View source for How to Read a Book

{{short description|1940 book by Mortimer J. Adler}}
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'''''How to Read a Book''''' is a book by the American [[philosopher]] [[Mortimer J. Adler]]. Originally published in 1940,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blackmur |first1=R.P. |title=Anterior and Posterior Conviction |journal=The Kenyon Review |date=1940 |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=353-57 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/4332181}}</ref> it was heavily revised for a 1972 edition, co-authored by Adler with editor [[Charles Van Doren]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=McGowan |first1=William F. |title=Too Good to Miss |journal=The English Journal |date=1982 |volume=71 |issue=5 |pages=79-80 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/816208}}</ref> The 1972 revision gives guidelines for critically reading good and great books of any tradition. In addition, it deals with genres (including, but not limited to, [[poetry]], [[history]], [[science]], and [[fiction]]), as well as inspectional and [[wikt:syntopical|syntopical]] reading.

==Overview of the 1972 edition==
''How to Read a Book'' is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters.

===Part 1: The Dimensions of Reading===
Here, Adler sets forth his method for reading a non-fiction book in order to gain understanding. He claims that three distinct approaches, or readings, must all be made in order to get the most possible out of a book, but that performing these three levels of readings does not necessarily mean reading the book three times, as the experienced reader will be able to do all three in the course of reading the book just once. Adler names the readings "structural", "interpretative", and "critical", in that order.

''Structural stage'': The first stage of analytical reading is concerned with understanding the structure and purpose of the book. It begins with determining the basic topic and type of the book being read, so as to better anticipate the contents and comprehend the book from the very beginning. Adler says that the reader must distinguish between practical and theoretical books, as well as determining the field of study that the book addresses. Further, Adler says that the reader must note any divisions in the book, and that these are not restricted to the divisions laid out in the table of contents. Lastly, the reader must find out what problems the author is trying to solve.

''Interpretive stage'': The second stage of analytical reading involves constructing the author's arguments. This first requires the reader to note and understand any special phrases and terms that the author uses. Once that is done, Adler says that the reader should find and work to understand each proposition that the author advances, as well as the author's support for those propositions.

''Critical stage'': In the third stage of analytical reading, Adler directs the reader to critique the book. He asserts that upon understanding the author's propositions and arguments, the reader has been elevated to the author's level of understanding and is now able (and obligated) to judge the book's merit and accuracy. Adler advocates judging books based on the soundness of their arguments. Adler says that one may not [[intellectual honesty|disagree]] with an argument unless one can find fault in its reasoning, facts, or premises, though one is free to dislike it in any case.

===Part 2: The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading===
Adler explains for whom the book is intended, defines different classes of reading, and tells which classes will be addressed. He also makes a brief argument favoring the [[Great Books]], and explains his reasons for writing ''How to Read a Book''.

There are three types of knowledge: practical, informational, and comprehensive. He discusses the methods of acquiring knowledge, concluding that 1. practical knowledge, though teachable, cannot be truly mastered without experience, 2. that only informational knowledge can be gained by one whose understanding equals the author's, and 3. that comprehension (insight) is best learned from the person who first achieved said understanding – an "original communication" with the source of understanding.

The idea that communication directly from those who first discovered an idea is the best way of gaining understanding is Adler's argument for reading the Great Books; that any book that does not represent original communication is inferior, as a source, to the original, and that any teacher, save those who discovered the subject he or she teaches, is inferior to the Great Books as a source of comprehension.

Adler spends a good deal of this first section explaining why he was compelled to write this book. He asserts that very few people can read a book for understanding, but that he believes that most are capable of it, given the right instruction and the will to do so. It is his intent to provide that instruction. He takes time to tell the reader about how he believes that the educational system has failed to teach students the art of reading well, up to and including undergraduate, university-level institutions. He concludes that, due to these shortcomings in formal education, it falls upon individuals to cultivate these abilities in themselves. Throughout this section, he relates anecdotes and summaries of his experience in education as support for these assertions.

