The Annals and Antiquities of Rajahstan by James Tod — “a source for several planned books”
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson — “one of the first books I read”
History of the World — he doesn’t mention the author, so I’m not exactly sure which book this is, but his memory of it was too good to pass up: “when my father came home I would sit on his knee and tell him what I read during the day.”
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
“A dozen Horatio Alger novels”
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace
The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas — “It was a great day when I discovered on the shelves of the library a set of forty-eight volumes by Dumas, and I read them, every one.”
Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs, and Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo — “The last-named was my favorite.”
Leatherstocking Tales (a series of 5 novels) by James Fenimore Cooper — “Enjoyed them.”
The Bar Sinister by Richard Harding Davis — “a story about a dog, and a good yarn.”
Martin Eden by Jack London — “prepared me for the rejections to come, and the difficulty I would have in getting published.” Also by London: The Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild (“another great dog story”)
The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle — “an exciting, romantic story.”
The Adventures of Gil Blas by Alain Rene Lesage — “I read it not once but twice on the plains of West Texas.”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes — “marvelous stuff.”
Hamlet by Shakespeare — “ was the ultimate professional, a writer who knew what he was doing all the time.”
The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer — “I often thought how like some of his characters were men whom I had met.”
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell — “without doubt one of the greatest biographies in the English language. It was a book I read slowly, often returning to reread parts of it.”
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad — “I have read several times . . . and which for me was a real discovery.”
Ecce Homo, The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, and The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky — “surprised by this book — surprised and very impressed. Several times I turned back to reread sections of the book.”
Kim by Rudyard Kipling — “read it twice.”
Candide by Voltaire — “it was a revelation. I loved it, rereading it at once.”
Commerce of the Prairies by Gregg — “one of the basic books of the westward movement”
My Life on the Plains by George Custer
The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Military Institutions of the Romans by Vegetius, On War by Carl von Clausewitz — “military tactics had interested me since my youth”
The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig — “the best novel to come out of World War I, although Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front attracted more attention and was a good book also.”
Lives by Plutarch — “In several of my western novels I have had characters reading Plutarch. I believe more great men have read his Lives than any other book, except possibly the Bible. … In reviewing the reading histories or libraries of great men, I have come upon him again and again, and justly so. His is a sophisticated, urbane mind dealing with aspects of leadership.”
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway, also his story “Fifty Grand” — “one of the best fight stories every written. Jack London’s ‘The Mexican’ is another.” L’Amour wrote that he “enjoyed Hemingway’s short stories more than his novels.”
Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade by Joseph McCoy — “an excellent book and one of the basic books on that aspect of the west. J. Frank Dobie’s The Longhorns is another.”
The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams
The Life of Billy Dixon by Olive Dixon — “I managed to stay awake most of the night to finish the story . . . Recently I reread the book and found it every bit as good as I had remembered.”
Six Years With the Texas Rangers by James Gillett
The Koran — “I find it has much to offer”
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck
The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler

"You can't get it for $20.00 anymore. I think that Louis wrote this list up in the early 1960s and so the prices are a bit . . . out of date.

Louis put this list together for a church group that he used to speak for. Dad was a big advocate of the paperback book and how it could communicate information and entertainment both quickly and cheaply. This list could definitely have been more complete if it had included hardbacks but that sure wouldn't have been $20 in any decade.

The notes on each book were compiled by Paul from many different sources where ever he could find the information.

1. The Ancient Myths - Goodrich - $ .50 {Now out of print but available used. A writer of consummate skill and sound scholarship here collects the important myths of Greece, Egypt, India, Persia, Crete, Sumer, and Rome--golden tales that tell of love and adventure, tragedy and terror, the rise and fall of great civilizations, the splendor of empires, and the feats of heroes}

2. The Anvil of Civilization - Cottrell - $ .50 {Now out of print but available used. Leonard Cottrell seems to be a fairly highly regarded archaeologist with many books on the subject under his belt.}

3. The Greek Way - Edith Hamilton - $ .50 {Still in print and available both new and used. The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievement of Greece in the fifth century BC. Edith Hamilton's remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introduced that world to the twentieth century and now the twenty-first!}

4. Plutarch's Lives - Plutarch - $ .50 {This book is one of an 11 volume collection of Plutarch's Lives and is still available. In the Parallel Lives, Plutarch writes about influential men of the ancient world and compares and contrasts them. Some include Theseus and Remulus, Pericles and Fabius Maximus, and Themistocles and Camillus. }

5. History of Rome - Mommsen - $ 1.95 {Theodor Mommsen (1818-1903), a great German historian, never completed his projected four-volume history of Rome; the manuscript for the final volume, covering the period from the fall of the republic to the collapse of imperial authority in the west, was destroyed by fire in 1880. A century later, Alexander Demandt discovered extensive notes compiled by two of Mommsen's students on his lectures between 1863 and 1886. The result is this "reconstruction," which serves as a faithful rendering of Mommsen's interpretation of the imperial age. Mommsen focuses almost exclusively on political and military history. Those readers wishing detailed examination of Roman struggles for territory or political power will not be disappointed. His analysis of the response to barbarian incursions in the fourth century is particularly compelling. }

6. Ancient Explorers - Carey and Warmington - $ 1.25 {Now out of print but available occasionally available used. Also, note the different spelling in this listing: Cary, Max, and E.H. Warmington. The Ancient Explorers. London: Methuen and Company, 1929. }

7. Rise and Splendor of the Chinese Empire - Grousset - $ 1.95 {Now out of print but available occasionally available used. Grousset, Rene. Rise & splendor of the Chinese empire. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.}

8. History of Europe (2 Volumes) - Pirenne - $ 1.90 {This book is still available. An interesting to note that Pirenne was a professor of history at the University of Ghent from 1886 to 1930. While imprisoned by the Germans during World War I, Pirenne wrote a History of Europe without using books or notes.}

9. The Crusades - Harold Lamb - $ .75 { This book is now out of print but can be found used. According to some who have read it (I have not) it is particularly of interest now because it deals with both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism.}

10. History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell - $ 2.25 {Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. }

11. Rats, Lice, and History - Zinsser - $ .50 {Out of Print but available used, a reviewer writes: In the interests of research, Zinsser carried pill boxes of lice under his socks for weeks at a time before taking "advantage of them for scientific purposes." He is not able to tear himself away from these little creatures and address the true subject of his biography, i.e. the typhus virus, until Chapter 12! However, the journey to Chapter 12 is well worth taking because along the way, Zinsser wittily savages modern biographers, psychoanalysis, astronomers and physicists who "scamper back to God" (Biologists evidently are much less prone to being 'born again'), and of course, all of the wars that have given Typhus countless opportunities to murder lice and humans alike. "Rats, Lice, and History" should be required reading for would-be writers for its style, would-be Generals for its lessons on how soldiers really die, and for anyone else who is interested in a passionate, eminently witty, one-of-a-kind history of medicine. }

12. Devils, Drugs and Doctors - Haggard - $ .50 {Out of Print but can be found used. Haggard, Howard Wilcox (1891-1959). DEVILS, DRUGS, AND DOCTORS; THE STORY OF THE SCIENCE OF HEALING FROM MEDICINE-MAN TO DOCTOR (Harper & Brothers, 1929). }

13. The Story of Engineering - Finch - $ 1.45 {A classic history of civil engineering written in 1960. }

14. Shakespeare of London - Chute - $ 1.55 {Out of print but can be found used. We know very little about William Shakespeare. He wrote in a time after the invention of the printing press, but before the invention of newspapers and magazines, so the sort of journalism which we rely on today to tell us more than we want to know about the inner lives of show-business figures did not exist during his lifetime. Chute's book is superb not only because she is a vivid writer, not only because she tells us why certain things were the way they were, but because she respects the people she is writing about. }

15. The Realm of the Incas - Von Hagen - $ .50 {Out of print but available used. Archaeological History of ancient empire in South American Andes. }

16. The Aztec: Man and Tribe - Von Hagen - $ .50 {Out of print but available used}

17. The Big Change - Frederick Lewis Allen - $ .50 {Out of print but available used. This book, published in the early 1950's, summarizes the changes to our society during the first half of the 20th century.}

18. The Russian Revolution - Moorehead - $ .50 {Still in print and available. WW II's abrupt end brought us many gifts, none stranger than the papers of the German State. These were captured virtually complete, and to this day give up secrets. One that emerges from Alan Moorehead's research is the extent to which Germany was involved in the Russian Revolution. The ironic result of this clandestine maneuver was Germany's sure defeat on the Eastern front in WW II. }

19. Hitler: A Study In Tyranny - Bullock - $ .95 {Available in a new abridged edition. The classic biography of Hitler that remains, years after its publication, one of the most authoritative and readable accounts of his life. }

20. Triumph and Tragedy - Winston Churchill - $ 1.25 {The last of a 6 volume history of WWII chronicled by one of the men responsible for it final outcome. Winston Churchill found himself with a lot of time on his hands at the end of the war. Part of his personal tragedy was to suddenly discover, not long after the fall of Berlin but before the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that he was no longer wanted by the British electorate. }

21. New Frontiers of Science - William Laurence - $ .75 {Laurence was chosen as the only journalist to cover the government's top secret development of the atomic bomb. This special access allowed him to witness bomb tests, to observe the Enola Gay takeoff, and to fly along in one of the planes that dropped the bomb over Nagasaki. New Frontiers of Science explores his vision of the post nuclear world.}