UATX Fall Reading List

Source: 65 Texts Our Students Are Reading, the University of Austin, November 13 2025 · shared by @uaustinorg and saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note

A university curriculum, not a recommendation list: 65 assigned texts across 12 courses, each with its named instructor. Heavy on classical primary sources — Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Cicero, Boethius, Sallust, Augustine, Plato — alongside a modern economics and social-science core.

Two entries are scripture rather than books in the usual sense, The New Oxford Annotated Bible and Book of Daniel; they appear below as listed.

Chaos and Civilization

• The New Oxford Annotated Bible (a scripture edition)
• The Odyssey — Homer
• Oresteia — Aeschylus
• Prometheus Bound — Aeschylus
• Theogony and Works and Days — Hesiod

Dante, Inferno

• The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno — Dante

Foundations of Microeconomics

• Modern Principles of Economics — Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen

Foundations of Science II

• The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic, Joe Miller, Ozlem Türeci — and Ugur Sahin
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief — Francis Collins
• A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution — Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
• Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life — Nick Lane

Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy

• Lives of the Eminent Philosophers: Diogenes Laertius — Diogenes Laertius
• Essays — Plutarch - On Obligations — Cicero
• The Consolation of Philosophy — Ancius Boethius

History, Historiography, and the Philosophy of History

• Catiline’s War — Sallust
• City of God — Saint Augustine
• Book of Daniel (a book of the Bible)
• The Idea of History — R.G. Collingwood
• The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers — Carl Becker
• The German Ideology — Karl Marx
• On the Genealogy of Morality — Friedrich Nietzsche
• Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History — Karl Löwith
• Natural Right and History — Leo Strauss
• The End of History and the Last Man — Francis Fukuyama
• Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History — Mircea Eliade
• Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for Aristocrats of the Soul — Julius Evola
• Only a God Can Save Us: 1966 Der Spiegel Interview — Martin Heidegger (essay/lecture — filed in articles-to-read)

Intellectual Foundations of Economics

• A Conflict of Visions — Thomas Sowell
• An Essay on the Principle of Population — Thomas Robert Malthus
• Utilitarianism — John Stuart Mill
• Manifesto of the Communist Party — Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• State and Revolution — Vladimir Lenin
• The Pretence of Knowledge — F.A. Hayek (essay/lecture — filed in articles-to-read)

Modernity and the West

• The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison — and John Jay
• Doctor Faustus — Christopher Marlowe
• Leviathan — Thomas Hobbes
• The Prince: Second Edition — Niccolo Machiavelli
• Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration — John Locke

Philosophy of Social Science

• Dialogues concerning Natural Religion — David Hume
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments — Adam Smith
• The Tacit Dimension — Michael Polanyi
• The Rules of Sociological Method — Emile Durkheim
• Science as a Vocation — Max Weber (essay/lecture — filed in articles-to-read)
• What is Political Philosophy? — Leo Strauss

Renaissance and Reformation

• The Essential Petrarch — Petrarch
• The Praise of Folly — Desiderius Erasmus
• On the Dignity of Man — Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• Erasmus and Luther: The Battle Over Free Will — James D. Tracy
• Apology for Raymond Sebond — Michel de Montaigne
• New Atlantis and the Great Instauration — Francis Bacon

The Beginning of Politics

• The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories — Herodotus
• The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide — Thucydides
• The Republic — Plato

Writing and the English Language

• Hunters in the Snow — Tobias Wolff
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
• Mrs. Dalloway — Virginia Woolf
• Black Boy — Richard Wright
• Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger
• The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway — Ernest Hemingway
• The Complete Short Stories — Flannery O’Connor
• Young Men and Fire Norman Mclean
• Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass
• Beloved — Toni Morrison

More books on this list

1 books; ✓ marks the ones Kyle has read.

Modernity and the West

• A Letter Concerning Toleration — John Locke

Connections

• The University of Austin — the institution whose curriculum this is.