Reading lists
College Reading List: Classics to Read Before College
The classics US college students meet most often are Plato's Republic, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles' Oedipus and Antigone, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes's Leviathan and Frankenstein: they lead the Open Syllabus count of about one million college syllabi and fill first-year great-books seminars. Read a few of them before you go, and your first seminars will feel familiar. Here they are by theme, with why each is read, how long it takes and how hard it is.
The Greeks: where first-year seminars start
Most core courses open with Homer, the tragedies and Plato, because everything later answers them.
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The Iliad
Homer
War, rage and grief at Troy: the first great book of the West, and a first-week seminar text.
- 9 h 33 min
- Medium read
- No. 14 in US college syllabi
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The Odyssey
Homer
The long way home, read for cunning, hospitality and how stories are told inside stories.
- 8 h 01 min
- Medium read
- No. 11 in US college syllabi
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Oedipus the King and Antigone
Sophocles · in The Seven Plays in English Verse
The two Greek tragedies colleges assign most: a king who hunts his own crime, and a sister who defies him.
- Whole book 6 h 28 min
- Medium read
- No. 9 in US college syllabi
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The Republic
Plato
The second most assigned text in US colleges: Plato on justice and the ideal city.
- 13 h 40 min
- Challenging read
- No. 2 in US college syllabi
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Apology
Plato
Socrates on trial for his life: the shortest way into Plato and into philosophy.
- 42 min
- Medium read
- St. John's first-year seminar
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The Ethics of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle on virtue and the good life, the base of every ethics course.
- 6 h 40 min
- Challenging read
- No. 6 in US college syllabi
Power, rights and the state
Political theory and history courses build on these arguments about who should rule and why.
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The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's handbook on getting and keeping power, assigned to argue about ends and means.
- 3 h 05 min
- Challenging read
- No. 8 in US college syllabi
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Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Why people give up freedom to a ruler: Hobbes's answer is the start of modern political theory.
- 13 h 43 min
- Challenging read
- No. 7 in US college syllabi
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Second Treatise of Government
John Locke
Locke on natural rights, property and consent, the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence.
- 3 h 36 min
- Challenging read
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The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison
Hamilton, Madison and Jay explaining the Constitution: the standard text for American government.
- 11 h 32 min
- Challenging read
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On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
Mill's case for free speech and the limits of power over the individual.
- 3 h 16 min
- Challenging read
- No. 19 in US college syllabi
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The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
The short pamphlet behind a century of politics, assigned across history, economics and sociology.
- 44 min
- Challenging read
- No. 3 in US college syllabi
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Faith, doubt and the self
Philosophy, religion and humanities courses return to these books about how to live and what we can know.
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The Confessions of St. Augustine
Saint Augustine
The first great autobiography of the soul: a life, a conversion and a mind thinking about time.
- 7 h 36 min
- Challenging read
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Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
A Roman emperor's private notes on calm and duty, short enough to read in pieces.
- 3 h 53 min
- Medium read
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Discourse on the Method
René Descartes
Descartes starts philosophy over from doubt: the source of 'I think, therefore I am'.
- 1 h 22 min
- Challenging read
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Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Complete
Dante Alighieri
Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, the summit of medieval literature.
- 7 h 29 min
- Medium read
Novels professors assign
The novels that literature and humanities courses use to ask big questions in story form.
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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
The only novel in the Open Syllabus top 5: science, ambition and what we owe what we make.
- 4 h 53 min
- Medium read
- No. 5 in US college syllabi
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
A short, demanding novella about empire, read in literature and history courses alike.
- 2 h 33 min
- Medium read
- No. 15 in US college syllabi
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Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A student's murder and its aftermath: Dostoyevsky's novel of ideas about guilt and freedom.
- 13 h 22 min
- Challenging read
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Candide
Voltaire
Voltaire's quick, funny attack on easy optimism, the Enlightenment in one short book.
- 2 h 17 min
- Medium read
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Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
The novel of manners at its best, assigned to read irony and social pressure closely.
- 8 h 14 min
- Medium read
American voices
First-year writing and American studies courses often begin with these.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Frederick Douglass
Slavery and the power of literacy, told by a man who escaped it.
- 2 h 38 min
- Medium read
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs's account of slavery from a woman's side, often read with Douglass.
- 5 h 30 min
- Medium read
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Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau on simple living and on refusing an unjust law.
- 7 h 43 min
- Challenging read
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Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
Whitman's open, sprawling poems of democracy and the self.
- 8 h 28 min
- Medium read
How this list is built
Evidence: the 20 texts most assigned in US college syllabi (Open Syllabus Project, as published by OCLC Research in 2016) and the first-year seminar list of St. John's College; the other works are classics that first-year core courses commonly assign. Reading time is the whole book at 238 words a minute; the level is our reading-level measure of the edition.
Send this list to someone starting college.
Questions
What books should I read before college?
Start with the books college syllabi assign most: Plato's Republic, the Iliad or the Odyssey, Sophocles' Oedipus or Antigone, Machiavelli's The Prince and Frankenstein. Even one or two of them make first-year seminars much easier to follow.
What books do college freshmen read?
First-year core and seminar courses usually start with Homer, the Greek tragedies and Plato, then move to political thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke, and to novels such as Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness.
What is the most assigned book in college?
In the Open Syllabus count of about one million US college syllabi, the most assigned book is a writing guide; the most assigned classic is Plato's Republic, followed by The Communist Manifesto, Frankenstein and Aristotle's Ethics.
What is a great books list?
A great books list is a set of the works that shaped Western thought, from Homer and Plato to the modern novel, read in order and discussed in seminars. Colleges such as St. John's build their whole curriculum on one.
How can I read these books faster?
Read a 15-minute summary first, so you know the shape of the argument or story, then read the book itself with the study guide open for the hard parts.
