Coming soon
The Well-Educated Mind
Our aspiration list — the full reading roadmap.
Adapted from Susan Wise Bauer's classical reading curriculum. Available titles are clickable and ready to work through. The rest are on the way — titles in the public domain are queued for ingestion; those still under copyright are aspirational while we pursue licensing.
18
Live
0
Queued
82
Coming soon
41
Aspirational
141 titles total · public-domain titles flow into the library as we ingest them. Titles still under copyright are marked “Aspirational” — we'll add them only if we secure licensing.
Novels
The form that lets a serious mind live inside someone else's story.
- Coming soonDon QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes
- Coming soonThe Pilgrim's ProgressJohn Bunyan
- Coming soonGulliver's TravelsJonathan Swift
- Coming soonPride and PrejudiceJane Austen
- Coming soonOliver TwistCharles Dickens
- Coming soonJane EyreCharlotte Brontë
- LiveNathaniel Hawthorne
- Coming soonMoby-DickHerman Melville
- Coming soonUncle Tom's CabinHarriet Beecher Stowe
- Coming soonMadame BovaryGustave Flaubert
- LiveFyodor Dostoyevsky
- Coming soonAnna KareninaLeo Tolstoy
- Coming soonThe Return of the NativeThomas Hardy
- Coming soonThe Portrait of a LadyHenry James
- LiveMark Twain
- Coming soonThe Red Badge of CourageStephen Crane
- Coming soonHeart of DarknessJoseph Conrad
- Coming soonThe House of MirthEdith Wharton
- Coming soonThe Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald
- Coming soonMrs. DallowayVirginia Woolf
- Coming soonThe TrialFranz Kafka
- AspirationalNative SonRichard Wright
- AspirationalThe StrangerAlbert Camus
- Aspirational1984George Orwell
- AspirationalInvisible ManRalph Ellison
- AspirationalSeize the DaySaul Bellow
- AspirationalOne Hundred Years of SolitudeGabriel García Márquez
- AspirationalIf on a winter's night a travelerItalo Calvino
- AspirationalSong of SolomonToni Morrison
- AspirationalWhite NoiseDon DeLillo
- AspirationalPossessionA.S. Byatt
Autobiographies
Lives written by the people who lived them — the discipline of looking back honestly.
- LiveAugustine
- Coming soonThe Book of Margery KempeMargery Kempe
- LiveMichel de Montaigne
- Coming soonThe Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by HerselfTeresa of Ávila
- Coming soonMeditations on First PhilosophyRené Descartes
- Coming soonGrace Abounding to the Chief of SinnersJohn Bunyan
- Coming soonThe Narrative of the Captivity and RestorationMary Rowlandson
- Coming soonConfessionsJean-Jacques Rousseau
- LiveBenjamin Franklin
- LiveHenry David Thoreau
- Coming soonIncidents in the Life of a Slave GirlHarriet Jacobs
- Coming soonLife and Times of Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass
- Coming soonUp from SlaveryBooker T. Washington
- Coming soonEcce HomoFriedrich Nietzsche
- AspirationalMein KampfAdolf Hitler
- Coming soonAn AutobiographyMohandas Gandhi
- Coming soonThe Autobiography of Alice B. ToklasGertrude Stein
- AspirationalThe Seven Storey MountainThomas Merton
- AspirationalSurprised by JoyC.S. Lewis
- AspirationalThe Autobiography of Malcolm XMalcolm X
- AspirationalJournal of a SolitudeMay Sarton
- AspirationalThe Gulag ArchipelagoAleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
- AspirationalBorn AgainCharles W. Colson
- AspirationalHunger of MemoryRichard Rodriguez
- AspirationalThe Road from CoorainJill Ker Conway
- AspirationalAll Rivers Run to the SeaElie Wiesel
Histories
The long story of how we got here — told by people who were closer to the fire than we are.
