Bookshelf

[Last updated: October 2024] This is a work-in-progress collection of physical books that we own and have (mostly) read. Many of these titles have made a great impression on the way we perceive the world around us; let us know if you’d like to share/receive a detailed review, we’d be delighted to hear it!

Titles highlighted blue are those which I’d generally recommend “off the bat” to someone who holds no strong existing inclinations towards specific topics or genres within that field. Of course, this is all extremely subjective – especially for works of fiction – so take it with a pinch of salt.

Titles ending with * are personal favourites; these are texts that have meaningfully influenced my thinking and I’d delighted to discuss them at length.

The headers below are extremely general and inevitably overlap at times. For example, a text on Aquinas could feasibly be included under either Religion or Philosophy. Apologies in advance for any confusion in our way of classification!

Religion

A Catholic Introduction to the Old Testament, Bergsma & Pitre
A Christological Catechism, Fitzmyer
A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, Vonier
All One in Christ; A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Theory, Feser
An Introduction to New Testament Christology, Brown*
An Introduction to the New Testament, Brown
Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity, Brown & Meier
Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, Wetzel
Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, Feser
Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics, Austriaco*
Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, de Lubac*
Catholic Commentary on Scripture Series: The New Testament
Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus, O’Collins
Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine, Ratzinger
City of God, St. Augustine*
Confessions, St. Augustine
Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross
Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation, Anatolios
Engagement with God: The Drama of Christian Discipleship, von Balthasar
Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Ratzinger*
Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard
Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Feser
General Doctrine of the Sacraments, Auer
God’s Voice Within, Thibodeaux
Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties, Horn
Heidegger and Theology, Wolfe
History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millenium, Hitchcock
In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall, Ratzinger*
Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger*
Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach, Loke
Islam: The Straight Path, Esposito
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Ratzinger*
Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, Ratzinger*
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, Ratzinger
Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, Pitre*
Jesus the Christ, Kaspers*
Jesus, Interpreted: Benedict XVI, Bart Ehrman, and the Historical Truth of the Gospels, Ramage*
Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church, Ratzinger
Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises, Hahn*
Liturgy and Personality, Hildebrand
Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla*
Moses or Jesus? An Essay in Johannine Christology, Boismard*
No Man Is an Island, Merton
On the Trinity, St. Augustine
One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics, Pruss
Orthodoxy, Chesterton
Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly, Pine
Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know, Barber
Studies on the Early Papacy, Chapman
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Craig and Moreland
The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century, Matarasso
The Day is Now Far Spent, Sarah
The Incredible Catholic Mass, von Cochem
The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila*
The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, Eddy & Boyd
The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth, Hahn
The Lord, Guardini
The Mystery of the Eucharist, Auer*
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Licona*
The Screwtape Letters, Lewis
The Spirit of St. Dominic, Clerisaac
The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ratzinger*
The Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux*
The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas, Legge*
The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, Emery
The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine of the Triune God, Emery
The Way of Perfection, St. Teresa of Avila
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics, Parry
The World’s First Love, Sheen
Thomism and Predestination, Long, Nutt & White
Transformation in Christ: On the Christian Attitude, Hildebrand
Upon this Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church, Ray
Why We’re Catholic, Horn

Philosophy

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke
After Virtue, Macintyre
All Desire is a Desire for Being, Girard*
Being and Time, Heidegger
Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche
Common Sense, Paine
De Anima, Aristotle
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, Pinker
Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter, Singer
Heidegger: A Critical Introduction, Trawny
Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction, Inwood
Heidegger’s Confessions, Coyne
In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine, Marion
Letters, Seneca*
Meditations, Aurelius
Metaphysics, Aristotle
Nations and Nationalism, Gellner
On Liberty, Mill
On the Road with St. Augustine, Smith*
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, Godfrey-Smith
Persons: The Difference Between Someone and Something, Spaemann*
Protagoras and Meno, Plato
Republic, Plato
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, Feser*
Selected Works, Cicero
Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard
Soul of the World, Scruton*
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, Gorsuch*
The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus
The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Scruton*
Utopia, More
Violence and the Sacred, Girard

