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 Auerbach

1. 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
Jan Assmann
(Cornell University Press)

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature - Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition
Erich Auerbach
(Princeton University Press)

The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)
M. M. Bakhtin
(University of Texas Press)

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)
Michael Baxandall
(Oxford University Press)

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (Oxford-Warburg Studies)
Michael Baxandall
(Clarendon Press)

Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art
Hans Belting
(University of Chicago Press)

The Arcades Project
Walter Benjamin
(Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)

Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages
R. Howard Howard Bloch
(University of Chicago Press)

The Genesis of the Copernican World (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Hans Blumenberg
(The MIT Press)

Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity
Peter Brown
(University of California Press)

The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
Michael Camille
(Cambridge University Press)

The Philosophy of the Enlightenment: Updated Edition
Ernst Cassirer
(Princeton University Press)

The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Advances in Semiotics)
Naomi Cumming
(Indiana University Press)

Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park
(Zone Books)

The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece
Marcel Detienne
(Zone Books)

The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe
Samuel Y. Edgerton
(Cornell University Press)

Archaeology of Knowledge (Routledge Classics)
Michel Foucault
(Routledge)

The Mediation of Ornament
Oleg Grabar
(Princeton University Press)

Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World
Stephen Greenblatt
(University of Chicago Press)

Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Musical Meaning and Interpretation)
Robert S. Hatten
(Indiana University Press)

Language in Literature (Belknap Press)
Roman Jakobson
(Belknap Press)

The King's Two Bodies
Ernst H. Kantorowicz
(Princeton University Press)

Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.)
Reinhart Koselleck
(Columbia University Press)

On Representation
Louis Marin
(Stanford University Press)

Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
Walter J. Ong S.J.
(University of Chicago Press)

Freud y filosofía: Un ensayo de interpretación
Paul Ricoeur, Denis Savage
(Motilal Banarsidass)

The Implications of Literacy
Brian Stock
(Princeton University Press)

Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii (English and French Edition)
Valerio Valeri
(Univ of Chicago Pr)

Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece
Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet
(Zone Books)

The Art of Memory
Frances A. Yates
(University of Chicago Press)

The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
(Johns Hopkins University Press)

Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond
Gregory Nagy
(Cambridge University Press)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Jurgen Habermas
(Polity Press)

Orientalism
Edward W. Said
(Penguin Books)

ANALYZING BACH CANTATAS
CHAFE
(Oxford University Press USA)

Categories of Medieval Culture
A. J. Gurevich
(Routledge Kegan & Paul)

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 22)
Northrop Frye
(University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division)

Archaic Roman Religion
Professor Georges Dumézil
(The Johns Hopkins University Press)

History of Madness
Michel Foucault
(Routledge)

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Fredric Jameson
(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)
Mieke Bal
(Indiana University Press)

The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (The Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures Series)
Jacob Bronowski
(Yale University Press)

The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions)
Peter Brown
(University Of Chicago Press)

The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
Ernst Cassirer, Mario Domandi
(University of Chicago Press)

Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China
K. C. Chang
(Harvard University Press)

The Riddle of Nostradamus: A Critical Dialogue (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
Professor Georges Dumézil
(The Johns Hopkins University Press)

Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India
Diana Eck
(Columbia University Press)

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
Umberto Eco
(Yale University Press)

Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Roman Literature and its Contexts)
Denis Feeney
(Cambridge University Press)

The Enigma of Piero: Piero Della Francesca
Carlo Ginzburg
(Verso)

The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
Eric A. Havelock
(Yale University Press)

The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
George Kubler
(Yale University Press)

Byzantium: Revised Edition (British Museum Paperbacks)
Rowena Loverance
(Harvard University Press)

Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning: Builders and Masters in the Age of Romanesque and Gothic
Charles M. Radding, William Clark
(Yale University Press)

Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Asao Special Publications ; No. 1)
Marshall D. Sahlins
(University of Michigan Press)

From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages (Theory & History of Literature)
Eugene Vance
(Univ of Minnesota Pr)

The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World
David Ulansey
(Oxford University Press)

On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton Classics)
Joseph R. Strayer
(Princeton University Press)

