下面所列舉的書單，都是值得你花時間一讀的書。我們說「值得你花時間」是很認真的。雖然這些書並不全都是一般人所認為的那種「偉大」，但只要你肯花時間努力，你就能得到回饋。所有這些書都超越了大多數的水平一一超出許多。因而這些書會強迫大部分讀者作心智上的成長，以瞭解並欣賞這樣的書。當然，如果你想要增進自己的閱讀技巧，這樣的書就是你該找的書，同時你也會發現在我們文化傳統中有過，哪些偉大的思想與說法。
就我們在上一章所談的特殊意義而言有些書特別了不起。每次你重讀，都會發現許多新的想法。這些書是可以一讀再讀，永不會厭倦的。換句話說，這些書一一我們不會正確地指出有多少這樣的書，也不會指出是哪些書，因為這是由個人判斷的一一超越過所有讀者的水平，就算最有技巧的讀者也不能超越這樣的書。我們在上一章說過，這些作品就是每個人都該特別努力去研讀的書。這些書是真正的偉大作品，任何一個人要去荒島，都該帶著這些書一起去。
這個書單很長，看起來有點難以消受。我們鼓勵你不要因為這個書單而覺得為難。一開始，你可能會先要辨識大部分的作者是誰。這裡面沒什麼是一般人難以瞭解，因而就該冷僻的道理。最重要的是，我們要提醒你，不論基於什麼理由，最聰明的做法都是從你最感興趣的書開始讀。我們已經說過許多次，主要的目標是要讀得好，而不是要讀得廣。如果一年當中你讀不了幾本書，其實不必覺得失望。書單上的書並不是要你在特定時間裡讀完的。這也不是非要讀完所有的書才算完成的挑戰。相反，這是一個你可以從容接受的邀請，只要你覺得很自在，任何時候都可以開始。
作者名單是按時間前後順序排出來的，以他們確實或大約的出生時期為準。一位作者有很多本書時，也是盡可能按作品時間順序排列的。學者們對每一本書的最早出版時間可能不見得有一致的看法，但這對你來說沒什麼影響。要記得的重點是：這個書單就像是一個時代的演進表，當然，你用不著依時間先後的順序來讀。你甚至可以從最近出版的一本書來讀，再回溯到荷馬及《舊約》。
我們並沒有把每一位作者所有的書都列出來。通常我們都只挑選比較重要的作品，以論說性作品而言，我們挑選的根據是盡可能表現一位作者在不同學習領域裡作了哪些貢獻。在另外一些例子中，我們會列舉一位作者的幾部作品，然後把其中特別重要又有用的書用括號標示出來。
要擬這份書單，最困難的總是跟當代作品有關的部分。作者越接近我們的年代，越難作很公正的評斷。時間能證明一切是句好話，但我們不想等那麼久。因此對現代的作者或作品，我們預留了一些不同觀點的空間，因此在我們書單比較後面部分的書，我們不敢說前面那些書公認的地位。對前面部分的書，可能也有人有些不同的觀點，因為我們沒有列人某些作品，可能會認為我們在挑選時有偏見。在某些例子中，我們承認自己是有些偏見。這是我們開的書單，自然會跟別人開的書單有點不同。不過如果任何人想要認真地研擬一份值得一生閱讀的好書書單，以增進閱讀能力的話，其間的差別應該不會太大才對。當然，最後你還是要自己擬出一份書單，然後全力以赴。無論如何，在你列出自己的書單之前，先看一份被一致公認為好書的書單，是很聰明的做法。這份書單是一個可以開始的地方。
我們還要提出一個疏漏之處，這可能會讓一些不幸的讀者覺得很受打擊。這份書單只列出了西方的作品，不包括中國、日本或印度的作品。我們這麼做有幾個理由。其中一個是我們對西方傳統文化以外的文化並不十分在行，我們建議的書單也不會有什麼份量。另一個原因是東方並不像西方這樣是單一的傳統，我們必須要明白所有的東方文化傳統之後，才能將這份書單擬好。而很少有學者能對所有的東方文化都有深刻的瞭解。第三，在你想要瞭解其他世界的文化之前，應該要先瞭解自己的文化。現代有許多人試著要讀《易經》或《薄伽梵歌》(Bhagavad-Gita)，都覺得很困難，不只是因為這樣的書本身就很難懂，也因為他們並沒有先利用自己文化中比較容易理解的書——他們比較容易接近的書——把閱讀技巧練習好。
還有另外一個疏忽之處要提提。雖然是一份書單，其中主要以抒情詩詩人為人熟知的作者卻沒幾位。當然，書單中另外有些作者也寫抒情詩，但他們較為人知的是一些較長的其他著作。這方面不該當作是我們對抒情詩有偏見。讀詩，我們認為從一本好的合選集開始閱讀，會比從某一位作者的個人選集開始要好得多。帕爾格雷夫(Palgrave)編輯的《英詩金庫》(The Golden Treasury)及《牛津英詩選》(The Oxford Book of English Verse)是最好的入門書。這些老的詩選應該要有現代人做增補的工作——像塞爾登·羅德曼(Selden Rodman)的《現代詩一百首》(Qne Hundred Modern Poems )，這本書用很有趣的概念，廣泛收集了當代隨手可得的英詩。因為閱讀抒情詩需要特殊的技巧，我們也介紹了其他相關的指導書籍——像馬克·范多倫的《詩歌入門》(Introduction to Poetry)，是一本合選集，同時也包含了一些短論，談到如何閱讀許多有名的抒情詩。
我們依照作者及書名將書單列出來，卻沒有列出出版者及特殊的版本。書單上幾乎所有的書都可以在書店中找到，有許多出了不同的版本，平裝或精裝都有。不過，如果哪位作者或哪本作品已經收錄進我們自己所編輯的兩套書，那就會特別標示出來。其中出現在《西方世界的經典名著》(Great Books of the Western World)中的，打一個星號；出現在《名著入門》(Gateway to the Great Books)中的，打兩個星號。
1. Homer (9th century B.C.?)
* Iliad
* Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c. 525–456 B.C.)
* Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c. 495–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.)
History (of the Persian Wars)
6. Euripides (c. 485–406 B.C.)
* Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.)
History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates (c. 460–377? B.C.)
* Medical writings
9. Aristophanes (c. 448–380 B.C.)
* Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
* Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. ** Epicurus (c. 341–270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
Elements (of Geometry)
14. Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.)
* Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C.)
On Conic Sections
16. ** Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c. 95–55 B.C.)
On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70–19 B.C.)
* Works
19. Horace (65–8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
20. Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17)
History of Rome
21. Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. ** Plutarch (c. 45–120)
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Moralia
23. ** Tacitus (c. 55–117)
Histories
Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
Introduction to Arithmetic
25. ** Epictetus (c. 60–120)
Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c. 100–178; fl. 127–151)
Almagest
27. ** Lucian (c. 120–c. 190)
Works
(esp. The Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121–180)
Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130–200)
On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205–270)
The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354–430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, * Confessions, * The City of God, * Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century)
(The Volsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend.)
