Great Books Reading Plans
Guided paths through the Great Books of the Western World.
The map is built for wandering, but a first reader often needs a path. These plans give you a sequence, a pace, and a reason for each turn.
Each plan draws from the works in Mortimer Adler’s Great Books collection and arranges philosophy, literature, theology, and science into a single reading order. A new reader gets a starting point; someone who has already read half the list gets a thread connecting what they know.
20 works
The Great Books Starting Point
A path through twenty Great Books for readers who want one clear place to begin.
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12 works
Faith, Doubt, and the Soul
Creation, death, grace, doubt, and judgment meet here as religious belief answers its hardest witnesses.
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12 works
How We Know
Euclid proves. Bacon collects. Newton measures. Darwin gathers small differences until nature starts to look historical.
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12 works
Power, Law, and the Citizen
Follow the argument from forbidden burial to free speech, with each work testing what citizens owe the law and what law owes them.
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3 works
The Meditations Reading Plan
A paced plan for reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: honest hours, which translation to pick, what the repetition is for, and the Epictetus to read next.
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4 works
The Odyssey Reading Plan
A paced plan for reading Homer's Odyssey: honest hours, which books matter most, which translation to pick, and what to read after the Nolan film.
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3 works
The Republic Reading Plan
A paced plan for reading Plato's Republic: honest hours, which books matter most, which translation to pick, and the works that answer it.
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