Personal Recommendation Library

I am currently working on elliptic cohomology (Cobordism representation of quantum field theory, geometric quantization of Chern-Simons theory, CS-WZW correspondence) and twisted K-theory (T-duality and higher background gauge fields), flavored with Connes-style noncommutative geometry, Poisson geometry, quantum group and higher category in general. It turns out that these fields intersect with physics, logic and theoretical computer science heavily, and in fact provides profound insight for the foundations of mathematics and philosophy. Hence the interest in linear (“quantum”, quote and unquote since “quantum logic” name space is occupied already) logic and the foundation of mathematics (category-topos theoretic approach, i.e. synthetic) and its intersection with philosophy of cognition, and in turn with “phenomenological” metaphysics, which is further related to action theory, ethics (Wittgensteinian and Scotist), “theological” anthropology (in the sense of Teilhard de Chardin), jurisprudence and theology (in the sense of Schmitt, Kantorowicz and Heer), and finally theology-mythology (in the sense of Traditionalists and Mircea Eliade). With the motivation comming from these connections and insights thus germinating, I hold reconciling St. Augustine and Origen, Scotist voluntarism and intellectualism, the individual and the collective, theology and occultism, as the final telos, so all the recommendations with spirits of theorizing will be made from this perspective. Another perspective is that of music, history of music theory (which in fact should be regarded as some sort of full intellectual history, since it is a condensation of all the human yearning for form, harmony and order), art history and cultural history in general. These recommendations will present the splendor of civilizations, the depth of human psyche, and the unfathomable sublimity and magnificence of human religions, which will effectively provide insights for the above mentioned inquiry.

• All the books listed are recommended and strongly recommended. No junk like Camus or de Beauvoir or Foucault or Zizek, etc.
• No “introductory” books. No ordinary textbooks and such.
• No popular classics like Hobbes’ Leviathan and such.
• Note that categories overlap. For example, many works labelled as psychoanalysis, especially those authored by C. G. Jung, can also be labelled as works on religion.
• Comments are not very serious and, moreover, incomplete.
• Try searching the archive file list page first for those whose links to the book files aren’t given. If there is no result, consult [external sites](external sites) and search in the sites listed.

Religion

Ancient Religion, Gnosticism, Iconography

• Frankfort, Henri - Kingship and the Gods. Mixture of Warburgian iconography, theology, art history, etc. URL
• Pritchard, James - Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Also known as ANET. URL
• Beatrice, Teisser - Egyptian Iconography on Syro Palestinian Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age
• Jan Assmann, David Lorton - Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt URL
• Majercik, Ruth - The Chaldean Oracles Text, Translation, and Commentary URL
• Jonas, Hans - The Gnostic Religion URL (Chinese translation)
• Peterson, Joseph H. - The Lesser Key of Solomon

Hermeticism, Perennial Philosophy, etc

For history and heresies see the intellectual & cultural history category.

• David Fideler - Jesus Christ, Sun of God, Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism URL
• Huxley, Adolf - Perennial Philosophy URL
• Jung, Carl - The Red Book
• Guenon, Rene - The Crisis of the Modern World URL
• Guenon, Rene - The Esotericism of Dante URL
• Evola, Julius - The Hermetic Tradition URL
• Evola, Julius - The Metaphysics of Sex URL
• Evola, Julius - Revolt against the Modern World URL
• Evola, Julius - Pagan Imperialism. Evola’s works are NOT on politics and he knows basically nothing about politics. URL
• Ghayat Al-Hakim - Picatrix URL
• de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard - The Phenomenon of Man
• Marsilio Ficino - Platonic Theology URL
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Oration on the Dignity of Man
• Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz
• G. R. S. Mead - Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

General Theology: Christian, Islamic, Judaic, etc.

Historical and Political “theology” are not included here.

Of course you should have read

• Saint Augustine - City of Gods
• Saint Augustine - Confessions
• The Writings of Martin Luther

etc.

