v. 1. Introduction & syntopical guide. A Letter To The Reader -- Introduction: The Ways, and Whys, of Reading ; The Imagination of Man ; Man and Society ; Science and Mathematics ; Philosophy ; The Endless Journey -- Syntopical Guide -- Appendices: A plan of graded reading ; Recommended novels ; Recommended anthologies of poetry.

v. 2. Imaginative Literature -- Robinson Crusoe / Daniel Defoe -- Mowgli's Brothers / Rudyard Kipling -- The Battle with the Cannon (from Ninety-three) / Victor Hugo -- Two Friends / Guy De Maupassant -- The Killers / Ernest Hemingway -- The Two Drovers / Walter Scott -- Youth / Joseph Conrad -- Micromegas / Voltaire -- The Happy Prince / Oscar Wilde -- The Tell-Tale Heart / Edgar Allen Poe -- The Masque of the Red Death / Edgar Allen Poe -- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / Robert Louis Stevenson -- The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg / Mark Twain -- A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick (from The Pickwick Papers) / Charles Dickens -- The Overcoat / Nikolai Gogol -- Customs and Opinions of the Erewhonians (from Erewhon) / Samuel Butler -- I'm a Fool / Sherwood Anderson -- Aucassin and Nicolette / Anonymous.

v. 3. Imaginative Literature -- The Open Boat / Stephen Crane -- Billy Budd / Herman Melville -- The Gentleman from San Francisco / Ivan Bunin -- Rappaccini's Daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Lifted Veil / George Eliot -- Cupid and Psyche (from The Golden Ass) / Lucius Apuleius -- First Love / Ivan Turgenev -- White Nights / Fyodor Dostoevsky -- The Apple-Tree / John Galsworthy -- The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller / Gustave Flaubert -- The Diamond as Big as the Ritz / F. Scott Fitzgerald -- A Passion in the Desert / Honore De Balzac -- The Darling / Anton Chekhov -- The Spinoza of Market Street / Isaac Singer -- The Queen of Spades / Alexander Pushkin -- The Rocking-Horse Winner / D.H. Lawrence -- The Pupil / Henry James -- Mario and the Magician / Thomas Mann -- Sorrow-Acre / Isak Dinesen -- The Death of Ivan Ilyitch / Leo Tolstoy -- The Three Hermits / Leo Tolstoy -- What Men Live By / Leo Tolstoy.

v. 4. Imaginative Literature -- The Misanthrope / Moliere -- The Doctor in Spite of Himself / Moliere -- The School for Scandal / Richard Sheridan -- An Ememy of the People / Henrik Ibsen -- The Cherry Orchard / Anton Chekhov -- The Man of Destiny / George Bernard Shaw -- Riders to the Sea / John M. Synge -- The Emperor Jones / Eugene O'Neill.

v. 5. Critical Essays -- How Should One Read a Book? / Virginia Woolf -- The Study of Poetry / Matthew Arnold -- Sweetness and Light / Matthew Arnold -- What Is a Classic? / Sainte-Beuve -- Montaigne / Sainte-Beuve -- Of Beauty / Francis Bacon -- Of Discourse / Francis Bacon -- Of Studies / Francis Bacon -- Of the Standard of Taste / David Hume -- On Style / Arthur Schopenhauer -- On Some Forms of Literature / Arthur Schopenhauer -- On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art / Arthur Schopenhauer -- On Simple and Sentimental Poetry / Friedrich Schiller -- A Defence of Poetry / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- Preface to Leaves of Grass / Walt Whitman -- My First Acquaintance with Poets / William Hazlitt -- On Swift / William Hazlitt -- Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen / William Hazlitt -- My First Play / Charles Lamb -- Dream Children, a Reverie / Charles Lamb -- Sanity of True Genius / Charles Lamb -- Preface to Shakespeare / Samuel Johnson -- Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power / Thomas De Quincey -- On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth / Thomas De Quincey -- Dante / Thomas Stearns Eliot -- Tradition and the Individual Talent / Thomas Stearns Eliot.

