Ten Books Every Student Should Read in College

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | Week of June 2, 2003 | 28 distinguished scholars and university professors

[Remedy]

The editors of HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 28 distinguished scholars and university professors to serve as judges in developing a list of Ten Books Every Student Should Read in College.

To derive the list, each scholar first nominated titles. When all the nominations were collected-they amounted to more than 100 titles-HUMAN EVENTS then sent a ballot to the scholars asking each to list his or her Top Ten selections. A book was awarded ten points for receiving a No. 1 rating, 9 points for receiving a No. 2 rating, and so on. The ten books with the highest aggregate ratings made the list. We have also compiled an Honorable Mention list.

Interestingly enough, the No. 1 book our judges decided every college student should read is a volume that has been virtually banned in public schools by the United States Supreme Court.

1. The Bible

Score: 116
Written: c. 1446 B.C. to c. A.D. 95

The Bible, the central work of Western Civilization, defines the relationship between God and man, and forms the foundation of faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet, today it is virtually banned in America's public primary and secondary schools-meaning many American students may not encounter the most important book of all time in a classroom setting until they reach college.

2. The Federalist Papers

Score: 106
Authors: Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
Written: October 1787 to May 1788

Written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers first appeared in several New York state newspapers as a series of 85 essays published under the nom de plume "Publius" from the fall of 1787 to the spring of 1788.

The purpose of The Federalist Papers was to garner support for the newly created Constitution. At the time the states were bound together under the Articles of Confederation, but the weakness of the Articles necessitated the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Once the Constitution was drafted, nine states were required to ratify it, so Hamilton, Jay, and Madison took up the effort to persuade skeptics. Because Hamilton and Madison were both members of the Constitutional Convention, their writings are instructive in divining the original intent of those who drafted the Constitution.

According to the Library of Congress, the first bound edition of The Federalist Papers was published in 1788 with revisions and corrections by Hamilton. A bound edition with revisions and corrections by Madison published in 1818 was the first to identify the authors of each essay.

3. Democracy in America

Score: 80
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Written: 1835

A left-leaning Frenchman who visited America in 1831, de Tocqueville produced an incisive portrait of American political and social life in the early 19th Century. He praised the democratic ideals and private virtues of the American people but warned against what he saw as the tyrannical tendency of public opinion. Visiting during the heyday of slavery, de Tocqueville foresaw the troubles racial questions would pose for the country. He also was early in observing that judicial power had a tendency to usurp the political in the United States. He also wrote of the difficulties inherent in the egalitarian sentiment then gaining strength in America. "However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit," he said.

4. The Divine Comedy

Score: 57
Author: Dante Alighieri
Written: A.D. 1306-1321

One of the most frequently cited poems of all time, this epic allegory is an amalgam of Dante's views of science, theology, astronomy, and philosophy. In it Dante recounts his imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, during which he realizes his hatred for his sin and becomes a changed man by the grace of God.

The work contains three sections-"Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso." In "Inferno," Dante journeys through Hell, led by the soul of the Roman poet Virgil. He describes Hell as a funnel-shaped pit divided into nine circles, each one a place for those people guilty of a particular sin, with suffering increasing as he descends to the bottom where Satan himself dwells.

In "Purgatorio," Dante travels with Virgil up the Mount of Purgatory. Ten terraces make up the Mount and the process of purification for its occupants is arduous as they climb from terrace to terrace. When Dante and Virgil pass the final terrace, they glimpse Paradise where Beatrice, Dante's first love, awaits and Virgil is forced to depart.

In "Paradiso," Beatrice guides Dante through the various levels of Paradise. At the highest level, Empyrean, where God, Mary, and many of the angels and saints abide, Dante views the light of God, which leaves him speechless and changed.

5. The Republic

Score: 55
Author: Plato
Written: c. 360 B.C.

The Republic is likely the most important work of the most important and influential philosopher who ever lived. The writings of Plato, a disciple of Socrates in ancient Athens, provide the foundation of abstract thought for all of Western Civilization, and The Republic contains expositions of various theories of justice, the state and society, and the soul. Is justice a matter of being helpful to those who help you and harmful to those who harm you? Or is it simply the "interest of the stronger," defined by those who govern the rest of us, as post-modern leftists would have it? How should society be organized? How is the human soul structured? How may we arrive at truth? The first author in history to deal with such questions in systematic rational argument, Plato contrasts the ideal society with reality in a way later echoed in the City of God (No. 7) by St. Augustine-who explored his own soul in his Confessions (No. 9). Plato describes the first totalitarian utopia as part of his argument, the first of many thinkers to do so. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought."

6. The Politics

Score: 54
Author: Aristotle
Written: Fourth Century, B.C.