===Part 3: Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter===
In this part, Adler briefly discusses the differences in approaching various kinds of literature and suggests reading several other books. He explains a method of approaching the Great Books – read the books that influenced a given author prior to reading works by that author – and gives several examples of that method.

===Part 4: The Ultimate Goals of Reading===
The last part of the book covers the fourth level of reading: syntopical reading. At this stage, the reader broadens and deepens his or her knowledge on a given subject{{snd}}e.g., love, war, particle physics, etc.{{snd}}by reading several books on that subject. In the final pages of this part, the author expounds on the philosophical benefits of reading: "growth of the mind", fuller experience as a conscious being...

==Reading list (1972 edition)==
{{See also|Great Books of the Western World}}
Appendix A in the 1972 edition provided the following recommended reading list:
# [[Homer]] – ''[[Iliad]]'', ''[[Odyssey]]''
# The [[Old Testament]]
# [[Aeschylus]] – Tragedies
# [[Sophocles]] – Tragedies
# [[Herodotus]] – ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]''
# [[Euripides]] – Tragedies
# [[Thucydides]] – ''[[History of the Peloponnesian War]]''
# [[Hippocrates]] – Medical Writings
# [[Aristophanes]] – Comedies
# [[Plato]] – Dialogues
# [[Aristotle]] – Works
# [[Epicurus]] – ''Letter to Herodotus''; ''Letter to Menoecus''
# [[Euclid]] – ''[[Euclid's Elements|Elements]]''
# [[Archimedes]] – Works
# [[Apollonius of Perga]] – ''[[Apollonius of Perga#Conics|Conic Sections]]''
# [[Cicero]] – Works
# [[Lucretius]] – ''[[On the Nature of Things]]''
# [[Virgil]] – Works
# [[Horace]] – Works
# [[Livy]] – ''[[Ab Urbe Condita Libri|History of Rome]]''
# [[Ovid]] – Works
# [[Plutarch]] – ''[[Parallel Lives]]''; ''[[Moralia]]''
# [[Tacitus]] – ''[[Histories (Tacitus)|Histories]]''; ''[[Annals (Tacitus)|Annals]]''; ''[[Agricola (book)|Agricola]]''; ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]''
# [[Nicomachus of Gerasa]] – ''[[Introduction to Arithmetic]]''
# [[Epictetus]] – ''[[Discourses of Epictetus|Discourses]]''; ''[[Enchiridion of Epictetus|Encheiridion]]''
# [[Ptolemy]] – ''[[Almagest]]''
# [[Lucian]] – Works
# [[Marcus Aurelius]] – ''[[Meditations]]''
# [[Galen]] – ''On the Natural Faculties''
# The [[New Testament]]
# [[Plotinus]] – ''[[Enneads|The Enneads]]''
# [[Augustine of Hippo|St. Augustine]] – "On the Teachers"; ''[[Confessions (St. Augustine)|Confessions]]''; ''[[City of God (book)|City of God]]''; ''[[On Christian Doctrine]]''
# ''[[The Song of Roland]]''
# The ''[[Nibelungenlied]]''
# [[Njáls saga|''The Saga of Burnt Njál'']]
# [[St. Thomas Aquinas]] – ''[[Summa Theologica]]''
# [[Dante Alighieri]] – ''[[The Divine Comedy]]''; ''[[La Vita Nuova|The New Life]]''; ''[[De Monarchia|On Monarchy]]''
# [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] – ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]''; ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''
# [[Leonardo da Vinci]] – Notebooks
# [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] – ''[[The Prince]]''; ''[[Discourses on Livy|Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy]]''
# [[Desiderius Erasmus]] – ''[[In Praise of Folly|The Praise of Folly]]''
# [[Nicolaus Copernicus]] – ''[[On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres]]''
# [[Thomas More]] – ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]''
# [[Martin Luther]] – Table Talk; Three Treatises
# [[François Rabelais]] – ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel]]''
# [[John Calvin]] – ''[[Institutes of the Christian Religion]]''
# [[Michel de Montaigne]] – ''[[Essays (Montaigne)|Essays]]''
# [[William Gilbert (astronomer)|William