The Book of Great Books: A Guide to 100 World Classics

by W. John Campbell

Provides a list of one hundred world classics, offering information on plot, characters, main themes, symoblism, and composition for each book.

Genres: Reference, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Classics, Literature, Ebooks, 21st Century

866 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[GW · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've done it! W J Campbell has inspired me to read classics and I now have finished all 100 books in his simply beautiful reference book. I never would have finished the 320 classic books I've read so far if I hadn't come across his book on books. It is a brief recapitalization of great works and should be treated as an aid not a complete cheat book for delinquent teenagers to finish high school without actually reading a book. I've found true pleasure in learning about each title after I finished the individual books. One thing is wrong though, I didn't see a follow up book or any way to thank Professor Campbell for the hard work it must of took to combine and author his book of great books. If ever I go back to college I will bring this book with me.

[StrangeBedfellows · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably would never have bought this book if I hadn't purchased it at a discount price. If you imagine a stack of SparksNotes bound together, you get an idea of what this book has to offer. It's useful as a general tool, especially for high school or lower-division literature studies. However, some of the information is questionable and I wonder at some of the titles selected/omitted for this book. If you can pick a copy up for a few bucks and you're interested in overviews of some major works, I'd say, 'go for it.' However, more advance literary students might turn their noses up.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like that it addresses many classic works. This helps me determine which books to read next.

It is a loan from Kindle Unlimited (KU), I won’t get it all read before my KU subscription expires, so here is a list of the books described in it.

Table of Contents
Aeneid: Virgil
All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque
All the King's Men: Robert Penn Warren
Animal Farm: George Orwell
As I Lay Dying: William Faulkner
As You Like It: William Shakespeare
The Awakening: Kate Chopin
Beowulf: Anonymous
Billy Budd: Herman Melville
The Bluest Eye: Toni Morrison
Brave New World: Aldous Huxley
The Call of the Wild: Jack London
Candide: Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales: Geoffrey Chaucer
Catch-22: Joseph Heller
1 minute left in chapter
The Color Purple: Alice Walker
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Crucible: Arthur Miller
Daisy Miller: Henry James
David Copperfield: Charles Dickens
Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller
Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank
The Divine Comedy: Inferno: Dante
Doctor Faustus: Christopher Marlowe
A Doll's House: Henrik Ibsen
Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes
Ethan Frome: Edith Wharton
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo: Plato
A Farewell to Arms: Ernest Hemingway
Faust, Parts 1 and 2: J. W. von Goethe
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway
Frankenstein: Mary Shelley
The Glass Menagerie: Tennessee Williams
The Good Earth: Pearl S. Buck
The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck
Great Expectations: Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver's Travels: Jonathan Swift
Hamlet: William Shakespeare
Hard Times: Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad
Henry Part 1: William Shakespeare
House Made of Dawn: N. Scott Momaday
The House of the Seven Gables: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Maya Angelou
Iliad: Homer
Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronté
The Joy Luck Club: Amy Tan
Julius Caesar: William Shakespeare
The Jungle: Upton Sinclair
King Lear: William Shakespeare
1 minute left in chapter
Light in August: William Faulkner
Lord Jim: Joseph Conrad
The Lord of the Flies: William Golding
The Lord of the Rings: J. R. R. Tolkien
Macbeth: William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary: Gustave Flaubert
The Mayor of Casterbridge: Thomas Hardy
The Merchant of Venice: William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream: William Shakespeare
Moby-Dick: Herman Melville
Native Son: Richard Wright
1984: George Orwell
Odyssey: Homer
The Oedipus Trilogy: Sophocles
Of Mice and Men: John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea: Ernest Hemingway
Oliver Twist: Charles Dickens
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ken Kesey
Othello: William Shakespeare
Paradise Lost: John Milton
The Pearl: John Steinbeck
The Plague: Albert Camus
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: James Joyce
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen
The Prince: Niccolö Machiavelli
The Red Badge of Courage: Stephen Crane
Republic: Plato
The Return of the Native: Thomas Hardy
Richard Ill: William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet: William Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Separate Peace: John Knowles
Silas Marner: George Eliot
Sons and Lovers: D. H. Lawrence
1 minute left in chapter
The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner
Steppenwolf: Hermann Hesse
The Stranger: Albert Camus
The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway
The Taming of the Shrew: William Shakespeare
The Tempest: William Shakespeare
Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Thomas Hardy
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston
Tom Sawyer: Mark Twain
Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stevenson
Twelfth Night: William Shakespeare
Waiting for Godot: Samuel Beckett
Walden: Henry David Thoreau

[Myth · Rating 5 out of 5]

*I've had this in reading limbo since 2007 since it's not a book I'll read cover to cover, but rather a guide and the sort I might look up a specific book.

I gave it a five star, because this is the sort of book that it either did what I wanted it to or it didn't. I got what I wanted/expected, so thumbs up.

2007
Because this is a huge collection of summaries on the classics it's taking me a while to get through. The summaries are interesting, but don't really fill the gap for a regular story. This is kind of my side reading.

I think it's a very useful book to read if you don't want to read all the classics. That was part of the reason I got it. I don't plan to read all these classics and some of them are so old that the language is hard to understand. This is a book for readers and non-readers who want to be informed in literature.

[Brianna Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Book of Great Books

This was so helpful. There are so many classic books that I have no desire to read, but I am interested in their cultural relevance, now and during the time they were written. This book clearly and objectively summarizes each book alphabetically, goes over the characters and main themes, tells me about the author and how the book was received during the time it was written, as well as other helpful information I appreciate knowing.

[Sharon Beers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gives a lot of information about the 100 classic books chosen - info about the author, about the characters and chronological details of the plot by chapter. It is broken into several sections for each book - Plot Summary, Background, Key Characters, Main Themes and Ideas, Main Symbols, Style and Structure. Very good reference.

[Sterlingcindysu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guide lists short synopsis of novels, plays and epic poems, from Shakespeare to Plato and Virgil to modern day writers. Campbell describes plot, characters, meaning of symbols, main themes and ideas and authors’ backgrounds. This helped me to make a list of classic books to be read.

[Franky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember buying this book years ago and I found it a mostly helping resource just for simply getting an overall snapshot and overview of specific classics. As other reviewers allude to, the structure is very SparkNotes-ish in that it contains a quick overview, a comprehensive summary, key themes, important primary characters, significant symbols, and a brief critical analysis. I think this is a very helpful guide for the student who may be taking a literature course with classics or those who are interested in reading classics. I'm mostly pleased with the books contained within as well, but, as you can imagine with only 100 classics listed, the reader will probably find ones that are not included as well as ones they feel should be omitted (clearly subjective to each reader, however). I know you can find out so much information online now, but this one is well worth the look if you are studying classic literature.

[Cindy Huskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one's a keeper! From the perspective of a former AP English teacher and current librarian, this is a great reference book for any reader. The list of 100 classics is organized alphabetically by title, which is helpful for those who find titles rather than authors' names easier to remember.

Each entry has the same format: a one-sentence summary; detailed plot summary broken down by sections of scenes, chapters, or books according to the format of the text; character chart (very useful graphic for some novels); background information about the novel (e.g., type of work, author information, etc.); key characters list with descriptions; main themes & ideas; main symbols; style & structure; and critical overview.

[Peter Curtiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's not too much to say - a compilation of book summaries of classics that read like spark notes. It's hard to get that spectacularly wrong or spectacularly right. The relationship infographics/trees in each section were pretty useful - eventually I started reading those first and the summaries after. As far as compilation selection went it seems, in my unuanced opinion, that too great an emphasis was placed on Shakespeare - 14/100 of the books were his.

[Denise Basinger · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a decent enough book to use as reference, but I found it highly misogynist, since only about 5-10% of the authors represented are women. No mention of Margaret Mitchell, Fannie Flagg, Carson McCullers, Ayn Rand, and so many others. What really shocked me was looking at the publication date, which was 2000! I honestly expected it to be 1950s of earlier!

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the list of books, but the accompanying articles felt too sparknotesy. Where are all the scholarly analyses??? Sheesh.

[Jesús Valdez godoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. This is a good one, I haven't read it, but i'll do it sooner as I can. I know to the author, He is one of the greatest persons I've known. He is great.

[Samantha Penrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great reference piece.