Publication of the week:

Anthony O'Hear, The Great Books. From the Iliad and the Odyssey to Goethe's Faust: A journey through 2,500 years of the West's classic literature (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2007). ISBN: 978-1-840-46829-8.

Anthony O'Hear's new book, The Great Books, is a journey through 2,500 years of the greatest classic literature of the West. 

The book begins with Homer and the first epic poems. There are also sections on Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) and Plato's writings on the death of Socrates. Latin literature is represented by Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses and St Augustine's Confessions. Dante's Divine Comedy, a tour through Hell and Purgatory, leads the reader through to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine and finally Goethe. These are books as powerful, thrilling, erotic and politically astute as any modern bestseller.

As well as being a grand work of reference, this is also a narrative history, shot through with a love of literature and a deeply-held belief in its power to enrich and enliven everyone's world. Professor O'Hear writes: "We do not realise that even though the Greek and Roman classics and those of the medieval world are truly remote from us, our own minds and feelings are stocked with themes and attitudes rooted in those classics."

Anthony O'Hear is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Education at the University of Buckingham, Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and Editor of the journal Philosophy.

See also:

• Professor Anthony O'Hear
• More about the book on the Icon Books website (external link)
• Department of Education at Buckingham
• Other recent news articles
• Publication of the week