Thomas Jefferson Education Book Lists

A Thomas Jefferson Education
100 Classics List

Acton, The History of Freedom

John Adams, "Thoughts on Government"

Aquinas, "On Kingship"

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle, Politics

Aristotle, Rhetoric

Augustine, The City of God

Aurelius, Meditations

Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Bacon, Novum Organum

Bastait, The Law

Bastait, "What is Seen and Not Seen"

Benson, "The Proper Role of Government"

The Bible

Boethius, The Consolidation of Philosophy

Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Bronte, Jane Eyre

Carson, The American Tradition

Capra, The Tao of Physics

Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Churchill, Collected Speeches

Cicero, The Republic

Cicero, The Laws

Clausewitz, On War

Confucius, Analects

The Constitution of the United States

Copnicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Dante, The Divine Comedy

The Declaration of Independence

DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe

Descartes, A Discourse on Method

Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens, Great Expectations

Douglas, Magnificent Obsession

Durant, A History of Civilization

Einstein, Relativity

Emerson, Collected Essays

Euclid, Elements

Frank, Alas Babylon

Franklin, Letters and Writings

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Galileo, Two New Sciences

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Goethe, Faust

Hobbes, Levathan

Homer, The Iliad

Homer, The Odyssey

Hugo, Les Miserables

Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary

Jefferson, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

Keegan, History of Warfare

Kepler, Epitome

Martin Luther King, Jr., Collected Speeches

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry

Lewis, Mere Christianity

Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lincoln, Collected Speeches

Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Machiavelli, The Prince

Madison, Hamilton and Jay, The Federalist Papers

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

More, Utopia

The Magna Charta

Mill, On Liberty

Milton, Paradise Regained

Mises, Human Action

The Monroe Doctrine

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

Newton, Mathematical Principles

Nichomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic

Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Northwest Ordinance

Orwell, 1984

Plato, Collected Works

Polybius, Histories

Potok, The Chosen

Plutarch, Lives

Ptolemy, Algamest

Shakespeare, Collected Works

Skousen, The Five Thousand Year Leap

Skousen, The Majesty of God's Law

Skousen, The Making of America

Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart"

Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy

Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Thoreau, Walden

Tolstoy, War and Peace

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars

Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Washington, Letters, Speeches, and Writings

Weaver, Mainspring of Human Progress

Wister, The Virginian

Classics to Read to Young Children 

Classics for you to read aloud to young children.

 Aesop’s Fables - Aesop

Andersen’s Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Anderson

Beauty and the Beast

The Bible

The Blind Men and the Elephant

“Casey at Bat”

Charlotte’s Web - E. B. White

Chicken Little

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Cinderella

Dinotopia series - James Gurney

Dr. Seuss series

The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Fourth Wise Man

The Gift of the Magi - Carol Lynn Pearson

The Giving Tree

“God Save the Flag”

Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg

Grimm’s Fairy Tales - Wilhelm & Jacob Grimm

“The Highwayman”

Hansel and Gretel

Jack and the Beanstalk

Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

“Lincoln, The Man of the People”

“Little Boy Blue”

The Little Engine that Could

The Little House on the Prairie series - Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Little Red Hen

The McGuffey Readers

Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes

“Paul Revere’s Ride”

Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie

Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter

The Pied Piper of Hamlin

Pinocchio, The Adventures of - Carlo Colladi

Pollyanna - Eleanor H. Porter

The Princess and the Pea

Puss-in-Boots

Rapunzel

Riki Tiki Tavi

Rip Van Winkle

Robin Hood, The Merry Adventures of - Howard Pyle

Rumpelstiltskin

Sleeping Beauty

The Song of Hiawatha

Snow White

Tales of the Arabian Nights

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The Three Little Pigs

The Ugly Duckling

Tom Thumb

"Twas the Night Before Christmas"

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Winnie-the-Pooh series - A. A. Milne

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank Baum

Classics for Youth 

For older youth to read and discuss with their mentors.

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

Animal Farm

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

The Anne of Green Gables series - L. M. Montgomery

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“Battle Hymn of the Republic”

Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ - Lew Wallace

The Bible

Brighty of the Grand Canyon

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

The Black Stallion series - Walter Farley

The Chronicles of Narnia series - C. S. Lewis

The Collected Verse of Edgar A Guest

“Concord Hymn”

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Samuel Clemmens

The Constitution of the United States

David Copperfield

Davy Crockett Legends - Irwin Shapiro

The Declaration of Independence

The Deerslayer

Don Quixote de la Mancha - Miguel De Cervantes

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Dred Scott Decision

The Education of Henry Adams

Eight Cousins

Emily Post’s Etiquette

Ender’s Game

“In Flanders Fields”

Flatland

The Foundation series

Frankenstein

“The Gettysburg Address”

“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”

The Great Brain series

Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift

Hamilton’s Mythology
Hamlet

Heidi - Johanna Spry

The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom

History Reborn

Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of - Mark Twain

“I Have a Dream”

Ivanhoe - Walter Scott

The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O’Dell

Joan of Arc - Mark Twain

Jo’s Boys - Louisa May Alcott

A Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne

Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)

The Jungle Book

King Arthur and the Round Table - Thomas Malory

Laddie - Gene Stratton Porter

The Last of the Mohicans - James Cooper

“Let America be America Again”

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The Little Britches series

Little Lord Fauntleroy - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Little Men - Louisa May Alcott

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

The Lonesome Gods

Lord of the Rings series

“The Man with the Hoe”

Mathmaticians are People, Too  (2 volumes)

Moby Dick

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

National Velvet

Noah Webster’s Original 1828 Dictionary

North to Freedom

“O Captain! My Captain!”

“Old Ironsides”

Old Yeller - Fred Gipson

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

On Numbers

Paul Bunyan - Esther Sheperd

The Phantom Tollbooth

“The Present Crisis”

“The Road Not Taken”

The Real Benjamin Franklin

The Real George Washington

The Real Thomas Jefferson

The Robe

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel DeFoe

Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare

The Sackett series

The Saxon Math series

The Secret Garden - Francess Hodgson Burnett

Shipwrecked

Soldiers, Statesmen, and Heroes

Sonnets of Shakespeare

Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

Stuart Little - E. B. White

The Summer of the Monkeys - Wilson Rawls

The Swiss Family Robinson - Johaan Wyss

Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of - Mark Twain

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Trumpet of the Swans - E. B. White

“Ulysses”

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

The Walking Drum

Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

White Fang - Jack London

William Tell

The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Recommended Readings

Bacon, Novum Organum

Emerson, “The American Scholar”

Mason, The Original Homeschool Series

Dewey, The School and Society

Montessori, all writings

Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America

Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Van Doren, Liberal Education

Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University

Holt, How Children Fail

Holt, How Children Learn

Toffler, Futershock

Blumenfeld, How to Tutor

Blumenfeld, The New Illiterates

Barzun, Teacher in America

A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Adler, Reforming American Education

Colfax, Home Schooling for Excellence

Hirsch, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

Barton, What Happened in Education?

Smith, Killing the Spirit

Nash, The Closing of the American Heart

Gardner, Multiple Intelligences

Gatto, Dumbing Us Down

Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

Gatto, The Exhausted School

Hirsch, Cultural Literacy

Perelman, School's Out

H. Bloom, The Western Canon

Covey, First Things First

Noebel, Understanding the Times

Swanson, The Education of James

Bennet, The Book of Virtues

Taylor, The Healing Power of Stories

Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning

Glasser, The Quality School

Kirk, Redeeming the Times

Bunting, An Education for Our Time

Harward. A Market Approach to Education