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Susan Wise Bauer

The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had Updated and Expanded Edition

by Susan Wise Bauer (Author)

4.6 335 ratings

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

Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise.

Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from the earliest works of Hippocrates to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres―fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science―accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter―ranging from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking―preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.

The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there’s no reason you can’t read and enjoy Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the “Great Books” without a guide and a plan. Bauer will show you how to allocate time to reading on a regular basis; how to master difficult arguments; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre―what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?―and also between genres.

In her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children; that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. Followed carefully, her advice will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

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ISBN-10

039308096X
ISBN-13

978-0393080964
Edition

Updated and Expanded
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

November 16, 2015
Language

English
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Print length

512 pages
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Customer reviews

335 global ratings

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Customers find the book easy to understand and well-written. They also say it provides a very good framework for studying and appreciating literature of all kinds.

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Comprehensibility Writing style Story

20 customers mention "Comprehensibility"20 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very comprehensible, challenging, and thorough. They also say it inspires and gives them the how-to.

"Ms. Bauer certainly knows the material and she has designed a very thorough and intensive study program for those that want to obtain a classical..." Read more

"...She writes well and is easy to understand. She does a good job explaining how you can develope a love of reading and improving your reading skills." Read more

"...The author's approach is very straight forward, but her writing is anything but dry...." Read more

"Overall I think the book is well written, with a very systematic approach to reading and absorbing the Great Books...." Read more

10 customers mention "Writing style"10 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style well-written, erudite, witty, and engaging. They also say the author is a great historian.

"...She writes well and is easy to understand. She does a good job explaining how you can develope a love of reading and improving your reading skills." Read more

"...The author's approach is very straight forward, but her writing is anything but dry...." Read more

"Overall I think the book is well written, with a very systematic approach to reading and absorbing the Great Books...." Read more

"...One of the things I discovered was that I love the way she writes and she could probably make grocery lists interesting...." Read more

3 customers mention "Story"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the story engaging.

"...The mental stimulation is excellent for someone my age. I expect it will continue its usefulness for as many years as I have ahead." Read more

"...These books have brought me great joy. As I read both books they were familiar, so perhaps I had already read them in school...." Read more

"Erudite, witty and engaging: I wish I'd had the benefit of this book when I was in college!..." Read more

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Where's Godot?

Great Guide for Self-Education

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2020

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Ms. Bauer certainly knows the material and she has designed a very thorough and intensive study program for those that want to obtain a classical education without spending the money and time to obtain one through a traditional brick-and-mortar graduate program. To be successful in the program that she lays out you must have a reading partner who is willing to do all the reading, journal his or her reactions, answer all the questions for each book, and meet with you to discuss. It's a commitment for you and your study buddy, but one that is well worth it. My only complaint is that Ms. Bauer details the study plan in several places throughout the introductory chapters and each time there are either new elements or some that seem to conflict with what she stated previously. I found it helpful to type up a document that combined and resolved some of the aforementioned issues and that listed the steps in an easy to follow format. That being said, I would still recommend this book to anyone that is serious about obtaining a classical education.

35 people found this helpful

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David J.

Wonderful book

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2022

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Susan Wise Baur is a great author and historian and I'm glad I can add this book to my library. I already have her other books on ancient history so this was great addition to my collection. She writes well and is easy to understand. She does a good job explaining how you can develope a love of reading and improving your reading skills.

3 people found this helpful

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Krusse

It's never too late.

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2016

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The Well-Educated Mind does a wonderful job of explaining how to go about reading with a purpose in an approachable and non-pretentious way. And by books, I mean not just any books, but some of The Great Books (key impressive music); which to some like myself, may be slightly intimidating if you are a decade (or two) out of university. (And never got around to reading any of these books while in said university). The author's approach is very straight forward, but her writing is anything but dry. She gives practical ways to break the books (which are addressed by genre in different chapters) into digestible chunks which make tackling these works perhaps more approachable than they are without a class syllabus, facilitator, or general plan. I am happy to have found this book and would definitely recommend for anyone looking to expand their horizons and library with some of the "greats". It's never too late to read!

49 people found this helpful

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brian

Well presented but some strange decisions

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2022

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Overall I think the book is well written, with a very systematic approach to reading and absorbing the Great Books. Some reviewers have said the approach takes the fun out of reading, but I think if you're going to put in the time and effort to read these works you might as well get maximum reward for it. They're not meant to be breezy reads, they're meant to be enriching and rewarding, and I think the author's approach helps in that regard.

