Two hundred good books recommended by C. F. Braun

Reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack, it’s fascinating to see that the good ideas in life and business seem to be repackaged for each new generation. For Charlie Munger (and by extension Warren Buffet), one of their oracles was C. F. Braun, the founder of the C.F. Braun Engineering Company of Alhambra, CA, which at the time of his death in 1954 had 5,000 employees working on some of the most complicated problems in chemical engineering.

There is not much written directly about Braun, but he left behind a series of books that served as guidance in leadership and communication for his company’s managers. He was a great believer in a well-rounded education beyond science and engineering. Towards that end, he published Two Hundred Good Books: A Letter to an Industrial Organization to help polish what he termed the “social skills” of his staff. The books within were then available in the company library and bookstore.

The following post is a list of all the generally available books recommended by Carl F. Braun in Two Hundred Good Books (the book includes a second more condensed list of books which are not generally available).

Braun categorized the books by general topic and listed them in increasing order of difficulty. I’ve repeated his list below. Given that due to age most of these books are now in the public domain, I have included links to those that struck me as most interesting (marked with an asterisk *).

Language, Composition, Semantics

Presentation for Engineers and Industrialists. Carl F. Braun. 1947.* (Books of C.F. Braun at Hathi Trust, requires NYPL or other library access)

Fair Thought and Speech. Carl F. Braun. 1948.* (see link above)

Letter-Writing in Action. Carl F. Braun. 1947.* (see link above)

Corporate Correspondence. Carl F. Braun. 1948.* (see link above)

General Index To Four Companion Books by Carl F. Braun. 1948.

Constructive English. Francis Kingsley Ball. 1923.

The Confounded Compound. Marjorie W. Browne. 1949.

Composition for College Students. Thomas, Manchester, and Scott. 1937. Originally written 1922.

Pronunciation. Thorleif Larsen and Francis C. Walker. 1930.

Language in Action. S. I. Hayakawa. 1947.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. H. W. Fowler. 1926.

Words and Their Ways in English Speech. Greenough and Kittredge. 1901.

Language Habits in Human Affairs. Irving J. Lee, PhD. 1941.

A History of the English Language. Albert C. Baugh. 1935.

Thought and Language. Philip Boswood Ballard. 1934.

American English Grammar. Charles Carpenter Fries. 1940.

The English Bible

King James Version.

The Apocrypha.

The Development of the English Bible. A Compilation with a Foreword by Carl F. Braun. 1948.

The Literary Study of the Bible. Richard G. Moulton, PhD. 1899.

Philosophy

The Philosophy of William James. William James.* (Archive.org PDF)

The Way of Life According to Laotzu. Witter Bynner. 1944.* (Archive.org)

The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Balthasar Gracian. Translation by Joseph Jacobs. 1945. Originally written c. 1650. (Univ. of Penn PDF)

Discourses on Art. Sir Joshua Reynolds. 1945.* (Gutenberg)

On Some of Life’s Ideals. William James. 1899.* (Gutenberg)

The Imitation of Christ. Tomas a Kempis. Translation by Richard Whitford. 1941. Originally written c. 1400.

Complete Essays of Schopenhauer. Arthur Schopenhauer. Translation by T. Bailey Saunders. 1942.

The Screwtape Letters. C. S. Lewis. 1946.* (Gutenberg Canada, contains epubs of many works of C. S. Lewis)

The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Translated by George Long.

After Two Thousand Years. G. Lowes Dickinson. 1930.

The Sense of Beauty. George Santayana. 1938.* (Gutenberg)

The Greek View of Life. G. Lowes Dickinson. 1947.* (Gutenberg)

The Evolution of Physics. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. 1942.

Reasoning

An Introductory Logic. James Creighton and Harold Smart. 1932.

Rational Belief. Albert Frye and Albert Levi. 1941.

Argumentation and Debating. William Trufant Foster, PhD. 1945.

The Principles of Reasoning. Daniel Sommer Robinson, PhD. 1947.

Novum Organum. Sir Francis Bacon. Translation by Andrew Johnson. 1948.* (Gutenberg)

The Advancement of Learning. Sir Francis Bacon. 1605.* (Gutenberg)

Psychology

Psychology: Briefer Course. William James. 1948. (Gutenberg)

The Psychology of Adjustment. Laurance Frederic Shaffer, PhD. 1936.

Sociology, Anthropology, Leadership

Management and Leadership. Carl F. Braun. 1948.* (Books of C.F. Braun at Hathi Trust, requires NYPL or other library access)

The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization. Elton Mayo. 1945. (Archive.org PDF)

Management and Morale. F. J. Roethlisberger. 1947.* (Archive.org PDF)

Management and the Worker. F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson. 1947.

The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization. Elton Mayo. 1946.*

The Mind in the Making. James Harvey Robinson. 1921.

The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Wilfred Trotter. 1947. Originally written 1915.

The Study of Man. Ralph Linton, PhD. 1936.

The Ways of Men. John Gillin. 1948.

The Science of Man in the World Crisis. Edited by Ralph Linton. 1945.* (Archive.org)

China Enters the Machine Age. Kuo-Heng Shih. 1944.

On Liberty. John Stuart Mill. 1912. Originally written 1859.* (Gutenberg)

On Education. Herbert Spencer. 1911. Originally written 1861.

The Prince and Other Works. Miccolo Machiavelli. Translation by Allan H. Gilbert. 1946. Originally written c. 1500.

Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne. 1946. Originally written 1643.

Economics

The Promises Men Live By. Harry Scherman. 1938.

Land of Plenty. Walter Dorwin Teague. 1947.* (Archive.org)

An Introduction to Modern Economics. Valdemar Carlson. 1946.

Principles of Engineering Economy. Eugene L. Grant. 1938.

Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. Frank K. Knight, PhD. 1921.

History and Mythology

Light from the Ancient Past. Jack Finegan. 1946.* (Archive.org)

The History of England. Thomas Babington Macaulay. 1931. Originally written 1861.

The Conquest of Mexico – The Conquest of Peru. William H. Prescott. 1843 and 1847. (Gutenberg, links to both, Conquest of Mexico has four volumes)

The Peloponnesian War. Thucydides. Translated by R. Crawley. 1934. Originally written c. 400 B.C.

The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers. Originally written c. 800 B.C.

The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Butcher and Lang or A. T. Murray.

Autobiographies, Fiction, Poetry, Drama

The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Thornton Wilder. 1927.* (Gutenberg)

Alice in Wonderland – Through the Looking Glass. Lewis Carroll. Illustrated by John Tenniel. 1946. Originally written 19th c.* (Gutenberg, links above)

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.* (Gutenberg)

One Hundred and One Famous Poems. Roy J. Cook. 1929.

Cyrano de Bergerac. Edmond Rostand. Translated by Brian Hooker. Originally written 1897.

Pilgrim’s Progress. John Bunyan. Originally written 1678.* (Gutenberg)

Art and Design

Design This Day. Walter Dorwin Teague. 1940. (Archive.org PDF)