I learned too late about Carl Jung’s mysterious Red Book, or I would have featured it in the “in search of whales” list. Over several decades, Jung used the Red Book as the medium within which to explore his deepest unconscious, giving the earliest glimpses of his best known concepts–that all of humanity shares a pool of ancient wisdom he called the collective unconscious.  Jung saw the psyche as “an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing”. The Red Book is both the place where Jung originated this idea and where he situated his own soul for such enlightenment.  There, he sought and battled and tamed many unusual creatures.

(In The New York Times Magazine (26 September 2009), Sara Corbett explores the history surrounding the book and why it took so long to reach the public.)