the Books

The Great Books faculty democratically agree upon the Great Books “Core” book lists.  While the Faculty are continuously seeking the texts that help our students advance on their journeys of deep intellectual inquiry, in 2025-26, the Faculty are actively reviewing the Core to best meet our students’ needs. We expect to make changes for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 academic years.

GBK 101: Among Gods and Heroes

Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey
Sappho (selections)
Herodotus or Thucydides (selections)
Aeschylus (one play)
Sophocles: one play from the Oedipus Cycle
Plato: Apology of Socrates

GBK 202: Classical Cultures

Plato: Meno and Republic
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
Euclid: Elements (Book 1)
Virgil: Aeneid
Josephus: The Jewish War
Sulpicia (selected poems)

GBK 203: The Hebrew and Christian Traditions

Hebrew Bible: Genesis 1-22, Exodus 1-24, Amos, Isaiah 40-55, Job 1-13, 38-42, Song of Songs, Ruth
New Testament: One Synoptic Gospel, John, Acts 1-11, 15-17, Romans
The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
Qu’ran
(selections)
Augustine: Confessions (Books 1-8)
Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias (selections)
Aquinas: Summa Theologica (selections)

GBK 304: Order and Ingenuity

1001 Arabian Nights (selections)
Dante:
The Divine Comedy (selections)
Machiavelli: The Prince
Calvin: The Institutes of Christian Religion (selections)
Christine de Pizan: Book of the City of Ladies (selections)
Montaigne: Essays (selections)
Cervantes: Don Quixote (selections)
Galileo: The Starry Messenger

GBK 305: The Modern Worldview

Shakespeare: Hamlet or King Lear
Francis Bacon: Novum Organum, Essays or Great Instauration (selections)
Descartes: Discourse on the Method or Pascal: Pensees (selections)
Hobbes: Leviathan (selections)
Locke: Second Treatise of Government
Cavendish: Blazing World (selections)
Milton: Paradise Lost (selections)
Montagu: Turkish Embassy Letters (selections)
Hume:
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
Voltaire: Candide
Equiano: Interesting Narrative (selections)

GBK 306: Reason and Revolution

Jane Austen: Persuasion
Charles Darwin: On the Origin of the Species
Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Haitan Revolution Documents
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay:
The Federalist Papers
Thomas Jefferson et al: The Declaration of Independence and The United States Constitution
Immanuel Kant: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Communist Manifesto or Karl Marx: Capital: Volume 3: A Critique of Political Economy
Romantic Poetry: Selections (including Phillis Wheatley, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein: 1818
Adam Smith:
Wealth of Nations
Mary Wollstonecraft:
Vindication of the Rights of Woman

GBK 407: The Age of Ambivalence

Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols
Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (selections)
DuBois: The Souls of Black Folks
Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Selected texts from the 19th or 20th century feminist tradition

Psychology text: (e.g., William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, B. F. Skinner, Mamie Phipps Clark, Anna Freud)