In 1952 Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins unleashed the first edition of EB's Great Books onto a mostly indifferent world. As Hutchins correctly huffed in his bombastic introduction to the set, these books had mostly disappeared from American education.
Nowadays the Homer-through-Freud crowd has made something of a comeback at American colleges and universities. In 1990 the set got a makeover. Twentieth-century authors were added, which incidentally reunited the James gang (William and Henry, not Jesse and whoever). The new edition also dumped a few books - Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Apollonius' Conics and Fourier's Theory of Heat. Guess the editors didn't like humor or math. Many deserving pre-twentieth-century writers got into the charmed circle - Moliere, Tocqueville, Jane Austen, Balzac, Dickens among others.
I've been burrowing through these books since the early sixties, when I first discovered a rather dusty set at the local public library. I can remember trudging through War and Peace and groaning whenever Tolstoy launched into another lecture on historical determinism. Plato's Republic looked like the last place I'd want to live, and Aquinas' debate format appealed to my argumentative self. Gibbon always had a good word for any emperor who killed a few Christians, and Milton really did seem to sympathize with Satan. Dante's hell entertained as much as his heaven bored.
It wasn't until the eighties that I bought my own (very slightly used) set for two hundred bucks. If I ever get rich, I'll drop a thou for the second edition, but this won't happen next week. By now I've plowed through long swatches of most of the writers in the set. So the envelope, please...
Friendliest writer: Plutarch. Always takes a pleasant stroll with the reader.
Most irritating writer: Hegel. Tell this idiot that his beloved all-powerful State has proven to be the biggest mass murderer in history.
Smartest writers: Archimedes, Aquinas. Brilliantly insightful, endlessly impressive in their logic.
Dumbest writer: Boswell. Doctor Johnson should have shown him the door.
Most pompous writers: Marx, Freud. These guys thought they knew it all and weren't about to let anybody tell them different.
Most disappointing writer: Rabelais. Richly deserves his reputation for tedium, rarely deserves his reputation for humor.
Most pleasantly surprising writer: Ptolemy. Yes, he got the basic idea wrong, but his careful observations allowed others to correct the mistake.
Wildest and craziest writer: Sterne. Gone from the second edition but not forgotten.
Funniest writer: Cervantes. Offers the best kind of humor - the sympathetic variety.
Bitterest writer: Swift. Hated us miserable humans as hard as he could.
Worst writer: Kant. As in, can't write.
Best writer: Shakespeare. Duh.
No doubt these awards reflect nothing more than my idiotic biases. You can point this out to me in detail at the email address on my front page.
Ken Roberts has a terrific Web site on these books, with lots of links to e-texts and critical discussions.
If you want truly great Web writing, the following beckon.