Aristotle, the most famous student of Plato, is one of the few men who managed to be highly appreciated both in his own time (he was hired to tutor Alexander the Great) and by posterity. His philosophy continues to form the backbone of Western thought. Much of his writing was lost for centuries, but its recovery helped Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th Century, and later political philosophers, develop the concept of natural law that became central to the Anglo-American understanding of just and limited government. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson cited Aristotle as an inspiration for the Declaration of Independence.

In the Politics, Aristotle examines the formation and composition of civil society more simply and effectively than perhaps anyone since. Beginning with a complete accounting of the elements in the basic unit of society-the oikos or family home-the philosopher expands outward to discuss the larger unit of human existence, the city-state-or polis-in the same terms.

7. Nicomachaean Ethics

Score: 52
Author: Aristotle
Written: Fourth Century, B.C.

The Ethics is a collection of notes from Aristotle's lectures, taken by his student Nicomachus. The Ethics' elegant inductive arguments, developed hundreds of years before the Christian era, proved that man can indeed understand the basic concepts of good and evil without the aid of Divine Revelation-a fact that many leftists are unwilling to accept in their quest to destroy respect for objective rules of right and wrong.

Unlike today's secularists, Aristotle saw clearly that all human beings have a built-in need to pursue happiness through behaving properly. Aristotle analyzes why not all human actions lead to happiness, and reveals how a man's daily choices between good and evil result in the habits of virtue or vice. Virtuous action, he concludes, makes men happy, whereas vice does not.

7. City of God

Score: 52
Author: St. Augustine of Hippo
Written: A.D. 413-426

The City of God ranks as history's most influential writing by a theologian. Augustine, the cultured bishop of an ancient Roman city in North Africa, created a philosophy of history that answered the argument of pagans who blamed the decline of Rome on the rise of Christianity. (Rome had first been sacked in 410.) Augustine explained human history in terms of Divine Providence and asserted that the Church would bring human history to its final consummation. At that consummation, the two "cities" that remained intermingled on Earth-the pure, virtuous city of God and the sinful, flawed city of man-would be separated into two. Augustine argued that the sinful practices of the pagan Romans helped prompt God to allow the Eternal City's capture by barbarians. Augustine firmly implants teleology-the Aristotelian idea that all things have an ultimate purpose-into history just as previous Christian thinkers had adopted teleology to explain God's plan for individual human beings. For Augustine, all of human history points toward a divine purpose.

9. Confessions

Score: 47
Author: St. Augustine of Hippo
Written: c. A.D. 400

The Confessions is Augustine's spiritual autobiography. Addressed to God, the book bares the author's soul. Here Augustine explains the history of his life in terms of Divine Providence, much as in the City of God he explained the history of Rome. He owns up to the sins that pulled him away from faith despite the exertions of his intensely devout mother, St. Monica. In the course of describing both his exterior and interior life, Augustine reiterates the Christian philosophy of the human person expounded by St. Paul in his epistles. He describes the interplay among passion, will, and reason and attempts to explain why men do evil when they know better.

10. Reflections on the Revolution in France

Score: 44
Author: Edmund Burke
Written: 1790

An Irish-born British politician of the late 18th Century, who was popular in America because of his opposition to taxing the colonies, Burke holds a prominent place in the history of English-speaking conservatives. Indeed, in The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk singled him out as the first modern conservative intellectual.

Burke's early and energetic disapproval of the French Revolution proved prophetic in light of the Reign of Terror that followed. A champion of the inherent wisdom of long-settled traditions, Burke argued that by violently ripping up their nation's institutions root and branch, the French had assured themselves years of chaos.

If changes had to be made in France, he argued, could not the tried-and-true be kept and only the bad discarded? "Is it, then, true," he asked, "that the French government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of reform, so that it was of absolute necessity that the whole fabric should be at once pulled down and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic, experimental edifice in its place?"

[ml/nj]

So I guess the bottom line is that you just read about Cornell, and I as a conservative American adult have visited and sat in on classes there. But you know better, and I must be too stupid to put this in simple enough terms for you to understand.

Maybe you should get a job for the New York Times? You could even dateline your columns, "Ithaca" !

ML/NJ

[Remedy]

Amazon.com: Books: Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted

A review of 'The Hollow Men' by Charles Sykes.

Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It

Authors: Jerry L. Martin, Ph.D., President, ACTA

Anne D. Neal, Executive Director, ACTA

 It was not only America that was attacked on September 11, but civilization. We were attacked not for our vices, but for our virtues-for what we stand for. In response, ACTA has established the Defense of Civilization Fund to support the study of American history and civics and of Western civilization. The first project of the Fund is Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It. The report calls on college and university trustees to make sure their institutions offer strong core curricula that pass on to the next generation the legacy of freedom and democracy.

---

Grove City College - Authentically Christian, Challenging

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has compiled this Portfolio of Excellence to help
alumni and other donors identify outstanding programs and organizations that they may want to
support. ACTA's Fund for Academic Renewal helps donors direct their gifts to existing or newly-created
programs and activities.

