Britannica's Great Books of the Western World: Favorite Classic Book Set Reviewed
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2024
- Honest review of the famous Great Books of the Western World set (1952). This classic book set is my favorite set of classics in my library - for good reason. Here, I tell all the nitty gritty details about what makes the Great Books of the Western World set so great (as well as its drawbacks). I compare this set of books to the other famous book sets, like the Harvard Classics and the Franklin Library sets. Spearheaded by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler out of the University of Chicago, this set remains well known in classic books circles through the U.S. and abroad. Learn about the books included in this set, the underrated Syntopicon, and the introduction to the great books provided by Robert Hutchins.
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#greatbooks #adler #hutchins #britannica
According to Cicero, all that you need is a library, a garden, and your family.
Check, check, and check.
I'd argue a sword is also necessary
@@ender8352 Yes, Cicero's statement assumes that a civil society rules, whereas in fact, his son Marcus was a good shot hurling a spear from horseback, showing that martial skills were in much greater demand. And Cicero himself was assassinated by one of Mark Antony's agents. It's ominous when one of your most advanced thinkers is a target for murder. Such was Rome at the beginning of the Empire.
Just bought the whole 54 book 1952 set for $1 at a small town library used book sale. Ecstatic!
That's the best deal I've ever heard of.
I’ll give you $2 for it 😂
@@RRScott-uz1lgDouble fold?! :)
Ain’t no way someone sold all of those for $1, the set I have was purchased for around $300
I have read all 60 volumes. It took me 5 years.
3:34 It's burnt orange.
5:20 Colors distinguish the domain of knowledge.
You must've read them every day for 5 years.
Love this set. Was able to convince my mom to let me use some of my scholarship money to buy this for myself in college and honestly it was sooo helpful for paper topics. The Synopticon was the best part because of the ideas it explored and what each great thinker talked about. You can really turn a professor's head when you compare and contrast Thucydides and Gibbon's views on the laws and patterns of historical change as an essay topic. Honestly it almost felt like cheating because of how easy it was to come up with great ideas and pull from an established name's work.
Would recommend to anyone even remotely interested.
I'm a bit envious you've been able to study them in such a dedicated way. It is a treasure trove.
I went the electrical engineering route. There this knowledge isn't as relevant to the education.
I also bought the Great Ideas Program books to give some guidance when reading the Great Books
I grew up with a set in my living room. My grandfather got it for us, dad mom and two kids me and my sister. I have it now in my 50's. I love it. I'm missing #10.
I'm looking forward to passing them on to my kids as well. The Great Books set and the Harvard Classics sets are in our living room. I'm hoping when my kids are old enough, they will want to read them as much as I do!
eBay might have #10. I was missing Cervantes, I lost it in high school. My wife found it on eBay. I'm in my 50s as well. They are still in the original bookcase.
I found mine at an antique/junk store. The owner noticed that I visited and admired them every time I came into the store. He had them priced at $150, but I couldn’t afford that. One day, he asked me if I’d read them if I had them and I said,
“Of course!” (what else would you do with them?😂). So he let me have them for $50 - 1952 edition, complete with The Great Conversation book and the Syntopicon volumes. We’ve enjoyed them greatly. They’re very useful to have when you’re doing classical homeschooling.
I had a set of those. Sadly they were destroyed in a flood. Now I would choose a few different books. Still that set had an untold positive affect on my life.
I bought my 1952, 54 volume set for 150$ at a used book store - they were in very good condition about 10 years ago.
That's a steal. Great investment.
When I became involved in a speech and debate club during high school I found myself becoming more academically inclined after having no interest in such things beforehand. I got the 1952 version of this set and took off from there. I’m now studying journalism and history at a liberal arts college. The Great Conversation changed my life
I wanted this set for many years but then recently found it on the last day of an estate sale for 15 dollars. It's in great condition with a cloth binding ; maybe first printing but I don't know nor does it matter to me. It's missing the volume on Freud which also doesn't matter to me. 😄
That is a deal that cannot be beat! Great find.
Great video. I initially came here to comment that I believed the volume on Hegel (volume 46) does not publish its two works in their entirety since I own one of the two works in the volume separately and it is significantly thicker than the entire volume in this collection. However, I've read the table of contents for The Philosophy of History (the aforementioned work by Hegel) and I do believe it is in fact complete. I think the font size allowed them to be printed in a volume of convenient size.
Yeah their secret to not having to abridge anything was to make the font so small...I've gotten used to it after awhile. Other sets (like the Harvard Classics) do abridge some works, but maintain a reasonable font size.