Race Matters
Cornel West
(Beacon Press)

Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
L. S. Vygotsky
(Harvard University Press)

The Many Faces of Realism (Paul Carus Lectures)
Hilary Putnam
(Open Court Publishing Company)

The Origins of Greek Thought
Jean-Pierre Vernant
(Cornell University Press)

Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages
Jacques Le Goff
(Zone Books)

Six lecons sur le son et le sens (Arguments) (French Edition)
Roman Jakobson
(Ed Du Minuit)

Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form (Carl Newell Jackson Lectures)
Peter Dronke
(Harvard University Press)

The Decipherment of Linear B (Canto)
John Chadwick
(Cambridge University Press)

Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture
Walter Burkert
(Harvard University Press)

The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)
Francis Barker
(University of Michigan Press)

Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History)
Philippe Ariès
(Johns Hopkins University Press)

The Old World and the New: 1492-1650 (Canto)
J. H. Elliott
(Cambridge University Press)

Mental Illness and Psychology
Michel Foucault
(University of California Press)

Metaphysical Song
Gary Tomlinson
(Princeton University Press)

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition
Benedict Anderson
(Verso)

Man and Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science)
Allen Debus
(Cambridge University Press)

The Rise of Universities (Foundations of Higher Education)
Charles Homer Haskins
(Routledge)

An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Phoenix Books)
Edward H. Levi
(University Of Chicago Press)

Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism
Erwin Panofsky
(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
Fernand Braudel
(University of California Press)

Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe
James A. Brundage
(University of Chicago Press)

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests
Geoffrey E. Maurice Ste. Croix
(Cornell University Press)

Medieval Latin and the rise of European love-lyric (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints)
Peter Dronke
(Clarendon P)

The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580
Eamon Duffy
(Yale University Press)

Frege: Philosophy of Language, Second Edition
Michael Dummett
(Harvard University Press)

Python
Joseph Fontenrose
(University of California Press)

The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (Vol. 1) (Enlightenment an Interpretation) (v. 1)
Peter Gay
(W. W. Norton & Company)

Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age
Peter Green
(University of California Press)

Traces on the Rhodian Shore
Clarence J. Glacken
(University of California Press)

Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750
Jonathan I. Israel
(Oxford University Press)

The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making
Adrian Johns
(University of Chicago Press)

Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis
Ian Kershaw
(W. W. Norton & Company)

The Reformation: A History
Diarmaid MacCulloch
(Penguin Books)

The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
Thomas C. Mcevilley
(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)
Fergus Millar
(The University of North Carolina Press)

After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC
Steven Mithen
(Harvard University Press)

The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain
B. Netanyahu
(New York Review Books)

Stonehenge
John North
(Free Press)

A History of Medieval Spain (Cornell Paperbacks)
Joseph F. O'Callaghan
(Cornell University Press)

The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition
John Greville Agard Pocock
(Princeton University Press)

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Richard Rhodes
(Simon & Schuster)

Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject's Narrative of Imperial India (Oxford India Paperbacks)
Amar Singh
(Oxford University Press)

Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960
Edward H. Spicer
(University of Arizona Press)

Family, Sex, and Marriage: 1500 To 1800 (Penguin History)
Lawrence Stone
(Penguin UK)

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
Charles Taylor
(Harvard University Press)

The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Carleton Library Series)
Bruce G. Trigger
(McGill-Queen's University Press)

God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman
(Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)

How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
Calvert Watkins
(Oxford University Press)

Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge Paperback Library)
Richard S. Westfall
(Cambridge University Press)

The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City
Paul Wheatley
(Aldine Publishing Company)

History of the Goths
Herwig Wolfram, Thomas J. Dunlap
(University of California Press)

Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884-1920
Michael W. Young
(Yale University Press)

The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge (Director's Circle Book)
Michael McKeon
(Johns Hopkins University Press)

Utopian Thought in the Western World (Belknap Press)
Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel
(Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)

The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance
Ernst Mayr
(Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)

Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages
Marshall Clagett
(Univ of Wisconsin Pr)

The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton
Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis
(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.