Should I buy the entire collection of the 1952 great books of the western world for $70
>>7882503
Yes
Yes. I have a set and it's great. some of the most important literature you'll ever read in one set.
If pic related, holy fuck yes, that is a deal bruv
I can't even read those fucking titles. What books are they?
What are the books?
>>7882783
>>7882812
Not OP but I'm assuming it's this:
Britannica's Great Books 54 volume set (complete)
Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica;
The 54 volumes are:
1) The Great Conversation;
2) The Great Ideas I;
3) The Great Ideas II;
4) Homer;
5) Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes;
6) Herodotus, Thucydides;
7) Plato;
8 & 9) Aristotle I & II;
10) Hippocrates, Galen;
11) Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Nicomachus;
12) Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius;
13) Virgil;
14) Plutarch;
15) Tacitus;
16) Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler;
17) Plotinus;
18) Augustine;
19-20) Thomas Aquinas I/II;
21) Dante;
22) Chaucer;
23) Machiavelli, Hobbes;
24) Rabelais;
25) Montaigne;
26 & 27) Shakespeare;
28) Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey;
29) Cervantes;
30) Francis Bacon;
31) Descartes, Spinoza;
32) Milton;
33) Pascal;
34) Newton, Huygens;
35) Locke, Berkeley, Hume;
36) Swift, Sterne; 37) Fielding;
38) Montesquieu, Rousseau;
39) Adam Smith;
40 & 41) Gibbon I & II;
42) Kant;
43) American State Papers, The Federalist, JS Mill;
44) Boswell;
45) Lavoisier, Fourier, Faraday;
46) Hegel;
47) Goethe;
48) Melville;
49) Darwin;
50) Marx, Engels;
51) Tolstoy;
52) Dostoevsky;
53) William James;
54) Freud.
>>7882503
Is that even a question that needs validation?
>>7882503
http://www.cambridge.org/cr/academic/subjects/general/cambridge-library-collection-475-set
Buy this instead.
A steal at only 32 dollars a book!
>>7882831
Looks like a good list. Would keep OP busy for over a year forsure. I'd say that's way worth 70 dollars.
If he is an average /lit/ user then he would just put them on his shelf and never read it and post in bookshelf threads to look xD patrician.
>>7882503
I'd pass. They look good in a middle class "arent i clever" sort of way, and they're not particularly readable. Forgetting completeness, look through and try to guess how many you'll actually read. Then decide f it's worth it. If it were me, I'd give it a pass.
>>7882831
This rules. I have a couple of them.
fuck yea is this a deal in your personal life or can I find it online
>>7882503
No.
Many of the translations are old-fashioned and generally subpar. There are only a handful of volumes from the full set where the translation is adequate.
Also, there are almost no margins, which cramps your note-taking. Type is very thin and not that easy on the eyes. Many of the volumes opt for a two-column format, adding to the eye-clutter.
Some volumes, e.g. the Shakespeare ones, use deficient texts and have no critical apparatus.
Overall, the set is not a great resource. You might think it's worth it for the convenience or the looks, but those are superficial reasons to me.
Source: went to a Great Books college, learned the hard way not to rely on this set.
Exception: The Euclid and Ptolemy are acceptable. Heath and Taliaferro's translations are still good today and the frequent diagrams leave alot of margin space for notes.
Actually, pretty much all the scientific volumes probably have acceptable translations. It's hard to fuck up science in translation.
>>7883348
Also, $70 is way too much. There are so many of these sets people are trying to unload (probably because they suck and take up so much space), you should be able to get it for cheaper than that.
>shit translations
>shit critical apparatus
>shit notes
You shouldn't OP
If you're comfortable with shit translations and reading on double columned bible paper then by all means go for it
I inhereted this collection from my grandfather. The spines are beginning to fall off but the books hold up. It's a great thing to have around I fully support buying it besjdes a minor few qualms I have abiut outdated book selections.. Reply if you have any questions.
>>7882503
God no worst translations ever
>>7882831
>Marx
>Freud
>great ideas
