Book List

Education ‍|    Moral Philosophy    |    Trivium    |    Quadrivium    |    Theological Studies    |    Applied Studies    |    Book List

We believe in word-centered education that involves reading and processing ideas verbally for the purpose of integration into life practice. New College Franklin is known for its expansive reading list. While this list shifts and changes by a few titles each years, the core of the curriculum has remained the same. Students at NCF read the formational works of Western Civilization in philosophy, poetry, literature, history, theology, the quadrivium, music, and more. Find a provisional reading list, organized by discipline and class year below.

Please note that this is a provisional book list, as our book list and curriculum does change from year to year, but major authors and works are consistent.

Freshman Year

Explore the Freshman Reading List

Moral Philosophy: Arts, Letters and Foundations

  • A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

  • Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth’s Sake

  • Plato, Meno, Five Dialogues, Phaedo

  • Aristotle, On the Soul, Poetics

  • Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, On the Teacher

  • Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Method of the Sciences

  • E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture

  • C.S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, The Discard Image

  • Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture

  • Fr. Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

  • Homer, Thelliad

  • Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy/Three Theban Plays

  • Aeschylus, Oresteia Trilogy, Prometheus Bound

  • Writings of Justin Martyr

  • Athanasius Enchiridion, On the Incarnation

  • Boethius, De Trinitate

  • Henry Chadwick, The Early Church

Arithmetic:

  • Euclid, Elements

  • D’Ooge, Nicomachus of Gerasa’s Introduction to Arithmetic

  • Waterfield, The Theology of Arithmetic 

  • Edwards, Pascal’s Arithmetic Triangle

  • Plato, Collected Dialogues 

Geometry:

  • Euclid, Elements

  • Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements

Theology Seminar:

  • Morales, L. Michael, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? 

  • Leithart, Peter, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament, The Four: A Survey of the Gospels. 

  • Van Dixhoorn, Chad, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms. 

  • Myers, Stephen G, God To Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture. 

  • Den Boer, William and Riemer A. Faber, ed. Synopsis of a Purer Theology. 

  • John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1541 Edition.

  • Gibson, Jonathan. Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship.

  • Gaffin, Richard. In the Fullness of Time.

  • Beale, G. K. and Mitchell Kim. God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth

  • Myers, Stephen G. God To Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture.Music:

  • Quentin Faulkner, Wiser Than Despair: The Evolution of Ideas in the Relationship of Music and the Christian Church.

  • Robert Greenberg, How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture and Heart. 

  • Hans Oxmond, Sight Singing – Ear Training Melodies and Exercises, Volume 2, The Major Scale

Composition:

  • A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers.

  • William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style.

  • Kate L. Turabian, Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 9th edition.

Sophomore Year

Explore the Sophomore Reading List

Moral Philosophy: Antiquity

  • Homer, The Odyssey

  • Thucydides, On Justice, Power, and Human Nature

  • Virgil, The Aeneid

  • Plato, The Republic

  • Augustine, The Confessions

  • Augustine, The City of God

  • Lucretius, OnThe Nature of Things

  • Seneca, On the Happy Life

  • Cicero, On Friendship, The Republic and Laws

  • Josef Pieper, Four Cardinal Virtues

  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,Physics, Metaphysics

  • Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple

  • John S. Grabowski, Sex & Virtue

Greek I & II:

  • Machen, J. Gresham, New Testament Greek for Beginners

  • Greek New Testament 

Art:

  • Harold Speed, The Practice & Science of  Drawing 

  • Paul Richer, Artistic Anatomy 

Rhetoric:

  • Edward Corbett and Robert Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th Ed.,

  • C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 

  • Charles Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students, 

  • Cicero, On the Good Life

  • Ryan Topping, The Elements of Rhetoric.

  • History’s Greatest Speeches.

