The Complete Harvard Classics - ALL 71 Volumes: The Five Foot Shelf & The Shelf of Fiction: The Famous Anthology of the Greatest Works of World Literature

PROS: 71 VOLUMES of books for less than five dollars on KINDLE.... I jumped at the bargain. Granted I may not get to read them all before I die, but Just one of these is worth what we are being charged for all 71. They loaded on my Kindle Fire Effortlessly. This volume is all in one big collection so you don't have 71 individual titles you have 71 sections of one HUGE Title which I totally prefer. I figure if these are encouraged at Harvard, why not give them a go. I've already have hard cover version of Ben Franklins biography in several book forms and now in the classics I also have it in Kindle form along with 70 other equally massive volumes, but being kindle without weight. Also being kindle I can read them anywhere I have access to Amazon with the Amazon Reader. LASTLY it appears that there is a ton of extra content too, like lecture notes even on the classics, AMAZING. CONS: Being so large I have yet to see an illustration, but I did buy for the reading this time not just for the pretty pictures. The other CON is that due to the size of the collection even KINDLE has it limits, I found myself bounced out of the collection from trying to jump around to fast. Best to wait a second or two longer before jumping to another place in the book. I'm sorry this review has only scratched the surface, but the keys to remember is that this HUGE COLLECTION is EASY TO NAVIGATE and offered at a very THRIFTY PRICE. Don't even think about it get it now for LESS THAN COST of a BIG MAC. It is overwhelming, yet I love it just the same. The perfect addition to my KINDLE Library. Yes I'd buy these again and recommend to a friend. If you have any questions leave them below and I'll do my best to answer or find you someone that can. Thank you.

I have an advanced degree from UC Berkeley; and many of these books I have already read. Some are very easy to read and deliver with a wonderfully textured tome. Some were written hundreds of years ago, and the language is what I am used to reading-others may find it difficult. I am reading from it now and have only read about a quarter of it. It is a large volume of first rate books; and I do recommend it to people who wish to finally "master the Classic's" and I did not go to Harvard but UC Berkeley that is now an expensive University as well. PhD's are about half a million dollars and that was twenty years ago! I lived near the campus in a city in the SF East Bay. I was fortunate to have had a benefactor who paid for my education. Yes I know how blessed I really was! Thank you Amazon for having this first rate set of books on my Kindle. I also ordered "50 Books You Must Read Before You Die" and I have not yet begun reading that one but I will; I have been busy with the Holidays but come January I will tackle them all and skip the ones I remember so well. I would love to have the books but my bookcase which is large as my husband also went to Cal as his as well is overly filled. It would be a great gift to a High School student upon graduation. Thank you again. S.S.

While I have yet to make sure that every single page from the physical collection is present and accounted for, my cursory searching and errant prodding have yet to yield any issues in terms of fidelity with the original. This digital version of the collection gives you immediate access to so many of the classic works of philosophy, fiction, theology, history, and political science that serve as the foundation of "western" thought and civilization. If you want to familiarize yourself with the works included, here is the wiki page for this collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics . It should be noted again that this is a collection of "western" thought, and so includes limited perspective from regions of the world outside of Europe and North America. As another disclaimer: many of these works were originally written in a language other than english, and there are likely better translations out there for many of them. The translations that I have looked at so far run from sufficient to well done. There may certainly be some classical works of western thought that you may look for that are not found in this collection, but they will be few and far between (and that issue will likely never arise for anyone doing anything but the most esoteric reading of classic texts). Perhaps most importantly, this digital version is eminently useful. Every volume has a link in the table of contents. That link brings you to a table of contents for that volume, which contains links for the individual works in the volume. Those links then bring you to a table of contents for the individual works of the volume, complete with links for each section therein. Perhaps equally importantly, every table of contents has a link that returns you to mother table of contents from which you came- making navigating to specific works and then back much easier than many other digital collections allow, in a way that does not require one to use the "Go To" feature of the Kindle. If you are interested in having access to nearly all of the essential classics of "western" civilization for a ridiculously cheap price and with a surprising ease of navigation, I recommend this collection without reservation.

This collection could keep me occupied for more than a decade. When I'm looking for something else to read I can always find something new in here. I am a big fan of western civilization and this is a wonderful, curated source of learning, complete with scholarly commentary. I gave it a 4 instead of 5 star because I believe that many of the original texts would have images pictures maps and these volumes are all text, hardly any graphics.

From Ancient Greece to mid 1800s the literature that western civilization is based upon. Happy reading. Worth the time and the effort

I have a set of these books that are so old, they fall apart, when I open them up. At last I can read them. Maybe this will help get rid of the actual books, but then they were a gift for my father's graduation from Georgetown in 1925. I love having a digital copies.

I'm amazed by how much is included in this book. Of course, I haven't read it all yet, but I've read some of the chapters and am well satisfied with the contents. I expect to read much more in the years to come. I bought the Kindle edition. As best I can tell from what I've read, the material in the book is over 100 years old—literally. One historical chapter I read ended with events in the year 1885, explaining that anything more recent than that represents "the current era." Ha! But hey, the classics are timeless.

I have an 11th generation Paperwhite Kindle device with the latest software version, i.e., 5.19.2. Unfortunately, there is a software glitch when I access this product. The product goes into a recursive loop where I have to reset my device. Obviously, this is an annoying software problem. Please fix the functionality of this product with the software.

É uma Biblioteca Clássica, que todo anglófono deve ter e consultar.

This book contains the correct historical documents.

It pretty much sums up what was considered great literature in Western education in 1909. Just the one text by Dr. Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations”, makes it a worthwhile read. It took him ten years to assemble the economic data before presenting it. While his understanding of ancient religions and culture is full of errors, and some of his economic relations don't stand up to real world testing, it's still one of the best economic texts of all time. Sir Francis Bacon's writing was also full of great economic advice. It was a treat to read Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci’s writings about the discovery of the Americas and interactions with the Indigenous Peoples. It clears up a lot of misconceptions. Plutarch’s writings about the nobles of Ancient Greece and Rome were also a pleasure to learn about. He gives great detail about the murder of Caesar told from the perspective of a few different historical individuals. Very dramatic. It's easy to see why Shakespeare chose it. And, there are many other great texts in the collection. It took about a year, maybe a year and half during the lockdowns to get through it - not including going back and reviewing. Well worth it.

Great way to look back at books that you always wanted to read

Unfortunately did not work and crashed my Kindle, presumably because of the size