Columbia Contemp Civ Fall Semester Books

Every fall semester book listed in the Contemporary Civilization syllabus on the Core Curriculum's home page.

Plato, Republic (Hackett)
Listen to a free video summary.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University Press)
Listen to a free video summary.

Aristotle, Politics (Hackett)
Listen to a free video summary.

Cicero, On Moral Ends (Cambridge)
On Wikipedia.

The Holy Bible (Revised Standard Edition)
Listen to free video summaries of Ecclesiastes, Exodus, Galatians, Matthew, and Romans.

Augustine, City of God (Penguin)
Listen to a free video summary.

The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an (Amana)
On Wikipedia.

Machiavelli, The Prince (Hackett)
Listen to a free video summary.

Machiavelli, The Discourses (Penguin)
Listen to a free video summary.

Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy (Hackett)
Listen to free video summaries of Discourse on Method and Meditations.

The Protestant Reformation (Harper & Row)
On Wikipedia.

Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford)
Listen to a free video summary.

Locke, Political Writings (Hackett)
Listen to a free video summary of Second Treatise of Government.



Recommended:

Epictetus, Handbook (Hackett)
On Wikipedia.

Columbia Contemp Civ Spring Semester Books

Every spring semester book listed in the Contemporary Civilization syllabus on the Core Curriculum's home page.

Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings (Hackett)
On Wikipedia.

Smith, Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)
On Wikipedia.

Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge)
On Wikipedia.

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford)
On Wikipedia.

Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Dover)
On Wikipedia.

Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Penguin)
On Wikipedia.

Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford)
On Wikipedia.

Marx-Engels Reader (Norton)
On Wikipedia.

Darwin, Norton Critical Edition (Norton)
On Wikipedia.

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo (Vintage)
Genealogy on Wikipedia. Ecce Homo on Wikipedia.

Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Dover)
On Wikipedia.

Freud, Freud Reader, ed. Gay. (Norton)
On Wikipedia.

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove)
On Wikipedia.

Gandhi, Selected Political Writings (Hackett)
On Wikipedia.

Woolf, Three Guineas
On Wikipedia.

Columbia Contemp Civ Optional Books

Contemporary Civilization professors usually assign a few of the following books in addition to the required fall semester and spring semester books.

These books are listed at the end of the Contemporary Civilization syllabus on the Core Curriculum's home page.

Mill, Utilitarianism (Oxford)
On Wikipedia.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage)
On Wikipedia.

Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago)
On Wikipedia.

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove)
On Wikipedia.

Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Vintage)
On Wikipedia.

MacKinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of State (Harvard)
On Wikipedia.

Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard)
On Wikipedia.

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago)
On Wikipedia.

Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (MIT)
On Wikipedia.

Voltaire, Candide (Penguin)
On Wikipedia.