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The Great Gatsby

Original English text

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

One summer on Long Island, a man of mysterious fortune throws open his house to the world, hoping one guest will wander in.

Siddhartha

Translated from German

Hermann Hesse, 1922

A young Brahmin leaves home to find the self, meets the Buddha without following him, and learns at last from a river.

Demian

Translated from German

Hermann Hesse, 1919

A boy caught in a bully’s power is set free by a strange older schoolmate, and begins to follow the mark of Cain toward himself.

Pride and Prejudice

Original English text

Jane Austen, 1813

Five unmarried sisters, one rich newcomer, and a proud gentleman nobody likes: Austen’s comedy of first impressions.

Frankenstein

Original English text

Mary Shelley, 1818 · 1831

A young scientist gives life to a creature he cannot bear to look at, and the creature learns what that means.

Beneath the Wheel

Translated from German

Hermann Hesse, 1906

A gifted boy from a Black Forest town is driven through the state examination and the seminary until he breaks.

The Metamorphosis

Translated from German

Franz Kafka, 1915

One morning a traveling salesman wakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin, and his family has to live with it.

On Liberty

Original English text

John Stuart Mill, 1859

Mill’s short, fierce case for freedom of thought and the limits of society’s power over the individual.

Meditations

Translated from Greek

Marcus Aurelius, 170s

The private notebook of a Roman emperor on campaign: how to work, bear with others, and face death, written to no one but himself.

The Prince

Translated from Italian

Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532

Machiavelli’s short, unsentimental handbook on how power is won, kept, and lost, translated afresh from the Italian.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Translated from Spanish

Baltasar Gracián, 1647

Three hundred compressed maxims on prudence, reputation, and dealing with people, from a Spanish Jesuit of the seventeenth century.

The Art of War

Translated from Classical Chinese

Sun Tzu, c. 5th century BC

Thirteen short chapters on when to fight, how to win, and why the best victory is the one that needs no battle.

Walden

Original English text

Henry David Thoreau, 1854

Two years in a cabin he built himself by a pond in Concord, and what Thoreau learned about how much a life really needs.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Original English text

Adam Smith, 1759

Before The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained how sympathy and an impartial spectator shape our sense of right and wrong.

The Wealth of Nations

Original English text

Adam Smith, 1776

Adam Smith’s inquiry into what makes nations rich: the division of labour, markets, capital, trade, and the duties of the state.

On the Origin of Species

Original English text

Charles Darwin, 1859

The book of 1859 in which Darwin set out, as one long argument, how species arise by natural selection.