Harmonia:

  • Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings: Volume 2, Harmonic & Acoustic Theory

  • Augustine, The Immortality of the Soul; The Magnitude of the Soul; On Music; The Advantage of Believing; On Faith in Things Unseen

  • William Harris Stahl, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts: Volume II: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury

Cosmology:

  • Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World

  • St Basil of Caesarea Hexaemeron, with On the Making of Man

  • Timaeus, Calcidius

  • Ptolemy, Almagest

  • Kepler, Epitome & Harmonia

Junior Year

Explore the Junior Reading List

Moral Philosophy: Medieval and Renaissance World

  • St. Benedict of Nursia, Rule of St. Benedict

  • Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions

  • John Calvin, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church

  • Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

  • John Locke, Second Treatise on Government

  • Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy

  • Basic Writings of St. Anselm of Canterbury

  • Herzman & Cook, Medieval World View

  • St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-I

  • Dante, TheDivine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, &  Paradiso)

  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth. 

  • William Langland, Piers Plowman. 

  • Chaucer. Troilus and Criseyde.

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Pearl and Sir Orpheo

  • Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy

Greek III:

  • Machen, J. Gresham. New Testament Greek for Beginners

  • Greek New Testament 

Ora et Labora:

  • Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water

  • Richard F. Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life

  • Andrew Murray, Abiding in Christ

  • Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder

  • Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life

Creative Writing:

  • G. Douglas Atkins, Tracing the Essay.

  • Phillip Lopate, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology

  • William Zinsser, On Writing Well.

  • Daniel McInerny, Beauty and Imitation. 

  • Grant Barrett, Perfect English Grammar. 

  • Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences.

  • Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, The Making of. Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetric Forms

  • George Macdonald, The Diary of an Old Soul‍ ‍

  • Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  • Horace, Ars Poetica

  • Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

  • T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent

Harmonia:

  • Bonaventure, On The Reduction of the Arts to Theology

  • Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings: Volume 2, Harmonic & Acoustic Theory

  • Flora R. Levin, Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music

  • Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres

  • Quentin Faulkner, Wiser Than Despair: The Evolution of Ideas in the Relationship of Music and the Christian Church

  • Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, and Cosmology

  • Laurence Wuidar, On Mystery Ineffability Silence and Musical Symbolism

  • Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus Ad Parnassum: The Study of Counterpoint

  • Augustine, De Musica and On the Magnitude of the Soul

  • Carol Harrison, On Music, Sense, Affect, and Voice

  • Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

Senior Year

Moral Philosophy: Modernity

  • Enlightenment Thought: An Anthology of Sources

  • English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology 

  • John Milton, Paradise Lost 

  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus 

  • Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre 

  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 

  • George Eliot, Silas Marner 

  • Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray 

  • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 

  • Carl Marx, The Communist Manifesto 

  • Wordsworth and Coleridge, Preface to Lyrical Ballads 

  • Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth 

  • Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories 

  • G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

  • Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

  • Albert Camus, The Plague and The Myth of Sisyphus

  • C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves

  • Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

  • T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays

  • Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

  • John Gardner, Grendel

  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism and No Exit

  • Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, Faith, Hope, and Love.

  • Johan Huizinga, In The Shadow of Tomorrow

  • James K. A. Smith, How Not to Be Secular

  • Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

Sacred Theology:

  • Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations

  • The Apostolic Fathers.

  • Augustine, The Trinity

  • Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans

  • Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God

  • Thomas a’ Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  • Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures

  • Ambrose of Milan, On the Mysteries

  • Origen

  • Chrysostom

  • John Davenant, On the Death of Christ

  • Peter Martyr Vermigli, Predestination and Justification, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist.

  •  Calvin and Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate. 

  • Perkins, A Reformed Catholic. 

  • Hooker, A Learned Discourse on Justification. 

  • Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. 

  • The Westminster Confession. 

Cosmology:

  • Alan F. Chalmers, What is This Thing Called Science

  • Universe 9th Edition

  • Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World

  • Michael J. Crowe, Mechanics: From Aristotle to Einstein

  • William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals

  • Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

  • Sir Francis Bacon, Select Philosophical Works

  • Bernardus Silvestris, Poetic Works

  • St Basil of Caesarea, Hexarmeron with On the Making of Man

  • Theony Condos, Star Myths