*NATIONAL BESTSELLER* “A lively adventure of the mind...The tone of the prose...is one of unqualified enthusiasm: energy, vigor, intellectual curiosity, and what might be called an ecstasy of imaginative journalism.” —The New York Times Book Review At the age of forty-eight, writer and film critic David Denby returned to Columbia University and re-enrolled in two core courses in Western civilization to confront the literary and philosophical masterpieces -- the "great books" -- that are now at the heart of the culture wars. In Great Books, he leads us on a glorious tour, a rediscovery and celebration of such authors as Homer and Boccaccio, Locke and Nietzsche. Conrad and Woolf. The resulting personal odyssey is an engaging blend of self-discovery, cultural commentary, reporting, criticism, and autobiography -- an inspiration for anyone in love with the written word.

DigiCat presents to you this unique collection, designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Les Misérables (Victor Hugo) The Call of the Wild (Jack London) Walden (Henry David Thoreau) Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy) Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) Art of War (Sun Tzu) Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol) Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) Dona Perfecta (Benito Pérez Galdós) A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore) The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous) Life is a Dream (Pedro Calderon de la Barca) The Divine Comedy (Dante) Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio) The Prince (Machiavelli) Arabian Nights Hamlet (Shakespeare) Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) Ulysses (James Joyce) Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw) Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott) Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) Peter and Wendy (J. M. Barrie) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe) Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery) Iliad & Odyssey (Homer) The Republic (Plato) Faust, a Tragedy (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo) The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire) The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) The Poison Tree (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee) Shakuntala (Kalidasa) Rámáyan of Válmíki...