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.