Penguin's Great Ideas Series
Introduction
According to the Penguin website, the "Great Ideas" Series intends to be a collection of "books that changed the world". It's a collection of non-fiction books or, many times, part of larger works, that have had an impact on modern civilization. Many of those are public domain, and several have been recorded for Librivox. Here is a list of all of them, with their current status. These could be a source of ideas for any Librivox volunteers who enjoy non-fiction. A brief discussion on the subject and the source for this list in the Librivox Forums here. In the list below the numbering of the books in the Great Ideas series has been kept.
Series 1
Already recorded
2) Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
3) St Augustine - Confessions of a Sinner
4) Thomas à Kempis - The Inner Life - part of The Imitation of Christ
5) Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince
8) Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract
9) Edward Gibbon - The Christians and the Fall of Rome - part of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
10) Thomas Paine - Common Sense
11) Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women
13) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto
14) Arthur Schopenhauer - On the Suffering of the World - part of Studies on Pessimism, by Arthur Schopenhauer
16) Charles Darwin - On Natural Selection - part of On the Origin of Species
PD but not recorded
1) Seneca - On the Shortness of Life
6) Michel de Montaigne - On Friendship - Part of Montaigne's Essays
7) Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub
12) William Hazlitt - On the Pleasure of Hating
15) John Ruskin - On Art and Life - This is actually made up of two parts of works: one, called "The Nature of Gothic", is chapter six of volume two of The Stones of Venice; the second, "The Work of Iron", is Lecture five of The Two Paths
17) Friedrich Nietzsche - Why I Am So Wise - Chapter of Ecce Homo
19) Sigmund Freud - Civilization and its Discontents
Not PD
18) Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own
20) George Orwell - Why I Write
Series 2
Already recorded
21) Confucius - The First Ten Books - These are the first ten books of the Analects or Sayings of Confucius[/url
22) Sun-tzu - The Art of War and Sun-tzu - The Art of War
24) Lucretius - Sensation and Sex - part of On the Nature of Things
25) Cicero - An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom - part of the Philippics
26) The Revelation of St John the Divine - ASV and TCNT and WEB and the Book of Job ASV and WEB and YLT besides a King James Version in progress
30) Francis Bacon - Of Empire - part of Essays of Francis Bacon
31) Thomas Hobbes - Of Man - part of Leviathan
35) Carl von Clausewitz - On the Nature of War - part of Clausewitz's On War
37) Henry David Thoreau - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For - part of Walden
38) Thorstein Veblen - Conspicuous Consumption - part of Theory of the Leisure Class
PD but not recorded
27) Marco Polo - Travels In the Land of Kubilai Khan - part of the Travels of Marco Polo
28) Christine de Pisan - The City of Ladies
29) Baldesar Castiglione - How to Achieve True Greatness - not sure, might be part of the Book of the Courtier
32) Sir Thomas Browne - Urne-Burial - also known as Hydriotaphia
33) Voltaire - Miracles and Idolatry - excerpts of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
34) David Hume - On Suicide - Collections of essays by Hume
36) Søren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
Not PD
39) Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
40) Hannah Arendt - Eichmann and the Holocaust
Series 3
Already recorded
42) Robert Burton - Some Anatomies of Melancholy - excerpts of The Anatomy of Melancholy
43) Blaise Pascal - Human Happiness - selections from Pensées
44) Adam Smith - The Invisible Hand, part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments
46) Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature
PD but not recorded
41) Plutarch - In Consolation to his Wife - Chapter 5 of Plutarch's Moralia
45) [color=red]Edmund Burke - The Evils of Revolution[/color] - not sure, I assume it's part of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15679] here[/url]
47) [color=red]Søren Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death[/color] - I couldn't find an English PD translation 48) [color=red]John Ruskin - The Lamp of Memory[/color] - Selection from The Seven Lamps of Arhitecture. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15200]here[/url] 49) [color=red] Friedrich Nietzsche - Man Alone with Himself[/color] - part of "Human, all to human" - Couldn't find a clearly PD text. 50) [color=red] Leo Tolstoy - A Confession[/color] - Text [url=http://www.archive.org/details/myconfessionands00tolsuoft] here[/url] 51) [color=red]William Morris - Useful Work versus Useless Toil[/color] - part of "Signs of change: seven lectures". Text [url=http://www.archive.org/details/signsofchangesev00morr] here[/url] 52)[color=red] Frederick Jackson Turner - The Significance of the Frontier in American History[/color] Part of "The Frontier in American History". Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22994] here[/url]. This project was started and abandoned in LV, I think we have no files for it. 53) [color=red]Marcel Proust - Days of Reading[/color] - No idea what is inside this book. Could be a part of Against Saint-Beuve, or something totally different. 54) [color=red]Leon Trotsky - An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe[/color] - This book has collected speeches and writings from 1915 to 1940, not easy to pin; we have very little Trotsky in the catalog anyway. 55) [color=red] Sigmund Freud - The Future of an Illusion[/color] - Published in German in 1927, so, PD. There is a translation published in 1928 in New York. Not sure if it's PD though.
