Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the Great Books in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes.
The original editors of the series chose three criteria for inclusion: a book must be relevant to contemporary issues, and not only important in its historical context; it must reward rereading; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas," relevant to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas identified by the editors. Books were not chosen on the basis of ethnic or cultural inclusiveness, historical influence, or the editors' agreement with the views expressed.
Read more about Great Books Of The Western World: History, Volumes, Second Edition
Famous quotes containing the words books and/or western:
“In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspirationalists, I have discovered that they all suffer from one or more of these expression-complexes: italicizing, capitalizing, exclamation-pointing, multiple-interrogating, and itemizing. These are all forms of what the psychos themselves would call, if they faced their condition frankly, Rhetorical-Over-Compensation.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)