off the BOOKshelf

Volume 1

• The Great Conversation

Volume 2

• Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love

Volume 3

• Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World

Volume 4

• Homer (rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler)
  • The Iliad
  • The Odyssey

Volume 5

• Aeschylus (translated into English verse by G.M. Cookson)
  • The Suppliant Maidens
  • The Persians
  • Seven Against Thebes
  • Prometheus Bound
  • The Oresteia
    • Agamemnon
    • Choephoroe
    • The Eumenides
• Sophocles (translated into English prose by Sir Richard C. Jebb)
  • The Oedipus Cycle
    • Oedipus the King
    • Oedipus at Colonus
    • Antigone
  • Ajax
  • Electra
  • The Trachiniae
  • Philoctetes
• Euripides (translated into English prose by Edward P. Coleridge)
  • Rhesus
  • Medea
  • Hippolytus
  • Alcestis
  • Heracleidae
  • The Suppliants
  • Trojan Women
  • Ion
  • Helen
  • Andromache
  • Electra
  • Bacchantes
  • Hecuba
  • Heracles Mad
  • Phoenician Women
  • Orestes
  • Iphigeneia in Tauris
  • Iphigeneia at Aulis
  • Cyclops
• Aristophanes (translated into English verse by Benjamin Bickley Rogers)
  • The Acharnians
  • The Knights
  • The Clouds
  • The Wasps
  • Peace
  • The Birds
  • The Frogs
  • Lysistrata
  • Thesmophoriazusae
  • Ecclesiazousae
  • Plutus

Volume 6

• Herodotus
  • The History (translated by George Rawlinson)
• Thucydides
  • History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Richard Crawley and revised by R. Feetham)

Volume 7

• Plato
  • The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin Jowett)
    • Charmides
    • Lysis
    • Laches
    • Protagoras
    • Euthydemus
    • Cratylus
    • Phaedrus
    • Ion
    • Symposium
    • Meno
    • Euthyphro
    • Apology
    • Crito
    • Phaedo
    • Gorgias
    • The Republic
    • Timaeus
    • Critias
    • Parmenides
    • Theaetetus
    • Sophist
    • Statesman
    • Philebus
    • Laws
  • The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Volume 8

• Aristotle
  • Categories
  • On Interpretation
  • Prior Analytics
  • Posterior Analytics
  • Topics
  • Sophistical Refutations
  • Physics
  • On the Heavens
  • On Generation and Corruption
  • Meteorology
  • Metaphysics
  • On the Soul
  • Minor biological works

Volume 9

• Aristotle
  • History of Animals
  • Parts of Animals
  • On the Motion of Animals
  • On the Gait of Animals
  • On the Generation of Animals
  • Nicomachean Ethics
  • Politics
  • The Athenian Constitution
  • Rhetoric
  • Poetics

Volume 10

• Hippocrates
  • Works
• Galen
  • On the Natural Faculties

Volume 11

• Euclid
  • The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements
• Archimedes
  • On the Sphere and Cylinder
  • Measurement of a Circle
  • On Conoids and Spheroids
  • On Spirals
  • On the Equilibrium of Planes
  • The Sand Reckoner
  • The Quadrature of the Parabola
  • On Floating Bodies
  • Book of Lemmas
  • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
• Apollonius of Perga
  • On Conic Sections
• Nicomachus of Gerasa
  • Introduction to Arithmetic

Volume 12

• Lucretius
  • On the Nature of Things (translated by H.A.J. Munro)
• Epictetus
  • The Discourses (translated by George Long)
• Marcus Aurelius
  • The Meditations (translated by George Long)

Volume 13

• Virgil
  • Eclogues
  • Georgics
  • Aeneid

Volume 14

• Plutarch
  • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Volume 15

• P. Cornelius Tacitus (translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
  • The Annals
  • The Histories

Volume 16

• Ptolemy
  • Almagest, part 1 (translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro)
• Nicolaus Copernicus
  • On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
• Johannes Kepler (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
  • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV–V)
  • The Harmonies of the World (Book V)

Volume 17

• Plotinus
  • The Six Enneads

Volume 18

• Augustine of Hippo
  • The Confessions
  • The City of God
  • On Christian Doctrine

Volume 19

• Thomas Aquinas
  • Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)