v. 6. Man and Society -- Childhood and Youth (from Autobiography) / John Stuart Mill -- Learning the River (from Life on the Mississippi) / Mark Twain -- Characters / La Bruyere -- The Hero as King / Thomas Carlyle -- Thoreau / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Sketch of Abraham Lincoln / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Death of Abraham Lincoln / Walt Whitman -- The Art of Biography / Virginia Woolf -- The March to the Sea (from The Persian Expedition) / Xenophon -- The Character of Socrates (from Memorabilia) / Xenophon -- The Land of Montezuma (from The Conquest of Mexico) / William H. Prescott -- The Power within Us / Haniel Long -- The Eruption of Vesuvius (from Letters) / Pliny The Younger -- The Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola / Cornelius Tacitus -- Civilization (from History of Civilization in Europe) / Francois Guizot -- The United States in 1800 (from History of the United States of America) / Henry Adams -- Herodotus / John Bagnell Bury -- The Way to Write History / Lucian -- Great Documents : The English Bill of Rights ; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ; The Virginia Declaration of Rights ; The Declaration of Independence ; Charter of the United Nations ; Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- A Call to Patriots: December 23, 1776 (from The Crisis) / Thomas Paine -- Circular Letter to the Governors of All the States on Disbanding the Army / George Washington -- The Farewell Address / George Washington -- The Virginia Constitution (from Notes on Virginia) / Thomas Jefferson -- First Inaugural Address / Thomas Jefferson -- Biographical Sketches / Thomas Jefferson -- A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America / Benjamin Franklin -- Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania / Benjamin Franklin -- The Making of Americans (from Letters from an American Farmer) / Jean De Crevecoeur -- Observations on American Life and Government (from Democracy in America) / Alexis De Tocqueville -- Civil Disobedience / Henry David Thoreau -- A Plea for Captain John Brown / Henry David Thoreau -- Address at Cooper Institute / Abraham Lincoln -- First Inaugural Address / Abraham Lincoln -- Letter to Horace Greeley / Abraham Lincoln -- Meditation on the Divine Will / Abraham Lincoln -- The Gettysburg Address / Abraham Lincoln -- Second Inaugural Address / Abraham Lincoln -- Last Public Address / Abraham Lincoln.

v. 7. Man and Society -- Of Youth and Age / Francis Bacon -- Of Parents and Children / Francis Bacon -- Of Marriage and Single Life / Francis Bacon -- Of Great Place / Francis Bacon -- Of Seditions and Troubles / Francis Bacon -- Of Custom and Education / Francis Bacon -- Of Followers and Friends / Francis Bacon -- Of Usury / Francis Bacon -- Of Riches / Francis Bacon -- Resolutions when I Come to Be Old / Jonathan Swift -- An Essay on Modern Education / Jonathan Swift -- A Meditation upon a Broomstick / Jonathan Swift -- A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country / Jonathan Swift -- Of Refinement in the Arts / David Hume -- Of Money / David Hume -- Of the Balance of Trade / David Hume -- Of Taxes / David Hume -- Of the Study of History / David Hume -- Of Bashfulness / Plutarch -- The Lantern-Bearers / Robert Louis Stevenson -- An Idealist's Arraignment of the Age / John Ruskin -- On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings / William James -- The Energies of Men / William James -- Great Men and Their Environment / William James -- On Education / Arthur Schopenhauer -- Observations on Mental Education / Michael Faraday -- Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol / Edmund Burke -- The Concurrent Majority (from A Disquisition on Government) / John C. Calhoun -- Machiavelli / Thomas Babington Macaulay -- English Men and Ideas (from Letters on the English) / Voltaire -- On World Government (from De Monarchia) / Dante Alighieri -- A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe / Jean Jacques Rousseau -- Perpetual Peace / Immanuel Kant -- What Is War? / Karl Von Clausewitz -- The Principle of Population (from Population: The First Essay) / Thomas Robert Malthus.

