Great Books students:
I urge you to read at least the first group of Great Books web pages listed below.

You will find a number of "Great Books" links scattered throughout my web site.
However, you may find particular interest in the following pages:

  1. "Why Read Great Books?" by Mortimer Adler
  2. "How to Mark a Book" by Mortimer Adler
  3. "How to Read a Difficult Book" by Mortimer Adler
  4. For those of you who take my Great Books Colloquium, I think you will find the following distinction made by Mortimer Adler helpful. In practice I tend to start our discussions of a work as a "great books seminar," and then once I am confident we understand the author's world view, move it to a "great issues seminar." (For those of you who have had me for more than one semester, you may notice that as the term wears on, and students come to class with better comprehension of the texts, we move increasingly towards the "great issues" type of discussion.) Best regards, michael gose

    "Remember that this is a Great Ideas seminar, not a Great Books seminar. What does this mean? In most traditional Great Books discussions the primary focus of the inquiry is 1) *factual* -- what did the author say, 2) *interpretive* -- what does the author mean, and 3) *evaluative* -- is it true? In the Great Ideas seminars we do not discuss books/texts per se, but rather the ideas and issues found in them, what we think about them, and how they may relate to and affect our lives *today* and in the future."

You might also benefit from the following pages:
  1. A brief history of our program by Jennifer Smodish
  2. Notes on Dialogue
  3. How Adler's group selected "the Great Books".
    P.S. There's a fourth criterion that has influenced our own program's book choices: "influence." Not all, but most of our required books were selected because of the degree of their perceived influence on the "great conversation."
  4. My course objectives for Great Books colloquia
  5. Finally, you may be particularly amused to read my article on leading great books discussions.