Required Readings

Memory is the major element in cognition in everything we call the humanities. If you cannot remember then you can’t think and you can’t imagine and you can’t write and you can hardly read. If you have shallow authors chosen only for political reasons or because supposedly they will make people of one ethnic background or another somehow feel good about themselves — self esteem, or that ridiculous metaphor we now call empowerment — if you do that you will not augment memory, you will not cause the mind to grow, you will put people into a state of another kind of poverty , the kind of poverty that the school of resentment does not seem to care about, poverty as imaginative need.

Harold Bloom

We shall not be reading shallow authors! In an effort to save your parents the outrageous cost of the standard textbooks (and to save you from the tedium of reading them), I have chosen only serious books that may be purchased online at a significant discount (used, of course). Gay&Webb’s ‘Modern Europe’ provides an engaging and well-written narrative by two intellectual giants without the inherent flaws of today’s standard textbooks.

IMPORTANT:  USED BOOKS ARE CHEAP NOW, so buy them NOW! They get more expensive as September nears. Buy ALL BOOKS now so you have them available when you need them – we will begin Machiavelli by end of September.

You should acquire each of the first THREE listed below.
  1. The Prince by N. Machiavelli (Norton Critical edition). There are many editions of this work; I ask that you have the Norton Critical.
  2. Utopia by Thomas More (Norton Critical edition).
  3. Henry V by William Shakespear (Oxford University edition) / they start at $1.45 at ALIBRIS
  4. I ask that you also invest in a moleskine journal   (normal sized to extra large) to use for reading notes – this is a READING journal, not simply for class notes, though it can certainly be used for both. (IMPORTANT: there are many brands — Leuchturm, is another option, for example; you want the large or extra-large.)
  5. We will also use bits of Modern Europe by Gay & Webb. This is the primary narrative for the semester – but I SHALL SUPPLY YOU WITH COPIES OF THE CHAPTERS WE USE        If you wish to purchase your own copy (it is a fine narrative of European history) do not pay more than about $20 for a copy.  Start here AbeBooks –  if you purchase, I suggest purchasing the single hardbound volume; it’s a seriously good history of Europe.