What are the “Great Books”? There is no one list, but the term is meant to describe a compilation of classics from Western Literature. Some lists are very long, topping hundreds of books, while others limit themselves to as little as 50, but the idea behind all of them is that these are foundational books – read these and you will have a better understanding of some of the key ideas or events shaping the world today. A Christian list would look different than a non-Christian, though a Christian list should contain non-Christian books. Placement is as much or more about a book’s influence as it is about its genuine insight, so pivotal infamous books do make their appearances.
So what exactly might be on such a list? Here is an example:
- The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- Everyone's a Theologian by R.C. Sproul
- Macbeth by Shakespeare
- Death by Living by N.D. Wilson
- The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
- The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
- Time Will Run Back by Henry Hazlitt
- Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- The Grace and Truth Paradox by Randy Alcorn
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Christianity and Liberalism by John Gresham Machen
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Art and the Bible by Francis Schaeffer
- Desiring God by John Piper
- Aesop’s Fables by, well, Aesop
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
- City of God by Augustine
- Flags out Front by Douglas Wilson
- The Prince by Machiavelli
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- 95 Theses by Martin Luther
- Knowing God by J.I. Packer
- The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
- The Koran by Mohammad
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
- The Gospel Blimp (and other parables) by Joe Bayly
- Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation by Ronald Reagan
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Westminster Confession of Faith
- Competent to Counsel by Jay Adams
- Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
- The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
- Hamlet by Shakespeare
- A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
- Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
- Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
#50 is no small feat! Several titles here I haven't heard of before, will have to add them to my list. Thanks
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