Enclosed you will find examples of exemplary higher education projects across the country. There
is no attempt to be exhaustive. Projects are included on the basis of descriptions provided to ACTA
and have not been independently verified.

GREAT BOOKS and LIBERAL ARTS

Auburn University

Austin Peay State University

Bethel College

California Institute of Technology

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Claremont McKenna College

Clemson University .

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Gardner-Webb University .

Hillsdale College

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Louisiana State University at Shreveport

Loyola University of Chicago

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St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco

St. John's College .

Temple University

Theodore Roosevelt School at Medaille College

Thomas Aquinas College

The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts .

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University of Montevallo

University of Wisconsin .

Wilbur Wright College

II. HONORS COLLEGES

Adelphi University

James Madison College at Michigan State University .

III. CORE CURRICULA

Boston University

Brooklyn College

St. Anselm College

St. Olaf College .

University of Dallas

University of North Carolina at Asheville

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

IV. AMERICAN IDEALS AND LIBERTY

Duke University .

The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions Ð

Princeton University .

James Madison Program of the Sabre Foundation

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V. PHILOSOPHY

Bowling Green State University .

Harvard University

Indiana University .

Missouri Baptist College

VI. ECONOMICS

Auburn University Ð College of Business

[AdamSelene235]

It was customary for the writers of that era to use pen names. Hamilton had a variety of them: Continentalist, Julius Caesar,

How modest.

He, Madison and Jay all use Publicus for the FP. He was not trying to hide his identity and anyone who was interested knew who was writing them.

Really, how many cases can you document?

There is also the little issue of Hamilton fraudulently claiming credit for 63 numbers of the Federalist, some of them plainly written by Madison.

Patrick Henry was not a nationalist and did not want a government strong enough to create a more perfect union. After a great start he too wound up on History's Loser List.

I very much doubt Patrick is concerned with your opinion. What exactly does a "more perfect union" mean? For me a free society will suffice, others equate the ability to control and dominate others with "greatness".

[Paulus Invictus]

Who was Atals and why did he shrug? Mysterious!

[LanPB01]

He was the twin brother of Atlas. He shrugged whenever a tpying error was committed.

[NerdDad]

Ping for your freshman reading list.

[LonghornFreeper]

Thats funny stuff, really. Theology is the most important topic for Christians, myself included, but it is not a science. As for philosophy being a higher science, and more important that the "lesser" (i.e. real) sciences, tell that to all the philosophy majors who now work at Walmart and all the Engineers making six figure salaries. Aristotle's policy of all thinking, no experiment lead to brilliant thoughts like heavy objects fall faster than light objects, heat comes from "caloric", and the earth is the center of the solar system.

[LonghornFreeper]

I definately agree that you need to know the Bible, that is why I said many of the books. You can do everything you mentioned without knowing the philosophies of Plato, or Augustine, or Dante (trust me, I have done those things, and I haven't read any of the books on the list except the Bible and the Federalist papers). If you didn't have the sciences, there would be no cars take on dates, or bikes for that matter, and your children would be far less healthy without biology and medicine.

[LonghornFreeper]

I agree that Luther made some errors, but not on the scale of the Catholic church and its blatant violation of multiple sections of the Bible, such as praying to saints, worshipping someone other than God (Mary), and randomly deciding that Priests must be celibate, when the Bible clearly states that church leaders can be "the husband of but one wife".

[Remedy]

substitutions, rearrangement?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Please, Aesop's fables are current and instructive because they condense human folly and behavior to a few paragraphs totally unlike Rand's collection of sermons dressed up as fiction. Beliveable characters are the first requirement of good fiction. Her's don't have that quality.

No non-religious society will ever resist socialism. Rand's lack of religioius understanding prevents her from understanding how people think and the reasons they act. Atheists cannot have a clue about law and justice since they do not understand the human heart. Law can be based on nothing but force in the world without God.

Belief in God is the strongest motivation and most effective force against the socialism Rand hated so much but she undermines her strongest ally. Surely she understood why the commies made the Church its first enemy yet she ignores that.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Antis were opposed to a federal system and preferred one dominated by the states as it was under the confederation.
Nationalists understood the need for a strong Union, having just fought a war to gain nationhood. State-righters preferred to think in small terms and concentrate on their local corrupt political machines which they could control rather than be concerned about a large nation which would not be susceptible to their bribery and spoils systems. Their victory would have meant the death of the United States of America.

Most of the anti-federalist papers are of little use at all, some are positively lunatic in their paranoia and hysteria. Reading the titles are sufficient to realize they would not stand against thinkers like Hamilton and Madison.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Since H. was replying to Cato (George Clinton) - Julius Caesar was an appropriate choice of names. In view of his end, it was not a little ironic.

