I have to give Going for Gusto’s Joe Grace credit for throwing down this literary gauntlet. What are the 88 books that have shaped my life? Why not 50 or 100? It’s a spin off the Library of Congress’s list of 88 books that have shaped America, that’s why. Of course, like anyone else’s, my list is specific to me and certainly not exhaustive. In any event, it’s a great introspective exercise into one’s intellectual formation to say the least.
88. “Invanhoe” by Sir Walter Scott (the first novel I ever read)
87. “The Greek Way” by Edith Hamilton
86. “The Roman Way” by Edith Hamilton
85. “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
84. “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare (in high school, the first I read, and the 50s movie with Brando as Antony came with it)
83. “The Gettysburg Address” and other speeches of Abraham Lincoln
82. “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens
81. “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
80. “Innocents Abroad” by Mark Twain
79. “Aristotle For Everybody” by Mortimer Adler
78. “Meeting of Minds” by Steve Allen (based on his PBS series)
77. “Life of Samuel Johnson” by James Boswell
76. “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift
75. “”The ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ Book” by Jeanine Basinger(including the complete script and an introduction by Frank Capra)
74. “365 StarryNights” by Chet Raymo
73. “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown
72. “Sherlock Holmes” by A. Conan Doyle (56 short stories and 4 novels)
71. “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll
70. ‘The Thurber Carnival” by James Thurber (includes “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and the hilarious “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox”)
69.” A Citizen of the World” by Oliver Goldsmith
68. “Profiles in Courage” by John F. Kennedy
67. “Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow
66. “Apology” by Plato
65. “The Poetics” by Aristotle
64. “The Politics” by Aristotle
63. “The Vocabulary of Science” by Lancelot Hogben
62. “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris
61.”Plato And A Platypus Walk Into A Bar” by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
60.”Sea Wolf” by Jack London
59. “The Complete Father Brown Detective Stories” by G. K. Chesterton
58. “True Grit” by Charles Portis
57. “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” by Chris Matthews
56. “The Gospel According to RFK: Why It Matters Now” Edited with Coimmentary by Norman MacAfee
55. “Lincoln at Gettyburg” by Garry Wills
54. “Aesop’s Fables”
53. “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller
52.”The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” by Homer
51. “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles
50. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan
49. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” by Mark Twain
48. “St. Francis of Assisi” by Morris Bishop
47. “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw
46. “Who’s Afraid of Schrodinger’s Cat” by Ian Marshall and Danah Zohar
45. “Herbs and the Earth” by Henry Beston
44. “The Divine Comedy” by Dante
43 “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
42. “The Bible”
41. “The Aubrey-Maturin Series of Sea Novels” (20 in all, including “Master and Commander”)
40. “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold
39. “Uysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero” by Michael Korda
38. “Moby Dick” By Herman Melville
37. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
36. “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
35. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
34. “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoyevsky
33. “The Story of Civilization” by Will and Ariel Durant (11 volumes—I read in toto the first 5. My favorite “The Age of Faith”)
32. “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
31. “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine
30. “The Federalist Papers” by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
29. “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
28. “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane
27. “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
26. “The Story of Carbon” by Isaac Asimov (And all the rest of his science books for the layman)
25. “All For Love” by John Dryden
24. “A Treasury of Great Poems” Compile and Selected by Louis Untermeyer
23. “Liberty” by John Stuart Mill
22. “Collected Poems of Robert Frost”
21. “My Country, The Story of Modern Israel” by Abba Eban
20. “Claudius, the God” by Robert Graves
19. “Dangling Man” by Saul Bellow
18. “The Citadel” by A.J. Cronin
17. “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco
16. “Amusing Ourselves To Death” by Neil Postman
15. “The Chosen” by Chaim Potok
14. “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth
13. “The Labors of Hercules” by Agatha Christie
12. “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene
11. “The Sword in the Stone” by T.H. White
10. “Howard’s End” by E.M. Forster
9. “The Dubliners” by James Joyce
8. “In Praise of Folly” by Erasmus
7. “The Confessions of St. Augustine”
6. “John Adams” by David McCullough
5. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. “The Civil War: A Narrative” by Shelby Foote
3. “Vanity Fair” by William Makepeace Thackery
2. “Dr. Faustus” by Christopher Marlowe
1. “The Apostle” by Sholem Asch
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