Currently Reading

• Fiction: Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
• Memoir: Finding Me, Viola Davis
• Nonfiction: Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward F. Edinger

Prehistory to 3500 B.C.
The First Humans

• Visual arts: study Paleolithic cave art, megaliths
• Neanderthal flute is the earliest human instrument; the 43,000-82,000 year old cave bear femur bone segment with four holes, matches Do-Re-Mi scale.
• 1300 B.C., the Ten Commandments
• c. 1035-972 B.C. David, King of Israel

3500 to 500 B.C.
Asia and Egypt

• The Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Deborah; Ruth, Psalms, Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes; the minor Prophets; Esther, Malachi; Job.
• 1780 B.C., The Code of Hammurabi (Mesopotamia).
• 700 B.C., The Epic of Gilgamesh

3000 B.C. to 500 A.D.: The East

• 638-713 B.C. Hui-Neng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
• 604-521 B.C. Lao-Tze, Tao Te Ch’ing
• 551-479 B.C. Confucius, The Analects of Confucius
• 500-477 B.C. Buddha
  • The Pali Canon TipiTaka
  • The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh
  • The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh
  • Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh
• 450-380 B.C., Sun-Tzu, The Art of War
• 400 B.C. Kalidasa, The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala
• 372-289 B.C. Mencius, The Book of Mencius (aka Meng-Tze, Ment the Sage)
• 300 B.C. Valmiki, The Ramayana
• 200 B.C. Vyasa, The Mahabharata
• 200 B.C. The Bhagavad Gita

1900 B.C. to 133 B.C.
The Gifts of Greece

• 800 B.C. Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
• 525-456 B.C. Aeschylus, The Oresteia, Dramas
• 494-425 B.C. Herodotus, The Histories
• 496-406 B.C. Sophocles, Dramas; Oedipus Rex, Oedipus of Colonus, Antigone
• 469-399 B.C. Socrates, in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato)
• 480-406 B.C. Euripedes, Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, Electra
• 460-400 B.C., Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
• 448-388 B.C. Aristophanes, The Frogs, Lysistrata
• 428-348 B.C. Plato, Apology, Crito, Dialogues
• 384-322 B.C. Aristotle, Ethics, Politics, Poetics
• 150-216 B.C. Clement of Alexandria, The One Who Knows God

600 B.C. to 500 A.D.
The Roman World

• 538 B.C., Cyrus of Persia decrees the return of the Jews: Ezra (458 B.C.) and Nehemiah (444 B.C.)
• 100-50 B.C. Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things
• 70-19 B.C. Virgil, The Aeneid
• 68 A.D. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers
• 55-135 A.D., Epictetus, Golden Thoughts
• 60-100 A.D. The Didache
• 95-97 A.D., Clement, “The Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians”
• 98-117 A.D. Ignatius, “The Letters of Ignatius”
• 121-180 A.D. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• 480-525 A.D. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

4 B.C. to A.D. 900
The Rise of Christendom

• 6 B.C. to 30 A.D., Jesus Christ; read the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
• 5 B.C. to 64 A.D., St. Paul, the letters of St. Paul, New Testament Bible
• 64 A.D. (d.), St. Peter, 1 and 2 Peter, the Gospel of Mark
• 101 A.D. St. John the Apostle, The Gospel of John (John the Theologian); The First Epistle of John (John the Evangelist); 2 and 3 Epistles of John (John the Presbyter); The Book of Revelation (John of Patmos)
• 47-120 A.D. Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives
• 100-165 A.D. St Justin the Martyr, Apologies
• 354-430 A.D., Saint Augustine, Confessions
• 673-735 A.D., The Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation
• 949-1022 A.D., St. Symeon the New Theologian, The First Created Man; On the Priesthood and Eucharist

A.D. 400-1500: The Islamic World

• Cornell University: Islamic Literature
• 650 A.D. Muhammad, The Koran

A.D. 400-1500
The Golden Age of the East

• 976-1015, Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
• 1048, Omar Khayyamm, The Rubaiyat
• 1330-1400, Luo Kuan-chung, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

