What are the books of greatest Literary Importance?

Question

For a college level student, what historical novels should he or she have read by graduation?

I currently read a good amount of modern day fiction. I've read lots of Dan Brown, Steven King, R.A. Salvatore and the likes. I'm interested in broadening the scope of my self-education (if you can call it that) through more historical works of fiction and/or non-fiction.

Answer 1

St John's College in Annapolis, MD is a private liberal arts institution where the only texts are great works of literature. Realistically, you can only scratch the surface of all these in four years, but it gives you a sense of what the influential works are. Their reading list is below:

FRESHMAN YEAR

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HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
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AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
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SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
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THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
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EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
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HERODOTUS: Histories
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ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
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PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
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ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
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EUCLID: Elements
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LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
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PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
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NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
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LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
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HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
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Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust

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SOPHOMORE YEAR

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THE BIBLE
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ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
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APOLLONIUS: Conics
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VIRGIL: Aeneid
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PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
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EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
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TACITUS: Annals
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PTOLEMY: Almagest
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PLOTINUS: The Enneads
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AUGUSTINE: Confessions
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ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
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AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
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DANTE: Divine Comedy
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CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
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DES PREZ: Mass
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MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
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COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
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LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
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RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
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PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
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MONTAIGNE: Essays
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VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
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BACON: Novum Organum
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SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
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POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
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DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
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PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
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BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
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HAYDN: Quartets
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MOZART: Operas
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BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
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SCHUBERT: Songs
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STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

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JUNIOR YEAR

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CERVANTES: Don Quixote
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GALILEO: Two New Sciences
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DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
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MILTON: Paradise Lost
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LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
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LA FONTAINE: Fables
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PASCAL: Pensees
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HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
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ELIOT: Middlemarch
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SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
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LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
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RACINE: Phaedre
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NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
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KEPLER: Epitome IV
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LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
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SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
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HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
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ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
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MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
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ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
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KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
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MOZART: Don Giovanni
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JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
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DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers"

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SENIOR YEAR

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Declaration of Independence
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The Constitution of the United States
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Supreme Court opinions
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HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers
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DARWIN: Origin of Species
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HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
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LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
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TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
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LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
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KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
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MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
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DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
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TOLSTOY: War and Peace
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MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
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TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
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FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
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WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
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DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
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HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
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HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
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MILLIKAN: The Electron
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CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
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Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy

Answer 2

I have been following posts by a very wise and well-traveled person who posts under the name of Boaz. I would love to get a peek at his library. He has quoted some books that are only referenced by great lecturers. Since he has been posting, I have noticed that some bookstores are re-printing some of them. Way to go Boaz.
As far as which books, I could list 1000. Do you like aviation--read exploits of Amelia Earhart. Archeology, Marine Biology and Environmental Studies---tons of books; subscribe to National Geographic.
ElihjahC.

Answer 3

YOU ASKING HISTORY?
GOSH BETTER SUICIDE THAN READING HISTORY!
I THINK YOU SHOULD READ SOMETHING LIKE,
1.Robin Cook's Books
2.Dan Brown's Books
3.Agatha Christie's Books
4.Sidney Sheldon's Books
5.Jeffrey Archer's Books

Try these..!!

Answer 4

Darwin's Origon of the Species