Not PD
56) Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
57) George Orwell - Books v. Cigarettes
58) Albert Camus - The Fastidious Assassins
59) Frantz Fanon - Concerning Violence
60) Michel Foucault - The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Series 4
Already recorded
PD but not recorded
Not PD
61) [url=http://librivox.org/the-tao-teh-king-by-lao-tze/]Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching[/url]; also in German [url=http://librivox.org/daodejing-by-laozi/]Daodejing[/url]
62) [color=red]Various - Writings from the Zen Masters[/color] In this book there are three books: The Gatless Gate, by Mumon Huikai Wumen (text [url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm]here[/url]), Ten Bulls (I couldn't find a translation) and Zen Stories (I suppose, from the 101 Zen Stories - I couldn't find a PD translation)
63) [url=http://librivox.org/utopia-by-thomas-more/]Thomas More - Utopia[/url]
64) [color=red]Michel de Montaigne - On Solitude[/color] - Part of Montaigne's Essays (being recorded in French). Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3600]here[/url]
65) William Shakespeare - On Power (:? we could have fun guessing what has been extracted and titled thus, but probably need someone with access to the book to take a look) - Leni wrote: Hamlet, Act III Scene 3; Richard II, Act III, Scene 2; Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene 3; The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2; Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 1; Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 2 and a bunch of other miscellaneous parts of plays. >.>
66) [color=red]John Locke - Of the Abuse of Words[/color] - part of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a2447]here[/url].
67) [color=red]Samuel Johnson - Consolation in the Face of Death[/color] - Collection of writings by Johnson. Text of his complete works [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/j#a297]here[/url]
68) Immanuel Kant - An Answer to the Question: 'What is Enlightenment?' (in [url=http://librivox.org/librivox-short-nonfiction-collection-vol-001/]Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 001[/url])
69) [color=red]Joseph de Maistre - The Executioner[/color] Selections from the first, second and seventh night of "Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg" (French text [url=http://www.archive.org/details/lessoiresdesain01maisgoog]here[/url]), or "The Saint Petersburg Dialogues" (English text [url=http://maistre.ath.cx:8000/st_petersburg]here[/url], but [color=red][b]I am not sure it's PD[/b][/color])
70) [url=http://librivox.org/confessions-of-an-english-opium-eater-by-thomas-de-quincey/]Thomas de Quincey - Confessions of an English Opium Eater[/url]
71) [color=red]Arthur Schopenhauer - The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion[/color] - Collection of essays by Schopenhauer, some of which are [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10833]here[/url]
72) Abraham Lincoln - The Gettysburg Address [url=http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=gettysburg&author=&status=all&action=Search](Five Versions available)[/url]
73) [color=red] Karl Marx - Revolution and War[/color] - Anthology of works by Marx published in the New York Tribune between 1853 and 1862. Texts [url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/newspapers/new-york-tribune.htm]here[/url]
74) Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Grand Inquisitor - in progress
75) William James - On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings - Selections from "Talks to Teachers on Psychology" (in progress) and [url=http://librivox.org/pragmatism-by-william-james/]Pragmatism[/url] and "The Meaning of Truth" (not recorded, text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5117]here[/url])
