Alex's Digital Garden

Back
How To Read A Book. The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading

Authors: [[Mortimer J. Adler]], [[Charles van Doren]]

Quotes for the book:

In tracking a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away. p.36

Contents:

Preface

Part One. The Dimensions of Reading

  1. The Activity and Art of Reading
    1. Active Reading
    2. The Goals of Reading: Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding
    3. Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery
    4. Present and Absent Teachers
  2. The Levels of Reading
  3. The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading
    1. Stages of Learning to Read
    2. Stages and Levels
    3. Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education
    4. Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education
  4. The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading
    1. Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading
    2. Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading
    3. On Reading Speeds
    4. Fixations and Regressions
    5. The Problem of Comprehensions
    6. Summary of Inspectional Reading
  5. How to be a Demanding Reader
    1. The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic Questions a Reader Asks
    2. How to Make a Book Your Own
    3. The three Kinds of Note-making
    4. Forming the Habit of Reading
    5. From Many Rules to One Habit

Part Two. The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading

  1. Pigeonholing a Book
    1. The Importance of Classifying Book
    2. What You Can Learn from the Title of a Book
    3. Practical vs. Theoretical Books
    4. Kings of Theoretical Books
  2. X-raying a Book
    1. OfPlots and Plans: Stating the Unity of a Book
    2. Mastering the MultiplicityL The Art of Outlining a Book
    3. The Reciprocal Arts of Reading and Writing
    4. Discovering the Author’s Intentions
    5. The First Stage of Analytical Reading
  3. Coming to Terms with an Author
    1. Words vs. Terms
    2. Finding the Key Words
    3. Technical Words and Special Vocabularies
    4. Finding the Meanings
  4. Determining an Author’s Message
    1. Sentences vs. Propositions
    2. Finding the Arguments
    3. Finding the Solutions
    4. The Second Stage of Analytical Reading
  5. Criticizing a Book Fairly
    1. Teachability as a Virtue
    2. The Role of Rhetoric
    3. The Importance of Avoiding Continentiousness
    4. On the Resolution of Disagreements
  6. Agreeing or Disagreeing with an Author
    1. Prejudice and Judgment
    2. Judging the Author’s Soundness
    3. Judging the Author’s Completeness
    4. The Third Stage of Analytical Reading
  7. Aids to Raeding
    1. The Role of Relevant Experience
    2. Other Books as Exctrinsic Aids to Reading
    3. How to Use Commentaries and Abstracts
    4. How to Use Reference Books
    5. How to Use a Dictionary
    6. How to Use an Encyclopedia

Part Three. Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter

  1. How to Read Practical Books
    1. The Two Kinds of Practical Books
    2. The Role of Persuasion
    3. What Does Agreement Entail in the Case of a Practical Book?
  2. How to Read Imaginative Literature
    1. How Not to Read Imaginative Literature
    2. General Rules for Reading Imaginative Literature
  3. Suggestions for Reading Stories, Plays, and Poems
    1. How to Read Stories
    2. A Note About Epics
    3. How to Read Plays
    4. A Note About Tragedy
    5. How to Read Lyric Poetry
  4. How to Read History
    1. The Elusiveness of Historical Facts
    2. Theories of History
    3. The Universal in History
    4. Questioning to Ask of a Historical Book
    5. How to Read Biography and Autobiography
    6. How to Read About Current Events
    7. A Note on Digests
  5. How to Read Science and Mathematics
    1. Understanding the Scientific Enterprise
    2. Suggestions for Reading Classical Scientific Books
    3. Facing the Problem of Mathematics
    4. Handling the Mathematics in Scientific Books
    5. A Note on Popular Science
  6. How to Read Philosophy
    1. The Questions Philosophers Ask
    2. Modern Philosophy and the Great Tradition
    3. On Philosophical Method
    4. On Philosophical Styles
    5. Hints for Reading Philosophy
    6. On Making Up Your Own Mind
    7. A Note on Theology
    8. How to Read “Canonical” Books
  7. How to Read Social Science
    1. What Is Social Science?
    2. The Apparent Ease of Reading Social Science
    3. Difficulties of Reading Social Science
    4. Difficulties of Reading Social Science
    5. Reading Social Science Literature

