Talk:Great Books of the Western World

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Contents 1 Add Links? 2 Remove links? 3 NPOV tweaks on criticism section 4 John Stuart Mill 5 Second edition 6 Copyright violation

[edit] Add Links?

Why not add links to copies of the books that are available on the internet? I added a link to the Aeneid and to James's Principals of Psychology by going to each of these works individual pages and copying what was already there. Sure, each reader could just do this for herself, but why add an extra step when there is no need to?N2lect2el 17:56, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Too cluttered and spammy. There are links on the works pages, which is a much better place for them. It's only one more click away. And there they can have a choice of external links as well. -R. fiend 19:53, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The pages for individual works or authors are more likely to be kept up-to-date than this catch-all approach. I'd prefer to limit links to other Great Books pages and sites. Alan Nicoll 17:06, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Remove links?

I removed three links to three Yahoo discussion groups, as wikipedia is not a link farm. There are discussion groups on thousands of Web sites about tens of thousands of topics that are articles in Wikipedia; we don't want to start linking to all of them. Although I'll grant you that this is an area where standards aren't exactly firm, external links should either be source material or very important information that is too obtuse or difficult to include in the article itself. - DavidWBrooks 01:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV tweaks on criticism section

I've included some responses to criticisms of the set in the final section, including quotes from the editors. Seems like a reasonable effort at NPOV. One oddity is a disagreement on the number of writers. The editors of the second edition specifically give the 130 figure, which I verified by a handcount of their author list. I'm not sure where the 151 figure in Norman Davies' criticism came from. He may include the four authors who were dropped from the second edition, and/or biblical authors because selections from the Bible are included in the reading plans for both editions. Casey Abell 06:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John Stuart Mill

The title of the essay in question is "Considerations on Representative Government", not simply "Representative Government" (although it's usually referred to by the shorter title, that's inappropriate for a list of titles). Thanks for reverting without comment, though. 81.104.160.179

Your change was reverted because it deleted much of the article. — goethean ॐ 16:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. My apologies, I've never seen *that* happen before. I wonder what went wrong? 81.104.160.179

[edit] Second edition

Mortimer Adler edited the second edition of the Great Books, with little or no contribution from Peter Temes. Adler was Editor in Chief of the edition and made all editorial decisions in consultation with a group of senior editors, which did not include Temes. (See Adler's own discussion of the process, referenced in the article.) In his criticism of Adler, Temes himself makes no claim to have presided over or even influenced the second edition. The article already includes an extensive discussion of the second edition and the criticisms made against Adler for the author list.

There appears to be some confusion between the second edition of the Great Books, published by Britannica, and the reading lists put out by the Great Books Foundation. Temes may have influenced those Foundation reading lists in the direction of more black, Hispanic and female authors, such as Morrison and Cortázar, who were not included in the second edition of the Britannica set. He had no apparent influence on that second edition from Britannica, which was heavily criticized for its lack of black and Hispanic authors (unless Cervantes counts as "Hispanic") and its small number of female authors. Casey Abell 18:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you're absolutely right. The articles I cited weren't clear about the distinction between the Great Books of the Western World series and the lists suggested by the Great Books Foundation. Thanks for clearing this up. Isokrates 18:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Didn't want to get into an edit war on this. It's a good idea to put Temes' criticism of Adler in the article, but Temes really had little or nothing to do with the second edition. Casey Abell 18:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

This is very frustrating. I couldn't find any reference to the specific additions made in the second edition. What are the additional books? (By the way, let's wait until someone is dead at least fifty years before adding his/her name to this list. It's the Great Books, after all.Scott Adler (talk) 19:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violation

Listing the whole contents of all 60 volumes is a copyright violation. The list was compiled by the project editors and they are the copyright holders of the list.

To comply with copyright policies, the listings of a few volumes have to be modified to say something like: "Volume 59 includes works by Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and others." -- Gabi S. 17:48, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a stretch. The copyright is probably pro forma. A copyrighted work has to be distinctive and original. A list of other people's work, most of it in the public domain, can't be reasonably considered intellectual property.Scott Adler (talk) 19:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)