Volume 20

• Thomas Aquinas
  • Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)

Volume 21

• Dante Alighieri
  • The Divine Comedy (Translated by Charles Eliot Norton)

Volume 22

• Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Troilus and Criseyde
  • The Canterbury Tales

Volume 23

• Niccolò Machiavelli
  • The Prince
• Thomas Hobbes
  • Leviathan

Volume 24

• François Rabelais
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel

Volume 25

• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
  • Essays

Volume 26

• William Shakespeare
  • The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Tragedy of Richard the Third
  • The Comedy of Errors
  • Titus Andronicus
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • The Life and Death of King John
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
  • Julius Caesar
  • As You Like It

Volume 27

• William Shakespeare
  • Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
  • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Troilus and Cressida
  • All’s Well That Ends Well
  • Measure for Measure
  • Othello, the Moor of Venice
  • King Lear
  • Macbeth
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • Coriolanus
  • Timon of Athens
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • Cymbeline
  • The Winter’s Tale
  • The Tempest
  • The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
  • Sonnets

Volume 28

• William Gilbert
  • On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
• Galileo Galilei
  • Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
• William Harvey
  • On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
  • On the Circulation of Blood
  • On the Generation of Animals

Volume 29

• Miguel de Cervantes
  • The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha

Volume 30

• Sir Francis Bacon
  • The Advancement of Learning
  • Novum Organum
  • New Atlantis

Volume 31

• René Descartes
  • Rules for the Direction of the Mind
  • Discourse on the Method
  • Meditations on First Philosophy
  • Objections Against the Meditations and Replies
  • The Geometry
• Benedict de Spinoza
  • Ethics

Volume 32

• John Milton
  • English Minor Poems
  • Paradise Lost
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Areopagitica

Volume 33

• Blaise Pascal
  • The Provincial Letters
  • Pensées
  • Scientific and mathematical essays

Volume 34

• Sir Isaac Newton
  • Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
  • Optics
• Christian Huygens
  • Treatise on Light

Volume 35

• John Locke
  • A Letter Concerning Toleration
  • Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• George Berkeley
  • The Principles of Human Knowledge
• David Hume
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Volume 36

• Jonathan Swift
  • Gulliver’s Travels
• Laurence Sterne
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Volume 37

• Henry Fielding
  • The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Volume 38

• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
  • The Spirit of the Laws
• Jean Jacques Rousseau
  • A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
  • A Discourse on Political Economy
  • The Social Contract

Volume 39

• Adam Smith
  • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Volume 40

• Edward Gibbon
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 1)

Volume 41

• Edward Gibbon
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2)

Volume 42

• Immanuel Kant
  • Critique of Pure Reason
  • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
  • Critique of Practical Reason
  • Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals
    • Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Conscience
    • General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
    • The Science of Right
  • The Critique of Judgement

Volume 43

• American State Papers
  • Declaration of Independence
  • Articles of Confederation
  • The Constitution of the United States of America
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
  • The Federalist
• John Stuart Mill
  • On Liberty
  • Considerations on Representative Government
  • Utilitarianism

Volume 44

• James Boswell
  • The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Volume 45

• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
  • Elements of Chemistry
• Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
  • Analytical Theory of Heat
• Michael Faraday
  • Experimental Researches in Electricity

Volume 46

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • The Philosophy of Right
  • The Philosophy of History

Volume 47

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Faust

Volume 48

• Herman Melville
  • Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Volume 49

• Charles Darwin
  • The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
  • The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Volume 50

• Karl Marx
  • Capital
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  • Manifesto of the Communist Party

Volume 51

• Count Leo Tolstoy
  • War and Peace

Volume 52

• Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
  • The Brothers Karamazov

Volume 53

• William James
  • The Principles of Psychology

Volume 54

• Sigmund Freud
  • The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
  • Selected Papers on Hysteria
  • The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
  • The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
  • Observations on “Wild” Psycho-Analysis
  • The Interpretation of Dreams
  • On Narcissism
  • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
  • Repression
  • The Unconscious
  • A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle
  • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
  • The Ego and the Id
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
  • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
  • Civilization and Its Discontents
  • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