I have the entire original Great Books of the Western World set and have read them all. I also have the Gateway to the Great Books, the Great Ideas Program and all of the Great Ideas Today. I also have all the Harvard Classics but have only read about 3/4 of them
Btw it took me 30 years to finish the core set
Wow, awesome. I suspect it will take me 20-30 years as well.
Favorite work in the GBWW set?
@@ThinkingWest It's worth it
Wow, so impressed
Excellent review. I just purchased a set off of eBay (1952 edition, cloth-bound rather than the orange hardback), and have begun what's sure to be a multi-year journey through these fantastic works.
One small correction: there are illustrations in the books. For example, in Galileo's works and other scientific works, there are illustrations of orbits, geometric diagrams, even anatomy in Harvey's works.
Great! Didn't know it came in a cloth-bound edition. And, yes, you are 100% right - the scientific works slipped my mind regarding illustrations. Thanks for the catch.
@@ThinkingWest I'm not sure which edition came out first (or if they came out simultaneously). Interestingly, the book seller had two sets available at the same time, one orange hardback and one cloth, for the same price. I decided on the cloth for aesthetic reasons, but I would like to know about the publishing history of the various editions.
These are awesome. One day I will save up enough for a set.
Even if you can't get the full set all together, look on ebay and pick up a couple here and there.
@@ThinkingWest Good point.
I would be happy to donate my complete collection of books to you. They were my husband's and he passed a few years ago. Only problem is I live in Australia so postage would be huge, assuming it is to USA. I had to take his Encyclopaedia Britannica to the local tip as nobody wanted them, not even the library.
Thanks for the video, it was very interesting. I may have to dust off the set I got from my dad ;-).
Regarding colors on the bindings, in Volume 1, page 86-87: "Yellow" (yes, that's what they called it): epic and dramatic poetry, satires, and novels. Blue: histories and works in ethics, economics, politics, and jurisprudence. Green: mathematics and the natural sciences. Red: philosophy and theology. But "...the color of the binding, therefore, serves only as a rough indication of the grouping..."
Regarding illustrations: Many of the math and science books do have black and white illustrations, e.g. volume 45, Lavoisier, there are several pages of figures. I think they're the ones famously drawn by his wife who was also his collaborator.
You may be interested in two accompanying sets called "Gateway to the Great Books" (ten volumes) and "The Great Ideas Program" (10 volumes), which are more selections, and extra works.
Also, there is a critical examination of the set called "A Great Idea at the Time: the Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books" by Alex Beam.
Edit: of course, there's a Wikipedia article too: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
Yellow! Wow, far off from yellow to my eyes. Thanks for the more precise breakdown of the binding colors and their correspondence with subject. I always thought some works were quite hard to classify in one group vs. another, particularly for those "Renaissance men" who wrote about virtually everything. I didn't know about the illustrations, but it makes sense they would be included in the scientific works - haven't made it that far yet. Regarding the related book sets, I've heard of Gateway to the Great Books, but not the Great Ideas Program nor the work by Alex Beam....will definitely get them these when I can. Thanks!
@@ThinkingWest Yet another book about the Books: The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha. CZcams and Google think I'm obsessed with this now... ;-)
Edit a month later after I got this book from the library and read it: Beha read the Harvard Classics, not GBWW, but the sentiment is similar.
I think I've heard of the author Beha... will check out this book when I can. My reading list always gets longer, never shorter. Thanks for the tip!
My set is from my mother, 1952 version. Currently I am reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
That's a big one...took me awhile just to get through Vol. 1.
Very good. Very useful. I do not think I will be able to read a lot of these books ....... But great to know about the set. Will dip in to it from time to time. I am sure I have read a small fraction of this set of books. Enjoyed your video. Thanks
Any bit counts....
everything about this was awesome!
Thanks!
Hi thanks for this video, I've liked and subscribed as I hope it will help me stick to it! I just bought my pristine 1989 set from ebay for £200 and I'm starting tomorrow. Btw it is still in print, about £1300 from Amazon in the UK. Happy reading and looking forward to your other videos.
Congrats Jan! And that is a fantastic price, one of the best I've ever heard of. Thanks for your support.
A Great Books sales representative told me years ago the spines represented colors of the American academic regalia, i.e., the colors of the doctoral hoods.
I own two hardback sets of the 1952 edition -- plus most of the same works in pdf format for e-book reading for convenience and searching. Of my physical sets, one set is in the el cheapo cloth bindings. Many of its volumes are ratty, worn, marked up and annotated. My other set is in the more common brown faux leather "Academic Binding." I try to keep that one in nearly pristine condition solely for the pleasure of appearance on my library shelves. My chief complaint is that the paper used was thinner than I would have preferred. Yes, it would have increased the size and cost of the set, but thicker paper could have withstood hard use without bleed through.
