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.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt
Assmann, Jan (Author), Lorton, David (Translator)
Cornell University Press
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition
Erich Auerbach (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator), Edward W. Said (Introduction)
Princeton University Press
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)
Bakhtin, M. M. (Author), Holquist, Michael (Editor), Emerson, Caryl (Translator), Holquist, Michael (Translator)
University of Texas Press
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)
Baxandall, Michael (Author)
Oxford University Press
Giotto And The Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (Oxford-Warburg Studies)
Baxandall, Michael (Author)
Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art
Belting, Hans (Author), Jephcott, Edmund (Translator)
University of Chicago Press
The Arcades Project
Benjamin, Walter (Author), Eiland, Howard (Translator), McLaughlin, Kevin (Translator)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages
Bloch, R. Howard (Author)
University of Chicago Press
The Genesis of the Copernican World (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Blumenberg, Hans (Author), Wallace, Robert M. (Translator)
The MIT Press
Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity
Brown, Peter (Author)
University of California Press
The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
Camille, Michael (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment: Updated Edition
Cassirer, Ernst (Author), Gay, Peter (Foreword)
Princeton University Press
The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Advances in Semiotics)
Cumming, Naomi (Author)
Indiana University Press
Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
Daston, Lorraine (Author), Park, Katharine (Author)
Zone Books
The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece
Detienne, Marcel (Author), Lloyd, Janet (Translator), Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (Foreword)
Zone Books
The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe
Edgerton, Samuel Y. (Author)
Cornell University Press
Archaeology of Knowledge (Routledge Classics)
Foucault, Michel (Author)
Routledge
The Mediation of Ornament
Grabar, Oleg (Author)
Princeton University Press
Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World
Greenblatt, Stephen (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Musical Meaning and Interpretation)
Hatten, Robert S. (Author)
Indiana University Press
Language in Literature (Belknap Press)
Jakobson, Roman (Author), Pomorska, Krystyna (Editor), Rudy, Stephen (Editor)
Belknap Press
The King's Two Bodies
Ernst H. Kantorowicz (Author)
Princeton University Press
Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.)
Koselleck, Reinhart (Author), Tribe, Keith (Translator)
Columbia University Press
On Representation
Marin, Louis (Author), Porter, Catherine (Translator)
Stanford University Press
Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
Ong S.J., Walter J. (Author), Johns, Adrian (Foreword)
University of Chicago Press
Freud y filosofía: Un ensayo de interpretación
Paul Ricoeur (Author), Denis Savage (Author)
Motilal Banarsidass
The Implications of Literacy
Stock, Brian (Author)
Princeton University Press
Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii (English and French Edition)
Valeri, Valerio (Author)
Univ of Chicago Pr
Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (Author), Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (Author), Lloyd, Janet (Translator)
Zone Books
The Art of Memory
Frances A. Yates (Author)
University of Chicago Press
The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (Author), Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew (Translator)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond
Nagy, Gregory (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Habermas, Jurgen (Author)
Polity Press
Orientalism
Said, Edward W. (Author)
Penguin Books
ANALYZING BACH CANTATAS
CHAFE (Author)
Oxford University Press USA
Categories of Medieval Culture
Gurevich, A. J. (Author)
Routledge Kegan & Paul
Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 22)
Frye, Northrop (Author), Denham, Robert (Editor)
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Archaic Roman Religion
Dumézil, Professor Georges (Author)
The Johns Hopkins University Press
History of Madness
Foucault, Michel (Author), Khalfa, Jean (Editor), Murphy, Jonathan (Translator)
Routledge
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Jameson, Fredric (Author)
Duke University Press
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.
Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature) (French Edition)
Bal, Mieke (Author)
Indiana University Press
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (The Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures Series)
Bronowski, Jacob (Author)
Yale University Press
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions)
Brown, Peter (Author)
University Of Chicago Press
The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
Cassirer, Ernst (Author), Domandi, Mario (Translator), Domandi, Mario (Introduction)
University of Chicago Press
Art, Myth and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China
Chang, K. C. (Author)
Harvard University Press
The Riddle of Nostradamus: A Critical Dialogue (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
Dumézil, Professor Georges (Author), Wing, Ms. Betsy (Translator)
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India
Eck, Diana (Author)
Columbia University Press
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
Eco, Umberto (Author), Bredin, Hugh (Translator)
Yale University Press
Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Roman Literature and its Contexts)
Feeney, Denis (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Enigma of Piero: Piero Della Francesca
Ginzburg, Carlo (Author), Ryle, Martin (Translator), Soper, Kate (Translator), Burke, Peter (Introduction)
Verso
The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
Havelock, Eric A. (Author)
Yale University Press
The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
George Kubler (Author)
Yale University Press
Byzantium: Revised Edition (British Museum Paperbacks)
Loverance, Rowena (Author)
Harvard University Press
Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning: Builders and Masters in the Age of Romanesque and Gothic
Radding, Charles M. (Author), Clark, William (Author)
Yale University Press
Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Canada, Origins and Options)
Sahlins, Marshall D. (Author)
University of Michigan Press
From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages (Theory & History of Literature)
Vance, Eugene (Author)
Univ of Minnesota Pr
The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World
Ulansey, David (Author)
Oxford University Press, USA
On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton Classics (76))
Strayer, Joseph R. (Author), Tilly, Charles (Foreword), Jordan, William Chester (Foreword)
Princeton University Press
Race Matters
West, Cornel (Author)
Beacon Press
Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
Vygotsky, L S (Author), Cole, Michael (Editor), John-Steiner, Vera (Editor), Scribner, Sylvia (Editor), Souberman, Ellen (Editor)
Harvard Univ Pr
The Many Faces of Realism (Paul Carus Lectures)
Putnam, Hilary (Author)
Open Court Publishing Company
The Origins of Greek Thought
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (Author)
Cornell University Press
Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages
Goff, Jacques Le (Author), Ranum, Patricia (Translator)
Zone Books
Six lecons sur le son et le sens (Arguments) (French Edition)
Jakobson, Roman (Author)
Ed Du Minuit
Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form (Carl Newell Jackson Lectures)
Dronke, Peter (Author)
Harvard University Press
The Decipherment of Linear B (Canto)
Chadwick, John (Author)
Cambridge University Press
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture
Burkert, Walter (Author)
Harvard University Press
The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)
Barker, Francis (Author)
University of Michigan Press
Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History)
Ariès, Philippe (Author), Ranum, Patricia (Translator)
Johns Hopkins University Press
The Old World and the New: 1492-1650 (Canto)
Elliott, J. H. (Author)
Cambridge University Press
Mental Illness and Psychology
Foucault, Michel (Author), Dreyfus, Hubert (Foreword)
University of California Press
Metaphysical Song
Tomlinson, Gary (Author)
Princeton University Press
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition
Anderson, Benedict (Author)
Verso
Man and Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science)
Debus, Allen (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Rise of Universities (Foundations of Higher Education)
Haskins, Charles Homer (Author)
Routledge
An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Phoenix Books)
Levi, Edward H. (Author)
University Of Chicago Press
Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism
Erwin Panofsky (Author)
Archabbey Publications
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 Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1
Braudel, Fernand (Author)
University of California Press
Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe
Brundage, James A. (Author)
University of Chicago Press
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests
Ste. Croix, Geoffrey E. Maurice (Author)
Cornell University Press
Medieval Latin and the rise of European love-lyric (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints)
Dronke, Peter (Author)
Clarendon P
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580
Duffy, Eamon (Author)
Yale University Press
Frege: Philosophy of Language, Second Edition
Dummett, Michael (Author)
Harvard University Press
Python
Fontenrose, Joseph (Author)
University of California Press
The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (Vol. 1) (Enlightenment an Interpretation) (v. 1)
Gay, Peter (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company
Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Volume 1)
Green, Peter (Author)
University of California Press
Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Glacken, Clarence J. (Author)
University of California Press
Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750
Israel, Jonathan I. (Author)
Oxford University Press
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making
Johns, Adrian (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis
Kershaw, Ian (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company
The Reformation: A History
MacCulloch, Diarmaid (Author)
Penguin Books
The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
McEvilley, Thomas (Author)
Allworth
Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Volume 3: The Greek World, the Jews, and the East (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome)
Millar, Fergus (Author)
University of North Carolina Press
After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC
Mithen, Steven (Author)
Harvard University Press
The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain
Netanyahu, B. (Author)
New York Review Books
Stonehenge
North, John (Author)
Free Press
A History of Medieval Spain (Cornell Paperbacks)
O'Callaghan, Joseph F. (Author)
Cornell University Press
The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
Pocock, John Greville Agard (Author)
Princeton University Press
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Rhodes, Richard (Author)
Simon & Schuster
Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject's Narrative of Imperial India (Oxford India Paperbacks)
Singh, Amar (Author), Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber (Editor), Rudolph, Lloyd I. (Editor), Kanota, Mohan Singh (Editor)
Oxford University Press
Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960
Spicer, Edward H. (Author)
University of Arizona Press
Family, Sex, and Marriage: 1500 To 1800 (Penguin History)
Stone, Lawrence (Author)
Penguin UK
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
Taylor, Charles (Author)
Harvard University Press
The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Carleton Library Series)
Trigger, Bruce G. (Author)
McGill-Queen's University Press
God’s War: A New History of the Crusades
Tyerman, Christopher (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
Watkins, Calvert (Author)
Oxford University Press
Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge Paperback Library)
Westfall, Richard S. (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City
Wheatley, Paul (Author)
Aldine Publishing Company
History of the Goths
Wolfram, Herwig (Author), Dunlap, Thomas J. (Author)
University of California Press
Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884–1920
Young, Michael W. (Author)
Yale University Press
The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Director's Circle Book)
McKeon, Michael (Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Utopian Thought in the Western World (Belknap Press)
Manuel, Frank E. (Author), Manuel, Fritzie P. (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance
Mayr, Ernst (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages
Clagett, Marshall (Author)
Univ of Wisconsin Pr
The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton
Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan (Author), Dikshoorn, C. (Translator)
Princeton University Press
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.
Aztecs: An Interpretation
Clendinnen, Inga (Author)
Cambridge University Press
The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy, and the War Against Time
Sullivan, William (Author)
Three Rivers Press
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Jaynes, Julian (Author), Jaynes, Julian (Author)
Mariner Books
Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600
Owens, Jessie Ann (Author)
Oxford University Press
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
Genovese, Eugene D. (Author)
Vintage
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe
Boswell, John (Author)
Vintage
Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece (Myth and Poetics)
Svenbro, Jesper (Author), Lloyd, Janet (Translator)
Cornell University Press
Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
Shapin, Steven (Author), Schaffer, Simon (Author)
Princeton University Press
Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth
Giorgio de Santillana (Author), Hertha von Dechen (Author)
Nonpareil Books
The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry
Milman Parry (Author), Adam Parry (Editor)
Oxford University Press
The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic (Myth and Poetics)
Muellner, Leonard (Author)
Cornell University Press
Galileo: Heretic
Redondi, Pietro (Author), Rosenthal, Raymond (Translator)
Princeton University Press
Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985, Volume 1)
Bernal, martin (Author)
Rutland Local History & Record Society
Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
White, Hayden (Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
From Scythia to Camelot (Arthurian Characters and Themes)
C. Scott Littleton (Author), Linda A. Malcor (Author)
Routledge
The Elementary Structures of Kinship
Levi-Strauss, Claude (Author)
Beacon Press
The Conquest of America
Todorov (Author)
OUP
Appendix: Richard Parmentier’s Books
I add these for convenience. –DBA
Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology (Advances in Semiotics)
Parmentier, Richard J. (Author)
Indiana University Press
Signs and Society: Further Studies in Semiotic Anthropology
Parmentier, Richard J. (Author)
Indiana University Press
