Thomas Jefferson once wrote "I cannot live without books." But what books ought the educated member of a free society read?
Here at Generation Joshua, we've taken time working through some of the greatest classics of Western civilization to compile a list of books that we would recommend to any conservative American should read.
The list ranges from classic texts that built Western philosophy, such as Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, to iconic works of Western literature, such as Dante's The Divine Comedy or Shakespeare's Henry V,
to modern classics of conservative political theory, such as Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order or Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. In addition, we've included a number of supplemental resources to
aid in understanding the big picture of Western civilization.
Wondering where to begin? Try The Roots of American Order, or email us at info@generationjoshua.org
Christian Living
- Thomas a Kempis - The Imitation of Christ
- Martin Luther - On Christian Liberty
- John Foxe - Book of Martyrs
- Brother Lawrence - The Practice of the Presence of God
- G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Cost of Discipleship
- C.S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
- C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity
- C.S. Lewis - The Weight of Glory
- Brother Andrew - God's Smuggler
- Corrie ten Boom - The Hiding Place
- Francis Schaeffer - How Should We Then Live?
- A.W. Tozer - The Knowledge of the Holy
Literature
Ancient
- Homer - The Illiad
- Sophocles - Antigone
- Virgil - The Aeneid
Medieval and Renaissance
- Beowulf (Author Unknown)
- The Song of Roland (Author Unknown)
- Dante - The Divine Comedy
- Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte d'Arthur
- William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream
- William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
- William Shakespeare - Henry V
Enlightenment through 1800s
- Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
- Jonathan Swift - Gulliver’s Travels
- Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
- Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
- Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
- Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
- Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
- Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
- Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin
- George MacDonald - Phantastes
- Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
- Jules Verne - Around The World In 80 Days
- Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island
- Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
20th Century
- Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel
- G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
- T.S. Eliot - Murder in the Cathedral
- T.S. Eliot - The Four Quartets
- C.S. Lewis - The Space Trilogy
- C.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia
- J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
- J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
- George Orwell - Animal Farm
- Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
- Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
- Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers
- Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Robert Frost - The Poetry of Robert Frost
- Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
Philosophy
Overview
- James Sire - The Universe Next Door
- Bill Bennett - The Book of Virtues
- J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
Historical Texts
- Plato - The Trial and Death of Socrates
- Plato - The Republic (Books 6-7)
- Aristotle - The Nicomachean Ethics
- St. Augustine - Confessions
- Thomas More - Utopia
- Sir Francis Bacon - Essays
- Blaise Pascal - Pensées
- C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man
Politics and Economics
- Aristotle - Politics
- Machievelli - The Prince
- John Locke - Second Treatise on Civil Government
- Montesquieu - The Spirit of the Laws
- Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations
- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay - The Federalist Papers
- Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France
- Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
- F.H. Hayek - The Road to Serfdom
- Richard Weaver - Ideas Have Consequences
- Russell Kirk - The Roots of American Order
History and Biography
- Sun Tzu - The Art of War
- Plutarch - Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
- Benjamin Franklin - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Winston Churchill - A History of the English Speaking Peoples
- Elizabeth Eliot - Through Gates of Splendor
- Whittaker Chambers - Witness
- Edwin Meese III - With Reagan
- Eric Metaxas - Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet
Worldviews Hostile to Christianity
- Karl Marx - The Communist Manifesto
- John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism
- Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil