Philadelphia Great Books Fall Institute
Past Readings
1971: On Becoming
Narcissus and Goldmund – Hermann Hesse
Psychotherapy East and West - Alan Watts
Thus Spake Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche
1972: Love and Will
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Love and Will - Rollo May
The Cocktail Party - T. S. Elliot
1973: Prejudice
Native Son - Richard Wright
A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
A Passage to India - E. M. Forster
1974: The Undiscovered Self
The Undiscovered Self – Carl Jung
Playboy of the Western World – John Millington Synge
Call It Sleep - Philip Roth
1975: Other Realties
The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution – Peter D. Ouspensky
The Only Dance There Is - Ram Dass
Journey to Ixtlan – Carlos Castanada
1976: Communication
Interaction Ritual - Erving Goffman
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Edward Albee
Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
1977: Humor
Lysistrata - Aristophanes
The Threepenny Opera – Bertolt Brecht
Jumpers - Tom Stoppard
1978: Power
Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
Power and Personality - Harold Lasswell
All the King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren
1979: Responsibility
The Fall - Albert Camus
The Grand Inquisitor – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nectar In A Sieve – Kamala Markandaya
1980: Commitment
Journey to the East – Hermann Hesse
Existentialism as Humanism – Jean-Paul Sartre
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
1981: On Courage
The Myth of Sisyphus- Albert Camus
Surfacing - Margaret Atwood
Luther - John Osborne
1982: Enchantment
Grendel - John Gardener
Equus - Peter Shaffer
A Tree Telling of Orpheus - Denise Levertov
1983: The Individual versus The State
Man versus the State - Milton Mayer
Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
Night Thoreau Spent in Jail – Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
1984: Justice/Morality
The Moral Decision - Edmond Cahn
The Oresetia - Aeschylus
Light in August – William Faulkner
1985: Odysseys
Ironweed - William Kennedy
My Name Is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
1986: Uses and Abuses of
History
Use and Abuse of History – Friedrich Nietzsche
Travesties - Tom Stoppard
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
1987: Why Faith?
Fear and Trembling – Soren Kierkegaard
Barabbas – Par Lagerkvist
To A God Unknown – John Steinbeck
1988: America through Its
Literature
The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich
1989: Between
Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell – William Blake
The Pearl - John Steinbeck
Othello – William Shakespeare
1990: The Anatomy of
Leadership
The Hero’s Adventure - Joseph Campbell
The Discourses (selections) – Niccolo Machiavelli
A Sport of Nature - Nadine Gordimer
1991: The Immigrant
Experience
Hunger of Memory - Richard Rodriguez
F.O.B. - David Henry Hwang
In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
1992: Who Am I?
The Unexpected Universe - Loren Eiseley
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Cat’s Eye - Margaret Atwood
1993: Story Tellers
The Odyssey - Homer
The Storyteller – Mario Vargas Llosa
Sonnets to Orpheus – Rainer Maria Rilke
1994: Freedom in the Balance
Falconer - John Cheever
A Plea for Captain John Brown – Henry David Thoreau
Free Man’s Worship - Bertrand Russell
1995: Love Lines
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marques
Poems: E. E. Cummings
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
1996: The Appearance of Evil
Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
The Devil’s Disciple – George Bernard Shaw
The Gates of the Forest - Elie Wiesel
1997: Shadows
on the Inside
House Made of Dawn – n. Scott Momaday
Broken Glass -
Arthur Miller
Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
1998: Trials
A Civil Action - Jonathan Harr
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Oresteia - Aeschylus
1999: Legacies
The Invisible Pyramid - Loren Eiseley
Valley Song - Athol Fugard
The Far Euphrates - Aryeh Lev Stollman
2000: Getting There
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Caucasia - Danzy Senna
This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald
2001: Moral Un-Certainties
Myths to Live By - Joseph Campbell
Alcestes - Euripedes (translated by Ted Hughes)
Copenhagen - Michael Frayn
2002: Beauty and the Beast
Tales of Genji - Lady Murasaki Shikibu
The Elephant Man - Bernard Pomerance
2003: Connections
Proof - David Auburn
Five Moral Pieces - Umberto Eco
Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
2004: Life is Choice
King Lear – William Shakespeare
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Sunflower – Simon Wiesenthal
2005: Stories
Shape our Lives
The Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
2006: Accommodations in Upheaval
A
Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Housekeeping
- Marilynne Robinson
The Cherry Orchard - Anton Chekhov
2007: Democratic Vistas
The Future of Freedom - Fareed Zakaria
Democracy
- Michael Frayn
All the King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren
2008: Inventing Love
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Invention of Love - Tom Stoppard
Possession - A.S. Byatt