Getting an Education from Books

Introduction: Getting an Education from Books

I have taken several courses already for my informal liberal arts education, and I have been reading books other than the classics, but I always seem to get back to where I need to be. I have been thinking about getting an education from books, and while I am feeling very philosophical, I thought about two courses that I have taken – Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life, and Invitation to World Literature. Both courses are about “great” books. Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life, and Invitation to World Literature. Both courses are about “great” books.

Today, I am going to focus on Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life, the only paid course that I have taken as a part of my informal liberal arts education. Offered by the Great Courses, I loved the content of this course. However, I did not like its delivery. The lectures are 30-minute videos, but what I have discovered about myself during my learning journey is that although I am a visual learner, I dislike videos with people giving lectures, I would prefer it if the video had slides, or were of people reading, or interacting, not someone standing there talking. Despite that, I liked the course because of how Professor Rufus Fears approached the topic.

Professor Fears spoke little about the content of the 35 books, but focused on the important themes, and he also showed how and why some of those great old books are still relevant today. Many of the books show how to live your life with honor and integrity. And one thing which struck me is the importance of thinking for yourself and doing what you know to be the right thing to do. This is poignant – during the holocaust and other horrific events, people committed hateful acts against others without thinking about whether it was the right thing to do.

The Themes from Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life

1. The meaning of life
2. Truth
3. Duty and responsibility
4. Law, government, and social justice
5. Love, jealousy, and hate
6. Courage, honor, and ambition
7. Beauty
8. Nature
9. History and the past
10. Education

The course made me think, but helped me to decide whether I wanted to read the 35 books that are covered in the course. When I read other books, I evaluate them based on the 10 themes. When you read a book, how do you evaluate how “good” it is? To get an education from a book, the process has to be active. Engaging with the words on the page and connecting the ideas with what you already know. I think that by reading even a third of the books on the list, you will get a worthwhile education on how to live your life.

35 Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life

1. Letters and Papers from Prison
2. The Iliad, Iliad
3. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
4. Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation
5. Book of Exodus
6. Gospel of Mark
7. Koran
8. Gilgamesh: A New English Version
9. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition)
10. Book of Job
11. Oresteia, Aeschylus
12. Bacchae, Euripides,
13. Phaedo (Oxford World's Classics), Plato
14. The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso), Dante
15. Othello The Moor of Venice, Shakespeare
16. Prometheus Bound (Greek Tragedy in New Translations), Aeschylus
17. The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
18. Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
19. 1984 (Signet Classics), George Orwell
20. The Aeneid (Penguin Classics), Virgil
21. Pericles's Funeral Oration, Pericles; The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln
22. All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
23. The Analects (Penguin Classics), Confucius
24. The Prince, Machiavelli
25. Republic, Plato
26. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
27. Le Morte Darthur (Norton Critical Editions), Sir Thomas Malory
28. Faust: Part 1 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 1), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29. Faust: Part 2 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 2), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
30. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
31. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Modern Library Classics), Gibbon
32. The History of Freedom, Lord Acton
33. On Moral Duties (De Officiis) & Treatise on the Common Wealth (From the Treatise on the Republic) (Two Books With Active Table of Contents), Cicero
34. Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Gandhi
35. My Early Life: 1874-1904; Painting As a Pastime; Winston S. Churchill THE SECOND WORLD WAR SERIES (6 BOOKS) (THE GATHERING STORM (1948) / THEIR FINEST HOUR (1949) / THE GRAND ALLIANCE (1950) / THE HINGE OF FATE (1950) / CLOSING THE RING (1951) / TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY (1953)), Churchill

Next Steps

Wondering what to do next, you can do all of:

1. Buy my new book, Leadership Reading: Spilling the Tea on How Top Leaders Read

2. If you want to Consult 1:1 about Effective Reading Strategies

3. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

4. Join the Art of Learning Membership Site

5. Download Unlock Your Genius Power Reading Tips Sheet

6. Buy me a cup of coffee!

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