• Saint Augustine - Writings Against the Manichaeans and the Donatists
• Saint Augustine - De Natura Boni
• Saint Augustine - De Trinitate
• Saint Augustine - Anti-Pelagian Writings
• St. Bonaventure - The Soul’s Journey into God, Tree of Life, Life of St. Francis URL
• St. Bonaventure - Collationes in Hexaemeron. See here, main.tex. Also see Benedict XVI’s The Theology of History in St.Bonaventure
• St. Bonaventure - On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology
• Gilson, Etienne - The Mystical Theology of St. Barnard URL
• Anonymous - Theologia Germanica. Paulist press version comes with a first rate introduction.
• Austin Flannery ed. - Vatican Council II, The Basic Sixteen Documents
• Benedict XVI - Papal Encyclicals. See [URL](https://files.geistlib.xyz/encyclical_tex/fin/BenedictXVI%20Encyclicals.pdf for TeX typesetted pdf) version. Especially Spe Salvi and Deus Caritas est
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux - Concerning Grace and Free Will URL
• Hugh of St. Victor - Sacraments of the Christian Faith URL
• Goldziher, Ignaz - Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law URL
• M. Friedländer (trans) - The Guide for the Perplexed URL
• Hardy, Edward R. - The Christology of the Later Fathers URL
• Henry Chadwick et. al - Alexandrian Christianity URL
• Philip Watson et al. - Luther and Erasmus, Free Will and Salvation URL
• The Writings of Saint Francis of Assisi URL
• Petry, Ray - Late Medieval Mysticism URL
• The Sermons and Conferences of John Tauler
• de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard - Hymn of the Universe
• de Lubac, Henri - Catholicism
• Scholem, Gerschom - Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
• Davis, Leo Donald - First Seven Ecumenical Councils
• de Lubca, Henri - Medieval Exegesis, The Four Senses of Scripture Vol.1 and Vol.2 (not complete)
• Scheeben, Matthias J. - The Glories of Divine Grace URL
• Rosenzweig, Franz - The Star of Redemption. Maybe should be labelled as philosophy. URL
• Clement of Alexandria - Protrepticus
• Nygren, Anders - Agape And Eros
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• The Lutheran Confessions
• Hans Urs von Balthasar - Cosmic Liturgy
• Hans Urs von Balthasar - The Glory of the Lord, Vol.1. I’ve only read the first volume.
• Missale Romanum

Scholarly works

• Tzamalikos, P. - Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time. Essential for those interested in the works of Teilhard de Chardin.
• Trigg, Joseph W. - Origen
• Pelikan, Jaroslav - The Christian Tradition. 5-volume set. Terse Church history and Christian intellectual history. Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3
• Rev. Joseph A. Jungmann - The Mass of the Roman Rite, its Origins and Development. Monumental work. URL
• Danielou, Jean - The Origins of Latin Christianity URL
• Danielou, Jean - The Theology of Jewish Christianity URL

Analytic (also see philosophy. Note that some philosophical works on mathematics and logic are actually theology)

• The T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology

Others

• Pelikan, Jaroslav - Mary Through the Centuries URL
• Joyce, Timothy - Celtic Christianity, a Sacred Tradition. Not a theology book actually, light read. URL
• Merezhkovsky, Dmitry - 宗教精神：路德与加尔文. No English translation available. It is recommended for those who appreciate the works of Merezhkovsky to read Jung, Mircea Eliade and Teilhard de Chardin URL

History of Religion, Mythology (Theory), Comparative Religion, etc

The field overlaps heavily with psychology, anthropology and sociology. Also sometimes art history and psychoanalysis can be seen as a branch.

• Witzel, E.J. Michael - The Origins of the World’s Mythologies
• Eliade, Mircea - A History of Religious Ideas. Everyone who reads Mircea Eliade should also read Ivan Strenski’s Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History Vol.1 Vol.2 Vol.3
• Eliade, Mircea - Patterns in Comparative Religion
• Eliade, Mircea - Rites and Symbols of Initiation URL
• Dumezil, Georges - Mitra-Varuna
• Jann Puhvel ed. - Myth and Law among the Indo-Europeans
• Mbiti John - Introduction to African religion URL
• Tyalor, Lily Ross - The Divinity of the Roman Emperor URL

Art, Music, Architecture

Aesthetics, Criticism

• Tartakiewicz, Wladyslaw - History of Aesthetics. 3-volume set. The 2nd volume is the “single” book on medieval aesthetics. URL (Chinese, Vol.2)
• Tartakiewicz, Wladyslaw - A History of Six [aesthetic] Ideas URL
• Heine, Heinrich - On Romantics
• Baudelaire, Charles - Essays on Aesthetics
• Tanizaki Junichiro - In’ei raisan (In Praise of Shadows )
• Dahlhaus, Carl - Esthetics of Music

