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
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)
Clarendon Press

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 a New World, with a new Preface (Carpenter Lectures)
Greenblatt, Professor 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
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: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society
Habermas, Jurgen (Author)
The MIT Press

Orientalism
Edward W. Said (Author)
Penguin Books, Limited (UK)

Analyzing Bach Cantatas
Chafe, Eric (Author)
Oxford University Press

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

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

On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton Classics, 21)
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 University Press

The Many Faces of Realism (Paul Carus Lectures)
Putnam, Hilary (Author)
Open Court Pub Co

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)
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 George (Author)
Cambridge University Press

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

An Introduction to Legal Reasoning
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
Dronke, Peter (Author)
Oxford University Press

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
Joseph Eddy Fontenrose (Author)
University of California Press (Berkeley/LA)

The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (Enlightenment an Interpretation)
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. 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)
The 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
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) (Volume 195)
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)
Edinburgh University Press

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.