The Great Books of the Western World 25th Anniversary Limited Edition

Published by the Franklin Library 1978 - 1985 ( 96 volumes )

All volumes in this series were bound in full genuine leather with silk moiré end papers. The 25th Anniversary Limited edition of The Great Books of the Western World was published under agreement with the Encyclopedia Britannica by the Franklin Library. The Great Books of the Western World was originally published by the Encyclopedia Britannica in collaboration with The University of Chicago, under the direction of Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Dr. Mortimer J. Adler.


The Great Books of the Western World - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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  Guide to The Great Books of the Western World - 3 volumes

  Complete Plays by Aeschylus - 1978
  Works of Aristotle - volume one - 1978
  Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes - volume one - 1978
  The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - 1978
  The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - 1978
  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1978
  Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1978
  The Odyssey by Homer - 1978
  Poetry and Prose of John Milton - 1978
  Histories by William Shakespeare - volume one - 1978
  The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith - 1978
  The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides - 1978
  Works of Aristotle -  volume two - 1979
  The Works of Hippocrates and Galen - 1979
  The Iliad by Homer - 1979
  Works of Michel de Montaigne - volume one - 1979
  Works of Michel de Montaigne - volume two - 1979
  The Works of Plato - volume one - 1979
  The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch - volume one - 1979
  Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - volume one - 1979
  Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - volume two - 1979
  Comedies and Tragedies by William Shakespeare - volume two - 1979
  Later Plays by William Shakespeare - volume three - 1979
  The Annals and The Histories by Tacitus - 1979
  The Federalist by HamiltonMadison and Jay - 1980
  The Confessions of Saint Augustine - 1980
  Selected Writings of Sir Francis Bacon - 1980
  The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin - 1980
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume one - 1980
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume two - 1980
  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville - volume one - 1980
  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville - volume two - 1980
  Works of Michel de Montaigne - volume three - 1980
  The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch - volume two - 1980
  Later Plays by William Shakespeare - volume four - 1980
  Plays by Sophocles - 1980
  The Aeneid by Virgil - 1980
  Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - volume one - 1981
  Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - volume two - 1981
  The Major Works of Sigmund Freud - volume one - 1981
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume three - 1981
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume four - 1981
  Works of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Titus Lucretius Carus - 1981
  Political Writings of John Stuart Mill - 1981
  The Works of Plato - Volume Two - 1981
  The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch - volume three - 1981
  The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch - volume four - 1981
  Later Plays by William Shakespeare - volume five - 1981
  The Eclogues and The Georgics of Virgil - 1981
  Plays by Aristophanes - volume one - 1982
  Plays by Aristophanes - volume two - 1982
  Works of Aristotle - volume three - 1982
  Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes - volume two - 1982
  Troilus and Cressida by Geoffrey Chaucer - 1982
  The Major Works of Sigmund Freud - volume two- 1982
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume five - 1982
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - volume six - 1982
  Selected Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau - 1982
  Works of RenĂ© Descartes and Baruch Spinoza - 1982
  Tragedies by William Shakespeare - volume six - 1982
  Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - 1982
  The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell - volume one - 1983
  The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell - volume two - 1983
  The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell - volume three - 1983
  The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - volume one - 1983
  The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - volume two - 1983
  The Major Works of Sigmund Freud - volume three - 1983
  Plays by Euripides - volume one - 1983
  Political Writings of Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli - 1983
  The Works of Plato - volume three - 1983
  The Enneads by Plotinus - 1983
  Sonnets and Final Plays by William Shakespeare - volume seven - 1983
  Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne - 1983
  Works of Aristotle - volume four - 1984
  Works of George Berkeley, John Locke and David Hume - 1984
  Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx - 1984
  Plays by Euripides - volume two - 1984
  Works of Galileo Galilei, William Gilbert and William Harvey - 1984
  The History of Herodotus - 1984
  The Spirit of Law by Charles de Montesquieu - 1984
  Provincial Letters, Pensees, and Scientific Treatises by Blaise Pascal - 1984
  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - volume one - 1984
  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - volume two - 1984
  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - volume three - 1984
  Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas - volume one - 1985
  Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas - volume two - 1985
  Works of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and Nicomachus - 1985
  The City of God and Christian Doctrine by Saint Augustine - 1985
  Works of Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Ptolemy - 1985
  Works of Michael Faraday, Joseph Fourier and Antoine Lavoisier - 1985
  Works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Immanuel Kant - 1985
  Works of Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton - 1985
  Principles of Psychology by William James - 1985


The term Western World or "the West" can have multiple meanings depending on its context (i.e. the time period and the used criteria). Even definitions of what constitutes the West today vary. In general however there is a consensus that the West includes at least Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In other definitions, Eastern Europe, Latin America and/or Israel are often included, as their cultures are closely linked.

Western culture
The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies.

Specifically, Western culture may imply:
- A Biblical-Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around Post-Classical Era.

- European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, whose themes have been further developed by Romanticism.

- A Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, concerning artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions, the cultural social effects of migration period and the heritages of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and other ethnic groups, as well as a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, Humanisms, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.

The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles that set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.

The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe.

Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, laicism, generalization of middle class, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration. The modern shape of these societies is strongly based upon the Industrial Revolution and the societies' associated social and environmental problems, such as class struggle and pollution, as well as reactions to them, such as syndicalism and environmentalism.

Source and additional information: Western Literature