Maybe you could name your 16 favorite books, but it might take a while. So consider the task that Martin Puchner undertook in picking 16 great books. Ever.
Puchner, who edited The Norton Anthology of World Literature, picked some of the greatest works written by humans over 4,000 years, to illustrate their power to document and shape humanity.
He brings the works together in the book The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization. Puchner gave us a crash course in the books in 2018, and we return to the interview here.