Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1.	Homer – Iliad, Odyssey2.	The Old Testament3.	Aeschylus – Tragedies4.	Sophocles – Tragedies5.	Herodotus – Histories6.	Euripides – Tragedies7.	Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War8.	Hippocrates – Medical Writings9.	Aristophanes – Comedies10.	Plato – Dialogues11.	Aristotle – Works12.	Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13.	Euclid – Elements14.	Archimedes – Works15.	Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections16.	Cicero – Works17.	Lucretius – On the Nature of Things18.	Virgil – Works19.	Horace – Works20.	Livy – History of Rome21.	Ovid – Works22.	Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia23.	Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24.	Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic25.	Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion26.	Ptolemy – Almagest27.	Lucian – Works28.	Marcus Aurelius – Meditations29.	Galen – On the Natural Faculties30.	The New Testament31.	Plotinus – The Enneads32.	St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33.	The Song of Roland34.	The Nibelungenlied35.	The Saga of Burnt Njál36.	St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica37.	Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38.	Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39.	Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks40.	Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41.	Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly42.	Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43.	Thomas More – Utopia44.	Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises45.	François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel46.	John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion47.	Michel de Montaigne – Essays48.	William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49.	Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote50.	Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51.	Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52.	William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays53.	Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54.	Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55.	William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56.	Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan57.	René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58.	John Milton – Works59.	Molière – Comedies60.	Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61.	Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light62.	Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics63.	John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64.	Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies65.	Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66.	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.	Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe68.	Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69.	William Congreve – The Way of the World70.	George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge71.	Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72.	Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73.	Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74.	Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75.	Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
— Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading