should learn and trust what our bodies' senses tell it.
Modern science was given a kick into overdrive with Descartes powerful
work on thinking and methods used in it. "I think, therefore
I am."
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John Milton
1608-1674
Paradise Lost
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Epic. The tragedy of the Fall of Man from Paradise. Adam and
Eve, the Garden of Eden and Satan. Unparalleled discriptions of
space, heaven and hell, all in original beautiful English writing.
It reminds you about the greatest forces in our lives: good and
evil.
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John Bunyan
1628-1688
The Pilgrims' Progress
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Literature. Except for the Bible, this book ranks first on the
all time printed list. A Pilgrim named Christian who has a great
adventure: travelling from the 'City of Destruction' to the 'Celestial
City.' On the way, he encounters the virtues and vices in the form
of real people, with names like Faithful, Dispair and Ignorance.
It seems innocent but its great power is that it makes you realize
through Christian, the endless possibilites of experience.
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Jean de la Fontaine
1621-1695
Fables
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Poetry. Fables told to French youth but in a masterly way containing
moral lessons in the tradition of Aesop and of the later Brothers
Grimm. Animal characters like Winnie the Pooh are anthropormorphisized
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Jean Baptiste Moliere
1622-1673
The Misanthrope
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Literature. A sophisiticated story about hypocrisy told through
a comedic framework of 'who you are is different from what you think
yourself to be.' Ironically, his readers were the very people he
was critisizing in the book! Of course Moliere's king was Louis
XIV, the ultimate spoiled royal.
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William Forbush (John Fox)
1517-1587
The Book of Martyrs
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This book describes the heroism of faithful Christians down through
the centuries from the times of the Early Church until his day.
This book reminds Christians why their religion is perhaps the most
astonishing and lovely forces of world history.
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Barch Spinoza
1632-1677
Ethics
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Philo. A genius work that is hard for regular humans to understand
sometimes, Ethics talks about freedom, what God is and gives a picture
of the cosmos as a great whole. That includes you.
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Blaise Pascal
1623-1662
The Pensees
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Philo. Perhaps the most profound reconciliation of Christianity
and science there ever was. Pascal shows us that right under our
noses, always looking at the material world around is, is a deeper
and more beautiful one. Pascal is a spiritual genius, and Pensees
means 'Thoughts.'
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Miguel Cervantes
1547-1616
Don Quixote
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Literature. Considered the first modern novel, the knight Don
Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza go on a Spanish adventure. Considered
one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written- a strange
combination. Spain sometimes feels like the Old West mixed with
the Middle Ages!
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Christiaan Huygens
1629-1695
A Treatise on Light
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Science. Huygens writes about the structure of light itself-
photons and the nature of reflection and refraction. Ironically,
17th Century Holland saw artists painting pictures like the one
here, with outstanding shades of light not used before. The Light
of Experience.
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John Locke
1632-1704
Treatise on Government
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Philo. A benchmark book for scholars of natural law and government
in the Western tradition, Locke here smashes Divine Right of Kings,
and lays the groundwork for the American Founding Fathers' ideas
about human reason, human rights, and what acceptible government
is.
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Baron de Montesquieu
18th Century
The Spirit of the Laws
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This is the foundational work for our modern governmental concept
of "Checks and Balances" or else, "Separation of
Powers." Our founding fathers adapted the ideas in this book
and made the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government.
Not stopping with this, the book goes on to explore the essentials
of good government, a classic Enlightenment text.
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Voltaire
18th Century
The Candide
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Smiling the 'smile of reason,' Voltaire is a towering figure
of the Enlightenment. He championed freedom everywhere (except the
dismembered Polish Commonwealth), he wrote in this book the
story of Candide, who has many bad things happen to him but does
not lose the zest for life... optimism. The book tells us that 'this
is NOT the best of all worlds that we live in,' and that change
can and should be wrought on the existing order of 1700's Europe.
Always funny and always powerfully serious, Voltaire teaches us
that individual freedom is the most powerful good.
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Daniel DeFoe
18th Century
Robinson Crusoe
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An 18th Century version of 'Castaway,' (ha ha)- this is a great
adventure story of being stranded with not much hope for ever returning
to your home. Whereas in the movie Tom Hanks was stranded for a
few years, Robinson Crusoe is the lone survivor of a shipwreck and
endures 28 years of alone-ness. How does he do it? Humans are social
animals and solitary confinement is one of the punishments used
in prison. 28 years? What does he do? What does he think? This powerful
story is one of the most popular books ever written.
