The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition.

Have you forgotten how to read for pleasure? Are there any novels you've been meaning to read but haven't because they seem too difficult? Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind is a pleasant and encouraging antidote to our age's technology and other distractions.

The Well-Educated Mind, newly expanded and updated to include notable works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from Hippocrates' earliest works to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science—along with detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the conclusion of each chapter—from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking—preview recommended reading and urge readers to find crucial links between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.

The Well-Educated Mind reassures readers who are concerned that they read too slowly or with poor comprehension. There's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets or Jane Eyre if you can grasp a daily newspaper. However, no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a strategy. Bauer will teach you how to set aside time for reading on a regular basis, how to master challenging arguments, how to make personal and literary judgements about what you read, and how to perceive the resonant ties between texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres.

The author presented a road map of classical education for parents seeking to home-school their children in her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind; that book is currently the leading reference for home-schoolers. Bauer adapts the same components and strategies for adult readers who want both fun and self-improvement from their reading time in The Well-Educated Mind. Her counsel, if carefully followed, will revive and increase the pleasure of reading.