Music

• Rickert, Edith - Ancient English Christmas Carols MCCCC to MDCC
• Lomax, John A - Cowboy Songs
• The English Hymnal
• Hymns Ancient and Modern
• W. B. Whall - Sea Songs, Ships and Shanties
• William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison - Slave Songs of the United States
• Liber Usualis 1961
• The Hymns of Luther External URL

Music History, Improvisation, Thoughts, Theory

• John Zorn ed. - Arcana V. Tim Hodgkinson presents a superb essay titled Holy Ghost. Also Garland’s article is good. URL
• Lang, Paul Henry - Music in Western Civilization. 保罗·亨利·朗，西方文明中的音乐。Must read for anyone interested in western music. The book is not solely about music, but rather like a Hegelian kaleidoscope presenting the spirit of ages of which the music is an ever-evolving manifestation. I read it in Chinese and wasn’t able to find an English version. URL The English version is now on libgen.
• Bailey, Derek - Improvisation
• Dahlhaus, Carl - Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality
• Dahlhaus, Carl - Foundations of Music History
• Frisch Walter - German Modernism. It is really about music and the arts of German modernism but I focused on music.
• Cook, Nicholas - The Schenker Project. Those interested in Fin-de-siecle Vienna should also read it.
• Thomas Christensen et al. - The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Really an intellectual history.
• 林谦三 -东亚乐器考 URL
• Schumann, Robert - Music and musicians, Essays and Criticisms
• Gide, Andre - Notes on Chopin. I read the Korean translation 쇼팽노트.
• Xenakis, Iannis - Formalized Music, Thought and Mathematics in Composition.
• Hodgkinson, Tim - Music and the Myth of Wholeness. A work on ethnomusicology and anthropology. Continuation of the essay Holy Ghost.

Art History, Iconography, Theory

• Riegl, Alois - Stilfragen(Problems of Style)
• Warburg, Aby - The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity. Including basically all of the important works of Aby Warburg. URL
• Warburg, Aby - Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America
• Panofsky, Erwin - Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism URL
• Panofsky, Erwin - Perspective as Symbolic Form
• Panofsky, Erwin - Studies in Iconology
• Fritz Saxl, Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky - Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy
• Otto Benesch - The Art of the Renaissance in Northern Europe URL
• Fritz Szxl - Heritage of Images
• Max Dvorak - The History of Art as the History of Ideas
• Heinrich Wölfflin - Italian and the German sense of Form. The work is quite boring, its language dull and overly academic, but it is an essential read, especially when one is going to read Otto Rank’s work on the psyche of artists.
• Francastel, Pierre - Art and Technology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Actually more on the influence of technology on modern art and architecture.
• Merrifield, Mary - Original Treatises. Monumental but forgotten work. Also known as Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting: Original Texts with English Translations. The alternative title explains all. Vol.1 Vol.2
• Male, Emile - The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century URL
• Kubler, George - The Shape of Time, Remarks on the History of Things URL
• Wilhelm Worringer - Abstraction and Empathy
• Wilhelm Worringer - Egyptian Art
• Wilhelm Worringer - Form in Gothic
• Louis Charbonneau-Lassay - The Bestiary of Christ URL

Architecture

• Studio Zaha Hadid - Total Fluidity
• Braunfels, Wolfgang - Urban Design in Western Europe
• Donald Watson, Alan Plattus, Robert Shibley - Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design. Don’t be fooled by the title. Essential read for those interested in the history of urban design, especially the part containing the classic texts of urban design.
• Proctor, Robert - Building the Modern Church
• Wittkower, Rudolf - Gothic vs. Classic Architectural Projects in Seventeenth-Century Italy
• Giedion, Siegfried - Space, Time and Architecture
• Denis Diderot - The Architectural Plates from the Encyclopedie
• Curtis, William J. R. - Modern Architecture since 1900 URL

Philosophy

I focus on Plato, Duns Scotus, Franz Brentano, Soren Kierkegaard, Charles Sanders Peirce, Gottlob Frege and Michael Dummett. No history of philosophy. Original works, modern commentaries and expositions are all included.

