Customer Reviews

A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books

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As a recently returned veteran in the spring of 1971 I was desperate to make some money. So I took a job with Britannica selling "Great Books of the Western World" door to door. I lasted about two weeks. One guy I talked with didn't want to buy the set because the books didn't include pictures. An older gentleman with every encyclopedia ever printed on his shelves balked at the set's colors. Another woman, however, who seemed very interested in the content of the books, backed off because she didn't like the small print. She also had some things to say about the translation being used in the sample book in my presentation. I quit Great Books and got a job driving an ice cream truck that summer - made a lot more money.

Some years later, now an educator myself, I was in a used book store and saw a set of Great Books, along with 21 yearbooks and a set of introductory lesson plans for the bargain price of $150. I bought them and much to my wife's horror unpacked them in our small study and put them up on our bookshelves. About a year later she made me take them to work, where they adorn my office. I've read a couple of the volumes cover to cover, browsed through many others. But that woman in 1971 was right; some of the translations are terrible, and now at age 60, I agree with her that the print is too small.

Alex Beam's book "A Great Idea at the Time" took me on a nice whirlwind tour of the making and marketing of the GBWW. The story includes dynamic characters like Robert Hutchins, boy wonder/genius who as President of the University of Chicago made the 'great books' curriculum a national phenomenon. Hutchins had a populist approach to education and brought in top notch minds to teach the great works to America's future. Along with Hutchins is Mortimer Adler - another brilliant young mind who co-taught the great books courses. Adler wrote more than 60 books, including one called "Aristotle for Everybody." Anyone who truly believes that "everybody' should read Aristotle has to be a populist thinker.

Beam doesn't try (thankfully) to get too philosophical about the campaign to popularize some of the western world's most difficult philosophical, political, and historical writings (ever try to read Hegel? Gibbon? never mind the works of Lavoisier). He states the obvious - there are many works in the original 54 volune set that are unreadable/shouldn't be read, and Adler & Co. used antiquated translations of other works to avoid paying out commissions to translators. I have read several translations of Aeschylus's Oresteia Trilogy (I have taught it to high school kids in Boston) and G.M. Cookson's has to be the the least readable. Beam merely acknowledges this weakness (Achilles Heel perhaps?) of the GBWW.

In today's dumbed down culture, writing any kind of a book about the so-called "Great Books" is a step forward. Beam may poke a bit of fun at the presumptuousness and the snake oil aspects of the marketing of the books, but there is no question where his sympathies lie with regard to the importance of treating education as a lifelong pursuit.

Toward the end of the book, Beam lists off some people and programs that take some form of 'great books' approach to education. While the Britannica set itself doesn't sell much anymore, the idea still flourishes. As for me, I now work in an educational program for veterans, and in one writing class our students (ages range from early 20s to late 60s) read and write about many of the classics Hutchins and Adler taught all those years ago. I was once looking over some essays on Plato's Allegory of the Cave and asked the instructor how he got the students so excited about readings that most would consider so difficult. His response to me was "they don't know it's supposed to be hard." I think Hutchins and Adler would have liked that.

This is a journalist's report on the follies of the Great Books idea. The two main characters in this tale turn out to be villains -- Mortimer Adler (New York Jew turned Chicago Episcopalian), and Robert M. Hutchins (Yale dean turned Chicago academic huckster). Beam's indictment is entertaining, judicious, and effective.

But alas, the book is not fully satisfactory. As it happens, the Great Book idea had been analyzed and criticized by the towering American philosopher John Dewey, and also by his student Sydney Hook. I suspected that something was amiss when I failed to find Hook's name in the index. That suspicion grew stronger when I read Beam's guileless description of his background in Dewey: "My knowledge of John Dewey comes from Jay Martin's ... 'The Education of John Dewey,' and from ... Menand's "The Metaphysical Club.'" In short, Beam has read about Dewey but not the important books and articles by Dewey. So it is not surprising to find that he lacks anything but a superficial background in the scholarly discussions of educational policy; we never learn in this book (more than superficially) just why Dewey and Hook, and others, sounded the early alarms against Great Books.

On the other hand, Beam is very good in some of his on-the-ground reporting. His visit to St. John's college (chapter Ten) and his attendance at a Great Books weekend (chapter Eleven) are both excellently reported and add substantially to our understanding of what remains of the Great Book movement.

The quality of the black-and-white photos is atrocious. The fault for this, obviously, lies with the publisher rather than with the author.

