Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

I know you've been waiting with bated breath for my list of five books. Here they are, in chronological order by date of first publication:

1. David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1772). Hume was a great stylist as well as a great thinker. I would never tire of these essays. Did I mention that Hume was a conservative?

2. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (1874/1907). C. D. Broad wrote (in 1930) that "Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics seems to me to be on the whole the best treatise on moral theory that has ever been written, and to be one of the English philosophical classics."

3. Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values (1964). For inspiration.

4. Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (1986). Lopez is the best writer in the world. When he describes a polar bear walking toward you, you see the bear.

5. Richard A. Posner, Economic Analysis of Law, 7th ed. (2007). I'm cited in this book, so I would feel famous on my little island. I would also learn a great deal about law from one of the few geniuses in the world.

All five of my chosen books are stylistically beautiful as well as intellectually stimulating. One must have both.