Hardcore

• Plato - Complete Works. Especially Phaedrus, Meno, Parmenides, Euthyphro, Timaeus, Sophist, Republic and Theatetus.
• Aristotle - Categories
• Aristotle - Nichomachean Ethics
• Aristotle - Metaphsyics
• Aristotle - Physics
• Kant, Emmanuel - Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. You should finish this.
• Plotnius - The Enneads
• Kierkegaard, Soren (John Climacus) - Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. To understand Kierkegaard one needs to read basically all his works or live a life in a specific way, so I prefer to recommend this one really essential work. Note the pseudonym is used.
• Brentano, Franz - The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong.
• Brentano, Franz - Descriptive Psychology. The beginning of phenomenology in the Cartesian tradition.
• Zahavi, Dan - Husserl’s Phenomenology. Crystal-clear exposition of Husserl’s phenomenology.
• Husserl, Edmund - On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time
• Nietzsche, Friedrich - Beyond Good and Evil
• Nietzsche, Friedrich - On the Genealogy of Morals. Basically I recommend all of Nietzsche’s works, excluding his earlier works like The Birth of Tragedy which is a waste of time for all those Dionysian and whatever things are so widespread that even a branlet knows how to use the jargon. However, his writings on Wagner and his personality is worth reading.
• St. Anslem - Proslogion and Monologion
• John Duns Scotus URL
  • Antonie Vos’s work The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus will be a good introduction.
  • You should have read some works of Anslem and Augustine.
  • You will prefer to read some English works at first even if you can read Latin.
  • Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle by John Duns Scotus
  • For ethics, Thomas Williams’ Selected Writings On Ethics
  • For metaphysics, Frank and Wolter’s Duns Scotus, Metaphysician
• Ibn Rushd / Averroes - Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle
• Cross, Richard - The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus
• Peirce, Charles Sanders - Collected Papers
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religion. His major works are basically unreadable and in my opinion not that worth reading. His lectures are without doubt worth reading. His best work is Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, see the corresponding section.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Lectures on Ethics
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Remarks on Color. Also see On Vision and Colors by Arthur Schopenhauer, Philipp Otto Runge, Georg Stahl.URL
• 韩林合 - 维特根斯坦《哲学研究》解读. 没有必要阅读韩林合的解读，但对维特根斯坦笔记和写作的整理（仿宋体）极有价值。
• Löwith, Karl - Nietzsche and Philosophy
• Herbert Davidson - Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect
• Jonas, Hans - The Phenomenon of Life, Toward a Philosophical Biology
• Martin Buber - I and Thou
• MacIntyre, Alasdair - After Virtue
• Bolzano, Bernard - Selected Writings on Ethics and Politics
• Max Scheler - The Nature of Sympathy
• Max Scheler - Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values
• Wilhelm Dilthey - Poetry and Experience
• Ernst Cassirer - The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
• Heinrich Rickert - Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft. Wierdly titled Science and history: A critique of positivist epistemology in English. 文化科学和自然科学
• Hamann, Johann Georg - Selected Writings
• Novalis - Philosophical Writings

Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic

Jean Yves-Girard, Frege, Dummett, Brouwer, Martin-Lof, Brentano, Bolzano, Lawvere, Husserl, Gerald Gentzen, etc.

• Manin, Yuri - Mathematics as Metaphor. Manin discussed the cultural aspects of mathematics well, but as a believer of Enlightenment do not really dive deep into the semantics of mathematics and physics, or rather his notion of semantics is that of pre-Romantic rationalism. Worth reading, but not deep.

I focus on topos-theoretic notion of logical truth. This is a brand new subject. See Category and Topos for the time being, and also

• Michael Dummett - The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The most profound work on the theory of meaning.
• Michael Dummett - The Seas of Language.
• Michael Dummett - Truth and Other Enigmas
• Rodin, Andrei - Axiomatic Method and Category Theory URL it is recommended to download the tar archive for the source and re-typeset the tex file.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Remarks on the Foundations of Mathemtaics. This is his best work. It is not, strictly speaking, about the foundations of mathematics, in the sense of set theory, logic, etc. but rather about the structure of rules.
• Hans Halvorson - The Logic in Philosophy of Science. The philosophy presented is quite bad and even stupid, but the exposition of mathematics is great.
• Frege’s complete works.
• Arend Heyting - Intuitionism, an introduction.

Keywords:

• Intuitionistic logic
• Synthetic differential geometry
• Internal logic/Internal language
• Curry-Howard correspondence
• Syntax-Semantics duality
• Isbell duality

Philosophy of Science

Scientific Methods and Representations

• Paul Feyerabend - Against method. A reasonably good book, but the next item is much better.
• Bas van Fraassen - The Empirical Stance.
• Bas van Fraassen - Scientific Representation.

Philosophy of Science

• Elsevier Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Especially the first volume on physics.
• Ilya Prigogine - Order out of Chaos.