The one decision she made that I find baffling is to compile a list that includes many of the usual categories, but omits perhaps the most important, philosophy/political theory/theology. Instead she includes autobiography, which almost nobody else does. And she uses her history category and this odd autobiography category to pretty much include names that she knows need to be on any list but really don't belong where she put them. So Plato and Aristotle, the foundational philosophers, are hidden in History and, really bizarrely, Literature. And most of the great philosophers are just ignored, like Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, or relegated to weird sections, like Descartes or Marx. In their place because she has to fill out the autobiography section with pretty random names like Margery Kempe, Charles Colson and Richard Rodriguez (and many more). The Bible and Koran are also not included, which are pretty foundational to Western civilization.

I know great books list debates often revolve around which novels to include or exclude, but with many thousands of important works of fiction to choose from, these sorts of disagreements are bound to arise. I'm trying to point out something bigger. By excluding most of the great thinkers of the West, I think she's rendered the reading suggestions unworkable. I'd still buy the book for the methodology, but use a Great Books list from Bloom, Adler or the St. John's College reading list instead.

54 people found this helpful

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JRW

My Goto Reference To Guide My Journey

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2020

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I dropped out of high school at age 16. I got my GED when I was 43. I am now 76. This was perfectly titled and written for me. I retired from technology where reading was necessary just to function. Now I can invest that time reading all the classics I missed. I also have the author's book, The Well Educated Mind. The book that is being reviewed has been my guide for setting priorities on my reading. The mental stimulation is excellent for someone my age. I expect it will continue its usefulness for as many years as I have ahead.

79 people found this helpful

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Charles Mosby

Now I know precisely where my journey begins.

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2021

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I always had this nagging sense of the inadequacy of my traditional classroom education with it's one size fits all sensibilities and robotically-opague agendas. After discovering The Well-Educated Mind, I feel as if I'm starting over in many ways, sort of like being left in a corner of a library to figure it all out on my own. I could not be happier.

13 people found this helpful

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Lizzy

Classical Education How-to

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2017

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I've been out of school for many years now. Many times I have wanted to go back to college and take classes, but I don't think it would be a good decision at this stage in my life. I love this book because it challenges one to educate themselves. It not only inspires, but also gives one the how-to. I can't recommend it enough!

46 people found this helpful

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R. Derby

Thank you Susan Wise Bauer!

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2022

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This book is an incredible roadmap for reading the classics. I look forward to many years of reading pleasure using strategies that Bauer explains in this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Raj Kumar S

Breathtaking overview of the Classics

Reviewed in India on January 26, 2021

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I am kicking myself for not having read Susan Wise Bauer earlier. This single book would have given me a map to navigate the world of the Classics much more fruitfully. While Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is an academic and dry exercise - Bauer's is a delight to read. Great style of writing. She makes us fly gently over the literary landscape swooping down each territory for a cool, refreshing dip or one can say a delightful mouthful before setting off for other lands.

If not humanity, I owe her a debt. Thanks to Bauer for making this such a rewarding book.

Part 1 starts with getting one's tools ready for the journey into the Classics with oractical tips on journaling.

Part 2 gets us involved with the Great Conversation itself - categorising them into six types of literature : as the Novel, the Autobiography, History, Drama, Poetry, Science.

The three levels of reading/learning, the 'trivium' (taste, swallow, digest) are described in detail to work them out in each genre - the grammar stage (finding the facts), logic stage (analayze and evaluate), rhetoric stage (making your own judgment, drawing conclusions).

At the end of each chapter is an annotated list having a brief outline of the book, with advice on the best print edition and translation (and audio, when suitable) available. The recommended list itself is a good guide on what to choose on one's journey and she does not claim that it is either exhaustive or the best.

I am eagerly looking forward to reading her chronological series on History of the World which she humbly does not recommend in her list :-)

Happy reading Folks ! This book would be one treasure in your book collection - to be used well - tasted, swallowed and digested. A strong recommendation for families passing on the reading habit to the next generation.

Andy

An insightful book

Reviewed in Germany on December 8, 2020

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I’ve orded it a few weeks ago and started to read it tonight. I like the book. It‘s very inspiring.

Louis Gilbert

Great

Reviewed in Canada on March 24, 2018

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Great Book

T.E. Jakopo

No better place to start!

Reviewed in Australia on August 28, 2021

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There’s simply no better place to start ones journey if your goal is to truly enter the ‘great conversation’. This is not only a guide on how to read and critique books - but a comprehensive history on the foundations of Western Civilisation and I was blown away by the vastness of information across the fields of Science, History, Fiction etc. 10/10 would recommend!

One person found this helpful

Mary P. Welsh

Classical Education for 21st Century Readers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

I am thoroughly enjoying improving my understanding of great texts that form part of the canon of Western literature. Susan Bauer offers guidance not only on which texts to read, but also how to go about tackling them confidently and purposefully. The following genres are explored - novels, autobiography and memoir, history and politics, drama, poetry and general science - and strategies appropriate to each are proposed.This is a wonderful book. I would not hesitate to recommend it to family and friends. Go on ... give it a go and get the classical education you never had. You'll not regret it, I promise!

10 people found this helpful

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