'A Great Idea at the Time' by Alex Beam

Argumentum ad Hominem

The subtitle should have read, Every Negative Fact and Innuendo I Could Dredge Up

Although he was not particularly unkind to me in the book, I found virtually every page to be a smart-alecky and snide diatribe of the worst order against the Great Books, Adler, Hutchins, et al. Plus the book is replete with errors of commission and omission.

As an effective antidote, I prescribe Robert Hutchins' pithy essay, The Great Conversation.

If the Great Books crusade is as bleak as Beam purports, then happily, not many will read his invective book.

Max Weismann,
President and co-founder with Mortimer Adler, Center for the Study of The Great Ideas
Chairman, The Great Books Academy

...they were, and always will be great books. When we emigrated from England in 1956, my late father had just purchased a set. We transported the 24 volumes, plus index and atlas 12,500 miles in a tea chest. As a boy of 7 and through our schooling we referenced them frequently and they are still a treasured posession...

"Maladroit" you call it, Wendy? I think it is a Kinseyan "gaffe", also known as a "mokita" in New Guinea: the truth that everyone knows, but no-one talks about.

A, Philip Randolph had no patience for pseudo-African nostalgia and would have agreed completely with Adler.

He flatly rejected any fantastic black reclamation of their stone age past, calling himself and all other American blacks "Anglo-Saxons in black face".

No, Miss Wendy, blacks have no Great Books of their own. They have ours, as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, A Philip Randolph and countless other educated black folk would instantly affirm. They extract all of their cherished principles from them: freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice, and mercy.

There is nothing "maladroit" about it.

I'm sorry. I apologize. My comment even adds a little bit of sexism ("MISS" Wendy) to its racism. My bad. I can't help being racially defensive now that my own state has produced the first African-American president. It makes me feel inferior, and I have to make fun of other groups to feel better.

As a child growing up in the Bronx, my public library had that
"Great Books Series". When I was nine, I read through all the math
books--Euclid, Apollonius on Conic Sections, Newton's Principia,
all the physics--Faraday, Fourier etc. IT WAS WONDERFUL--and helped set me on the path of becoming a mathematician. It put me years ahead of my school courses--I strongly recommend reading "Principia" to learn to reason with advanced geometry--for that is how Newton presents his ideas there.

So, I completely disagree with the evaluation of the science books given by your author. His physics expert is correct that nowadays there are slicker and more modern books on elementary physics and calculus--but, Newton was a genius (in fact, more than a genius), and it really is valuable to actually read
and reason with him ( and find his errors too). I suspect his expert has never actually read "Principa".

I also read the philosophy books--to understand that philosophy was nothing but drivel--an important early lesson.

Your author is correct, though, that there are better editions of
the arts classics--like John Milton's "Paradise Lost", and i had already seen some of these in my older sister's schoolbooks--things like the excellent "Norton Anthologies".

Still, for poor children this series was an important resource--and I would imagine many upper middle class children whose parents bought these books as "decoration" actually read them--probably, at an early age.

Max, if you want, i can give you a list of physics and math classics ( on the order of Faraday) that are more recent to extend the set.

I was flippant about philosophy--Socrates ( at least the Socrates expressed in Plato---who may be a literary invention) was a smart guy!

The trouble with philosophy is there really is lots of drivel--and every time something works out we change the name--aka Natural Philosphy ( physics), Jurisprudence, Psychology, Logic ( as a branch of math) etc.

Philosophy is the mother of disciplines.

But, I wanted to express the lesson that I learned as a child--because the focus was helpful--and the work of Newton, Faraday,
Darwin, Fourier was so inspiring and brilliant.... Thank you Adler and Hutchins.

Big Bill,
Did you know that Alexander Dumas and his son were black?

"The Count of Monte Christo" is a great book.

There is quite a lot of African Wisdom Literature--much of which was drawn on by our
Western Tradition. Timbuktu had a university when Oxford was a farming village.

"All Stories are Anazi ( the spider god)
Stories".

And I am Caucasian.

Big Bill,
Nubia had a culture as high as Egypt ( big buildings, art
philosophy etc.) when the people of England were painting themselves blue and living in trees. Nubia was a black African culture with such advanced ideas as the social and political equality of women.

Me, I am white--but a human being before that--and, a member of the creaturehood of sentinent beings in the universe--a
citizen of the local galactic group and of the the universe.

The single gene that controls skin color is of no importance to me.

Penny, visit www.thegreatideas.org

Max

I miss the sense of wonder that the Great Books offered. When I was young, I would leaf through the pages and would become amazed at how those great minds could write those great books. Often, I would try to read a page or two, and would realize that I understood not a line in the page! Nonetheless, the feeling of having read even just a few lines was awesome! I wish some of the kids today could have a glimpse of that wonderful sensation.

The idea of great books was a slight exaggeration, and sometimes the distinction is a little forced - the French academy was never quite satisfied with Dumas for example. Not because he was black, but because he was popular.

But when we look at the books with which modern critics would like to supplant canon literature, the argument falls down. Paul Auster - sets new standards of triviality.