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Johnathan Swift
18th Century
Gulliver's Travels
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A genius of human behavior and observation, Swift's masterpiece
shows us who WE are by changing the order of magnitude of our perspective:
First Gulliver, after being shipwrecked, wakes up in a land of little
tiny people who argue and squabble about their little problems-
until they find him and see that there is something greater than
them and their petty issues. Life is greater then them, as it is
greater than us. Gulliver goes to other lands, of giants, of philosophers
and of brutish guys who all give him realistic and sometimes bitter
insights into human life. Are we more than the sum of our parts?
Gulliver is going to find out.
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Captain James Cook
18th Century
Journal of Voyages
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Eventually killed by the ancestors of the inhabitants of our
50th State, Hawaii, Captain Cook's famed explorations opened up
the Pacific Ocean's secrets and in this, the greatest 'Captain's
Log' ever, the master voyager tells us his thoughts on the open
sea, the dangers of travel in unexplored regions, and what real
discovery is like. He charted Australia and New Zealand, explored
the south Pacific islands like Fiji and Tonga, Tahiti and the others.
At one point the cannibalistic Maori of New Zealand eat some of
his crew members. So, if you are looking for real, true, gritty
and powerful adventure, turn to the Captain. If you've ever talked
to a WWII vet and were amazed at what life was like back then, when
men were jacks-of-all-trades, try this one and get another dose
of reality.
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Sir Issac Newton
18th Century
Principles of Gravity
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Look into his eyes. You find a serious scientist yet one who
said an 'apple fell on my head...' Newton is the first man to understand
the invisible force that make all the universe go... gravity. This
secret, existing for all time but never yet seen, revolutionized
science. Now, it was understood not only THAT the planets move in
orbits, but WHY. Not only THAT apples fall to the Earth from trees,
but WHY. This is our world, Newton says, 'Why not try to understand
it?'
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David Hume
18th Century
Treatise on Human Nature
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One of philosophy's major works, Hume shows us that, like Gulliver's
observation of the behavior of those funny midgets and giants, we
can understand human beings best by observing them. "You can
tell what is inside a person's soul by what comes out if it."
Hume's humor (the smile of reason) make the book entertaining to
read, but remember, today you hear a bunch of high handed theories
in college that are patently the work of faux specialists. Hume
is a specialist too, but his specialty is human nature. Read this
and you will finally see into the mind that knows more about our
nature than all of your theory-of-the-week flinging professors put
together.
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Jean Jacques Rousseau
18th Century
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The Social Contract. "There once was a man
named Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas.
The 2nd Edition was bound in the skins of those who did not read
the first." This book tells us about the General Will (of the
People), that following it is a way to channel natural self interest
into the greater good of a balanced and healthy society. Written
to oppose 'The Leviathan,' you must imagine the Leviathan's head
cut off and rule of the state given to the people and not a soverign.
One of the famous books of moden democracy, we learn that we shake
hands with the government and agree to uphold the laws while the
government agrees to protect our rights. This is the Social Contract,
a powerful idea. Of course, this has led in some cases to a 'tyranny
of the majority' because the General Will cannot be wrong, the book
says.
The Emile. A philosophical text describing the
ideal education of a boy name Emile, Rousseau shows us Amour Propre,
which is self-love and vanity and caring only about how you look
in the eyes of other people, not who you are. Emile is educated
in a fine way. This book helps us not be a 'nation of slaves- to
our desires, to whims, money, to power, to each other.'
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Denis Diderot
18th Century
The Encyclopedia
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The master compiler, Denis Diderot wanted to give out a work
that put all of knowledge into the hands of the average person.
So, he compiled the world's first encyclopedia, or else, The Encyclopedia,
with a capital E. The original. One great aspect is the drawings
and woodcuts that Diderot got French artists to do for the book,
depicting pre-industrial machinery and the way Europeans and Americans
made things in the 1700's. You will find out how much it took to
make things we take for granted, and the dedication it took to make
them. If you have this one, and a good book on farming, you should
be ok if a nuclear solution ever comes to the USA from China or
some other power.