- Coming soonThe HistoriesHerodotus
- LiveThucydides
- LivePlato
- Coming soonLivesPlutarch
- Coming soonThe City of GodAugustine
- Coming soonThe Ecclesiastical History of the English PeopleBede
- LiveNiccolò Machiavelli
- LiveThomas More
- LiveJohn Locke
- Coming soonThe History of England, Vol. VDavid Hume
- LiveJean-Jacques Rousseau
- LiveThomas Paine
- Coming soonThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireEdward Gibbon
- Coming soonA Vindication of the Rights of WomanMary Wollstonecraft
- Coming soonDemocracy in AmericaAlexis de Tocqueville
- Coming soonThe Communist ManifestoKarl Marx & Friedrich Engels
- Coming soonThe Civilization of the Renaissance in ItalyJacob Burckhardt
- Coming soonThe Souls of Black FolkW.E.B. Du Bois
- Coming soonThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismMax Weber
- Coming soonQueen VictoriaLytton Strachey
- AspirationalThe Road to Wigan PierGeorge Orwell
- AspirationalThe New England MindPerry Miller
- AspirationalThe Great CrashJohn Kenneth Galbraith
- AspirationalThe Longest DayCornelius Ryan
- AspirationalAll the President's MenBob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
- AspirationalBattle Cry of FreedomJames M. McPherson
- AspirationalA Midwife's TaleLaurel Thatcher Ulrich
- AspirationalThe End of History and the Last ManFrancis Fukuyama
Drama
The plays that built the Western imagination — meant to be heard out loud.
- Coming soonAgamemnonAeschylus
- Coming soonOedipus the KingSophocles
- Coming soonMedeaEuripides
- Coming soonThe BirdsAristophanes
- Coming soonPoeticsAristotle
- Coming soonEverymanAnonymous
- Coming soonDoctor FaustusChristopher Marlowe
- Coming soonRichard IIIWilliam Shakespeare
- Coming soonA Midsummer Night's DreamWilliam Shakespeare
- Coming soonHamletWilliam Shakespeare
- Coming soonTartuffeMolière
- Coming soonThe Way of the WorldWilliam Congreve
- Coming soonShe Stoops to ConquerOliver Goldsmith
- Coming soonThe School for ScandalRichard Brinsley Sheridan
- Coming soonA Doll's HouseHenrik Ibsen
- Coming soonThe Importance of Being EarnestOscar Wilde
- Coming soonThe Cherry OrchardAnton Chekhov
- Coming soonSaint JoanGeorge Bernard Shaw
- AspirationalMurder in the CathedralT.S. Eliot
- AspirationalOur TownThornton Wilder
- AspirationalLong Day's Journey Into NightEugene O'Neill
- AspirationalNo ExitJean-Paul Sartre
- AspirationalA Streetcar Named DesireTennessee Williams
- AspirationalDeath of a SalesmanArthur Miller
- AspirationalWaiting for GodotSamuel Beckett
- AspirationalA Man for All SeasonsRobert Bolt
- AspirationalRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are DeadTom Stoppard
- AspirationalEquusPeter Shaffer
Poetry
The form where meaning rides on sound.
- Coming soonThe Epic of GilgameshAnonymous
- LiveHomer
- Coming soonThe OdysseyHomer
- Coming soonGreek LyricistsVarious
- Coming soonOdesHorace
- LiveAnonymous
- Coming soonInfernoDante Alighieri
- Coming soonSir Gawain and the Green KnightAnonymous
- Coming soonThe Canterbury TalesGeoffrey Chaucer
- Coming soonSonnetsWilliam Shakespeare
- Coming soonPoemsJohn Donne
- Coming soonPsalmsKing James Bible
- LiveJohn Milton
- Coming soonSongs of Innocence and of ExperienceWilliam Blake
- Coming soonPoemsWilliam Wordsworth
- Coming soonPoemsSamuel Taylor Coleridge
- Coming soonPoemsJohn Keats
- Coming soonPoemsHenry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Coming soonPoemsAlfred, Lord Tennyson
- LiveWalt Whitman
- Coming soonPoemsEmily Dickinson
- Coming soonPoemsChristina Rossetti
- Coming soonPoemsGerard Manley Hopkins
- Coming soonPoemsWilliam Butler Yeats
- Coming soonPoemsPaul Laurence Dunbar
- AspirationalPoemsRobert Frost
- AspirationalPoemsCarl Sandburg
- AspirationalPoemsWilliam Carlos Williams
This roadmap is adapted from Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind (W.W. Norton). We use it as a structural reference for what a full humanities library ought to contain — it reflects no endorsement from the author.
Missing a book you'd like to see next? Let us know.