Where a lot of people go wrong on the GBWW is trying to just read them like typical books. That won't happen -- 99% of folks won't get through a single volume before they run out steam and let their GBWW just collect dust on the shelf. The books really need to be approached through the use a reading plan -- e.g., the "10 year reading plan," The Great Books discussion groups, or using the the "Syntopicon" (vol. 2 &3), which is an index of ideas: pick an idea and then read what each of the GB authors had to say about that idea.
I very much enjoyed this review of The Books.
I don’t want to watch your assessments of the works therein until I’ve read and processed them myself, so that might impact your numbe of views :-)
I would recommend nothing else! Thanks for tuning in here. Just glad there are people like you out there that enjoy reading the good stuff.
Wow… just picked up three 1952 books- plutarch, tacitus, and herodetus&thucydides. Wonderful condition!
They are a gem. Good picks, too.
Check out a book by Alex Beam, "A Great Idea at the Time". A very readable story about how the GBWW came about and the players involved.
This sounds like a great read. Thanks for the tip.
Your review is so wonderful
Thanks!
Thanks for the video! I am from Brazil, and most of these classical scientists ( as Copernicus, Ptolemy or Kepler) were never published here so I have to buy these books in english. Most prints are very expensive, but this colletion is more affordable. I have a question: are these books full versions of the original books? For exemple, is the Almagest by Ptolemy all covered in this version, or is it just a book about Ptolemys book?
Thanks for the videos, they help me a lot.
Interesting that after so long, many of the works still aren't translated across all common languages! I agree - the GBWW set is one of the more affordable ones. Harvard Classics in the right edition isn't too bad either (but varies widely). And to answer your question, yes! To the best of my knowledge, every work here is the full version of the work. Ptolemy's Almagest here has all 13 books + 3 appendices. These are not books about books. They are the original (translated) works. Other sets sometimes abridge or only select parts of works, but not the GBWW set.
Unfortunately, any "textbook" sent to Brazil must be in Portuguese. I tried to send a friend Ramón y Cajal's Advice to a Young Investigator and could not.
Good overview.
i bought this same set a couple years ago, in a used book store for $75, its in amazing condition. some of the books look like they have never been opened. Now im afraid to read them and potentially ruin them.
wow, $75 is a steal. Mine were not nearly so cheap, but similarly they were hardly touched. The spines will crack a little upon use. I try to read them while not opening the book more than 90 degrees or so when I can. Ultimately better to use and break them, than to never use them at all.
The commentator says Mortiner Adler invented the GBWW Syntopicon. I feel that, possibly, what he did was adopt the format of the LEGAL work: _Corpus Iuris Secundum_ as the basis of the set.
By this, I assume you mean Adler adopted the format and applied it to western ideas?
@@ThinkingWest Yes. The two sets of books both touch on topics and categories; one with legal concepts like Agency,Contract...,while the other is on ideas like Liberty, Experiment,etc..
Can you cite evidence for your assertion? It's been many years since I read Adler's autobiography, Philosopher at Large, and I don't recall him mentioning that where he discusses his brainchild, The Syntopicon. But what you say makes sense because his buddy Hutchins got him a position in the law school at
Chicago since the philosophy department didn't want him. I appreciate your fascinating comment!
@@molocious Lamentably, my opinion is pure conjecture. I will have to amend my comment.
Regards
Conjecture or hypothesis: one observes a similarity between the form and function of the Corpus Iuris Secundum and A Syntopicon. Is it merely coincidence? Circumstance: Mortimer Adler becomes the first non-lawyer appointed to the Univeristy of Chicago Law School by his friend, Robert Maynard Hutchins. Adler devotes his time there to research into the rules of evidence (ha! Just what we happen to be looking for, well, if not rules, then evidence). Your conjecture has made me interested in the Corpus Iuris Secundum. A Syntopicon is the only reason I would want the set to which it is the index of ideas. It's creation cost 400,000 man-hours, 10 years of work, and nearly one million dollars. It was to be the factor that would ensure the uniqeness of the set compared to others like the Harvard set. Was it ultimately a chimera, a boondoggle given its present obscurity? So your hypothesis, if proven, would point to the genesis of a publishing phenomenon.
Thank you very much, sir, for your great breakdown.
I would like to ask, however, as someone from Hong Kong, if you would think purchasing a used set of the 54 volume edition from Amazon is reliable? (I came across one used set for US$529.9) This is the only way I found available (or obvious) to me. I would be infinitely grateful if you can advise. Thank you, sir.