“Soft”

• Paul Veyne - Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination URL
• Pierre Hadot - Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault
• Pierre Hadot - The Veil of Isis
• Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari - What is Philosophy
• Gottfried Herder - On the Origin of Language

Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Cognitive Science

Cognitive science and modern metaphysics overlap in that both of them studies how the categorization of percepted object is realized. Cognitive science is a derived form of philosophical phenomenology.

Of course no Freud.

Jungian. Peter Kingsley’s Catafalque would be helpful in understanding Jung’s works.

• Jung, Carl - Answer to Job. Must read for those interested in religion and mysticism, and even anthropology.
• Jung, Carl - Memories, Dreams, Reflections (especially last three chapters) URL
• Jung, Carl - Psychology and Religion
• Jung, Carl - Symbols of Transformation
• Jung, Carl - Mysterium Coniunctionis
• Jung, Carl - Psychology and Alchemy
• Jung, Carl - Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
• Jung, Carl - Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self URL
• Carl Jung, Wolfgang Pauli - Correspondences. Many of the dreams Jung presented as examples are Pauli’s.
• Neumann, Erich - The Origins and History of Consciousness URL

More cognitive leaning.

• Jaynes, Julian – The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind URL
• Otto Rank - Art and Artists
• Otto Rank - Psychology and the Soul
• James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Thompson, Rosch - The Embodied Mind
• Muensterberger, Werner - Collecting : An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives
• Piaget, Jean - The Language and Thought of the Child
• Gazzaniga et al. - Cognitive Neuroscience. A standard but not ordinary textbook.
• Janet Gyatso - Apparitions of the Self, The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary
• Lakoff, Johnson - Metaphors We Live By
• Lakoff, George - Women, Fire and Dangerous Things

Equipped with the knowledge gained reading Jungian and cognitive science, in cognitive archaeology one explores the deep history of human past.

• Shryock, Smail et al. - Deep History, The Architecture of Past and Present.
• ed. Tracy B. Henley et al. - Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology.
• ed. Colin Renfrew, Ezra B. W. Zubrow - The Ancient Mind, Elements of cognitive archaeology.

History

Works of Tacitus, Thucydides, etc. and ordinary textbooks are not included.

• Fernand Braudel - Memory and the Mediterranean URL
• Jacob Burckhardt - The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
• Heer, Friedrich - The Medieval World, Europe 1100 to 1350 URL
• Heer, Friedrich - The Holy Roman Empire. Excellent review . However, to fully understand the work you should be familiar with political theology, especially the monumental work of Kantorowicz The King’s Two Bodies. URL
• Heer, Friedrich - Charlemagne and his world URL
• Wilson, Peter - Heart of Europe, A History of the Holy Roman Empire. While Heer focus on the intellectualside, or more precisely, Geist, Peter Wilson provides an ordinary approach to the history of the Holy Roman Empire. URL
• Coulton, G. G. - Five Centuries of Religion, Vol.1 - Vol.4. In fact, Church history.
• Peters, Edward - Inquisition URL
• Ware, Timothy - The Orthodox Church URL
• Fletcher, Richard A. - The Conversion of Europe. Monumental work. URL
• Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin - Constantine and the Conversion of Europe URL
• Wigram, W. A. - An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church URL
• Buonaiuti, Ernesto - Stoira del Cristianesimo.
• Bihlmeyer, Karl - Church History. 3-volume set. Terse textbooks. 毕尔麦尔，古代、中世纪、近代教会史。URL (中文，第二卷)
• Gregory of Tours - The History of the Franks
• Bernal Diaz Del Castillo - The True History of The Conquest of New Spain
• Burckhardt, Jacob - Judgements on History and Historians
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie - Montaillou
• Bumke, Joachim - Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages
• 佐藤公彦 - 义和团的起源及其运动
• Meinecke, Friedrich - Die Entstehung des Historismus
• Tyler, Henry - The Medieval Mind, A History of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages
• Adam of Bremen - History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen URL

Reformation

• Lortz, Joseph - The Reformation in Germany. Interesting reading of Reformation by a Catholic sympathetic to Martin Luther. Those who are interested in 20th century intellectual history should read and analyse the mindset of the author.
• Lindsay, Thomas Martin - A History of the Reformation in Europe. Very biased but worth reading for that overtly expressed bias. URL （中文，上）URL （中文，下）
• John Roth and James Stayer - A Companion to Anabaptism and Apiritualism, 1521 to 1720. Brill companion. No good alternative. URL
• Wendel, Lee Palmer - A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation. Brill companion. No good alternative URL
• Bax, E. Belfort - Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists. Written by a diehard socialist. URL
• Bax, E. Belfort - The Peasants War in Germany, 1525 to 1526 URL

Intellectual & Cultural History

General, Technical, etc.