1000-1500: The Middle Ages

• 1033-1109, Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works
• 1098-1179, Hildegard von Bingen, Secrets of God; listen to her music CD, Canticles of Ecstasy, Vision
• 1100-1173, Richard of St. Victor, The 12 Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of the Trinity
• 1181-1226, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assissi
• 1225-1274, Thomas Aquinas, The Light of Faith
• 1260-1427, Master Eckhart, Writings
• 1265-1321, Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
• 1293-1381, Jan van Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
• 1303-1373, Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden, Life and Revelations
• 1342-1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
• 1342-1416, Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
• 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, The Holy Grail
• (c. 1800s) Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Morte d’Arthur and Galahad

1400-1600: European
Renaissance & Reformation

• 1469-1527, Machiavelli, The Prince
• 1517, Martin Luther posts The Ninety-Five Theses; read Address to the German Nobility and Concerning Christian Liberty 
• 1478-1535, St. Thomas More, Utopia
• 1483-1553, Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
• 1509-1564, John Calvin, Dedication to the Institution of the Christian Religion
• 1513-1572, John Knox, Preface to the History of the Reformation
• 1515-1582, St. Theresa of Avila, Interior Castle
• 1553-1592, Michel de Montaigne, Essays
• c. 1540, St. Ignatius, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
• 1542-1592, St. John of the Cross, Collected Works of St. John of the Cross; The Ascent of Mount Carmel
• 1561-1626, Sir Francis Bacon, Essays
• 1564-1616, William Shakespeare, Complete Works
• 1573-1631, John Donne, Selected Works
• 1575-1624, Jacob Boehme, Writings
• 1596-1650, Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method
• 1588-1679, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
• 1608-1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost
• c. 1600, St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
• 1605-1691, Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

1450-1800: The Age of Expansion

• 1454-1512, Amerigo Vespucci, Account of His First Voyage
• c. 1500, The Thousand and One Nights
• 1500-1582, Wu Cheng’en, Journey to the West
• 1618, Chin P’ing Mei, The Plum in the Golden Vase
• 1685, Madame Jean Guyon, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ
• 1689, Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• 1651-1715, St. John Maximovitch of Tobolsk, The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God

1550-1815
Enlightenment & Revolution

• 1574-1630, Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
• 1590-1697, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
• Early American Poets, Slave Poetry by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), Jupiter Hammon (1720-1800) and Phillis Wheatley
• 1600-1681, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Life is a Dream
• 1623-1662, Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (Pensees)
• 1628-1688, John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
• 1660-1731, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
• 1667-1745, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal
• 1694-1773, Voltaire, Candide
• 1706-1790, Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• 1707-1754, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
• 1711-1776, David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• 1713-1795, Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
• 1712-1778, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (the first modern autobiography)
• 1724-1804, Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
• 1737-1809, Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”
• 1740-1795, James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (the first modern biography)
• 1723-1790, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• 1789-1859, Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• 1789-1851, James Fenimore Cooper, Leather Stocking Tales
• 1787, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, The Federalist Papers
• 1797, Hannah Foster, The Coquette
• 1819-1892, Walt Whitman, War Poems and Poems on the Death of Lincoln

American Diaries

• Samuel Sewall (1674-1729)
• Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
• William Byrd (1674-1744), History of the Dividing Line
• Robert Beverley (1673-1722)
• Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) (1745-1797), The Interesting Narrative of…Olauda Equiano, Slave

Literary Criticism

• Hume, On the Standard of Taste
• Burke, On Taste and On the Sublime and Beautiful
• Thackeray, Jonathan Swift

Essays

• 1690, John Locke, “Second Treatise of Government”
• 1690, John Locke, “Some Thoughts on Education”
• Jonathan Swift, “Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding”
• Daniel Defoe, “The Shortest Way with Dissenters”
• Daniel Defoe, “Education of Women”

Music

• Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major (1721), Johann Sebastian Bach
• Organ Fugue in G Minor (1709), Bach
• Suite No. 3 in D. Major (1729-1731), Bach
• Cantata No. 140: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a Voice is Calling Us, 1731), Bach
• Orpheo (Orpheus, 1607), Claudio Monteverdi
• Dido and Aeneas (1689), Henry Purcell
• Trio Sonata in A Minor, Op. 3, No. 10 (1689), Arcangelo Corelli
• La Primavera (Spring), Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra, Op. 8, No. 1, from ​The Four Seasons​ (1725)
• George Frideric Handel: Messiah (1741)
• Symphony No. 94 in G Major (​Surprise,​ 1791), Joseph Haydn
• Trumpet Concerto in E Flat Major (1796), Haydn
• ​Eine kleine Nachtmusik​ (​A Little Night Music,​ 1787), K. 525, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Don Giovanni (1787)
• String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4 (1798-1800), Ludwig von Beethoven
• Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op. 13 (​Pathetique,​ 1798), Beethoven
• Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (1808)

1800-1870
Industrialization & Nationalism

European Authors

• 1749-1832, Johann Wolfgang von Goethë, Faust
• 1757-1827, William Blake, Selected Works
• 1770-1850, William Wordsworth, Poems
• 1772-1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan
• 1775-1817, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Emma
• 1783-1842, Stendhal, The Red and the Black
• 1799-1850, Honoré de Balzac, Peré Goriot, Cousin Bette
• 1811-1863, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
• 1812-1870, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Hard Times, and more
• 1812-1882, Anthony Trollope, The Warden, The Last Chronicle of Barset, The Way We Live Now
• 1816-1855, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
• 1818-1848, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
• 1821-1880, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Russian Authors

• 1809-1852, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Dead Souls
• 1818-1883, Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
• 1821-1881, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamozov
• 1828-1910, Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

American Authors

• 1803-1882, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Works, including “Self Reliance” (essay); Poems; and literary criticism (The Poet, Beauty, Literature)
• 1804-1864, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
• 1809-1849, Edgar Allan Poe, Short Stories
• 1811-1896, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• 1817-1862, Henry David Thoreau, Walden
• 1819-1891, Herman Melville, Moby Dick
• 1819-1892, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
• 1835-1910, Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
• 1807-1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Evangeline,” “Song of Hiawatha”
• 1830-1886, Emily Dickinson, Collected Poems
• 1835-1894, Celia Thaxter, Collected Poems

Autobiographies & Political

• 1797-1883, Autobiography of Sojourner Truth
• 1817-1895, Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
• 1818-1896, Autobiography of Harriet Jacobs
• 1818-1883, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
• 1861-1865, American Civil War; Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863)

Music: The Romantic Period

• 1797-1828, Franz Schubert, Erlkonig (The Erlking), Die Forelle (The Trout)
• 1810-1856, Robert Schumann, Carnival
• 1810-1849, Frederic Chopin, Nocturne in E Flat Major (1830), Etude in C Minor (1831), Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op. 53 (1842)
• 1811-1886, Franz Liszt, Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F Minor (1851)
• 1813-1901, Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto (1851)
• 1809-1847, Felix Mendelssohn, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 54 (1844)
• 1803-1869, Hector Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
• 1813-1883, Richard Wagner, The Valkyrie (1856)
• 1824-1884, Bedrich Smetana, The Moldau (1874)
• 1833-1897, Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 4; A German Requiem(1868)
• 1839-1881, Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. by Maurice Ravel, 1922)
• 1840-1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet (1869)
• 1841-1904, Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, From the New World (1893)
• 1844-1908, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade, Op. 35 (1888)

1870-1914
Mass Society & the National State

European Literature

• 1819-1880, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch
• 1828-1906, Henrik Ibsen, Plays
• 1840-1928, Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure
• 1865-1939, William Butler Yeats, Collected Poems
• 1867-1916, Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
• 1879-1970, E. M. Forster, A Passage to India; A Room With a View; Howard’s End

American Literature

• 1832-1898, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass
• 1895, Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
• 1903, Jack London, The Call of the Wild
• 1903, Henry James, The Ambassadors
• 1911, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
• 1856-1915, Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
• 1871-1938, James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man
• 1868-1963, W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

Politics and War

• 1805-1859, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
• 1806-1873, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, The Subjection of Woman
• 1817-1862, Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
• 1838-1918, Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
• 1878-1968, Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Philosophy, Religion, Science, and Psychology

• 1809-1882, Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of the Species
• 1844-1900, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, The Anti-Christ, Ecco Homo 
• 1842-1910, William James, The Principles of Psychology, Pragmatism, essays from The Meaning of Truth, The Varieties of Religious Experience
• 1873-1897, Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
• 1880, Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Culture

Visual Arts

• 1830-1926, Claude Monet
• 1841-1919, Auguste Renoir
• 1830-1903, Camille Pissarro
• 1881-1973, Pablo Picasso
• 1882, Childe Hassam

Music

• 1858-1924, Giacomo Puccini, La Boheme
• 1868-1917, Scott Joplin (American Jazz), Maple Leaf Rag
• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), Claude Debussy
• The Moldau (1874), Bedrich Smetana
• Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (​From the New World,​ 1893)
• ​Romeo and Juliet,​ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90, Johannes Brahms
• 1858-1924, Giacomo Puccini, La Boheme
• 1868-1917, Scott Joplin (American Jazz), Maple Leaf Rag
• The Rite of Spring (1913), Igor Stravinsky
• Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1912), Arnold Schoenberg
• Mondestrunken (Moondrunk), Schoenberg

1914-1919: World War I

• 1857-1924, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo
• 1856-1950, George Bernard Shaw, Selected Plays
• 1856-1939, Sigmund Freud, Selected Works, incl. The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Civilization and Its Discontents
• 1860-1904, Anton Chekhov, short stories, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard
• 1862-1937, Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence
• 1871-1922, Marcel Proust, Remembrances of Things Past
• 1875-1926, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elegies
• 1882-1941, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves
• 1882-1941, James Joyce, Ulysses
• 1883-1924, Franz Kafka, The Trial, The Castle, selected short stories
• 1885-1930, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love
• 1899-1961, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
• 1894-1961, James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times
• 1916, Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Music

• Wozzeck (1917-1922), Alban Berg
• Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10 (1911-1913), Anton Webern
• Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut (1912), from Three Places in New England (1908-1914), Charles Ives

1919-1939
Between the World Wars

• 1868-1950, Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology
• 1874-1963, Robert Frost, Collected Poems
• 1878-1967, Carl Sandburg, Collected Poems
• 1879-1955, Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems
• 1883-1963, William Carlos Wiliams, Collected Poems
• 1885-1972, Ezra Pound, Collected Poems
• 1888-1965, T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems, Collected Plays
• 1888-1953, Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night
• 1894-1963, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
• 1896-1966, John of Shanghai, The Orthodox Veneration of Mary, the Birthgiver of God
• 1902-1968, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men
• 1903-1960, Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• 1930, Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science”
• 1938, St. Maria Faustine Kowalska, Diary

Music

• Rhapsody in Blue (1924), George Gershwin
• Lost Your Head Blues (1926) Bessie Smith
• Hotter Than That (1927), Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
• Afro-American Symphony (1931), William Grant Still (b. 11 May 1895, d. 3 Dec 1978)

1939-1945: World War II

• 1874-1963, Robert Frost, Collected Poems
• 1875-1955, Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
• 1885-1951, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925, Pulitzer Prize), Elmer Gantry (1927)
• 1886-1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• 1892-1973, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954-1956)
• 1897-1962, William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying
• 1897-1975, Thornton Wilder, Our Town
• 1899-1961, Ernest Hemingway, Short Stories
• 1902-1967, Langston Hughes, Poems
• 1903-1950, George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1984, Burmese Days
• 1906, R. K. Narayan, The English Teacher, The Vendor of Sweets
• 1908-1960, Richard Wright, Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945)
• 1911-1983, Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Music

