What’s on your Five Foot Shelf?

July 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

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One hundred years ago saw the publication of Charles Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. The Harvard President claimed you could get a solid liberal education by reading a collection of books that filled a five-foot shelf. Most of the 51 volumes on the Five Foot Shelf probably still deserve their place: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Homer’s Odyssey and many other classics. But what books from the last 100 years – fiction or non-fiction – have now earned a slot alongside them? Which books from around the world would you put on a Five Foot Shelf for 2009?

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Listen to the update from July 13, 2009:

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Listen to the update from July 17, 2009:

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Discussion

175 comments for “What’s on your Five Foot Shelf?”

Zach Herr

The Civil War (3 vols.) by Shelby Foote
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
the Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Working by Studs Turkel
Gig by John and Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter
Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E Ambrose
Memoirs Found In A Bathtub and Hospital of the Transfiguration by Stanislaw Lem
the Executioners Song by Norman Mailer
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
sorry if i’ve repeated anyone’s suggestions

Larry Montello

Add to list!
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

judy

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an absolute must!

Steve

Citizens Soldiers, although an enlightening read, was plagiarized.

Carl Roth

“The Stars My Destination” by Alfred Bester, classic timeless SciFi

“Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo, peerless anti war polemic in story form

Anything by blacklisted authors, any books banned by Governments…
Obstacles

Missed the date part. Oops. Just delete Sun Tzu, Cervantes and Horace. Could then add Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence, 100 years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez and To Live – Yu Hua.
pi wiglesworth

‘The Selfish Gene’ – Richard Dawkins
The origination of ‘meme’ which did not exist as a homologue to gene until it was coined by Dawkins.
Sally Wunsch

1984 Orwell
All the King’s Men Penn Warren
Brave New World Huxley
A Man in Full Wolf
Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
The Stranger Camus
Arthur Miller’s plays
A Fine Balance
T. S. Eliot’s works
Robert Frost’s works
Dry September and other short stories Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms Hemingway
Michael Lynch

Children of the Arbat: Anatoli Rybakov

2001 A Space Odyssey: Arther C. Clark

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant

Walden: Henry David Thoreau

Lord of the Ring: J.R.R. Tolkien

The Plague: Albert Camus

Tom Sawyer: Mark Twain

A Rumor of War: Philip Caputo

Surprised by Joy: C.S. Lewis

The Crisis: Winston Churchill
senseandnonsense

All Quiet on the Western Front – Remarque
The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Thompson
The Jeeves Books… P.G.Wodehouse
The Satires of Juvenal – Juvenal
The Golden Ass – Apuleius
Huckleberry Finn – Twain
Dune – Herbert
Beowulf
The Autobiography of William Shatner
Katie Fahmy

-Orientalism by Edward Said
-Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
-The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
Dewaine

Liberalism by Ludwig von Mises
Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
Man, Economy, and State, by Murray N. Rothbard
Erica Bowers

Epic of Gilgamesh
The Beautiful and Damned- Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby-
Fitzgerald
works of Petrarch
Apes and Essence- Huxley
The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera
Pragmatism- William James
Thus Spoke Zarathrustra- Nietzsche
CURTIS HURLEY

A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
frank malone

Tolkien, The lord of the Rings
Tim Hartmann

The Moral Compass, William J. Bennett
My list was long, (its what liberal arts people do!)but did not see this compilation of world stories. No matter what the country or history, the stories ring true on many levels
Stephanie Martin-Ward

“The Grapes of Wrath” Steinbeck
“Night” Wiesel
“Heart of Darkness” Conrad
“Blackhawk Down” Bowden
“Pride and Prejudice” Austen
“Wuthering Heights” Bronte
The “Regeneration” trilogy by Barker
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Atwood
“The House of Mirth” Wharton
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” Hurston
All of Langston Hughes’ poetry
“Farewell to Manzanar” Houston
“Beloved” Morrison
“Frankenstein” Shelley
“Everything that Rises Must Converge” O’Connor

Add, “Antony and Cleopatra” under Shakespeare’s plays.

Can you tell I’m an English teacher? ;)

Stephanie Martin-Ward

Oops! A couple of those are over 100 years old. They’re still must-reads though, IMHO.

georgetta busler

Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Love in the Time of Cholera
In Cold Blood
Who Moved My Cheese?
Irene

Ocean sea by Alessandro Baricco
Dorothy Raymond

another author I overlooked earlier- Wallace Stegner, especially Angle of Repose
Patrick Eidsmo

I would choose Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It is the greatest example of almost every type of literary theory in practice today, and it blends more popular culture, history, religion, science, and other “things” into a fragmented but brilliant plot.
Gab