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Sir William Blackstone
18th Century
The Rights of Englishmen
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In a distinguished text, Sir William Blackstone gives us the
source of our rights- though he spoke for Englishmen, his concepts
have formed our American traditions too. This is most deserving
of reading today, since law, once the shield of the innocent in
America, is now becoming a weapon in the hands of a Leviathan style
government. Accidents and civil offenses are NOT crimes according
to Blackstone, small time, non-violent offenses should NOT put you
in jail either, but in America
today, we are seeing a major change in the way we do law. Blackstone
reminds us what we used to do, and why that was better.
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Sir Edward Gibbon
18th Century
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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During a pilgrimage from England to Rome, Edward Gibbon was inspired
to write the greatest history book in the English, or perhaps in
any, language. Powerfully intelligent and very entertaining,
he talks of the Roman Empire's fall because it needed to be told
at the time. This classical empire's story mixes drama with humor,
passion with powerful characters, major shapers of world history.
From Augustus the first emperor during the time of Jesus to the
fall of Constantinople, the last vestige of the Roman Empire in
its Byzantine form in 1452, Gibbon's history book will probably
never be surpassed.
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Immanuel Kant
18th Century
A Critique of Pure Reason
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A great work of moral and ethical philosophy, Kant lays down
an indictment of abandoning the humanity of humankind for pure reason.
Kant says that Christian values are the best values, but discounts
the possibility that God had a human son. Probably not a Christian,
Kant extolls the religion of Jesus Christ and of God, the higher
being that Kant does believe in. This book has influenced all of
philosophical thought since it was written, and is considered a
classic.
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Edmund Burke
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Inquiries into the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke
is the intellectual patriarch of modern conservatism (no, not Bush
style neo-consertavism but traditional conservatism)- and this book
highlights his speeches in the House of Commons on the defense of
the American colonies along with looking into how people judge and
interpret what they sense.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke
warned that the French Revolution was bad when everyone else was
saying it was good. Why? Because a cabal of new decision makers
would take control and make things terribly worse, and it was true.
The Jacobins executed noblemen and even the king and queen based
on their own self interest. The foundations of French culture were
turned upsidown and the old order was gone for good. On almost everything
he ever said and did, Edmund Burke was right.
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Adam Smith
18th Century
The Wealth of Nations
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Published the same year as the birth of America, 1776, the world's
economics masterpiece remains 'The Wealth of Nations.' It argues
for laissez-faire capitalism, unrestricted by government intervention.
He said that people should set the prices for goods and services
by demanding them to some degree, and that the supply of that good
or service will respond to the demand. This book taught governments
(like ours) how to create and disperse wealth in a modern market
economy. The power of money is highlighted in this book too.
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Thomas Paine
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Common Sense "These are the times that try men's
souls," states this famous article that gave the American Revolutionaries
that kick they needed to commit to the amazing revolt against their
mother country, The British Empire. It was not an easy decision,
after all, the South would later attempt the same idea, secession,
resulting in the American Civil War. When big decisions are taken,
they need big ideas to fight for, and Thomas Paine's Common Sense
gave that to our Founding Fathers.
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The American Founding Fathers
18th Century
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The Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776
this immortal document became the birth certificate of a New Republic,
dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all
its citizens.
The Constitution. In 1787 the New Nation's founding
fathers completed work on the world's first Constitution. It gave
and still gives to American people, as it is the source of our rights
and responsibilities. It outlines the supreme law that everyone
must follow, from the individual person to the government of the
republic itself.
The Federalist Papers. The founding fathers' wrote
a series of Federalist Papers explaining how and why the United
States is structured as it is, the superiority of the Enlightenment
ideas used in its creation, and what the rationale is for keeping
our country's government accountable to the people.
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Sir Thomas Malthus
18th Century
Essay on Population
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Have you ever thought that maybe the world could get too full
of people? Thomas Malthus worried about that 200 years ago when
his country, Great Britain, which is a small island, was getting
crowded (by 18th Century standards- he would be shocked at today's
number of people and crowdedness). In the Essay on Population he
argued that people would start fighting each other for food and
other scarce resources and society would degenerate if there were
too many people and not enough places to live and food and so forth.
He was wrong about England, it siphoned off people to the USA and
Australia, generated new technology to make more and better food
and generally was ok. Yet, now, his essay is now taken to be the
prophecy for the entire 3rd World of today. People live in worse
conditions in many countries than any human beings have since the
pyramids went up- and today this overpopulation problem, more
than ANY other, threatens
us all.
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