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
Summa Theologica
37. ** Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, * The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400)
Works
(esp. * Troilus and Criseyde, * Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527)
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536)
The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Sir Thomas More (c. 1478–1535)
Utopia
44. Martin Luther (1483–1546)
Three Treatises
Table-Talk
45. Francois Rabelais (c. 1495–1553)
Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin (1509–1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
Essays
48. William Gilbert (1540–1603)
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)
Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599)
Prothalamion
The Faerie Queene
51. ** Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Essays
Advancement of Learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
* Works
53. ** Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
The Starry Messenger
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey (1578–1657)
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
On the Circulation of the Blood
On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
The Leviathan
57. Rene Descartes (1596–1650)
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on Method
Geometry
Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton (1608–1674)
Works
(esp. * the minor poems, * Areopagitica, * Paradise Lost, * Samson Agonistes)
59. ** Moliere (1622–1673)
Comedies
(esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe)
60. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
The Provincial Letters
Pensees
* Scientific treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695)
Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677)
Ethics
63. John Locke (1632–1704)
Letter Concerning Toleration
* 「Of Civil Government」 (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699)
Tragedies
(esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
65. Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)
Discourse on Metaphysics
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
Monadology
67. ** Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)
Robinson Crusoe
68. ** Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
A Tale of a Tub
Journal to Stella
Gulliver』s Travels
A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve (1670–1729)
The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley (1685–1753)
Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Essay on Criticism
Rape of the Lock
Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)
Persian Letters
Spirit of Laws
73. ** Voltaire (1694–1778)
Letters on the English
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
Joseph Andrews
Tom Jones
75. ** Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dictionary
Rasselas
The Lives of the Poets
(esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
76. ** David Hume (1711–1776)
Treatise of Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. ** Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
On the Origin of Inequality
On Political Economy
Emile
The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith (1723–1790)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
80. ** Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Practical Reason
The Science of Right
Critique of Judgment
Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Autobiography
82. James Boswell (1740–1795)
Journal
(esp. London Journal)
Life of Samuel Johnson Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)
Elements of Chemistry
84. John Jay (1745–1829), James Madison (1751–1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
Federalist Papers
(together with the * Articles of Confederation, the * Constitution of the United States, and the * Declaration of Independence)
85. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Faust
Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)
Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit
Philosophy of Right
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Poems
(esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Poems
(esp. 「Kubla Khan,」 Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
92. ** Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
On War
93. Stendhal (1783–1842)
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love
94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Don Juan
95. ** Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Studies in Pessimism
96. ** Michael Faraday (1791–1867)
Chemical History of a Candle
Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. ** Charles Lyell (1797–1875)
Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
The Positive Philosophy
99. ** Honore de Balzac (1799–1850)
Pere Goriot
Eugenie Grandet
100. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Representative Men
Essays
Journal
101. ** Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
The Scarlet Letter
102. ** Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
Democracy in America
103. ** John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
A System of Logic
On Liberty
Representative Government
Utilitarianism
The Subjection of Women
Autobiography
104. ** Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
The Origin of Species
The Descent of Man
Autobiography
105. ** Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Works
(esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)
106. ** Claude Bernard (1813–1878)
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. ** Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
108. Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Capital
(together with the * Communist Manifesto)
109. George Eliot (1819–1880)
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
110. ** Herman Melville (1819–1891)
Moby-Dick
Billy Budd
111. ** Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
112. ** Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
113. ** Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
Plays
(esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll』s House, The Wild Duck)
114. ** Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What Is Art?
Twenty-three Tales
115. ** Mark Twain (1835–1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger
116. ** William James (1842–1910)
The Principles of Psychology
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragmatism
Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. ** Henry James (1843–1916)
The American
The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincare (1854–1912)
Science and Hypothesis
Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Civilization and Its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. ** George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
Plays (and Prefaces)
(esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
122. ** Max Planck (1858–1947)
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
Where Is Science Going?
Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. ** John Dewey (1859–1952)
How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
125. ** Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
126. ** George Santayana (1863–1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Persons and Places
127. Nikolai Lenin (1870–1924)
The State and Revolution
128. Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
Remembrance of Things Past
129. ** Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
130. ** Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
131. ** Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
The Meaning of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)
132. ** James Joyce (1882–1941)
「The Dead」 in Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
133. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
Art and Scholasticism
The Degrees of Knowledge
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
True Humanism
134. Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
The Trial
The Castle
135. Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975)
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
136. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)
The First Circle
Cancer Ward