Comentary on the Harvard Classics and a suggested update

MMascaro · 06-19-2007, 11:03 AM

I found a commentary of the Harvard classics on the web from Harvard University Magazine (link below) But it ended with the question.

Who would you update the Harvard Classics? And the answers below.

Mark

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/110177.html

Your Harvard Classics

What books would you choose for a twenty-first century Harvard Classics? Harvard Magazine invites readers to submit lists of 10 books, excluding the following titles and authors, deemed likely consensus choices: Bible, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad-Gita, Koran, Homer, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Dante, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Goethe, Hegel, Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau, Marx, Freud, Einstein. Submit responses via our website, www.harvard-magazine.com, or by mail or e-mail. A future issue will report results of this informal survey.

Your Harvard Classics

"What books would you choose for a twenty-first century Harvard Classics?" the editors asked readers (November-December,2001 page 56), inviting them to submit lists of 10 books, excluding various titles and authors deemed likely consensus choices. By press time, 38 lists were in hand. The book chosen most often was James Joyce's Ulysses (six times), followed by Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman (four). Some examples:

The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Emma, Jane Austen
Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust
--from Percy Crosby, Ph.D. '60, of Mesa, Arizona

Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen
The Man Born to Be King, He That Shall Come, and Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
The Wasteland and Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot
Women Artists 1550-1950, Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin
Feminism and Art History, Norma Broude and Mary Garrard
Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies, Julius Held
John Adams, David McCullough
The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom
A Marginal Jew, John P. Meier
--from Alicia Craig Faxon, A.M. '53, of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson
Sartor Resartus, Thomas Carlyle
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes
The Double Helix, James Watson
Our Town, Thornton Wilder
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber
The Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche
Law in Modern Society, Roberto Unger
The Idea of a Christian Society, T.S. Eliot
Consilience, Edward O. Wilson
--from Richard B. Bloom '76, of Bristol, Pennsylvania

The History of the Persian Wars, Herodotus
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki
The Story of the Stone, Cao Xueqin
The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
City of God, Saint Augustine
Ulysses, James Joyce
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
--from Drew Chuppe '83, A.M. '88, G '90, of South Bend, Indiana

Selected Poems, Sappho
Selected Writings, Hildegard of Bingen
The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
The Princess of Clèves, Mme. de Lafayette
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Complete Poems, Emily Dickinson
--from Ann M. Moore '61, of Hampton, Virginia

The Human Comedy, Honoré de Balzac
I and Thou, Martin Buber
On War, Carl von Clausewitz
The Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Collected Poems, William Butler Yeats
--from a member of the class of '68 who wishes anonymity

From other lists: D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover; Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities; Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes; Katharine Graham, Personal History; Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah; Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-Past Nine; Alfred C. Kinsley, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male; Tony Kushner, Angels in America; Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers; Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics; J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground; Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard.

JSWolf · 06-19-2007, 11:28 AM

I would have chosen The Hobbit and the LotR trilogy by Tolkien. They changed the face of fantasy and are true classics.

eumesmo · 11-02-2007, 06:33 PM

Well, Harvard Classics is hardly novel centric.

1 Philosopher, Nietzsche
1 Fantastic Autobiography, Proust
1 Economist/Sociologist, Marx
1 Redefinition of novel, Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal
3 Plays, Long Day's Journey into Night, Waiting for Godot, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder
1 One truly remarkable theory, Freud
1 Epic, Absalom! Absalom!, Faulkner

1 Book of poetry, T.S. Eliot, Rilke...
2 Books of Thinkers, Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, James(William), Wittgenstein

06-19-2007, 11:03 AM	#1
MMascaro Zealot Posts: 111 Karma: 1009 Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Maryland USA Device: HP mini 1035/Sony Reader/IPad	Comentary on the Harvard Classics and a suggested update I found a commentary of the Harvard classics on the web from Harvard University Magazine (link below) But it ended with the question. Who would you update the Harvard Classics? And the answers below. Mark http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/110177.html Your Harvard Classics What books would you choose for a twenty-first century Harvard Classics? Harvard Magazine invites readers to submit lists of 10 books, excluding the following titles and authors, deemed likely consensus choices: Bible, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad-Gita, Koran, Homer, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Dante, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Goethe, Hegel, Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau, Marx, Freud, Einstein. Submit responses via our website, www.harvard-magazine.com, or by mail or e-mail. A future issue will report results of this informal survey. Your Harvard Classics "What books would you choose for a twenty-first century Harvard Classics?" the editors asked readers (November-December,2001 page 56), inviting them to submit lists of 10 books, excluding various titles and authors deemed likely consensus choices. By press time, 38 lists were in hand. The book chosen most often was James Joyce's Ulysses (six times), followed by Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman (four). Some examples: The Art of War, Sun Tzu The Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus Pensées, Blaise Pascal Emma, Jane Austen Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust --from Percy Crosby, Ph.D. '60, of Mesa, Arizona Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen The Man Born to Be King, He That Shall Come, and Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers The Wasteland and Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot Women Artists 1550-1950, Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin Feminism and Art History, Norma Broude and Mary Garrard Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies, Julius Held John Adams, David McCullough The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom A Marginal Jew, John P. Meier --from Alicia Craig Faxon, A.M. '53, of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson Sartor Resartus, Thomas Carlyle The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes The Double Helix, James Watson Our Town, Thornton Wilder The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber The Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche Law in Modern Society, Roberto Unger The Idea of a Christian Society, T.S. Eliot Consilience, Edward O. Wilson --from Richard B. Bloom '76, of Bristol, Pennsylvania The History of the Persian Wars, Herodotus The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki The Story of the Stone, Cao Xueqin The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio City of God, Saint Augustine Ulysses, James Joyce Meditations, Marcus Aurelius --from Drew Chuppe '83, A.M. '88, G '90, of South Bend, Indiana Selected Poems, Sappho Selected Writings, Hildegard of Bingen The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir The Princess of Clèves, Mme. de Lafayette A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Beloved, Toni Morrison Complete Poems, Emily Dickinson --from Ann M. Moore '61, of Hampton, Virginia The Human Comedy, Honoré de Balzac I and Thou, Martin Buber On War, Carl von Clausewitz The Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Moby Dick, Herman Melville Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy Collected Poems, William Butler Yeats --from a member of the class of '68 who wishes anonymity From other lists: D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover; Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities; Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes; Katharine Graham, Personal History; Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah; Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-Past Nine; Alfred C. Kinsley, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male; Tony Kushner, Angels in America; Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers; Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics; J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground; Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard.

11-02-2007, 06:33 PM	#3
eumesmo Connoisseur Posts: 69 Karma: 272 Join Date: May 2006 Device: Sony Reader	Well, Harvard Classics is hardly novel centric. 1 Philosopher, Nietzsche 1 Fantastic Autobiography, Proust 1 Economist/Sociologist, Marx 1 Redefinition of novel, Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal 3 Plays, Long Day's Journey into Night, Waiting for Godot, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1 One truly remarkable theory, Freud 1 Epic, Absalom! Absalom!, Faulkner 1 Book of poetry, T.S. Eliot, Rilke... 2 Books of Thinkers, Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, James(William), Wittgenstein Last edited by eumesmo; 11-02-2007 at 09:30 PM.

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06-19-2007, 11:28 AM	#2
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 78,932 Karma: 144284074 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	I would have chosen The Hobbit and the LotR trilogy by Tolkien. They changed the face of fantasy and are true classics.

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