Hamilton indeed wrote 2/3 of the papers most authorities agree. He wrote about 15 of those in conjunction with Madison. Jay wrote 5. Madison could not write with anything like the speed of H., the greatest newspaper columnist of his day. His words were read by more people over a long period of time than any of his contemporaries. Had Madison been required to take a greater role the series would never have reached 85 essays.

Hamilton understood, unlike his enemies, that freedom needed a bulwark to survive and that history had repeatedly shown that it failed to survive when that fortress was missing. That was the goal behind his policies.

Had our first president been one of the democrat-republicans rather than Washington I have no doubt the nation would not have survived. Or if it had it would have been destroyed by a Confederate victory and the loser would have been mankind as a whole.

[E Rocc]

Interestingly enough, the No. 1 book our judges decided every college student should read is a volume that has been virtually banned in public schools by the United States Supreme Court.

That's entirely false. The Bible may be read by students during free time including study hall, and may be studied as literature or a historically significant document. It may not be presented as divinely imspired or read devotionally during classroom time in public schools. That's all.

-Eric

[E Rocc]

Oddly enough, I was forced to read Ayn Rand in High School and hated it. I don't get all the Ayn Rand worshipers on this forum who says Rand "converted" them to conservative thought. I was conservative long before Rand and her novel Anthem put me to sleep, Orwell wrote on the same theme and did it much better instead of hitting you over the head with it.

Heinlein did more to make me a conservative than Rand did, and many of his books are more teen-friendly.

-Eric

[mware]

Here was the spring reading list for St. John's of Annapolis

2003 January Freshmen Reading List.

Homer, Iliad.

Homer, Odyssey.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Thucydides, Peloponnesian War.

Plato, Gorgias.

Plato, Meno.

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.

Plutarch, Lives; Lycurgus; Solon

SPRING BREAK

Plato, Republic.

Aristophanes, The Clouds

Plato, Apology, Crito

Plato, Phaedo

Plato, Symposium

Sophocles, Antigone

Plato, Theaetetus

Plato, Sophist

SECOND SEMESTER

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle, Politics

Sophocles, Philoctetes

Aristotle, Poetics

Plato, Timaeus

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

Aristotle, Physics

Euripides, Hippolytus

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Plato, Phaedrus

Now that is what I call an education!!!!!

[Desdemona]

ping

[rdb3]

The Prince -- Niccolo Machiavelli

The Art of War -- Niccolo Machiavelli

The Art of War -- Sun Tzu

The Book of Five Rings -- Go Rin No Sho

The Illiad & The Odyssey -- Homer

The Canterbury Tales -- Chaucer

The bombing starts in five minutes.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Among about 1000 others...

Additions:

Ellis, Edward S., A.M. and Horne, Charles F., M.S., Ph.D. The Story of the Greatest Nations. New York: Francis R. Niglutsch, 1907.

Heilman, Robert B. Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York : Penguin, 1989.

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday, 1968.

Lenson, David. Achilles’ Choice, Examples of Modern Tragedy. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Lewis, William Dodge, A.M., Ph.D., Litt.D., Henry Seidel Canby, Ph.D., Thomas Kite Brown, Jr., Ph.D.; Eds. The Winston Simplified Dictionary. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1927.

Nave, Orville J., A.M., D.D., LL.D., chaplain in the Army of the United States. Nave's Topical Bible; A Digest of the Holy Scriptures. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1897.

Naville, Edouard, trans. Egyptian Book of the Dead of the XVIII to XX Dynasties, Berlin,
1886.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Rpr. First Vintage Books Edition, September 1991, New York.

Paglia, Camille. Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s. http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm (An expanded version of a lecture delivered on 26 March 2002 at Yale University, sponsored by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale.)

Potts, L.J. Aristotle on the Art of Fiction. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

Rand, Ayn. The Ayn Rand Lexicon. Ed. Harry Binswanger. New York: Penguin, 1988.

Tannahill, Reay. Sex in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1980.

Velikovsky, Immanuel. Oedipus and Akhnaten; Myth and History. New York: Doubleday, 1960.

West, Willis Mason. The Ancient World. Revised edition. New York: Allyn and Bacon,
1913.

Williams, Raymond. Modern Tragedy, Essays on the idea of tragedy in life and in the drama, and on modern tragic writing from Ibsen to Tennessee Williams. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

[x]

A fine list. I'm only now coming to realize how important Aristotle was for the Western mind. If I were going to add something, I'd say Shakespeare and some Greek tragedy. Philosophers, theologians, and scientists can explain how the world works. Poets, though, can show us how it often doesn't. The ancient conviction of order, unity, harmony and permanence can be the touchstone of our view of the world, but we also need the modern knowledge of disorder, multiplicity, variety and change to understand it.