Universal Reading List

The goal of this project is to curate lists of media worth experiencing according to a transparent methodology, in the spirit of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Future goals include expanding the database, crafting more objective standards of merit, subjecting all materials to expert review, and making the results more accessible.

Wait, what? Should we care about about cultural value, historical importance, technical merit, factuality, insight, beauty, applications, or something else? (Yes.) Are all of these qualities subjective, culturally relative, and historically arbitrary? (Yes, but not to the point where doing your best is meaningless.)

The Universal Reading List is a free resource licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Please remake and remix this content as you see fit.

May 19, 2021. Revised Natural Science and Social Science. Finished booklist v1.0.

April 13, 2021. Revised Formal Science.

April 7, 2021. Overhauled business, communications, education, engineering subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

March 31, 2021. Overhauled commentary, essays, wisdom literature subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

March 24, 2021. Overhauled topic history and historical narrative subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

March 16, 2021. Overhauled classics, premodern and early modern literature, and drama subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

March 3, 2021. Overhauled history subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

February 28, 2021. Overhauled art subsections of booklist using Open Syllabus.

February 21, 2021. Added Project Gutenberg and LibriVox links to book list where available.

February 20, 2021. (Almost all) books on the book list now have summaries.

February 2, 2021. (Almost all) books on the book list now have estimated word and page counts.

December 28, 2020. New site live!.