I bought this book because I've been teaching the Great Books on the college level for ten years...I sold it the day after I read it...this book is bad...real bad...why? Simple - some topics are just too grand for some writers...the author is way in over his head on this topic...he speaks about the Great Books series the same way an ignorant college freshman would speak about the first class that asks him to read something more than six pages long and written above an eighth grade level...I am genuinely embarrassed for the writer and publishing company...his flippant, glib, and arrogant dismissal of weighty ideas and attempts to better a society are dismissed the way all small people dismiss things greater than themselves...by the way, the author puts forth no ideas or agendas whatsoever to better society...do yourself a favor and read a great book and not a terrible book about the Great Books

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

Beam performs a tactical blunder, in addition to weak, indeed distasteful, methodology. The primary audience for his work is people who have been involved with the GB movement, many still being enriched by it. People outside the movement will yawn.

The GB movement is not about Hutchins, Adler, et.al. It is about the colossal thinkers who need to be understood more than ever. And by calling attention to it, I rather think it will grow because of Beam's attack.

I would respect Beam more if he had written of the good along with the bad, and ugly. Indeed, a book that only praised the GB movement would be equally unwelcome. But cheeky, sound-bite slams and put-downs are for sit-coms, not books about a serious educational movement that has done more good than bad, and continues to do so, even if handicapped.

Much of the failure of the GB movement lies in inexorable trends of twentieth century society, pragmatism, technology, and entertainment. Try getting an 18 year-old XBox junkie freshman to read a great book, by any author, in any translation, with notes, even with illustrations, with whatever. (Xbox Inferno release in 2010, maybe they'll read Dante now). It is hard and I know it. But these dumb-down trends are all the more reason why people need to interact with voices from the past: so they won't be dumb-struck stupid and ignorant of the ideological forces that play them like a flute. Our democratic republic really needs more people who can think critically about rhetoric and the history of ideas, not just technicians, God bless them.

The titles in the GB sets enthrall and educate readers, both before and after the attempt of Hutchins and Adler to popularize and capitalize upon them. Perhaps some of the GB movement was misguided, but much good has come from it. I have owned the '52, and now the '94 edition. Ok, the sets are flawed, too Dead White Man syndrome, too ambitious, too tiny type, bad translations. Whatever. It's a starting point, not an end. But, I have never seen such lively and deep thinking about an entire worldview as when the Republic is read and discussed by a group. That's priceless, regardless of your gender, age, or ethnicity.

Recent decades have seen a vigorous debate in academic circles and society at-large over the relevance of the Western Canon and the "dead white males" who dominated it. In "A Great Idea at the Time," Alex Beam takes us back to an era when the value of the great books was unquestioned. In fact, in post-World War II America, they became a popular phenomenon for a while when a group of scholars at the University of Chicago selected works for a 54-volume Great Books set published and marketed by Encyclopedia Britannica. Great Books discussion groups sprang up from coast to coast. It seemed as if the United States was on the verge of a new era of enlightenment.

Not quite. In this lively, breezy account, Bream introduces us to some of the dominant personalities behind the Great Books phenomenon, including U of C President Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, the everyman's philosopher. We learn that the two-volume "syntopicon" (an index of 102 "great ideas" examined in the works), Adler's brainchild, proved to be so labor-intensive and expensive to produce it almost bankrupted the project. Beam also recounts the failure of the initial marketing efforts, revealing that the Great Books only took off when Britannica's door-to-door salesmen resorted to deceptive practices that twice brought the wrath of the Federal Trade Commission down on the Britannica organization. Beam explores the decline of the Great Books phenomenon as well, and takes us to places where their influence remains: St. John's College in Annapolis, where the books make up the entire four-year curriculum; and to the dwindling remnants of the Great Books discussion groups, where (mostly) aging enthusiasts still seek enlightenment in these ancient pages. Beam's narrative, while witty and engaging, is buttressed by solid reporting and research. Recommended.--William C. Hall

Beam wrote a book about the history of the Great Books concept and specifically the set of Great Books promoted by Hutchins and Alder from the University of Chicago. I found the book unimpressive.

What is Beam's point in this meandering book? Is it a history of the Great Books or a critical commentary on the idea and movement?


Beam establishes no credibility with the reader, yet offers childish critiques and name calling, particularly of Adler: "brilliant, Hobbit-like sidekick, Mortimer Alder" (2); "William Benton, ad man and hustler extraordinaire" (2); "watching his [Adler's] endless, self-promotional television appearances was a nightmare for which I am trying to awake" (5); "low-born Adler"; "Adler, a troll next to the godlike Hutchins" (25). Is there a hidden fight between Beam and Adler? What is the point of this silliness?


Are readers to be impressed with anecdotes and gossip uncovered in working papers and interviews? Do they help the argument or discussion at all? Adler called Aspen Institute attendees business "bozos" (132). "A notorious philanderer, he [Adler] divorced his first wife" (32) . Later, Beam writes about an incident where someone recalled that "Adler was hitting on my mother" (142).