Part Four. The Ultimate Goal of Reading

  1. The Fourth Level of Reading: Syntopical Reading
    1. The Role of Inspection in Syntopical Reading
    2. The Five Steps in Syntopical Reading
    3. The Need for Objectivity
    4. An Example of an Excercise in Syntopical ReadingL The Idea of Progress
    5. The Syntopicon and How to Use It
    6. On the Principles That Inderline Syntopical reading
    7. Summary of Syntopical Reading
  2. Reading and the Growth of the Mind
    1. What Good Books Can Do for Us
    2. The Pyramid of Books
    3. The Life and Growth of the Mind

Appendix A. A Recommended Reading List

Appendix B. Exercises and Tests at the Four Levels of Reading

Index

Appendix A. A Recommended Reading List

  1. Homer (9th century B.C.?)
    1. Iliad
    2. Odyssey
  2. The Old Testament
  3. Aeschylus (c. 525 - 456 B.C.)
    1. Tragedies
  4. Sophocles (c. 495-406 B.C.)
    1. Tragedies
  5. Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.)
    1. History (Of the Persian Wars)
  6. Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.)
    1. Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
  7. Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.)
    1. History of the Peloponnesian War
  8. Hippocrates (c. 460-377 ? B.C.)
    1. Medical writings
  9. Aristophanes (c. 448-380 B.C.)
    1. Comedies (esp. Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
  10. Plato (c. 427 - 347 B.C.)
    1. Dialogues (esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
  11. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
    1. Works (esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul. The Nichomachean, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
  12. Epicurus (c. 341-270 B.C.)
    1. Letter to Herodotus
    2. Letter to Menoeceus
  13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
    1. Elements (of Geometry)
  14. Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.)
    1. Works (esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
  15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C.)
    1. On Conic Sections
    • *Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
      1. Works (esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
  17. Lucretius (c. 95-55 B.C.)
    1. On the Nature of Things
  18. Virgil (70-19 B.C.)
    1. Works
  19. Horace (65-8 B.C.)
    1. Works (esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
  20. Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
    1. History of Rome
  21. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D.17)
    1. Works (esp. Metamorphoses)
  22. Plutarch (c. 45-120)
    1. Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Moralia
    • Tacitus (c. 55-117) * Histories” * “ AnnalsAgricolaGermania
  24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (ft.c. 100 A.D.)
    • Introduction to Arithmetic
    • *Epictetus (c. 60-120) * DiscoursesEncheiridion (Handbook)
  26. Ptolemy (c. 100-178; fl. 127-151)
    1. Almagest
  27. Lucian (c. 120-c. 190)
    1. Works (esp. The Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
  28. Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
    1. Meditations
  29. Galen (c. 130-200)
    1. On the Natural Faculties
  30. The New Testament
  31. Plotinus (205-270)
    1. The Enneads
  32. St. Augustine (354-430)
    1. Works (esp. On the Teacher,Confessions, *The City of God,Christian Doctrine)
  33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
  34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century) (The Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend.)
  35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
  36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
    1. Summa Theologica
  37. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)”
    1. Works (esp. The New Life, On Monarchy,*The Divine Comedy)
  38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400)
    1. Works (esp. Troilus and Criseyde,Canterbury Tales)
  39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
    1. Notebooks
  40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
    1. The Prince
    2. Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
  41. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469-1536) The Praise of Folly
  42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
    1. On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
  43. Sir Thomas More (c. 1478-1535)
    1. Utopia
  44. Martin Luther (1483-1546)
    1. Three Treatises
    2. Table-Talk
  45. François Rabelais (c. 1495-1553)
    1. Gargantua and Pantagruel
  46. John Calvin (1509-1564)
    1. Institutes of the Christian Religion
  47. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
    1. Essays
  48. William Gilbert (1540-1603)
    1. On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
  49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
    1. Don Quixote
  50. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599)
    1. Prothalamion
    2. The Faërie Oueene
  51. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
    1. Essays
    2. Advancement of Learning
    3. Novum Organum
    4. New Atlantis
  52. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
    1. Works
  53. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
    1. The Starry Messenger
    2. Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
