Trinity Academics

Great Books Program

Trinity’s Great Books Program is modeled after programs found at the University of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, and St. John’s College in both Annapolis and Santa Fe. The program is student-driven and inquiry-based. It aims to explore the human experience and its complexity through classic works of literature. Students develop their worldview and critical thinking by asking questions, formulating and sharing their opinions, and supporting their ideas with textual evidence.

African American Experience
  • Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  • Frederick Douglass: Narrative Life
  • W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk
  • Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
  • Anne Moody: Coming of Age in Mississippi
  • Solomon Northup: 12 Years a Slave
  • Jesmyn Ward: Salvage the Bones
  • Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery
African Experience
  • Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
  • Bessie Head: Maru
  • Bessie Head: When Rain Clouds Gather
  • Cheikh Hamidou Kane: Ambiguous Adventure
American Novel
  • Saul Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March
  • Kate Chopin: The Awakening
  • Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie
  • Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
  • William Faulkner: Light in August
  • Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
  • Sue Monk Kidd: The Secret Life of Bees
  • Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • Edith Wharton: Ethan Frome
Asian American Experience
  • Carlos Bulosan: America is in the Heart
  • Celeste Ng: Everything I Never Told You
  • Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer
  • Monica Sone: Nisei Daughter
Christian Spiritual Classics
  • Saint Athanasius: The Life of Saint Antony of Egypt
  • Saint Augustine: Confessions
  • Saint Catherine of Siena: Little Talks with God
  • Saint Francis de Sales: Introduction to the Devout Life
  • Saint John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul 
  • The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi
  • Saint Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle
  • Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul
Classical Studies
  • Aeschylus: Agamemnon 
  • Marcus Aurelius: The Meditations
  • Homer: The Iliad
  • Homer: The Odyssey
  • Plato: Phaedo
  • Sophocles: Antigone
  • Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
  • Virgil: The Aeneid
Detective/Thriller Fiction
  • Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
  • Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  • Dashiell Hammett: The Glass Key
  • Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
  • Tony Hillerman: Dance Hall of the Dead
  • Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca
Eastern Religions
  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • Confucius: The Analects
  • The Dhammapada
  • Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
  • Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
Epic Tradition
  • Beowulf
  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Homer: The Iliad
  • Homer: The Odyssey
  • Virgil: The Aeneid
Golden Age of English Theater
  • Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy
  • Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
  • William Shakespeare: Othello
  • William Shakespeare: The Tempest 
  • William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
Hispanic American Experience
  • Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street
  • Cristina Henriquez: The Book of Unknown Americans
  • Richard Rodriguez: Hunger of Memory
Japanese Novel
  • Shusaku Endo: Silence
  • Yasuanari Kawabata: Snow Country
  • Yukio Mishima: The Sound of Waves
  • Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of the Genji
  • Junichiro Tanizaki: The Makioka Sisters
Modern Novel
  • Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
  • Pearl Buck: The Good Earth
  • Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
  • Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Karamazov Brothers
  • Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
  • Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory
  • Victor Hugo: Les Misérables 
  • Sigrid Undset: Kristin Lavransdatter I–The Bridal Wreath
  • Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Modern Philosophy
  • Rene Descartes: Discourse on Method
  • Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit
Native American Experience
  • Mary Brave Bird: Ohitika Woman
  • Mary Crow Dog: Lakota Woman
  • Bartolomé de las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
  • David Grann: Killers of the Flower Moon
  • Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn
  • John G. Neihardt: Black Elk Speaks
  • Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony
Literature and Science
  • Rachel Carson: Silent Spring
  • George Gamow: Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland
  • Margot Lee Shetterly: Hidden Figures
  • Rebecca Skloot: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Literature and War
  • Stephen Ambrose: Band of Brothers
  • Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Selections from The Penguin Book of First World War Stories
  • Michael Shaara: The Killer Angels
  • Elie Wiesel: Night
Middle Ages
  • Dante Alighieri: Purgatory
  • Saint Bonaventure: The Life of Francis
  • The Quest of the Holy Grail
  • The Saga of Eirik the Red
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • The Song of Roland
Political Theory
  • Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
  • Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince
  • Plato: The Republic
Russian Novel
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
  • Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls
  • Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
  • Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
  • Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Orson Scott Card: Ender’s Game
  • Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  • Frank Herbert: Dune
  • J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
Short Story
  • Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
  • Selections from Great Short Stories by African American Writers
  • Selections from Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers
  • Selections from Short Stories by Latin American Women
  • Selections from Short Story Masterpieces by American Women Writers
  • Selections from The Complete Short Stories by Saki
  • Selections from The Oxford Book of American Short Stories
  • Selections from The World’s Greatest Short Stories
Sports Literature
  • Sasha Abramsky: Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar
  • Lars Anderson: Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Einsenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football’s Greatest Battle
  • Alex Bellos: Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life
  • Franklin Foer: How Soccer Explains the World
  • W.P. Kinsella: Shoeless Joe
  • Jane Leavy: The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created
  • David Maraniss: When Pride Still Mattered
  • Mark Ribowsky: The Power and the Darkness
  • Tom Swift: Chief Bender’s Burden
  • John Thorn: Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game
  • Todd Tucker: Notre Dame vs. The Klan
  • Susan Ware: Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports
Supernatural Fiction
  • Lafcadio Hearn: Japanese Ghost Stories
  • Henry James: Turn of the Screw
  • M.R. James: Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories
  • Selections from American Supernatural Tales
  • Selections from Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu
  • Selections from The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories
  • Bram Stoker: Dracula

“I have read Pride and Prejudice and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes through Trinity’s Great Books program. Participating in this program has allowed me to continue to read and digest modern media in a purposeful manner to understand better the past, present, and future.” — Kennedy Paul ’26