Slaughterhouse five
On the Road
The Secret Garden
The little Princess
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Harry Potter series
A Clockwork Orange
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Old Man and the Sea
A Brave New World
A Separate Peace
The Giver
Lord of the Flies
works by: Nietzche, Satre, Chomsky, Simone de Beauvoir
The Chosen
Bobbi Baker

The complete short stories of Chekhov, Flannery O’Connor, Frank O’Connor, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Richard Yates.
Jason Ocker

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
The novel follows a group of individuals in Soviet Russia during the siege of Stalingrad.
Roberth

blood meridien – cormac mccarthy
the sun also rises – hemingway
http://www.antroposdesign.org Vlad Kunko

Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
Mind and Nature – Gregory Bateson
The Ever-Present Origin – Jean Gebser
Tree of Knowledge – Humberto Maturana / Francisco Varela
Four-Quartets – T.S. Eliot
Sondra Carter

The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini
Three Cups of Tea-Greg Mortenson
Night,
Women Who Run with the Wolves-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Gather Together in My Name; Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas-Maya Angelou
We Are All the Same-Jim Wooten
Fences; The Piano Lesson-August Wilson
The Hand Maiden’s Tale-Margaret Atwood
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf; Betsy Brown-Ntozaki Shange
Reading Lolita in Tehran-Azar Nafisi
Directed by Desire: the Collected Poems of June Jordan
Peace Like a River-Leif Enger
A Woman of Salt-Mary Potter Engle
Jarrod Ross

In The Heart Of The Sea – Nathaniel Philbrick, I’ve grown up in and around New Bedford, Mass so you were always steeped in the whaling history. This is an incredible story of survival and an interesting historical background for Moby Dick.
Fairenhiet 451 – Ray Bradbury
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain, This is a great window into the restaurant world and a glimpse into what happens behind the swinging doors. In a time where we all eat out so much, this is a must.

Joan

In the Heart of the Sea is a absolutely fantastic read, I couldn’t put it down. Thanks for mentioning it.

Irene Siegel

The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptomist by Emile Habiby
Deborah Stevenson

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Diary of Anne Frank
The Four-Gated City – Doris Lessing
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Charlotte’s Web – E.B.White
Childhood’s End – Arthur Clarke
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Five Children and It – E.Nesbit
Travels With Charlie – John Steinbeck
Working – Studs Terkel
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Memories, Dreams, & Reflections – Carl Jun

Dorothy Raymond

Glad to see Travels with Charlie and Grimm’s Fairy Tales on the list – both well-deserved.

Matt Johnson

Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
Blood and Thunder – Hampton Sides
A History of God – Karen Armstrong
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy – Hirsch
Social Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
The End of Poverty – Jeffery Sachs
The Language of God – Francis Collins

Alyssa

“Guns, Germs, and Steel” was great. I read it, “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, “What is the What” and “Things Fall Apart” in preparation for working in Africa. It leveled the playing field so to speak. If you like Karen Armstrong may I suggest “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” by the same author. The best book for giving anyone, from learned scholar to lay man, a perspective on the situation and insight into the turmoil.
Steve

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and environmental determinism has popular appeal, but it is an idea that is decredited by geographers. I am not well versed enough to adequately explain geographers’ rejection of it, but I remember my geography professor pointing this out.

Alyssa

Hmm, that is interesting. I’m afraid it has been many years since I left college and have only what I read now in which to glean my information. But, I think maybe a tiny fraction of credit is surely do to the notion that a people cannot speedily progress when there’s next to nothing for indigenous plants and domesticable animals in the area. If not yet founded, an interesting thought in the very least

Alyssa

“Atlas Shrugged” Ayn Rand
“Mountains Beyond Mountains” Tracy Kidder
“The House of the Spirits” Isabel Allende
“The Labyrinth of Solitude” Octavio Paz
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” Robert M. Prisig
“A People’s History of the United States” Howard Zinn
“East of Eden” John Steinbeck
The works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson
The works of Walker Percy and Umberto Eco
The works of Jared Diamond
Leona Heitsch

From Day to Day, Odd Nansen
Lucky Child, Thomas Buergenthal
Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson
Farming, A Handbook, Wendell Berry
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
West of Morning, August Dereleth
The Soup Has Many Eyes J.R Leonard
The Invisible Pyramid, L. Eiseley
Innocent Assasins, Loren Eiseley
The Winona LaDuke Reader, W. LaDuke
Black Mesa Poems Jimmy SantiagoBaca
Eve’s Daughter, Hannah Kahn
Steve

Although I don’t think I’m well read enough to be qualified to do this, these are some books that I would suggest.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen–Will explain many of the myths passed off as American history by textbooks. Every teacher should read this book.

Small is Beautiful: Econimics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher–Published in 1973, this book is ahaed of its time regarding sustainability.

