Prospectus for a Book Club in the Humanities and Social Sciences

History

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy--Jacob Burckhardt (1860)

The Autumn of the Middle Ages--Johan Huizinga (1919)

The Old Regime and the French Revolution--Alexis de Tocqueville (1856)

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life--Richard Hofstadter (1963)

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan--Ivan Morris (1964)


Psychology


A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis--Sigmund Freud (1920)

Modern Man in Search of a Soul--Carl Gustav Jung (1933)

Love and Will--Rollo May (1969)

Man’s Search for Meaning--Viktor Frankl (1946)

The Farther Reaches of Human Nature--Abraham Maslow (1971)


Theology


The Courage to Be--Paul Tillich (1952)

On Being a Christian--Hans Kung (1974)

The Imitation of Christ--Thomas a Kempis (15th C.)

Fear and Trembling--Soren Kierkegaard (1843)

The Varieties of Religious Experience--William James (1902)

I and Thou--Martin Buber (1923)


Philosophy


Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason--Rene Descartes (1637)

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion--David Hume (1779)

Thus Spake Zarathustra--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883)

The Ethics of Aristotle (4th C. BCE)

On Duty and The Tusculan Disputations--Cicero (1st C. BCE)


Political Theory


Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch--Immanuel Kant (1795)

Democracy in America--Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)

A Theory of Justice--John Rawls (1971)

The Politics of Aristotle (4th C. BCE)

The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot--Russell Kirk (1953)

The Revolt of the Masses--Jose Ortega y Gasset (1929)


Aesthetics and Criticism


The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry--Walter Pater (1873)

The Sense of Beauty--George Santayana (1896)

The Nature of Gothic--John Ruskin (1853)

The Poetics of Aristotle (4th C. BCE)

Axel’s Castle: a Study in Imaginative Literature 1870-1930--Edmund Wilson (1931)

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays--Northrop Frye (1957)


Literature


Labyrinths--Jorge Luis Borges (1962)

The Golden Notebook--Doris Lessing (1962)

The Grapes of Wrath--John Steinbeck (1939)

Atlas Shrugged--Ayn Rand (1957)

The Man Without Qualities--Robert Musil (1930)

Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort--Roger Martin du Gard (1999)