(Just out of curiosity ... what else in on the shelf?)
I should have said "primo" bookcase, which sits in my living room. (The major part of my library is located in another part of the house.) It's the one that I use for my most cherished books. It's a sort of "grab bag," the sort of thing you'd expect of a generalist of conservative tendencies. Your asking me what's on it gives me a welcome chance to "flog" my favorite books! :^)
There's lots of Eric Voegelin (I'm collecting all his titles over time) and Plato. There's a rather large "Americana" section: works of the Framers (e.g., collected letters of T. Jefferson, Federalist); plus the new John Adams biography; a few years back I was collecting sources of the Framers' thought (e.g., Locke, Hume, Burke, Milton's Areopagitica, Trenchard and Gordon's Cato's Letters). They're all there still. Also critical studies of the founding period by Bernard Baylin (e.g., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and The Ideological Origins of American Politics). I have the Autobiography of U.S. Grant (a first edition!), the collected writings of John Calhoun, including his masterful Disquisition on Government.
Then there are writers on American and Western culture, such as Russell Kirk (The Roots of American Order), Richard Weaver (The Southern Tradition at Bay), the Vanderbilt Agrarians (I'll Take My Stand), A. J. Nock (Our Enemy, the State), Frank Chodorov (Fugitive Essays) Jacques Barzun, James Burnham (esp. Suicide of the West); lots of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. I only have two works on economics on these shelves: Ludwig von Mises (Human Action) and Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy).
Other than Voegelin, Plato, Aristotle, and the Framers' sources, the only other philosophers there: Alasdair McIntyre's After Virtue. Theology: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, Francis Schaffer (Trilogy), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and books by or about Pope John Paul II (including the fine Carl Bernstein biography). Of course, the King James Bible is there.
My science section is a-building: Wolfram, Gleick, Heisenberg, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, and (new accessions!!!) Roger Penrose, Evan Harris Walker, Christopher Wills....
I have Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Also Vilfredo Pareto's Mind and Society.
This bookshelf is relatively poetry and plays "lite": But T.S. Eliot and John Donne are there; also a collection of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Also Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. The plays: T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Aeschylus' Orestiea, and a collection of Moliere (he just cracks me up!).
I have most of the C.S. Lewis (my favorites: The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce) and G. E. K. Chesterton titles (I love his biographies of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis of Assisi).
It's "fiction-lite", too. Only truly beloved titles are there, including Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed, The Idiot); the collected works of Jane Austin; Boccaccio's Decameron; Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur; also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Also one of the greatest autobiographies ever written (IMHO) is there: Whittaker Chambers' Witness, as well as Sam Tannenbaum's excellent critical biography of Chambers.
I think that's about it. Pretty eclectic, no?!
Thanks for asking, A-G. Hugs!
I should have said "primo" bookcase, which sits in my living room. (The major part of my library is located in another part of the house.) It's the one that I use for my most cherished books. It's a sort of "grab bag," the sort of thing you'd expect of a generalist of conservative tendencies. Your asking me what's on it gives me a welcome chance to "flog" my favorite books! :^)
There's lots of Eric Voegelin (I'm collecting all his titles over time) and Plato. There's a rather large "Americana" section: works of the Framers (e.g., collected letters of T. Jefferson, Federalist); plus the new John Adams biography; a few years back I was collecting sources of the Framers' thought (e.g., Locke, Hume, Burke, Milton's Areopagitica, Trenchard and Gordon's Cato's Letters). They're all there still. Also critical studies of the founding period by Bernard Baylin (e.g., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and The Ideological Origins of American Politics). I have the Autobiography of U.S. Grant (a first edition!), the collected writings of John Calhoun, including his masterful Disquisition on Government.
Then there are writers on American and Western culture, such as Russell Kirk (The Roots of American Order), Richard Weaver (The Southern Tradition at Bay), the Vanderbilt Agrarians (I'll Take My Stand), A. J. Nock (Our Enemy, the State), Frank Chodorov (Fugitive Essays) Jacques Barzun, James Burnham (esp. Suicide of the West); lots of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. I only have two works on economics on these shelves: Ludwig von Mises (Human Action) and Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy).
Other than Voegelin, Plato, Aristotle, and the Framers' sources, the only other philosophers there: Alasdair McIntyre's After Virtue. Theology: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, Francis Schaffer (Trilogy), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and books by or about Pope John Paul II (including the fine Carl Bernstein biography). Of course, the King James Bible is there.
My science section is a-building: Wolfram, Gleick, Heisenberg, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, and (new accessions!!!) Roger Penrose, Evan Harris Walker, Christopher Wills....
I have Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Also Vilfredo Pareto's Mind and Society.
This bookshelf is relatively poetry and plays "lite": But T.S. Eliot and John Donne are there; also a collection of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Also Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. The plays: T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Aeschylus' Orestiea, and a collection of Moliere (he just cracks me up!).
I have most of the C.S. Lewis (my favorites: The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce) and G. E. K. Chesterton titles (I love his biographies of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis of Assisi).
It's "fiction-lite", too. Only truly beloved titles are there, including Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed, The Idiot); the collected works of Jane Austin; Boccaccio's Decameron; Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur; also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Also one of the greatest autobiographies ever written (IMHO) is there: Whittaker Chambers' Witness, as well as Sam Tannenbaum's excellent critical biography of Chambers.
I think that's about it. Pretty eclectic, no?!
Thanks for asking, A-G. Hugs!