1984 by George Orwell–It is alarming how much of this continues to be happening.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Doctor Zhvago by Boris Pasternak
Things Fall Apart by by Chinua Achebe
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
The Tree of Red Satrs by Tessa Bridal
Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years by Haynes Johnson
Something by Noam Chomsky, perhaps the Chomsky Reader to get a feel for him.
Tim Adell

The Lord of the Rings–Tolkien
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock–Eliot
Nothing from Ezra Pound
Dubliners but not Ulysses
A Hundred Years of Solitude–Marquez
The Menelaiad by John Barth
The short stories of Chekhov, Hemingway, Faulkner, Frank and Flannery O’Connor, both Barthelmes and Raymond Carver.
The poems of Philip Larkin, Wendy Cope, Donald Hall, Paul Zimmer. Talk to me tomorrow to see how this list changes.
History by Barbara Tuchman, Doris Kearns Goodwin (and Gore Vidal, for fiction.)
Thurber, Benchley, Cal Trillen, PJ O’Rourke, Carl Hiassen and Dave Barry.
Peter Casey

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Capitalism, Ayn Rand
Team of Rivals, Goodwin
1776, McCullough
Angelas Ashes, McCourt
Richard(SAN)

GODEL, ESCHER, BACH by Hofstadter

Witter Bynner’s translation of Tao Teh King.

‘The Place of Houses” by Alexander

“The Little Grey Men” by Watkins-Pitchford

“The Little Prince” by Antoine St.Exupery

an extra copy of Godel, Escher, Bach.

Richard(SAN)
KG

To the Lighthouse – Virignia Woolf
Sunset Song – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Ulysses – James Joyce
Civilization and Its Discontents – Freud
Crying of Lot 49 – Pynchon
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
The Metamorphosis – Kafka
Labyrinths – Borges
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
Writings from Foucault, Derrida, Spivak, Paul de Man and Simone de Beauvoir
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
Of Human Bondage – Maugham

On the cusp:
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad

I also agree with those postings that include: Winston Churchill, the Harry Potter series, Faulkner, Orwell, Hemingway, Pasternak, Arthur Miller, Huxley, Anne Frank, Zora Neale Hurston, Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Said, Golding and Fitzgerald.
David LaBrie

Le Petit Prince ( The Little Prince)- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Pa:wi:ki:ma:p

In the future, the most important book of the 20th century will be recognized to be Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.”
Mike Melchiors

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
From an early start, to becoming older, these bring with them a pleasure to teach & to learning. To care for our selves, our community and our world. Great examples of following the golden rule and what the failure to understand it does to ourselves. These books help demonstrate that you can bend down either to pick someone up, our to put someone down. Either way the action you choose comes back on us to the same effect.
Juan Luna

Fiction:
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolken
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Star Wars Legacy of the Force Series

Non- Fiction:
The Bible
Brad Brown

I add to the mix Marge Piercy’s 1976 utopian “speculative” science fiction (as is called in Wikipedia) Woman on the Edge of Time. It is both contemporary commentary and cautionary treatise, along the lines of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, with more avenues of hope and misadventure. Not only does Piercy create a non-gender specific pronoun for s/he, but she challenges our metahpors for the future. As the proper futurist and utopian, she “pierces” through by seeing in “one piece of evidance” the whole (viz. Willaim A. Williams). Woman on the Edge of Time is a challenge mind and spirit and a measure that is handed over to the reader to parse not only sanity but action.
Bobbi Baker

Ok, if we’re including children’s books, I’m adding Charlotte’s Web. The book that got me hooked on books for life.
Bobbi Baker

The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport
Underground by Haruki Murakami
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild
senseandnonsense

Treasure Island -Stevenson
Robinson Crusoe-Defoe
Concord Hymn-Emerson
The Autobiography of Malcom X
Two Years Before the Mast-Dana
Leaves of Grass-Whitman
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen-McMurtry
The Glory of Their Times-Ritter
The speeches of Abraham Lincoln
David Waldron

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl draws upon existential philosophy and his experience in Nazi concentration camps to inform his theories of psychotherapy.
Tom Broach

The Glass Bead Game – Hesse
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Vonnegut
Marsha Lake Eyre

The Pattern Language- Alexander C, Isikawa S, Silverstein M
John Martin

The Seven Mysteries of Life- Guy Murcie
The Discoverers- Daniel Boorstin
Daniel Hollis

“The Myth of Sisyphus” By Albert Camus
Jon Kruiz

Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky
Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
People’s History of the U.S. – Howard Zinn
Common Sense – Thomas Paine
Guns, Germs & Steel – Jared Diamond
I Am Joaquin/Yo Soy Joaquin (Poetry) – Rodolfo Gonzales
The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
Spiritual Couplets – Rumi
John Glass

Science and Human Behavior, BF Skinner
The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann

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Michael Rass

What’s on your Five Foot Shelf?

Discussion

175 comments for “What’s on your Five Foot Shelf?”

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