Culture and literature, to some extent, move hand in hand.  To begin to understand a given culture, one must as well understand and appreciate its history and literature and the evolution of both; moreso a starting point than a comprehensive list, the below works range from history to fiction to philosophy and beyond, providing a baseline of useful knowledge.

And knowledge is key to understanding the world and one's place in it.

Notably absent are significant references or works from Asia, a fundamental gap in the author's knowledge.  The Americas, Western Europe, North Africa and to a limited extent, Arabia, are featured knowledge sets.
Picture
Moser: The Cambridge History of Russian Literature
Picture
Mair: The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature
Picture
Edie/Scanlan/Zeldin/Klein: Russian Philosophy - The Nihilists, The Populists, Critics of Religion & Culture
Picture
Patai: The Arab Mind
Picture
Hesse: Siddhartha
Picture
Kafka: The Metamorphosis
Picture
Gogol: Collected Tales
Picture
Herodotus: The Histories
Picture
Sun Tzu: Art of War
Picture
Nietzche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Picture
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Picture
Isaac: The Limits of Empire - The Roman Army in the East
Picture
Amir-Ali: The Message of the Qur-an
Picture
Irwin: The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250 - 1382
Picture
Fitzgerald / Dulac: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام‎)
Picture
Blackham: Reality, Man and Existence: Essential Works of Existentialism
Picture
Knight: The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: from Shaka to Cetshwayo 1818 - 1879
Picture
Agee / Evans: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Picture
Maslow: Toward a Psychology of Being
Picture
Longfellow: Selected Poems
Picture
Hemingway: Death in the Afternoon
Picture
Dostoyevsky: The Idiot
Picture
Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Picture
Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov