Bring this back!
L. Gordon Crovitz on The Great Books program. An excerpt:
These were not just any books, but "Great Books of the Western World," marketed by Encyclopaedia Britannica. The authors included Aristotle, Aquinas, Milton, Locke, Hume and Mill along with some especially dense texts such as Apollonius' "On Conic Sections." The celebrities who bought the special Founders' Edition at $500 per leather-bound set included David Ben-Gurion, Frank Capra, Marshall Field, Conrad Hilton, Henry Luce and Walter Lippmann.
The Great Books were marketed door-to-door through the 1960s with the message that anyone could become well-read. "The ability to discuss and clarify basic ideas is vital to access. Doors open to the man who possesses this talent," read one advertisement. Another said, "Great Books alone can't make you a vice-president. Or chairman of the board. But they can stimulate your mind, and sharpen your judgment."
Execupundit Update: In the fifties, many an elementary school book report may have been based on this great series: http://www.tkinter.smig.net/ClassicsIllustrated/index.htm
3 comments:
I'll second that. But my experience wasn't with the Great Books. When I was in my late teens and in the Marines, I responded to an ad and started a subscription to Walter J. Black's Classics Club. I've still got some of them, well thumbed, marked up old friends.
Wally,
I never heard of Walter J. Black's Classic Club. The Modern Library classics were the closest I came to that.
Mortimer Adler originated the Great Books program. I have great respect for him for two reasons: his Paideia Program (an excellent educational model now out of fashion, unfortunately) and a taped lecture I have since lost called "How to Speak and How to Listen."
It may be time for a revival of Adler's legacy.
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