History and Politics

21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari
A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC, Van Der Mieroop
A History of Western Music, Grout
A Human Being Died That Night, Gobodo-Madikizela
A Republic If You Can Keep It, Gorsuch
Another Day of Life, Kapuscinski
Bismarck: A Life, Steinberg
Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, Ignatieff*
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Herrin
Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, Biggar*
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, Petraeus & Roberts*
Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas, Runciman
Economic Interdependence and War, Copeland
From Beirut to Jerusalem, Ang
Guns, Germs & Steel, Diamond
Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Kissinger*
Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, Plokhy
Man, the State, and War, Waltz
On Revolution, Arendt
On War, von Clausewitz
Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle For Europe, 1807 to 1814, Lieven*
Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer, Smith
The Ancien Regime and the Revolution, de Tocqueville
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, Pomfret
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery, Falk
The People Vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy, Bartlett*
The Prince, Machiavelli
The Guns of August, Tuchman*
The Story of Art, Gombrich*
The Story of Russia, Figes*
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn*
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer
Western Culture Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues, Ratzinger*
What is History?, Carr
World Order, Kissinger*

Literature

A Grain of Wheat, wa Thiong’o*
A Sportsman’s Notebook, Turgenev*
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens
City of Joy, Lapierre
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky*
Chekhov: The Major Plays, Chekhov
Dead Souls, Gogol
Demons, Dostoevsky
Dracula, Stoker
Great Expectations, Dickens
Inferno, Dante*
Novels, Tales, Journeys, Pushkin
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn*
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez
Purgatorio, Dante*
Siddartha, Hesse
Steppenwolf, Hesse
Taras Bulba, Gogol*
The Aeneid, Virgil
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky*
The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas*
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy
The Gambler, Dostoevsky
The Idiot, Dostoevsky
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde*
The Ring of the Nibelung, Wagner*
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
The Way of All Flesh, Butler
Two Hussars, Tolstoy
To Have and Have Not, Hemingway
To the Lighthouse, Woolf
Resurrection, Tolstoy*
War and Peace, Tolstoy

Economics, Business and Finance

21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19, Bernanke
A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises, Dalio*
Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought, Lo
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Bernstein
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, Akerlof & Shiller
Basic Economics, Sowell
Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns, Rappaport & Mauboussin
Irrational Exuberance, Shiller*
Merchants of Debt: KKR and the Mortgaging of American Business, Anders
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Banerjee & Duflo
Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America’s Top Stock Traders, Schwager
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Collier*
The Intelligent Investor, Graham
The Nature of Economies, Jacobs
The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Stiglitz
The Shock Doctrine, Klein*
The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resource, Blas & Farchy
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Thiel

Natural History, Science and Psychology

A Brief History of Time, Hawking
Aspects of the Feminine, Jung
Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Plomin
Chaos: Making A New Science, Gleick
Cracking the Aging Code: The New Science of Growing Old – And What It Means for Staying Young, Mitteldorf & Sagan
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom, Carroll*
Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution, Day & Bonduriansky
Great Calculations: A Surprising Look Behind 50 Scientific Inquiries, Pask
How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind, Langmuir and Broecker*
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry, Pauling & Wilson
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Gottlieb
On the Origin of Species, Darwin
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Attia
Pale Blue Dot: a Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan
Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind & Hrabovsky
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity, Zimmer*
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, Feynman
The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are, Jasanoff
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, Dawkins
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance, Carey
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World, Prum*
The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, Dawkins
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind, Kaku
The Grand Design, Hawking & Mlodinow
The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, Lewis & Maslin
The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall, Moffett
The Order of Time, Rovelli
The Selfish Gene, Dawkins*
The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin*
The Walking Whales: From Land to Water in Eight Million Years, Thewisssen*
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, O’Neil