There are surely intersections with theology, philosophy, etc.

• Heer, Friedrich - The Intellectual History of Europe. Monumental work. URL (English) URL (Chinese)
• Lachterman, David Rapport - The Ethics of Geometry, Genealogy of Modernity. Also read Andrei Rodin’s Axiomatic Method and Category Theory.
• Le Goff, Jacques - Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages (Pour un autre Moyen Age) URL * Sedgwick, Mark - Against the Modern World
• Strenski, Ivan - Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History URL (Chinese)
• Allan Janik, Stephan Toulmin - Wittgenstein’s Vienna. Those interested in modern arts and architecture should also read it.
• Schorske, Carl - Fin-De-Siecle Vienna. THE book on Fin-De-Siecle Vienna.
• Barth, Karl - Protestant Thought, from Rousseau to Ritschl
• Berdyaev, Nikolai - Russian thoughts
• van Steenberghen, Fernand - Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism URL
• van Steenberghen, Fernand - Aristotle in the West URL
• Otto Neugebauer - A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy. Excellent handbook.
• Goodman, Martin - A History of Judaism. Monumental work. URL
• Warder, A. K. - Indian Buddhism
• 平川彰 - 印度佛教史
• Duhem, Pierre - Medieval Cosmology URL
• Herbert Grundmann - Religious Movements in the Middle Ages URL
• Evans, E. P. - The Criminal Prosecution and the Capital Punishment of Animals. Maybe anthropology or sociology or psychology? URL
• Caroline Walker Bynum, Paul Freeman - Last Things, Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages
• Caroline Walker Bynum - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336
• de Boer, T. J. - History of Philosophy in Islam
• 筒井俊彦 - 伊斯兰教思想历程 URL
• Authur Llewellyn Basham et al. - A Cultural History Of India URL （中文）
• Mumford, Lewis - Technics and Civilization
• Diderot, Charles Gillespie - A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry
• Vico, Giambattista - New Science

Romanticism, Traditionalism, Heresies, Hermeticism

Works on Joachim of Fiore is not included here.

• McIntosh, Christopher - The Rosicrucians
• Glenn Alexander Magee - Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition URL
• Walter Wakefield et al. - Heresies of the High Middle Ages URL
• Bernard McGinn - The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany URL
• Van Nieuwenhove, Rik - Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries URL
• David Burr - The Spiritual Franciscans, From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis URL
• Runciman, Steven - The Medieval Manichee A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy URL
• von Harnack, Adolf - Marcion, The Gospel of The Alien God URL
• Pfleiderer, Otto - Paulinism, a Contribution to the History of Primitive Christian Theology. Vol.1 Vol.2
• Nag Hammadi Library URL
• Beiser, Frederick - The Romantic Imperativem The Concept of Early German Romanticism URL
• Dimitri Obolensky - The Bogomils, A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism URL
• Yates, Frances A. – The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
• Yates, Frances A. – Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

Historical Philosophy and Theology

• McGinn, Bernard - Visions of the End URL
• Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz - Joachim of Fiore, A Study in Spiritual Perception and History URL
• Benedict XVI - The Theology of History in St.Bonaventure URL
• Löwith, Karl - Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. 洛维特，世界历史与救赎历史。 URL
• Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim - Theological Writings. 中文翻译中较好者为《历史与启示》
• Taubes, Jacob - Occidental Eschatology
• Voegelin, Eric - Order and History. 5-volume set.
• John Deely - Four Ages of Understanding.

Anthropology, Geography, Sociology

• Levy-Bruhl, Lucien - Primitive Mentality
• Durkheim, Emilde - The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. This is really a work on anthropology and psychology, but whatever.
• Pausanias - Description of Greece URL
• Frazer, James George - The Golden Bough. Certainly not a work of comparative religon.
• Becker, Ernest - The Birth and Death of Meaning
• Malinowski, Bronislaw - Argonauts of the Western Pacific, An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea
• Lincoln, Bruce - Discourse and the Construction of Society
• Weber, Max - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• Clliford Geertz - The Interpretation of Cultures.

