Richard Parmentier is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Brandeis University. His studies in semiotic anthropology Signs in Society and Signs and Society discuss the subject the context of its “twin peaks” of Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. I discovered Parmentier’s Amazon Listmania! lists many years ago–I believe they were linked off of a Hans Blumenberg book–and they were responsible for introducing me to a number of works of great scholarship.
Unfortunately, Amazon subsequently discontinued its Listmania! feature and deleted all lists that had ever been posted. This still dismays me. The internet does not cater to intellectual content and Amazon had, in its way, managed to cultivate a disorganized but incredibly worthwhile amount of organic intellectual work.
I archived Parmentier’s lists before they were taken down, and he has kindly permitted me to repost them here. I encourage people to delve into the lists and discover something new.
I have retained Parmentier’s introductory notes at the beginning of each list.
David Auerbach1. Really Important Books
I keep a special selection of books close-to-hand in my study, not because they contain information I need to refer to on a regular basis but because each embodies a particular mode of argumentation that I find useful to keep in mind (and difficult to remember in detail). In the (hypothetical) event of having to abandon ship, I hope I would have time to grab at least these volumes.
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)
Price: $23.95
63 used & new available from $9.00
Price: $69.99
14 used & new available from $59.96
The Genesis of the Copernican World (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Price: $55.00
20 used & new available from $49.49
The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Advances in Semiotics)
Price: $39.99
22 used & new available from $32.91
Price: $20.95
23 used & new available from $13.00
Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.)
Price: $29.34
18 used & new available from $27.72
Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
Price: $37.00
31 used & new available from $19.89
Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 22)
Price: $101.01
1 used & new available from $101.01
2. Great Short Books
When challenged to present a substantive yet succinct account of their subject matter in less than 150 pages, a number of scholars have written remarkable short books. Some of these books were originally lecture series and, thus, maximize the clarity of presentation. Others represent syntheses or summaries of larger works of scholarship. And, in some cases, authors have expanded what was basically an article-length work into a tidy monograph. I don’t include in this list books that collect independent articles.
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (The Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures Series)
Price: $21.62
56 used & new available from $2.32
Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Roman Literature and its Contexts)
Price: $41.74
24 used & new available from $16.94
Price: $18.95
59 used & new available from $1.49
Price: $17.90
12 used & new available from $8.36
Price: $23.95
43 used & new available from $4.92
3. Big Books
Here are some big books in my collection that cover the topic without the constraint of space. There is some comfort in knowing that one will not need to read another book on a topic for quite a while.
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests
Price: $57.00
28 used & new available from $45.68
The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (Vol. 1) (Enlightenment an Interpretation) (v. 1)
Price: $19.95
50 used & new available from $5.47
Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Volume 1)
Price: $62.81
40 used & new available from $22.22
Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750
Price: $51.08
23 used & new available from $43.00
Price: $49.95
19 used & new available from $30.00
The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
Price: $17.51
22 used & new available from
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
Price: $31.25
34 used & new available from $25.00
Price: $135.00
11 used & new available from $49.98
Price: $18.00
9 used & new available from
Utopian Thought in the Western World (Belknap Press)
Price: $109.00
21 used & new available from $20.83
4. Risky Books
Here are a group of books that take risks, either in advancing an original hypothesis, charting a new direction for research, or proposing an innovative methodology. Not everyone will agree with these authors, but readers will be struck by their creativity and daring and will be envious of their ability to take a path less traveled by.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Price: $12.60
56 used & new available from $10.00
Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
Price: $60.60
28 used & new available from $7.00
Price: $44.00
18 used & new available from $20.00
The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry
Price: $62.51
21 used & new available from $40.00
Appendix: Richard Parmentier’s Books
I add these for convenience. –DBA
Signs and Society: Further Studies in Semiotic Anthropology
Price: $33.59
19 used & new available from $29.60