• Concerto for Orchestra (1943), Bela Bartok
• Appalachian Spring (1943-1944), Aaron Copland

1945-1970: The Cold War

• 1893-1963, Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung (The Little Red Book)
• 1897-1963, A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (1957), The Knowledge of the Holy (1961)
• 1919-., J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (1951)
• 1932-1963, Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems, The Bell Jar (1963)
• 1928-1974, Anne Sexton, Collected Poems
• 1923-1997, James Dickey, Deliverance (1970)
• 1914-1993, John Hersey, A Bell for Adano (1944), Hiroshima (1946)
• 1929-., Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems
• 1922-1907, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
• 1905-1989, Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (1946)
• 1924-1987, James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
• 1914-1994, Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
• 1925-1964, Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
• 1931-1989, Donald Barthelme, Short Stories
• 1944-., Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1983, Pulitzer Prize)
• 1941-., Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons
• 1922-1969, Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
• 1924-1984, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966); Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958)
• 1876-1941, Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
• 1899-1986, Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Dreamtigers
• 1899-1977, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Speak, Memory
• 1906-1989, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape
• 1907-1973, W. H. Auden, Collected Poems
• 1913-1960, Albert Camus, The Plague, The Stranger
• 1915-., Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, Herzog
• 1918-., Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), The Gulag Archipelago (1973), The First Circle (1968),  Harvard Commencement Speech (8 June 1978)
• 1925-1970, Mishima Yukio, Confessions of a Mask, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
• 1928-., Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
• 1930-., Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Music

• Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-1948), John Cage
• ​Poème électronique​ (​Electronic Poem,​ 1958), Edgard Varese
• Fugata (1969), Astor Piazzolla
• Concerto Grosso 1985, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
• Yo-Yo Ma, cellist, playing Piazzolla’s Fugata
• ​Short Ride in a Fast Machine​ (1986), John Adams
• Bloomdido (1950), Charlie Parker
• Miles Runs the Voodoo Down (1969), Miles Davis
• West Side Story (1957), Leonard Bernstein
• Musicals by: Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Loesser, George Gershwin, George Balanhine, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim (​West Side Story, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd​)

1970 to 1999

• Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth (1931)
• Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
• Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us (1951), Silent Spring (1962)
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
• John LeCarre, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963)
• Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972)
• Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter (1973)
• Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977)
• John Irving, The World According to Garp (1978)
• John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever (1978)
• Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song (1980)
• John Updike, Rabbit is Rich (1982), Rabbit at Rest (1991)
• William Kennedy, Ironweed (1984)
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
• Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1986)

2000-2021
Nobel Prize Winners, Literature

• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (2000)
• Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde (2000)
• Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier & Clay (2001)
• Julia Glass, Three Junes (2002)
• Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire (2003)
• Lily Tuck, The News from Paraguay (2004)
• William T. Vollman, Europe Central (2005)
• Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (2006)
• Doris Lessing (2007)
• Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008)
• Herta Müller (2009)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
• Tomas Tranströmer (2011)
• Mo Yan (2012)
• Alice Munro (2013)
• Patrick Modiano (2014)
• Svetlana Alexievich (2015)
• Bob Dylan, American songwriter (2016)
• Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)
• Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
• Peter Handke (2019)
• Louise Glück (2020)
• Abdulrazak Gurney (2021)

2000-2021: Pulitzer Prize, Memoir

• Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (2002)
• Joan Didion, ​The Year of Magical Thinking​ (2006)
• Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World: A Memoir (2016)
• Susan Faludi, In the Darkroom (2017)
• Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (2017)
• Deirdre Bair, Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me (2020)
• Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (2021)

My personal reading list by years is here.