Perennial Bookclub: 60 great books, one chapter every morning

Great Ideas

Philosophy, religion and politics, from Machiavelli and Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne.

Cover of The Prince: title page, Il Principe, Rome 1532

Cover of Meditations: title page, first printed edition, Zurich 1558

Cover of Walden: title page, Walden, 1854, after a drawing by Sophia Thoreau

Cover of A Modest Proposal: Jonathan Swift, painted by Charles Jervas, c.1710

Cover of Leviathan: frontispiece, Leviathan, 1651, by Abraham Bosse

Cover of Confessions: title page, Confessions, London 1679

All 20, in order: The Prince, Meditations, Walden, A Modest Proposal, Leviathan, Confessions, Second Treatise of Government, The Souls of Black Folk, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Republic, Beyond Good and Evil, On Liberty, The Art of War, The Enchiridion, Nicomachean Ethics, Common Sense, The Problems of Philosophy, The King James Bible, The Wealth of Nations, The Essays of Montaigne.

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Great Stories

The novels everyone means to read, from Austen and Shelley to Dumas.

Cover of Pride and Prejudice: illustration by Hugh Thomson, 1894

Cover of Frankenstein: frontispiece, 1831 edition, by Theodor von Holst

Cover of Moby-Dick: title page, first American edition, 1851

Cover of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: illustration by John Tenniel, 1865

Cover of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: illustration by Sidney Paget, The Strand, 1891

Cover of Dracula: cover, first edition, 1897

All 20, in order: Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Moby-Dick, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Romeo and Juliet, A Room with a View, Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Little Women, The Blue Castle, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Odyssey, Middlemarch, The Count of Monte Cristo.

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True Stories

History, memoir and science, from Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin to Darwin.

Cover of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: title page, first edition, 1845

Cover of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: title page, first edition, Paris 1791

Cover of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: title page, eighth edition, Norwich 1794

Cover of On the Origin of Species: title page, first edition, 1859

Cover of Life on the Mississippi: title page, 1883

Cover of The Travels of Marco Polo: title page, first English translation, 1579

All 20, in order: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, On the Origin of Species, Life on the Mississippi, The Travels of Marco Polo, The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, History of the Peloponnesian War, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Autobiography of a Yogi, De Profundis, The Anabasis of Alexander, Up from Slavery, Twelve Years a Slave, My Life, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Principles of Psychology, The Antiquities of the Jews.

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One chapter of a great book, every morning.