Politics

Of course no Hayek, Arendt, and junk(excuse me) like that.

Jurisprudence, Sovereignty, Natural Law

• Schmitt, Carl - The Nomos of the Earth URL
• Schmitt, Carl - The Concept of the Political
• Schmitt, Carl - Legality and Legitimacy
• Heller, Hermann - Sovereignty
• Vinx, Lars - The Guardian of the Constitution Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt on the Limits of Constitutional Law URL
• Hayes, Christine - What’s Divine about Divine Law URL
• Rommen, Heinrich Albert - Natural Law
• Marmor, Andrei - Philosophy of Law
• Bodin, Jean - On Sovereignty
• S. J. Francisco Suarez - Selections From Three Works
• Pauline Westerman - The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory

History of Political Thoughts, Political Philosophy & Theology, etc

• Kantorowicz, Ernst - The King’s Two Bodies. Read Jung and some Catholic theology, especially those on Mystici Corporis Christi. Also read Jaynes and Eliade. URL
• Peterson, Erik - Theological Tractates
• Peterson, Erik - El Monoteismo Como Problema Politico. Read in Spanish. URL
• Jacques Rousseau - The Plan for Perpetual Peace, On the Government of Poland, and Other Writings on History and Politics
• Strauss, Leo - Natural Right and History
• Strauss, Leo - History of Political Philosophy
• Voegelin, Eric - History of Political Ideas. 7-volume set.
• Oakley, Francis - The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages

Biography, Journals

• Gombrich, E. H. - Aby Warburg, An Intellectual Biography URL
• Brown, Peter - Augustine of Hippo, A Biography
• Eugene Delacroix - The Journal
• Jung, Carl - Letters
• Gorky, Maxim - Reminiscences of Lev Tolstoy
• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - A Writer’s Diary

Literature

Works

Classics of Classics, though Homer, Dante, Goethe, Tolstoy, even Doestoevsky and so on are not included.

• Broch, Hermann - The Death of Virgil. Must Read.
• Thomas Mann - Doctor Faustus. Must Read, betther than The Magic Mountain.
• Robert Musil- The Man without Qualities. Must Read.
• Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen - Simplicius Simplicissimus. Must Read.
• Gide, Andre - Theseus. Magnum opus.
• Francois Rabelais - La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel
• La Chanson de la Croisade contre les Albigeois
• La Chanson de Roland
• The Epic of Gilgamesh (also in ANET)
• The Tale of Igor’s Campaign
• Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl
• Guillaume de Deguileville - The Pilgrimage of Human Life
• Jacopone da Todi - Poems
• Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales
• Charles Peguy - Le Mysteres des Saints Innocents
• Charles Peguy - Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc
• Charles Peguy - Le Porche du Mystere de la Deuxieme Vertu
• Martin Luther’s Table Talk
• Jean Racine - Dramatic Wroks
• The Golden Legend
• Odysseus Elitis - Poems
• Sagas and Eddas. Especially Egils saga and Njals saga. URL (萨迦)
• Solzhenitsyn - Gulag Archipelago
• Pindar - Odes
• Robinson Jeffers - The Collected Poetry
• Friedrich Holderlin - Late Poems.
• The Rigveda and Yajurveda
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Manu-smriti (Laws of Manu)
• Herman Melville - Moby Dick
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -The Song of Hiawatha
• Tanizaki Junichiro - Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters)
• Tanizaki Junichiro - Shosho Shigemoto no haha (Captain Shigemoto’s Mother)
• Tanizaki Junichiro - Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin)
• Tanizaki Junichiro - Bushuko hiwa (The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi)
• Heike Monogatari
• James Joyce - Dubliners
• Richard Yates - The Easter Parade
• Rolland, Romain - Jean-Christophe
• Marguerite Yourcenar - L’Oeuvre au noir URL （中文，苦炼）
• Robinson Jeffers - The Collected Poetry. URL