76) Robert Louis Stevenson - An Apology for Idlers - part of [url=http://librivox.org/essays-of-robert-louis-stevenson-by-robert-louis-stevenson/]Essays by R.L. Stevenson [/url]
77) W.E.B. Du Bois - Of the Dawn of Freedom - part of [url=http://librivox.org/souls-of-black-folks-by-web-du-bois/]The Souls of Black Folk[/url]
78) [color=blue]Virginia Woolf - Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid[/color]
79) [color=blue]George Orwell -Decline of the English Murder[/color]
80) [color=blue]John Berger - Why Look at Animals?[/color]
Series 5 and final
Already recorded
PD but not recorded
Not PD
81) [color=red]Chuang Tzu - The Tao of Nature[/color] Part of the Zhuangzi, couldn't find a PD translation
82) Epictetus - Of Human Freedom - part of [url=http://librivox.org/golden-sayings-of-epictetus-by-epictetus/]Epictetus' Aphorisms[/url]
83) [color=red] Niccolo Machiavelli - On Conspiracies[/color] - part of the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10827] here[/url].
84) Rene Descartes - [url=http://librivox.org/meditations-on-first-philosophy-by-rene-descartes/]Meditations[/url]
85) [color=red]Giacomo Leopardi - Dialogue Between Fashion and Death[/color] - part of the Zibaldone; selected translations (including this specific essay) [url=http://www.archive.org/details/essaysdialogues00leoprich]here[/url]; Italian text [url=http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Zibaldone]here[/url]
86) John Stuart Mill - [url=http://librivox.org/on-liberty-by-john-stuart-mill/]On Liberty[/url]
87) Charles Darwin - Hosts of Living Forms - part of the [url=http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/]Origin of Species[/url]
88) [color=red]Charles Dickens - Night Walks[/color] - part of The Uncommercial Traveler. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/914] here[/url]
89) Charles Mackay - Some Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Volume 1 of [url=http://librivox.org/memoirs-of-extraordinary-popular-delusions-and-the-madness-of-crowds-volume-i-by-charles-mackay/]Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds[/url])
90) [color=red]Jacob Burckhardt - The State as a Work of Art[/color] - part of The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2074]here[/url]
91) George Eliot - Silly Novels by Lady Novelists (in [url=http://librivox.org/short-nonfiction-collection-vol-016/]Nonfiction Collection 016[/url])
92) [color=red]Charles Baudelaire - The Painter of Modern Life[/color] - Couldn't find an English translation, French text [url=http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Peintre_de_la_vie_moderne]here[/url]
93) [color=red]Sigmund Freud - The Wolfman[/color] - probably the text known as "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis", I couldn't find a PD translation
94) [color=red]Theodore Herzl - The Jewish State[/color] In the catalog in [url=http://librivox.org/the-jewish-state-by-theodor-binyamin-zeev-herzl/] Hebrew[/url] ; English text [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25282]here[/url]
95) [color=red]Rabindranath Tagore - Nationalism[/color] - Text [url=http://www.archive.org/details/nationalism00tagorich]here[/url]
96) [color=red]Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Imperialism[/color]. Text [url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/]here[/url]
97) Winston Churchill - We Will All Go Down Fighting to the End - Collection of speeches by Churchill, I couldn't acces which ones exactly. We have some in catalog.
98) [color=blue]Jorge Luis Borges - The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise[/color]
99) [color=blue]George Orwell - Some Thoughts on the Common Toad[/color]
100) [color=blue]Chinua Achebe - An Image of Africa[/color]
