This collection compiles history's greatest written works, from the ancient classics to more recent masterpieces. Great Books of the Western World contains 517 works from 130 of the most renowned minds throughout history. Authoritative, accurate, and complete, this collection represents the essential core of the Western literary canon

Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Volumes 1 and 2 comprise the Syntopicon®, a unique guide that enables you to investigate a particular idea and compare the perspectives of different authors. The Syntopicon organizes thirty centuries of thought into 102 Great Ideas, subsequently divided into topics and subtopics to effectively explore the different viewpoints over time.

v. 1. The syntopicon, I -- v. 2. The syntopicon, II -- v. 3. Homer ; The Iliad ; The Odyssey -- v. 4. Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides; Aristophanes -- v. 5. Herodotus; Thucydides -- v. 6. Plato -- v. 7. Aristotle, I -- v. 8. Aristotle, II -- v. 9. Hippocrates; Galen -- v. 10. Euclid; Archimedes; Nicomachus -- v. 11. Lucretius; Epictetus; Marcus Aurelius; Plotinus -- v. 12. Virgil -- v. 13. Plutarch -- v. 14. Tacitus -- v. 15. Ptolemy; Copernicus; Kepler -- v. 16. Augustine -- v. 17. Aquinas, I -- v. 18. Aquinas, II -- v. 19. Dante; Chaucer -- v. 20. Calvin -- v. 21. Machiavelli; Hobbes -- v. 22. Rabelais -- v. 23. Erasmus; Montaigne -- v. 24. Shakespeare, I -- v. 25. Shakespeare, II -- v. 26. Gilbert; Galileo; Harvey -- v. 27. Cervantes -- v. 28. Bacon; Descartes; Spinoza -- v. 29. Milton -- v. 30. Pascal -- v. 31. Molière; Racine -- v. 32. Newton; Huygens -- v. 33. Locke; Berkeley; Hume -- v. 34. Swift; Voltaire; Diderot -- v. 35. Montesquieu; Rousseau -- v. 36. Adam Smith -- v. 37. Gibbon, I -- v. 38. Gibbon, II -- v. 39. Kant -- v. 40. American state papers; The Federalist; J.S. Mill -- v. 41. Boswell -- v. 42. Lavoisier; Faraday -- v. 43. Hegel; Kierkegaard; Nietzsche -- v. 44. Tocqueville -- v. 45. Goethe; Balzac -- v. 46. Jane Austen; George Eliot -- v. 47. Dickens -- v. 48. Melville; Twain -- v. 49. Darwin -- v. 50. Marx -- v. 51. Tolstoy -- v. 52. Dostoevsky; Ibsen -- v. 53. William James -- v. 54. Freud -- v. 55. 20th century philosophy and religion -- v. 56. 20th century natural science -- v. 57. 20th century social science, I -- v. 58. 20th century social science, II -- v. 59. 20th century imaginative literature, I -- v. 60. 20th century imaginative literature, II.