Gilbert]] – ''[[De Magnete|On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies]]''
# [[Miguel de Cervantes]] – ''[[Don Quixote]]''
# [[Edmund Spenser]] – ''[[Prothalamion]]''; ''[[The Faerie Queene]]''
# [[Francis Bacon]] – ''[[Essays (Francis Bacon)|Essays]]''; ''Advancement of Learning''; ''[[Novum Organum]]'', ''[[New Atlantis]]''
# [[William Shakespeare]] – ''[[Complete Works of Shakespeare|Poetry and Plays]]''
# [[Galileo Galilei]] – ''[[Sidereus Nuncius|Starry Messenger]]''; ''[[Two New Sciences|Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences]]''
# [[Johannes Kepler]] – ''[[Epitome of Copernican Astronomy]]''; ''[[Harmonices Mundi|Concerning the Harmonies of the World]]''
# [[William Harvey]] – ''[[On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals]]''; ''On the Circulation of the Blood''; ''On the Generation of Animals''
# [[Thomas Hobbes]] – ''[[Leviathan (Hobbes book)|Leviathan]]''
# [[René Descartes]] – ''[[Rules for the Direction of the Mind]]''; ''[[Discourse on the Method]]''; ''[[La Géométrie|Geometry]]''; ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]''
# [[John Milton]] – Works
# [[Molière]] – Comedies
# [[Blaise Pascal]] – ''[[Provincial Letters|The Provincial Letters]]''; ''[[Pensees]]''; Scientific Treatises
# [[Christiaan Huygens]] – ''[[Treatise on Light]]''
# [[Benedict de Spinoza]] – ''[[Ethics (Spinoza)|Ethics]]''
# [[John Locke]] – ''[[A Letter Concerning Toleration|Letter Concerning Toleration]]''; ''[[Two Treatises of Government|Of Civil Government]]''; ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding|Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]''; ''[[Some Thoughts Concerning Education|Thoughts Concerning Education]]''
# [[Jean Baptiste Racine]] – Tragedies
# [[Isaac Newton]] – ''[[Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]]''; ''[[Opticks|Optics]]''
# [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] – ''[[Discourse on Metaphysics (book)|Discourse on Metaphysics]]''; ''[[New Essays on Human Understanding|New Essays Concerning Human Understanding]]''; ''[[Monadologie|Monadology]]''
# [[Daniel Defoe]] – ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]''
# [[Jonathan Swift]] – ''[[A Tale of a Tub]]''; ''[[A Journal to Stella|Journal to Stella]]''; ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]''; ''[[A Modest Proposal]]''
# [[William Congreve]] – ''[[The Way of the World]]''
# [[George Berkeley]] – ''[[A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge|Principles of Human Knowledge]]''
# [[Alexander Pope]] – ''[[An Essay on Criticism|Essay on Criticism]]''; ''[[The Rape of the Lock|Rape of the Lock]]''; ''[[An Essay on Man|Essay on Man]]''
# [[Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu]] – ''[[Persian Letters]]''; ''[[The Spirit of the Laws|Spirit of Laws]]''
# [[Voltaire]] – ''[[Letters on the English]]''; ''[[Candide]]''; ''[[Philosophical Dictionary]]''; ''[[Micromegas]]''
# [[Henry Fielding]] – ''[[Joseph Andrews]]''; ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]''
# [[Samuel Johnson]] – ''[[The Vanity of Human Wishes]]''; ''[[Johnson's Dictionary|Dictionary]]''; ''[[Rasselas]]''; ''[[The Lives of the Poets]]''
# [[David Hume]] – ''[[A Traste of Human Nature|Treatise on Human Nature]]''; ''Essays Moral and Political''; ''[[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]''
# [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] – ''[[Discourse on Inequality|On the Origin of Inequality]]''; On the Political Economy; ''Emile – or, On Education'', ''[[The Social Contract]]''
# [[Laurence Sterne]] – ''[[Tristram Shandy]]''; ''[[A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy]]''
# [[Adam Smith]] – ''[[The Theory of Moral Sentiments]]''; ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]''
