What books would you include in the 'Great Books of the Western World' series?

I read in Saturday’s Mobile Press-Register, in the classified section under “Collectors Items,” that someone had the following item(s) for sale – “54 Volume Great Books of the Western World. Excellent condition REDUCED PRICE! $150 Call 251-…”

Prior to reading this ad, I’d never heard of this book series, so, naturally, this roused my curiosity. According to Wikipedia, this series of books was first published in the U.S. in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. “to present the Western canon in a single package of 54 volumes.” An updated second edition of the series is now available and consists of 60 volumes, so I presume that the books in the ad are from the first series.

What’s meant by the term “Western canon,” you ask? Again according to Wikipedia, that term denotes a “canon of books… that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the ‘greatest works of artistic merit.’” These works include autobiographical and biographical writings, drama, economics, ethics, fiction, history, mathematics, natural science, philosophy, poetry, politics and religion.

What follows is a select list of the contents of all 54 volumes of the first series. Keep in mind that this is a very, very small sample of what’s contained in the entire series. For the full contents, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World.

- The Iliad by Homer
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles
- The History by Herodotus
- The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
- The Republic by Plato
- Poetics by Aristotle
- The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements by Euclid
- The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- A Midsummer-Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
- The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
- Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
- Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare
- Don Quixote by Cervantes
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Constitution of the United States of America
- The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

In the end, how many of you have heard of the Great Books of the Western World series? Which of the works listed above have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.