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1、 HOW TO READ A BOOK A Guide to Reading the Great Books by Mortimer J. Adler Table of Contents Preface PART I . THE ACTIVITY OF READING CHAPTER ONE To the Average Reader 1 2 3 4 CHAPTER TWO The Reading of Reading 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER THREE Reading is Learning 1 2 3 4 5 6 CHAPTER FOUR Teachers, Dead or A
2、live 1 2 3 4 6 CHAPTER FIVE The Defeat of the Schools 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CHAPTER SIX On Selfhelp 1 2 3 4 PART II . THE RULES CHAPTER SEVEN From Many Rules to One Habit 1 2 3 4 5 6 CHAPTER EIGHT Catching on From the Title 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER NINE Seeing the Skeleton 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 CHAPTER TEN Coming to Ter
3、ms 1 2 3 4 5 6 CHAPTER ELEVEN Whats the Proposition and Why 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 CHAPTER TWELVE The Etiquette of Talking Back 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Things the Reader Can Say 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER FOURTEEN And Still More Rules 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PART III . THE REST OF THE READERS LIFE CHAPTER FIFTEEN The
4、Other half 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Great Books 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Free Minds and Free Men 1 2 3 4 APPENDIX: GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD Imaginative Literature HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE NATURAL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY GATEWAY TO THE GREAT BOOKS IMAGI
5、NATIVE LITERATURE CRITICAL ESSAYS MAN AND SOCIETY NATURAL SCIENCE MATHEMATICS PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS Preface - In this special edition of How to read a Book, I can make clear what was not entirely clear when the book was first published in 1940. Readers of the book knew, though its title did not indic
6、ate this with complete accuracy, that the subject was not how to read any book, but how to read a great book. In 1940 the time was not yet ripe for such a title, with which the book might not have reached the large audience that it did. Today, with hundreds of thousands of American families engaged
7、in reading and discussing the great gooks books that alone require the kind of reading described the situation is much changed. I have therefore added a new subtitle for this edition: A guide to Reading the Great Books. How to Read a Book attempts to inculcate skills that are useful for reading anyt
8、hing. These skills, however, are more than merely usefulthey are necessaryfor the reading of great books, those that are of enduring interest and importance. Although one can read books, magazines, and newspapers of transient interest without these skills, the possession of them enables the reader t
9、o read even the transient with greater speed, precision, and discrimination. The are of reading analytically, interpretively, and critically is indispensable only for the kind of reading by which the mind passes form a state of understanding less to a state of understanding more, and for reading the
10、 few books that are capable of being read with increasing profit over and over again. those few books are the great booksand the rules of reading here set forth are the rules for reading them. The illustrations that I have given to guide the reader in applying the rules all refer to the great books.
11、 When this book was written, it was based on twenty years of experience in reading and discussing the great booksat Columbia University, at the University of Chicago, and St. Johns College in Annapolis, as well as with a number of adult groups. Since then the number of adult groups has multiplied by
12、 the thousands; since then many more colleges and universities, as well as secondary schools all over the country, have introduced courses devoted to reading and discussing the great books, for they have come to be recognized as the core of a liberal and humanistic education. But, though these are a
13、ll advances in American education for which we have good reason to be grateful, the most important educational event since 1940 has been, in my judgment, the publication and distribution by Encyclopedia Britanica, Incorporated, of Great Books of the Western World, which has brought the great books i
14、nto hundreds of thousands of American homes, and into almost every public and school library. To celebrate the fact, this new edition of How to Read a Book carries a new Appendix that lists the contents of Great Books of the Western World; and also, accordingly, a revised version of Chapter Sixteen.
15、 Turn to page 373 and you will find the great books listed there into four main groups: imaginative literature (poetry, fiction, and drama); history and social science; natural science and mathematics; philosophy and theology. Since 1952, when Great Books of the Western World was published, Encyclop
16、edia Britannica has added a companion set of books, consisting of shorter masterpieces in all fields of literature and learning, properly entitled Gateway to the Great Books. You will find the contents of this set also listed in the Appendix, beginning on page 379. The present book is, as its subtitle i