Theory, Criticism and History

• Auerbach, Erich - Mimesis. Monumental work. URL (Chineses)
• Curtius, Ernst Robert - European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Monumental work.
• Jozef Czapski, Eric Karpeles - Lost Time, Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp. Not a work on literary ciricism in fact, but worth reading.
• Jung, Carl - Psychology and Literature
• Woolf, Virginia - The Common Reader
• Arpi Movesesian et. al. - Love and its Critics URL
• Lewis, C. S. - The Discarded Image URL
• Briffault, Robert - The Troubadours URL
• Frye, Northrop - Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays
• Hardison, O. B. - Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages
• Dronke - Medieval Latin And The Rise Of European-Love-Lyric
• Fussell, Paul - Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
• Tydeman, William - The Theatre in the Middle Ages
• Bloom, Harold - The Western Canon
• Brandes, Georg - Main Currents in 19th-century Literature. Monumental work.
• Merezhkovsky, Dmitry - Tolstoy and Doestoevsky. An extremely personal take. This is in fact a book on philosophy of religion or even theology.
• Herder, Johann Gottfried - The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry
• 刘皓明，荷尔德林 - 荷尔德林后期诗歌。重点是评注。

Computer Science, Chemistry, Other Natural Sciences, Linguistics, etc.

• David Harris, Sarah Harris - Digital Design and Computer Architecture
• Dahlin, Anderson - Operating Systems, Principles and Practice
• Papadimitriou - Computational Complexity
• Garfinkel, Weise, Strassman - UNIX hater’s textbook. Funny read.
• Sweetman, Dominic - See MIPS Run
• Lions commentary on UNIX
• Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell - Introduction to Modern Cryptography : Principles and Protocols
• Robert McColl Millar, Larry Trask - Historical Linguistics
• Seuren, Pieter - Western Linguistics, An Historical Introduction
• Michael Quirk, Julian Serda - Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology
• Stephane Mallat - A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing The Sparse Way
• Richard Cowen - History of Life
• Hobbs and Wallace - Atmospheric Science

Mathematics

Of course no standard textbooks and (ordinary) GTMs.

“Classical” Mathematics

• Scorpan, Alexandru - The Wild World of 4-Manifolds
• Dieudonne, Jean - The Historical Development of Algebraic Geometry
• Kirillov - An introduction to Lie groups and Lie algebras
• Edwards, Harold - Riemann’s Zeta Function
• Edwards, Harold - Galois Theory
• Weil, Andre - Elliptic Functions according to Eisenstein and Kronecker
• Street, Ross - Quantum Groups, A Path to Current Algebra
• McDuff et al. - Introduction to Symplectic Topology
• Esposito, Chiara - Formality Theory
• Woodhouse - Geometric Quantization. It’s a terrible book to follow for studying, but there are good remarks occasionally.
• Weinstein, Bates - Lectures on the Geometry of Quantization. The only decent book on geometric quantization.
• Vaisman, Izu - Lectures on the Geometry of Poisson Manifolds
• Kashiwara and Schapira - Categories and Sheaves
• Steen and Seebach - Counterexamples in Topology
• Cartan, Henri - Elementary theory of analytic functions of one or several complex variables
• Kirillov and Bakalov - Lectures on Tensor Categories and Modular Functors
• Halperin, Israel - Introduction to the theory of distributions

Category and Topos

• Borceux, Francis - Handbook of Categorical Algebra.
• Moerdjik and Mac Lane - Sheaves in Geometry and Logic
• Goldblatt, Robert - Topoi, the Categorical Analysis of Logic

Theoretical Computer Science

• Sorensen, Urzyczyn - Lectures on the Curry-Howard Isomorphism
• Cutland - Computability. Extremely clear presentation.

misc.

• van Dalen, Derk - Logic and Structure
• Girard, Jean-Yves - The Blind Spot, Lectures on Logic
• Dummett, Michael - Elements of Intuitionism
• Kline - Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. 3-volume set.
• Sati, Schreiber ed. - Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory and Perturbative String Theory

Physics

Of course no Polchinski, Weinberg, etc.

• Pauli, Wolfgang - Writings on Physics and Philosophy
• Nakahara - Geometry, Topology and Physics. In fact a book on mathematics.
• Hori et al. - Mirror Symmetry
• Marino, Marcos - Chern-Simons Theory, Matrix Models, and Topological Strings
• Pais, Abraham - Inward Bound Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World. A history of 20th century particle physics for professionals.
• Joerg Teschner ed. - New Dualities of Supersymmetric Gauge Theories
• Daniel S. Freed - Five Lectures on Supersymmetry
• Deligne et al. - Quantum Fields and Strings
• Pokorski - Gauge Field Theories
• John Baez, Javier P Muniain - Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity
• Bertlmann - Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory. Excellent book.
• Bender, Carl - Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers I : Asymptotic Methods and Perturbation Theory
• Hawking, Stephen - The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time