Aesop's Fables

Why it’s on the list: Several hundred very short animal fables, each carrying a moral — the source layer under a large amount of borrowed business wisdom, worth reading directly rather than through the people who quote it.

Where I heard about it

• Robert Haisfield — put it forward in Thread of Classics, a crowd-sourced Twitter thread pairing classic texts with the people recommending them (his tweet), May 2020.

About this edition

The fables are attributed to Aesop, a figure who may or may not have existed, and were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down; they are the origin of a surprising share of everyday English idiom. The page count reflects the Oxford World’s Classics edition — these texts vary widely by edition and translation.

Connections

• Thread of Classics — the reading list it came from