The works that have had the greatest influence on Western culture, history and science are distilled, and placed in the context of their time.

1. The Book of Books
The Bible
2. Epic Poet
Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
3. Judge of Nature and Mankind
Plato: Symposium, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Republic, Statesman, Laws, Timaeus
4. Universal Man
Aristotle: Organon, History of Animals, Physics, On the Heavens, Meteorologics, Mechanics, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics
5. Masters of Dramatic Art
The Greek Playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander
6. Sense of the Past
Greek and Roman Historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Sallust, Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus
7. Greek and Roman Scientists
Hippocrates: Aphorisms
Theophrastus: On the History of Plants, On the Causes of Plants
Archimedes: On the Sphere and Cylinder
Lucretius: De Rerum Natura
Pliny the Elder: Natural History
8. Fathers of the Church
St. Augustine: Confessions, City of God
St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
9. Celestial Revolution
Nicolaus Copernicus: De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
10. Father of Scientific Anatomy
Andreas Vesalius: De Humani Corporis Fabrica
11. Dawn of Scientific Medicine
William Harvey: De Motu Cordis
12. Anatomy of Power Politics
Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince
13. System of the World
Sir Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica
14. American Firebrand
Thomas Paine: Common Sense
15. Patron Saint of Free Enterprise
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
16. First of a New Genus
Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the Rights of Woman
17. Discoverer of Vaccination
Edward Jenner: An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae
18. Too Many Mouths
Thomas Malthus: Essay on the Principle of Population
19. Individual Versus State
Henry David Thoreau: "Civil Disobedience"
20. Crusader for the Lowly
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
21. Survival of the Fittest
Charles Darwin: Origin of Species
22. Prophet of the Proletariat
Karl Marx: Das Kapital
23. Leviathan Against Elephant
Alfred T. Mahan: The Influence of Sea Power upon History
24. Psycologist of the Unconscious
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
25. Heartland and World-Island
Sir Halford J. Mackinder: "The Geographical Pivot of History"
26. Study in Megalomania
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf
27. Upsetting the Balance of Nature
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring
Biblographical Notes
Index