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Harvard Classics Book Download
- olliej 8y agoThey look great, alas they’re all pdf so text size is fixed :(
- MattHeard 8y agohttp://www.bartleby.com/hc/ http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
- cbluth 8y agoWhat would you recommend? epub? Something else?
- shakna 8y agoEpub is a great format if you're not just embedding images. It's pretty braindead, so generating it is easy, as is converting it to any other standard you need. Most ereaders can parse it. However, if you have the LaTeX source, then you can both convert to whatever, and have no information loss. But you do usually have to render it to something else.
- vonseel 8y agoWhere does one find LaTeX source for published books?
- acqq 8y agoThis is a fantastic converter of pdf to pdf (!) but fitting your e-books reader: http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ I like reading with the originally printed fonts on my reader.
- JKCalhoun 8y agoYes, but hopefully you have a larger device and can scale the PDF but as others have pointed out, there are ePub versions about. I sort of prefer PDFs though, when an ePub is allowed to reflow the content ... it often leaves some off widows and orphans. (Never mind the problems when there are also illustrations or drop caps.)
- lazycouchpotato 8y agoWhich books would you recommend to read from these?
- my_first_acct 8y agoHere [1] is a list (extracted from volume 50 apparently) of suggested excerpts. Supposedly, if you spend just 15 minutes a day reading these, you will become well educated in just a year. Note: I have not tried this. [1] https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1 https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1
- pronoiac 8y agoNote, some of them require signing in. I wonder how well this list would work as a mailing list.
- Animats 8y ago"The Five Foot Shelf". Those were once a common set of books. They'd show up in used bookstores. Back when there were bookstores.
- sailfast 8y agoYou can still pick these up in used bookstores. Garage sales are also great spots to get them.
- jonsen 8y agoYou mean, now all the bookstores are used? ;) Shouldn't it be "used-book stores"?
- projektfu 8y agoNope. Used Bookstores is correct.
- deerpig 8y agoWhen I was a kid we had the whole set. I assume that it was something tied together with Britannica -- we had an early 60's set. I tried to read them but the font faces were so small that they were terrible reading copies. If memory serves, I remember really, really trying to read Moby Dick and Darwin (are they both on the list?) but the tiny type and terrible formatting defeated me. More than 45 years later, I've read maybe 70% of the books in the list (maybe more), but all in different, more readable editions. Today almost everything I read is in epub, and pdf for technical and scientific papers.
- zhdc1 8y agoWhenever this subject comes up, I feel the need to point out St. John's College's undergraduate liberal arts program: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs
- vonseel 8y agoI assume you are implying it is based on the Harvard Classics? I guess they wouldn’t explicitly advertise it as such.
- barry-cotter 8y agoThey are pointing out that it’s based on Great Books, the Western Canon. There will be some disagreement on which minor works are part of the canon but very little on major works. Plato, Homer, Augustine, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Cicero, Goethe, Dante, Shakespeare
- tombone12 8y agoProps for using the proper name of Ibn Sina!
- zhdc1 8y agoYes. The undergraduate 'great books' program used at St. John's came from the University of Chicago (Mortimer Adler and others) through Stringfellow Barr. The University of Chicago based their program on Charles Eliot's work (i.e., the Harvard University Classics). I was also pointing out that it's (anecdotally) beneficial to read the Harvard Classics and other foundational works, but if you're looking for some sort of academic purity, there you go.
- agensaequivocum 8y agoAlso Thomas Aquinas College. It is a Socratic method, great books only undergraduate program. https://thomasaquinas.edu https://thomasaquinas.edu
- phs318u 8y agoOr in any format you like here: https://archive.org/details/Harvard-Classics https://archive.org/details/Harvard-Classics or https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics_(Bookshelf) https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics_(Bookshelf) EDIT: added Project Gutenberg link.
- robin_reala 8y agoSlight self promotion, but Standard Ebooks has a few of the classics, and a few more of the classic fiction available as nicely formatted and accessible PD ebooks (epub, Kobo variant epub, and Kindle formats for each): - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/benjamin-franklin/the-autobiography-of-benjamin-franklin https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/benjamin-franklin/the-auto... - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditations/george-long https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditation... - Don Quixote by Cervantes: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/miguel-de-cervantes-saavedra/don-quixote/john-ormsby https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/miguel-de-cervantes-saaved... - Pride and Predudice by Jane Austen: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jane-austen/pride-and-prejudice https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jane-austen/pride-and-prej... - Vanity Fair by William Thackeray: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-makepeace-thackeray/vanity-fair https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-makepeace-thackera... - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/david-copperfield https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/david-copp... - Washington Irving collection: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/washington-irving/the-sketch-book-of-geoffrey-crayon-gent https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/washington-irving/the-sket... - Father Goriot by Balzac: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/honore-de-balzac/father-goriot/ellen-marriage https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/honore-de-balzac/father-go... - The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/j-w-von-goethe/the-sorrows-of-young-werther/r-d-boylan https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/j-w-von-goethe/the-sorrows... - Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/crime-and-punishment/constance-garnett https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/crime-an... These are nearly always taken from the Gutenberg source transcriptions, but tidied up typographically and marked up using modern technologies. If you notice any problems with any of these we’ll happily take PRs!
- tramGG 8y agoI tried to read through this once. I couldn't get beyond: "Volume 1 - Benjamin Franklin" because I found Benny Frank to be an insufferable nerd hah. It sort of ruined the perception that grade school gave me of him.
- keiferski 8y agoWhen people talk about a culture of “anti-intellectualism”, this is what they’re talking about.
- tramGG 8y agoThat's not true. He was just sort of a jerk. Maybe I should have said he was a nerd that was also an insufferable person. :) Did you read it?
- keiferski 8y agoYes, I've read it multiple times - it's incredibly short yet filled with a lot of wisdom. I highly suggest you give it a second look.
- known 8y agohttps://personalmba.com/ https://personalmba.com/ is also good for entrepreneurs
- techer 8y agoZipEpub https://archive.org/details/HarvardClassicsEpub https://archive.org/details/HarvardClassicsEpub
- aestetix 8y agoThis is fantastic. My only gripe here is that I don't see Herodotus or Thucydides listed, which I would consider very important prerequisites to some of the other books, especially Plutarch.
- mynameishere 8y agoMost readable one is also the one most mystifying included: Two Years before the Mast. I actually bought this collection on ebay years ago for like 10 dollars. It's really a great example of not being able to buy the time along with the books. They mostly collect dust. "Mmm, Sacred Writings..."
- wjnc 8y agoSo how does one go about reading such classics? Any tips? I often get distracted by the arcane language of many translations and go for a modern translation, preferably annotated. Even when the English seems pretty readable (say, Shakespeare) it's obvious I miss quite a lot in comprehension.
- eternauta3k 8y agoFind an online class on the book. For example, Mythgard Academy's class on The Consolation of Philosophy: https://mythgard.org/academy/consolation-of-philosophy/ https://mythgard.org/academy/consolation-of-philosophy/ Annotated books are also good.
- nicoburns 8y agoOpen the first page, and continue through the rest. This might seem like a flippant answer, but I've always hated companion texts which try to read specific meanings into primary texts. I much prefer just to engage with the original, and make what I can of it. I figure I might miss some things, but I can also have my own perspective.
- catach 8y ago> but I can also have my own perspective. That seems alien to me, the notion that access to an interpretation prevents you from forming your own.
- zdkl 8y agoConsider: discovering context in a companion that describes the authors state of mind at time of writing. That information may alter your perception of the primary resource.
- wenc 8y agoI understand where you're coming from, but for most people the brute force approach to reading original texts without sufficient background deprives them of many layers of understanding that makes a text rewarding to read. And because most readers are centuries removed form the original context of the text, a direct reading also skews their interpretation significantly because most will read it through their own 21st century lens (this is how chronological bias seeps in). Companion texts (or commentaries) might seem like crutches or training wheels because they only present one interpretive option (which could reflect a commentary author's biases). The remedy is use more than one commentary, not necessarily to discard all commentaries. Critical thinkers do this instinctively anyway -- for instance, we click on multiple Google News links to figure out what's going on. Commentaries help a modern reader to get to speed on the historical context and thinking that was present during that era, which in turn helps them to formulate their own (more informed) thoughts. One could try to piece together this material by inferring stuff from the text, but chances are one would be wrong about the details and one would have to consult secondary or tertiary materials anyway. In Chaim Potok's "The Chosen" (fiction), there's a Hasidic character named Danny Saunders who was a prodigy, praised by all for his intelligence. He had an eidetic memory and great ability for analysis, but found himself stumped when reading original texts in psychology. He studies German in order to read Freud, but he gets stuck on the fact German words can be understood in many different ways, when he only wants to find the ONE way. He has a breakthrough when he realizes that Freud's works need to be studied, not read. His epiphany led to him studying Freud using Talmudic methods (with multiple commentaries), arguing with it, etc. and finally, the text yields to him. TLDR: when a text stumps you, try reading it with multiple commentaries.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ramblerman 8y agothe reading guide at the bottom is quite nice. It has a daily recommended 15minute snippet.