Second edition

The second edition of Great Books of the Western World, 1990, saw an increase from 54 to 60 volumes, with updated translations. The six new volumes concerned the 20th century, an era of which the first edition’s sole representative was Freud. Some of the other volumes were re-arranged, with even more pre-20th century material added but with four texts deleted: Apollonius’ On Conic Sections, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Joseph Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler later expressed regret about dropping On Conic Sections and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the addition of Voltaire’s Candide, and said that the Syntopicon should have included references to the Koran. He addressed criticisms that the set was too heavily Western European and did not adequately represent women and minority authors.^[6]

The added pre-20th century texts appear in these volumes (some of the accompanying content of these volumes differs from the first edition volume of that number):

Volume 20

• John Calvin
  • Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)

Volume 23

• Erasmus
  • The Praise of Folly

Volume 31

• Molière
  • The School for Wives
  • The Critique of the School for Wives
  • Tartuffe
  • Don Juan
  • The Miser
  • The Would-Be Gentleman
  • The Imaginary Invalid
• Jean Racine
  • Bérénice
  • Phèdre

Volume 34

• Voltaire
  • Candide
• Denis Diderot
  • Rameau’s Nephew

Volume 43

• Søren Kierkegaard
  • Fear and Trembling
• Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Beyond Good and Evil

Volume 44

• Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Democracy in America

Volume 45

• Honoré de Balzac
  • Cousin Bette

Volume 46

• Jane Austen
  • Emma
• George Eliot
  • Middlemarch

Volume 47

• Charles Dickens
  • Little Dorrit

Volume 48

• Mark Twain
  • Huckleberry Finn

Volume 52

• Henrik Ibsen
  • A Doll’s House
  • The Wild Duck
  • Hedda Gabler
  • The Master Builder

The contents of the six volumes of added 20th-century material:

Volume 55

• William James
  • Pragmatism
• Henri Bergson
  • “An Introduction to Metaphysics“
• John Dewey
  • Experience and Education
• Alfred North Whitehead
  • Science and the Modern World
• Bertrand Russell
  • The Problems of Philosophy
• Martin Heidegger
  • What Is Metaphysics?
• Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • Philosophical Investigations
• Karl Barth
  • The Word of God and the Word of Man

Volume 56

• Henri Poincaré
  • Science and Hypothesis
• Max Planck
  • Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
• Alfred North Whitehead
  • An Introduction to Mathematics
• Albert Einstein
  • Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
• Arthur Eddington
  • The Expanding Universe
• Niels Bohr
  • Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections)
  • Discussion with Einstein on Epistemology
• G. H. Hardy
  • A Mathematician’s Apology
• Werner Heisenberg
  • Physics and Philosophy
• Erwin Schrödinger
  • What Is Life?
• Theodosius Dobzhansky
  • Genetics and the Origin of Species
• C. H. Waddington
  • The Nature of Life

Volume 57

• Thorstein Veblen
  • The Theory of the Leisure Class
• R. H. Tawney
  • The Acquisitive Society
• John Maynard Keynes
  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Volume 58

• Sir James George Frazer
  • The Golden Bough (selections)
• Max Weber
  • Essays in Sociology (selections)
• Johan Huizinga
  • The Autumn of the Middle Ages
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
  • Structural Anthropology (selections)

Volume 59

• Henry James
  • The Beast in the Jungle
• George Bernard Shaw
  • Saint Joan
• Joseph Conrad
  • Heart of Darkness
• Anton Chekhov
  • Uncle Vanya
• Luigi Pirandello
  • Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Marcel Proust
  • Remembrance of Things Past: “Swann in Love“
• Willa Cather
  • A Lost Lady
• Thomas Mann
  • Death in Venice
• James Joyce
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Volume 60

• Virginia Woolf
  • To the Lighthouse
• Franz Kafka
  • The Metamorphosis
• D. H. Lawrence
  • The Prussian Officer
• T. S. Eliot
  • The Waste Land
• Eugene O’Neill
  • Mourning Becomes Electra
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Great Gatsby
• William Faulkner
  • A Rose for Emily
• Bertolt Brecht
  • Mother Courage and Her Children
• Ernest Hemingway
  • The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
• George Orwell
  • Animal Farm
• Samuel Beckett
  • Waiting for Godot