  54. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
    1. Epitome of Copemican Astronomy
    2. Concerning the Harmonies of the World
  55. William Harvey (1578-1657)
    1. On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
    2. On the Circulation of the Blood
    3. On the Generation of Animals
  56. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
    1. The Leviathan
  57. René Descartes (1596-1650)
    1. Rules for the Direction of the Mind
    2. Discourse on Method
    3. Geometry
    4. Meditations on First Philosophy
  58. John Milton (1608-1674)
    1. Works(esp. the minor poems, Areopagitica, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes)
  59. Molière (1622-1673)”
    1. Comedies (esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe)
  60. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
    1. The Provincial Letters
    2. Pensées
    3. Scientific treatises
  61. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)
    1. Treatise on Light
  62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)
    1. Ethics
  63. John Locke (1632-1704)
    1. Letter Concerning Toleration
    2. “Of Civil Government” (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government)
    3. Essay Concerning Human Understanding
    4. Some Thoughts Concerning Education
  64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
    1. Tragedies (esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
  65. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
    1. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
    2. Optics
  66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
    1. Discourse on Metaphysics
    2. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
    3. Monadology
  67. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
    1. Robinson Crusoe
  68. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) 1. A Tale of a Tub 2. Journal to Stella 3. Gulliver’s Travels 4. A Modest Proposal
  69. William Congreve (1670-1729)
    1. The Way of the World
  70. George Berkeley (1685-1753)
    1. Principles of Human Knowledge
  71. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
    1. Essay on Criticism
    2. Rape of the Lock
    3. Essay on Man
  72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
    1. Persian Letters
    2. Spirit of Laws
  73. Voltaire (1694-1778)
    1. Letters on the English
    2. Candide
    3. Philosophical Dictionary
  74. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
    1. Joseph Andrews
    2. Tom Jones
  75. ** Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
    1. The Vanity of Human Wishes
    2. Dictionary
    3. Rasselas
    4. The Lives of the Poets (esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
    • *David Hume (1711-1776)
      1. Treatise of Human Nature
      2. Essays Moral and Political
      3. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
      • Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) 1. On the Origin of Inequality 2. On Political Economy 3. Emile 4. The Social Contract
  78. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
    1. *Tristram Shandy
    2. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy”
  79. Adam Smith (1723-1790)
    1. The Theory of the Moral Sentiments
    2. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
    • *Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
        • Critique of Pure Reason
        • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
        • Critique of Practical Reason
        • The Science of Right
        • Critique of Judgment
      6. Perpetual Peace
  81. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
      • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Autobiography
  82. James Boswell (1740-1795)
    1. Journal (esp. London Journal)
      • Life of Samuel Johnson Ll.D.
  83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
      • Elements of Chemistry
  84. John Jay (1745-1829), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804)
      • Federalist Papers (together with the *Articles of Confederation, the * Constitution of the United States, and the * Declaration of Independence)
  85. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
    1. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
    2. Theory of Fictions
  86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
      • Faust
    2. Poetry and Truth
  87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830)
      • Analytical Theory of Heat
  88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)”
    1. “Phenomenology of Spirit
      • Philosophy of Right
      • Lectures on the Philosophy of History
  89. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
    1. Poems (esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
  90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
    1. Poems (esp. “Kubla Khan,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
    2. Biographia Literaria
  91. Jane Austen (1775-1817)
    1. Pride and Prejudice
    2. Emma
    • *Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
      1. On War
  93. Stendhal (1783-1842)
    1. The Red and the Black
    2. The Charterhouse of Parma
    3. On Love
  94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
    1. Don Juan
    • *Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