I'm not concerned so much about the condition of the books themselves as long as you see good pictures of them. I've had no major issues buying from Amazon, ebay, Thriftbooks, etc. The only thing I would be concerned about is the shipping. It all depends how well the seller packages so many books. When I bought another set (the Harvard Classics), the books were just tossed into a box all together with very little organization, and the box was in bad shape when it arrived. I'm sure international shipping would be even riskier. It is a gamble, for sure. If you do decide to buy, it may be worthwhile to contact the seller to make sure the books are packaged well.
You said there's no pictures, but can I assume that for the science texts that diagrams are included where they existed in the originals?
You are correct. Many of the scientific texts do have images.
I'd love to get this on AUDIBLE
I'm sure most of the works are on Audible in various locations. But yes, a single source of Audible for all of them would be fantastic.
I have done a fair number of the individual works in the GBWW series by listening to the Audible audiobook version. Doing them on audiobook made my long commutes to work an absolute pleasure. One of my favorite narrators of the great classics is Charlton Griffin. My least favorite reader (and one to be avoided like the plague) is "Frederick Davidson" (David Case). Alas, FD was the metaphorical "only game in town" for some of the classic works I wanted to listen to.
Does anything else compete with the great books set🤔. Thinking about getting into this.
Definitely. There's also the Harvard Classics. Worth checking out to compare.
Thanks
But the real question is: Can we be liberal artists without being lemurs?
I don't mean to be gratuitously frivolous, but I found that question with its howler of a misprint in Peter A. Redpath's fascinating book, How to Read a Difficult Book: A Beginner's Guidebto the Lost Art of Philosophical Reading. At the back of the book is a series of questions like the one above that was meant to be "Can we be liberal artists without being learners?"
To answer that one must know what a liberal artist is. Answer: a practitioner of the arts (skills) that make one free (liberal, liberty). Plato and Aristotle espoused those skills but Boethius codified them for the Middle Ages as the Seven Liberal Arts divided into the Trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In light of this, then "no" seems to be an obvious answer to the question unless one is not a lemur.
I found this quite comical. "Learners" vs "lemurs".
Does the early set that you have not have any diagrams or illustrations? I saw someone review the second edition and it had a number of concise illustrations.
Thank u for this video. I had one question. Is the font type and size consistent across all the volumes?
Yes, except for Vol I, the introduction, which has a larger font size than the rest.
@@ThinkingWest Thank you. The reason I'm considering the series is the uniform font and space on the sides for notes. Also the ability to quickly cross-refer between the various books.
Why isn’t Thomas Paine or Carl Jung included in the set?
I actually don't know...those are certainly deserving authors. The editors didn't spend much time telling us the reasons they left out many works. I suspect some are simply just because they forgot about them.
@@ThinkingWest that sucks because they definitely belong there 😔
And after this, there are all the volumes in the Loeb Classical Library! Green for Greek, red for Latin! One can learn the rest of Hippocrates, besides just the oath.
I wasn't familiar with the Loeb set. Thanks for the tip. I'll have to add that list to our website.
I am thinking about getting this set but the lack of any work between Augustine and Aquinas still bugs me. It's like nothing happened for 800 years, which of course is silly. Boethius is not there, for example. As much as the middle ages seems backward to us today, I think it was far more influential that we realize.
I agree it's certainly lacking in the "Dark Ages" works. I'll have to compare to the Harvard Classics set, but I bet they have few works in that period as well. I think it reflects a widespread notion that nothing worth reading was written during this time.
@@ThinkingWest I have bought select volumes from the set (mostly on astronomy, science, and philosophy), and I love them. Great set; well made. I can supplement with my own other books where needed.
that's in good condition. does it ever get reprinted?
Don't think so...
Does Syntopicon vol 1 and 2 sets comes under those 50+ volumes are they separate
The Syntopicon is volume 2 and volume 3 of the 54 volume set. Volume 1 is "The Great Conversation" by Hutchins; it's an intro to the set.
Where can we buy this set?
Typically ebay for full sets, running in the range of $300-$500. Occasionally I find single volumes for $2 at used book stores.
@@ThinkingWest Thank you😊
Any idea where to obtain some of these in Europe?
Best chance is eBay. Hopefully the shipping isn't too bad.
way general books, if you want to learn more about a subject or author buy something more focused then these collections.
Depends what you want to learn, I think
Oh nice, a based christian bale.
this is so old style - I would even say ugly, but that is just me. I prefer to chase these books individually
some of these are math books, some are in French, Latin, ... it would be a life-long and massive challenge to read all of them. Also, what is the point of so much generality ? Wouldn't you want to be good in one field, instead of "everything", which sounds rather naïve ?