This book list coordinates with the Modern History time period. It includes classic literature, The Great Books, listings from different genres, audios, videos, and much more!
The Great Books List for Modern History
Reading and selecting The Great Books can be a challenging process and one not to be taken lightly. I have a very detailed post about The Great Books of Classic Literature that can help you learn more about these works and their authors.
PARENTS! A word of caution — please read or review these books before handing them over to your child. Some of them have very mature content. You can read reviews from other people at Goodreads and Amazon.
**Some of these links will provide you with an option for the kindle, audio, softcover, hardback, and used versions of the book. Whenever possible, I link to Amazon because it provides you with the most options and it’s usually the cheapest place to purchase.**
- Final Harvest by Emily Dickinson
- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
- Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler – NOTE: this book is not easy to read! During my research I found that the best translation was done by Ralph Manheim, however, even with his translation, this book is still a very disturbing and graphic novel, so approach it cautiously.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
- Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
- Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writing by Abraham Lincoln
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- How Should We Then Live? By Francis Schaeffer
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- Beyond Good & Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare —- Hamlet No Fear version
- Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot
- The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein
