An autodidact's guide to a comprehensive self education.
Here I have listed in chronological order the most important books ever written; encompassing novels, poetry, aphorisms, mathematics, science, philosophy, economics, history, biology, etc. I have included every influential work of literature from the time of Ancient Mesopotamia (2100 BC) to around the Second World War (1945), with some outliers.
Each title after 100 Years of Solitude falls outside of the scholarly canon, but I have listed them as an addendum because their ideas are edifying to the educated man.
I have also intentionally left out post-modernist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jean Paul Sartre, Leo Strauss, Franz Boas, the Frankfurt School, William S. Burroughs, Wilhelm Reich, etc. because their philosophies are antithetical to the Western tradition, and thus did not qualify to be listed. While Marx, Darwin, and Freud would also meet this criteria, their works are essential to the development of world history.