Yes, the sales methods of the Great Books were misplaced (selling culture books like crest toothpaste with door-to-door reps who deployed sleazy sales methods, receiving a reprimanded by the FTC). Beam and all of us can feel good, I guess, that these highly educated men from University of Chicago made this mistake.


What about people who said books had a big impact on their lives? He mentions numerous people including actor Julie Adams (67), Pilot Thomas Hyand (143), plumber David Call (146), Professor Montas (162), and Eva Braum. What is Beam's view here? Are these people blind worshipers in the cult of GB? Is their praise of the GB genuine and well placed? Beam gives us no answer (but thankfully he has fortunately dropped the snide personal commentary by this point in the book).


Stunningly, despite his obvious contempt for Adler and the Great Books, Beam admits that he got some enjoyment from the books. "Reading them [set of readings] en group turned out to be fun, and also hard (183). "How was this intellectual experience? - fantastic" [Beam ponders after attending a seminar] (185) . He writes "My first Great Books experience turns out to be one of my best" (185), and he enjoyed Epictetus's Handbook --"I fell in love with the gnarly-legged Stoic" (196).


Beam redeems himself a bit when he leaves his mindless commentary aside and reports historical facts from St. John's, University of Chicago, and seminars. (At least he attended a St. John class, a GB seminar and a GB weekend retreats, before writing the book.)


But, in the end, what IS his point? Does Beam even have a point of view? Does he agree or disagree with the educational premise? Is this a history book or commentary? Were the GB a good idea that was poorly packaged, marketed and sold; or are the GB a bad idea whose converts should be scorned? The sarcastic Beam does not share any view on this, presumably because he is unable to define and defend his point of view.

No one will ever mistake this book for a great, good, or even mildly interesting book.

This is a horrible book. The main problem is that the book is utterly lacking in the key ingredient to writing a history book: RESEARCH. The main sources upon which the author relies are a couple biographies of Hutchins and Adler, and a few articles from magazines. That's it. There is nothing new in this book that hasn't already been published elsewhere. The author shows no evidence of conducting original research at the archives at the University of Chicago, or any where else. The book is gossipy, and it reads as if it is an article is "US Weekly," or "People Magazine." The author attempts to be cute and funny and makes up silly names for the people he describes and in doing so, he demeans his own credibility. It is obvious from the first few pages that the author lacks an understanding of what the whole Great Books movement was all about, and this lack of understanding makes his inquiry sophomoric and petty. The author needs to go back to "English 101" and figure out how to write a decent research paper. I am amazed that any publisher agreed to print this book; obviously the person making that decision had a few Martini's that afternoon! This is a failed, silly and laughably trite waste of paper. Don't bother buying it now: it will end up in the ".99 cents" bin at your local used bookstore soon enough.

Alex Beam's topic is a fascinating one, the efforts of Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler to return American university education to a classical core curriculum (the liberal arts) and away from the carnival of electives and vocational training that has replaced it, sadly leaving contemporary students to our day with little in common except perhaps a shared grievance over difficulty in on-campus parking.

The principal shortcoming of Beam's presentation is its merely journalistic focus. Beam seems wise only in his own generation, to whose biases he grants the authority of a quasi absolute - hence, for example, his ever too quick concern when he examines any curriculum over the number of women or people of color it includes. Great books for him are less important than the race, gender, or ethnicity of their authors. As a corrective to Beam's unreflective "Now-ism," I mention what Saul Bellow, who I believe it was, asked a Beam-like multicultural dogmatist long ago, "Where is the "King Lear" from Tierra del Fuego?"

Beam adequately documents the failures of the missions of Hutchins and Adler - both men, as he notes, acknowledged their lack of success. But he's content to rest too much of his case on arguments ad hominem, pointing out the inconsistencies of the two in their private lives when set against their high-minded, professed ideals. His procedure here is no more sophisticated than that of Delia Bacon in the 19th century who decided that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because in the plays chastity for both sexes is the norm, whereas the historical Shakespeare had impregnated Anne Hathaway some months before their wedding!

Beam has a marginal focus. As he concedes, he's less interested in deeply reading great texts that might disturb his complacent contemporaneity than in hearing or relaying personal anecdotes that may occur during the last few minutes of Great Books Discussion Groups. It was Henry James who criticized the journalism of his day for being smugly wise though it was no deeper than "criticism of the moment, at the moment." Unfortunately, modern journalist Alex Beam's take on these ever central education issues is similarly blighted.

I was interested to read the history of the creation of the Great Books series -- its genesis and the personalities behind the idea. The author capably handled this part of the book and the story he wanted to tell.

I was so much less impressed with the author's half-baked analysis or study of the place of the Great Books in twentieth-century American society, and the series' lasting (or not?) impact on education and literacy. The book's interesting first third is really marred by a contradictory, repetitive, and lazily written later two-thirds, in my opinion.