- wyclif 8y agoIs this resource new, or has it been available for a while?
- qop 8y agoWhat a great link for starting off the long weekend! Great idea!
- herodotus 8y agoIt is great that these books are available for download. However, the quality of a translation is hugely important. Even translations that were considered great at the time may be turgid and off-putting to a contemporary ear. And the problem is that you might try, for example, Dante from this list, hate it, and miss out on what may have been a life-altering reading experience. My advice, if you want to read some of the great classics, is to (a) look at reviews; and (b) compare paragraphs from different translations.
- davidkuhta 8y agoWould this be a good set from which to gain some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies?
- bsenftner 8y agoMy parent's got a set of these in the 60's, leather bound with gold leaf printing on the covers and page trims. I had them assessed a few years ago, and they are worth a small mint. Then my evil sister got them and they are gone.
- placeholderNam 8y agoWould Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius generally make it onto a complete classics list, or is it because of Stoicism's recent resurgence in popularity?
- Sangermaine 8y agoThe Harvard Classics anthology was compiled in 1909. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics
- Finnucane 8y agoI guess it depends on how 'complete' a list you're looking for, but the Loeb Classics library included Aurelius in 1916 and Epictetus in 1925. They were not in any way forgotten or thought of as minor.
- Koshkin 8y agoI have been experimenting with the idea of reading some classics in the languages they were written in - Greek, Latin, French, etc., and I am still wondering if the experience is worth the effort (of learning a language), especially given the availability of many excellent English translations.
- happy4crazy 8y agoHard to say if it's worth the effort, but I've taught myself enough French to read classics (e.g. Hugo, Déscartes, Tocqueville), and it really is an immense pleasure. I imagine I'll get a kick out of it for the rest of my life.
- bambataa 8y agoThe difficulty is that your language ability needs to be at such a high level that you'd lose more nuance from a translation than you would from lack of vocabulary etc when reading the original. In my opinion it's worth it for poetry but prose less so.
- schizoidboy 8y agoPOSIX one-liner to download all PDFs: $ curl -s https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120212 \ | grep "downloads.*download" | sed -e 's/href/\n&/g' \ | sed 's/.*\(http:.*download\)/\1/g' | grep " - " \ | grep -v target | sed 's/"> - / /g' | sed 's/<.*//g' \ | while read link rest; do \ if [ "${i}" = "" ]; then i=1; fi; \ wget -O "Harvard Classics - Volume $(printf '%02d' ${i}) - ${rest}.pdf" "${link}"; \ i=$(( i + 1 )); \ done
- Kovah 8y agoI should have checked the comments before downloading all books manually...
- qop 8y agoExcellent form! I would LOVE to see more of this type of posting in HN. We're supposed to hack everything! There was a really neat post the other day I think you might like about how someone made a shell script that performed a job like 200x quicker than hadoop. You'd probably enjoy it. Anyways, thanks!
- glitch 8y agoFor anyone that wants to download the books, I strongly recommend downloading the PDF archive on Archive.org because the image scans within the PDFs are of much higher quality. https://archive.org/details/Harvard-Classics https://archive.org/details/Harvard-Classics
- schizoidboy 8y agoNice. The `du -ch *pdf` for myharvardclassics.com is 439M, and this higher quality zip is 975MB. $ wget "https://archive.org/compress/Harvard-Classics/formats=TEXT%20PDF&file=/Harvard-Classics.zip"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gazzik 8y agoGist for downloading the guide in text format for easier consumption: https://gist.github.com/mutaphore/e8f2d9fec119288215b186d7dcdd3113 https://gist.github.com/mutaphore/e8f2d9fec119288215b186d7dc...