Vincent O’Malley books
The Beating Heart with David Armstrong
The Meeting Place (Maori & Pakeha Encounters 2642-1840)
The Treaty of Waitangi Companion with Bruce Stirling & Wally Penetito
Beyond the Imperial Frontier

Kevin Boon Developments in NZ series
The Maori Before the Europeans Came to NZ
James Cook & Other European Explorers
Whalers & Sealers
Missionaries & Traders
The Colonies
The Gold Rushes
The Treaty of Waitangi
The Land Wars
Dawn of the Twentieth Century (1899-1914)
The Liberals
Development of Farming
Roads & Railways
The Forests

Kevin Boon books
EVENTS: NZ Earthquakes * Napier Earthquake * Great Depression * Influenza Epidemic * Abbotsford Landslide * Wellington Flood * Tarawera Eruption * White Island Eruption * Wahine Disaster * Ballantyne’s Fire * Tangiwai Rail Disaster * Anzac Day (info on all wars)
PEOPLE: Maui Pomare * James Cook * Whina Cooper * Peter Buck * James K. Baxter * Norman Kirk * Jon Trimmer * Janet Frame * Yvette Williams * Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan * All Blacks * Edmund Hillary * Frances Hodgkins * Kiri To Kanawa * Kate Shepperd * George Nepia * Charles Upham * Robert Muldoon * Catherine Tizard * Princess Te Puea * Richard Hadlee * Peter Buck * Malvina Major * Ngaio Marsh * Katherine Mansfield * Guide Rangi * Ernest Rutherford * Inia Te Wiata * Bernard Freyberg * Apirana Ngata * Jean Batten

Picture Books
The House That Jack Built by Gavin Bishop
Katarina by Gavin Bishop (in Maori, gorgeous illustrations)
Matatuhi by Robyn Kahukiwa
Old Will by Alison Sutherland (true story of a goat)

Other
Two Peoples, One Land by Elsie Locke (especially for young readers)
Jessie Jenkin’s Diary by Kathryn Rountree (1841-42 sailing from England to NZ)
Rebecca and the Queen of Nations by Deborah Burnside (1874) – not read
Hene and the Burning Harbour by Paula Morris (1845) – not read
The End of the Harbour by Elsie Locke
The Story of New Zealand by Judith Bassett, Keith Sinclair and Marcia Stenson
Anzac Day The New Zealand Story by Philippa Werry (a lot of photos and realia)
Te Ao o Te Maori/ The World of the Maori by Ruth Naumann and Frank Winiatia (project book designed to be used in NZ curriculum)

African Literature:

Prester John by John Buchan

Star of Light by Patricia St John

The Shadows of Ghadames by Joelle Stolz

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Jungle Doctor books by Paul White

Journey to Jo’berg by Beverley Naidoo

African Myths and Folktales by Carter Godwin Woodson

Sama by Rene Guillot

A Pride of African Tales by Donna L. Washington

African Stories retold by Robert Hull

An Extra Special Book We Read Aloud:

Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis

Another two months, another continent. Actually this time we have wandered around Africa and zipped over to the Middle East as well.

We have had a lot of fun with African sunset pictures with silhouette people stuck onto the backgrounds – multiple copies were made for us and then some more were made to send with our latest letters to our sponsored children in Togo. We have played some African games, were supposed to see African animals at the zoo (but we haven’t made it there yet) and have drawn maps and written a variety of pieces – stories, articles, biographies, fundraising speeches (not everyone has done everything).

As far as the African culinary exploits go, they have been decidedly NOT favourites – nothing wrong with the recipes, but just not anything we’d bother doing again. But I imagine even they will be sought after once the family discovers my plans for this week – I’m handing out the UN rations for a refugee in Sudan and that’s what they’ll have to cook with for the next few days!
Not all learning happens in books, you know. But here are the picture books we have dipped into…..(other ones will follow in another post because wordpress is playing silly games)

African picture books:

Papa, Do you Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse

Handa’s Hen and Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne

So That’s What God is Like! by Leanne Hardy

One Hen

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

The Butter Man by Elixabeth Alalou and Ali Alalou

Hands Around the Library by Susan L. Roth and Karen Leggett Abouraya

At the Crossroads by Rachel Isadora

Mandela by Floyd Cooper

A Country Far Away by Nigel Gray

Travelling Man by James Rumford