# [[Immanuel Kant]] – ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]''; ''[[Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals|Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals]]''; ''[[Critique of Practical Reason]]''; ''The Science of Right''; ''[[Critique of Judgment]]''; ''[[Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch|Perpetual Peace]]''
# [[Edward Gibbon]] – ''[[The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]''; [[Memoirs of My Life and Writings|Autobiography]]
# [[James Boswell]] – Journal; ''[[Life of Samuel Johnson]]'', Ll.D.
# [[Antoine Laurent Lavoisier]] – ''[[Traité Élémentaire de Chimie]]'' (Elements of Chemistry)
# [[Alexander Hamilton]], [[John Jay]], and [[James Madison]] – ''[[Federalist Papers]]''
# [[Jeremy Bentham]] – [[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]; Theory of Fictions
# [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]] – ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]''; ''[[Dichtung und Wahrheit|Poetry and Truth]]''
# [[Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier]] – Analytical Theory of Heat
# [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] – ''[[The Phenomenology of Spirit|Phenomenology of Spirit]]''; ''[[Elements of the Philosophy of Right|Philosophy of Right]]''; ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]''
# [[William Wordsworth]] – Poems
# [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] – Poems; ''[[Biographia Literaria]]''
# [[Jane Austen]] – ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]''; ''[[Emma (novel)|Emma]]''
# [[Carl von Clausewitz]] – ''[[On War]]''
# [[Stendhal]] – ''[[Le rouge et le noir|The Red and the Black]]''; ''[[The Charterhouse of Parma]]''; On Love
# [[George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron|Lord Byron]] – ''[[Don Juan]]''
# [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] – Studies in Pessimism
# [[Michael Faraday]] – [[The Chemical History of a Candle]]; Experimental Researches in Electricity
# [[Charles Lyell]] – ''[[Principles of Geology]]''
# [[Auguste Comte]] – The Positive Philosophy
# [[Honoré de Balzac]] – ''[[Père Goriot]]; [[Eugenie Grandet]]''
# [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
# [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] – ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]''
# [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] – ''[[Democracy in America]]''
# [[John Stuart Mill]] – ''[[A System of Logic]]''; ''[[On Liberty]]''; ''[[Considerations on Representative Government|Representative Government]]''; ''[[Utilitarianism (book)|Utilitarianism]]''; ''[[The Subjection of Women]]''; Autobiography
# [[Charles Darwin]] – ''[[The Origin of Species]]''; ''[[The Descent of Man]]''; ''[[The Autobiography of Charles Darwin|Autobiography]]''
# [[Charles Dickens]] – ''[[Pickwick Papers]]''; ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]''; ''[[Hard Times (novel)|Hard Times]]''
# [[Claude Bernard]] – ''Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine''
# [[Henry David Thoreau]] – ''[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]''; ''[[Walden]]''
# [[Karl Marx]] – ''[[Das Kapital|Capital]]''; ''[[Communist Manifesto]]''
# [[George Eliot]] – ''[[Adam Bede]]''; ''[[Middlemarch]]''
# [[Herman Melville]] – ''[[Moby-Dick]]''; ''[[Billy Budd]]''
# [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] – ''[[Crime and Punishment]]''; ''[[The Idiot (novel)|The Idiot]]''; ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]''
# [[Gustave Flaubert]] – ''[[Madame Bovary]]''; [[Three Tales (Flaubert)|Three Stories]]
# [[Henrik Ibsen]] – Plays
# [[Leo Tolstoy]] – ''[[War and Peace]]''; ''[[Anna Karenina]]''; ''[[What is Art?]]''; [[Twenty-Three Tales]]
# [[Mark Twain]] – ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''; ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]''
# [[William James]] – ''[[The Principles of Psychology]]''; ''[[The Varieties of Religious Experience]]''; ''Pragmatism''; ''[[Essays in Radical Empiricism]]''
# [[Henry James]] – ''[[The American (novel)|The American]]''; ''[[The Ambassadors]]''
# [[Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]] – ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]''; ''[[Beyond Good and Evil]]''; ''[[On the Genealogy of Morality|The Genealogy of Morals]]''; ''[[The Will to Power (manuscript)|The Will to Power]]''
# [[Jules Henri Poincaré]] – ''[[Science and Hypothesis]]''; ''Science and Method''
# [[Sigmund Freud]] – ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]''; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; ''[[Civilization and Its Discontents]]''; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
# [[George Bernard Shaw]] – Plays and Prefaces
# [[Max Planck]] – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
# [[Henri Bergson]] – ''[[Time and Free Will]]''; ''[[Matter and Memory]]''; ''[[Creative Evolution (book)|Creative Evolution]]''; ''The Two Sources of Morality and Religion''
# [[John Dewey]] – ''[[How We Think]]''; ''[[Democracy and Education]]''; ''Experience and Nature''; ''Logic: the Theory of Inquiry''
# [[Alfred North Whitehead]] – ''An Introduction to Mathematics''; ''Science and the Modern World''; ''The Aims of Education and Other Essays''; ''Adventures of Ideas''
# [[George Santayana]] – ''[[The Life of Reason]]''; ''[[Skepticism and Animal Faith]]''; Persons and Places
# [[Vladimir Lenin]] – ''[[State and Revolution|The State and Revolution]]''
# [[Marcel Proust]] – ''[[Remembrance of Things Past]]''
# [[Bertrand Russell]] – ''[[The Problems of Philosophy]]''; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
# [[Thomas Mann]] – ''[[The Magic Mountain]]''; ''[[Joseph and His Brothers]]''
# [[Albert Einstein]] – [[The Meaning of Relativity]]; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; ''[[The Evolution of Physics]]''
# [[James Joyce]] – 'The Dead' in ''[[Dubliners]]''; [[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]; ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''
# [[Jacques Maritain]] – ''[[Art and Scholasticism]]''; ''[[The Degrees of Knowledge]]''; ''The Rights of Man and Natural Law''; ''True Humanism''
# [[Franz Kafka]] – ''[[The Trial]]''; ''[[The Castle (novel)|The Castle]]''
# [[Arnold J. Toynbee]] – ''[[A Study of History]]''; ''Civilization on Trial''
# [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] – ''[[Nausea (novel)|Nausea]]''; ''[[No Exit]]''; ''[[Being and Nothingness]]''
# [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] – ''[[The First Circle]]''; ''[[The Cancer Ward]]''

==Publication data==
* Mortimer Adler, [https://archive.org/details/howtoreadabook1940edition ''How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education''], (1940) {{OCLC|822771595}}
** 1967 edition published with subtitle ''A Guide to Reading the Great Books'' {{ISBN|978-0-671-21209-4}} {{OCLC|500166716}}
** 1972 revised edition, coauthor [[Charles Van Doren]], New York: Simon and Schuster. {{ISBN|1-567-31010-9}} {{OCLC|788925161}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==See also==
* ''[[How to Read Literature Like a Professor]]'' {{snd}} A book on literature interpretation
* [[Reading (process)]]

{{Books}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1940 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Alternative education]]
[[Category:Books about books]]
[[Category:Books by Mortimer J. Adler]]
[[Category:English-language non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Great Books]]
[[Category:Simon & Schuster books]]