Read This

To form a grounding in Tradition & History: read the following and use what you can in daily life, depending on circumstances. Read and retell to younger kids, in your own words.

For overview:

• Dawson, Christopher. Dynamics of World History.
• Lewis, C. S. "On Reading Old Books," introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation. Available online here.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair. “How to be a North American.”
• Newman, John Henry. Historical Sketches.

For basic names, dates, events information:

• Carroll, Anne. Christ the King, Lord of History & Christ and the Americas.
• Carroll, Warren. Christendom series.
• Hughes, Philip. Popular History of the Catholic Church.
  (Really—any textbook or history will work, if supplemented with the following.)

For individual periods, as Dawson divides them:
Ancient

• Chesterton, G. K. The Everlasting Man.
  

Primitive (0-4th century) & Patristic (4th-6th c.)

• Augustine’s Confessions, City of God.
• Church fathers
• Newman, John Henry. History of Arianism.
  

Formation of Christendom (Early medieval) (6th-11th c.)

• Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.
• Boethius. Consolation of Philosophy.
• Chesterton, G. K. “The Ballad of the White Horse.”
• LeClercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God.
• Rule of St. Benedict
• The Confessions of St. Patrick
  

Medieval (12th-15th c.)

• Belloc, Hilaire. The Crusades.
• Beowulf.
• Chesterton, G. K. St. Francis of Assisi.
• Dawson, Christopher. Medieval Essays.
• Dore, Gustav. Illustrations of the Crusades and The Divine Comedy.
• El Cid
• Francis of Assisi. The Words of St. Francis.
• Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend.
• Joinville. The Life of St. Louis.
• Male, Emile. Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century.
• The Song of Roland.
• White, T. H. Appendix to his translation of the Bestiary: A Book of Beasts. Click here for online version.
  

Divided (16th – 18th c.)

• Adams, Gwen. "Gasparo Contarini: Counter-Reformation and the Spirit of the Baroque." Click here for online version.
• Belloc, Hilaire. Characters of the Reformation.
• Chesterton, G.K. “The Battle of Lepanto.”
• Daniel-Rops, Henri. The Protestant Reformation, Vol. I-II.
• Dawson, Christopher. The Dividing of Christendom.
• Olin, John C. The Catholic Reformation: Savaronola to Ignatius of Loyala. (original texts)
  

Secularized (18th – now)

• Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. (original texts)
• Lewis, C. S. "De Descriptione Temporum: Inaugural Lecture from The Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, 1954." This sums up and explains our culture more pithily than anything I've read in a long time. Find it here.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair. Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry.
• Schama, Simon. Citizens.