      1. Studies in Pessimism
    • *Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
      1. Chemical History of a Candle
      2. *Experimental Researches in Electricity
    • *Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
      1. Principles of Geology
  98. Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
    1. The Positive Philosophy
    • *Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
      1. Père Goriot
      2. Eugénie Grandet
    • *Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)”
      1. “Representative Men
      2. Essays
      3. Journal
    • *Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) 
      1. The Scarlet Letter
    • *Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) 
      1. Democracy in America
    • *John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) 
      1. A System of Logic
      2. *On Liberty
        • Representative Government
        • Utilitarianism
      5. The Subjection of Women
      6. Autobiography
    • *Charles Darwin (1809-1882) 
        • The Origin of Species*The Descent of Man Autobiography
    • *Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 
      1. Works (esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)
    • *Claude Bernard (1813-1878)”
      1. “Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
    • *Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) 
      1. Civil Disobedience
      2. Waiden
  108. Karl Marx (1818-1883)  1. * Capital (together with the * Communist Manifesto)
  109. George Eliot (1819-1880)  1. Adam Bede 2. Middlemarch
    • *Herman Melville (1819-1891) 
        • Moby Dick
      2. Billy Budd
    • *Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) 
      1. Crime and Punishment The Idiot
        • The Brothers Karamazov
    • *Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) 
      1. Madame Bovary
      2. Three Stories
    • *Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) 
      1. Plays (esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck)
    • *Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) 
        • War and Peace
      2. Anna Karenina
      3. What Is Art?
      4. Twenty-three Tales
    • *Mark Twain (1835-1910) 
      1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
      2. The Mysterious Stranger
      • William James (1842-1910) 
          • The Principles of Psychology
        2. The Varieties of Religious Experience
        3. Pragmatism
        4. Essays in Radical Empiricism
    • *Henry James (1843-1916) 
      1. The American
      2. The Ambassadors
  118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)  1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2. Beyond Good and Evil 3. The Genealogy of Morals 4. The Will to Power
  119. Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)  1. Science and Hypothesis 2. Science and Method
  120. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)  1. * The Interpretation of Dreams 2. *Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 3. *Civilization and Its Discontents 4. *New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
    • *George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) 
      1. Plays (and Prefaces) (esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)”
    • *Max Planck (1858-1947) 
      1. Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
      2. Where Is Science Going?
      3. Scientific Autobiography
  123. Henri Bergson (1859-1941)  1. Time and Free Will 2. Matter and Memory Creative Evolution 3. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
    • *John Dewey (1859-1952) 
      1. How We Think
      2. Democracy and Education
      3. Experience and Nature
      4. Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
    • *Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) 
      1. An Introduction to Mathematics
      2. Science and the Modern World The Aims of Education and Other Essays Adventures of Ideas
    • *George Santayana (1863-1952) 
      1. The Life of Reason
      2. Skepticism and Animal Faith
      3. Persons and Places
  127. Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924)  1. The State and Revolution
  128. Marcel Proust (1871-1922)  1. Remembrance of Things Past
      • Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) 
        1. The Problems of Philosophy”
        2. “The Analysis of Mind
        3. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
        4. Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
    • *Thomas Mann (1875-1955) 
      1. The Magic Mountain
      2. Joseph and His Brothers
    • *Albert Einstein (1879-1955) 
      1. The Meaning of Relativity
      2. On the Method of Theoretical Physics
      3. The Evolution of Physics (with L. Inf eld)
  132. James Joyce (1882-1941)  1. “The Dead” in Dubliners 2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 3. Ulysses
  133. Jacques Maritain (1882-      )  1. Art and Scholasticism 2. The Degrees of Knowledge 3. The Rights of Man and Natural Law 4. True Humanism
  134. Franz Kafka (1883-1924      )  1. The Trial 2. The Castle
  135. Arnold Toynbee (1889-      )” 1. “A Study of History Civilization on Trial
  136. Jean Paul Sartre (1905-      )  1. Nausea No Exit 2. Being and Nothingness
  137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-      )  1. The First Circle 2. Cancer Ward