Principles of Geology, The (Lyell), 393
Principles of Political Economy (J. S. Mill), 369
Principles of Psychology (James), 64, 72
Protagoras (Plato), 286
Proust, Marcel, 129
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y
R
Racine, Jean, 227
Rationale of Judicial Evidence (Bentham), 369
Reader’s Digest, 253
Representative Government (J. S. Mill), 367, 369
Republic (Plato), 247, 286
Rhetoric (Aristotle), 406
Rodman, Selden, 350
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 64, 172, 247, 406, 408-410
S
Science, 267
Scientific American, 267
Scott, Walter, 139
Selection in Relation to Sex (Darwin), 394
Seventeenth Century Background, The (Willey), 251
Seventh Letter (Plato), 286
Shakespeare, William, 37, 93, 179, 224, 225, 226, 230, 231, 252, 344
Shaw, George Bernard, 225, 257
Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, Together With the Sense of Antiquity Upon This Argument (Collier), 79
Smith, Adam, 38, 64, 81, 104, 145
Social Contract, The (Rousseau), 64, 172, 364, 406, 408-410
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 217
Sophocles, 226
Spinoza, Baruch, 70, 158, 283, 284
Spirit of Laws, The (Montesquieu), 172, 406
Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), 309, 310
Subjection of Women, The (J. S. Mill), 367
Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 122, 247, 282, 283
p. 426 Symposium (Plato), 146
System of Logic, A (J. S. Mill), 369
T
Theory of Moral Sentiments, A (Adam Smith), 145
Thomas, Dylan, 229
Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (J. S. Mill), 369
Thucydides, 240, 241
Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 284
“To His Coy Mistress” (Marvell), 232
Tolstoy, Leo, 129, 177, 219, 232, 238, 239, 309
Tom Jones (Fielding), 79, 225
Treatise on Light (Huygens), 372
Two New Sciences (Galileo), 72, 132, 266
Tyndall, John, 246
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y
U
Ulysses (Joyce), 79
U.S. Constitution, 86, 88, 89, 172, 366
Universe and Dr. Einstein, The, (Barnett), 60, 268
Utilitarianism (J. S. Mill), 367, 369
V
Van Doren, Mark, 206
Variation in Plants and Animals under Domestication (Darwin), 394
Virgil, 223
Vita Nuova (Dante), 379
W
Wallace, A. R., 394
Walton, Izaak, 246
War and Peace (Tolstoy), 218, 219, 220, 309
Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith), 38, 64, 81, 145
Westminster Review, 369
What Men Live By (Tolstoy), 177
White, E. B., 217
Whitehead, Alfred North, 268, 269
Whitman, Walt, 248
Willey, Basil, 251
Wordsworth, William, 222
Wren, Christopher, 374
Y
“You, Andrew Marvell” (MacLeish), 232
Publication Information
About How to Read a Book
“These four hundred pages are packed full of high matters which no one solicitous of the future of American culture can afford to overlook.”
—Jacques Barzun
How to Read a Book, originally published in 1940, has become a rare phenomenon, a living classic. It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated.
You are told about the various leuels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. You learn how to pigeonhole a book, X-ray it, extract the author’s message, criticize. You are taught the different reading techniques for reading practical books, imaginatiue literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science.
Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests whereby you can measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension and speed.
“It shows concretely how the serious work of proper reading may be accomplished and how much it may yield in the way of instruction and delight.”
—The New Yorker
A Touchstone Book
Published by Simon & Schuster
New York
Copyright Notice
Copyright 1940 by Mortimer J. Adler,
renewed 1967 by Mortimer J. Adler
Copyright © 1972 by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
A Touchstone Book
Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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ISBN 0-671-21280-X
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The excerpts from the biographies of Charles Darwin and J. S. Mill are reprinted from Great Books of the Western World, by permission of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
eBook Version Notes
v1.0 July 2006 – Desktop & PocketPC .lit
Scan, conversion, and proofing.
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Page 44