v. 8. Natural Science -- The Sphinx / Francis Bacon -- Michael Faraday (from Faraday as a Discoverer) / John Tyndall -- The Discovery of Radium / Eve Curie -- Autobiography / Charles Robert Darwin -- A Laboratory of the Open Fields / Jean Henri Fabre -- The Sacred Beetle / Jean Henri Fabre -- On Time (from The Immense Journey) / Loren Eiseley -- The Sunless Sea / Rachel L. Carson -- On Being the Right Size / J.B.S. Haldane -- On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals / Thomas Henry Huxley -- On a Piece of Chalk / Thomas Henry Huxley -- The Classification of Human Ability (from Hereditary Genius) / Francis Galton -- Experimental Considerations Common to Living Things and Inorganic Bodies / Claude Bernard -- Scientific Study of the So-called Psychical Processes in the Higher Animals / Ivan Petrovich Pavlov -- On the Artificial Production of Urea / Friedrich Wohler -- Geological Evolution (from The Principles of Geology) / Charles Lyell -- The Starry Messenger / Galileo Galilei -- Arguments for and against Galileo (from The Defense of Galileo) / Tommaso Campanella -- The Chemical History of a Candle / Michael Faraday -- The Genesis of a Law of Nature (from The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements) / Dmitri Mendeleev -- On the Conservation of Force / H.L.F. Von Helmholtz -- The Rise and Decline of Classical Physics (from The Evolution of Physics) / Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld -- The Running-Down of the Universe / Arthur Eddington -- Beginnings and Endings / James Jeans -- Cosmic View / Kees Boeke.

v. 9. Mathematics -- Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization / Lancelot Hogben -- Mathematics, in Life and Thought / Andrew Russell Forsyth -- On Mathematical Method (from An Introduction to Mathematics) / Alfred North Whitehead -- On the Nature of a Calculus / Alfred North Whitehead -- The Study of Mathematics / Bertrand Russell -- Mathematics and the Metaphysicians / Bertrand Russell -- Definition of Number / Bertrand Russell -- New Names for Old / Edward Kasner, James R. Newman -- Beyond the Googol / Edward Kasner, James R. Newman -- Fingerprints / Tobias Dantzig -- The Empty Column / Tobias Dantzig -- The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg / Leonhard Euler -- Measurement / Norman Robert Campbell -- Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science / Norman Robert Campbell -- The Postulates of the Science of Space / William Kingdon Clifford -- Space / Henri Poincare -- Mathematical Creation / Henri Poincare -- Chance / Henri Poincare -- Probability (from A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities) / Pierre Simon De Laplace -- The Red and the Black / Charles Sanders Peirce.

v. 10. Philosophical Essays -- The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent / John Erskine -- The Ethics of Belief / William Kingdon Clifford -- The Will to Believe / William James -- The Sentiment of Rationality / William James -- The Process of Thought (from How We Think) / John Dewey -- Letter to Herodotus / Epicurus -- Letter to Menoeceus / Epicurus -- The Enchiridion / Epictetus -- The Art of Life (from The Renaissance) / Walter Horatio Pater -- Contentment / Plutarch -- On Friendship / Cicero -- On Old Age / Cicero -- Of Truth / Francis Bacon -- Of Death / Francis Bacon -- Of Adversity / Francis Bacon -- Of Love / Francis Bacon -- Of Friendship / Francis Bacon -- Of Anger / Francis Bacon -- Lucretius / George Santayana -- Goethe's Faust / George Santayana -- St. Thomas Aquinas / Henry Adams -- The Philosophy of Common Sense (from Philosophical Dictionary) / Voltaire -- Nature / John Stuart Mill -- Nature / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Self-Reliance / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Montaigne; or, the Skeptic / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth / William Hazlitt -- Immortality (from Urn-Burial) / Thomas Browne.