How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book)

How to Read a Book, originally published in 1940, has become a rare phenomenon, a living classic. It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated.

You are told about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them -- from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading, you learn how to pigeonhole a book, X-ray it, extract the author's message, criticize. You are taught the different reading techniques for reading practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science.

Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests whereby you can measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension and speed.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

How to Read a Book, 2008-11-28
We have recently made an exciting discovery--three years after writing the wonderfully expanded third edition of How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren made a series of thirteen 14-minute videos on the art of reading. The videos were produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica. For reasons unknown, sometime after their original publication, these videos were lost.

When we discovered them and how intrinsically edifying they are, we negotiated an agreement with Encyclopaedia Britannica to be the exclusive worldwide agent to make them available.

For those of you who teach, this is great for the classroom.

I cannot over exaggerate how instructive these programs are--we are so sure that you will agree, if you are not completely satisfied, we will refund your donation.

Please go here to see a clip and learn more:

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Must Read!, 2008-08-26
This book has greatly helped me. I think this should be required reading in any school, be it home or public. I will certainly have my new born read it (well, once she is old enough). Now I have so many more tools available to me while reading. You will not read the same after reading this book. If you apply this book your skill will greatly increase. It has help me love to read!

Daniel Fuller, John Piper's hermeneutics teacher uses this book for his class. He doesn't believe in special hermeneutics but general hermeneutics. You can learn more here: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/1994/ and http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/2006/1625_Where_can_I_learn_more_about_the_Bible_study_method_called_arcing/


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

How to Read a Book, 2008-07-16
A great book on a seemingly obvious subject. Very insightful and a must for any begining researcher.


5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Useful, but much longer than necessary, 2008-05-24
This is a review of "How to read a book" by Adler (May 2008).

This book was recommended to me by several authors I liked so aftr reading the positive reviews I decided to buy it. I can see that some see this book as 'timeless' and I think that is true, but I have also some criticism.

Pros:
- I see the main value of the book in teaching you the ability to structure your reading process/effort so that you get maximum value out of reading any book. For experienced readers (age 35+) this may be already a kind of automatism, but for less experienced (either in terms of #years or in terms of type of topic) this is probably not the case.
- I liked in particular the fact that the author not only discusses how to read book with emphasis on analytic content (rational / scientific / factual type of books), but also other kinds of literature.

Cons:
- The book is way too long. The author takes many pages to make a point that can also be done in 30% of the space. Fortunately, the author provides summaries of his 'rules' and tips. Nevertheless, an author who writes about how to efficiently read a book, should be brief himself! Just as you may expect from a dedicated reader that he reads efficiently, you may expect from a good writer he thinks through how to make a point, and be brief in the end, not forcing a reader to read many superfluous pages. Adler failed here. This makes me downgrade my rating.

Bottom line: If possible get it from a library; I would not recommend buying this book if you are in the second half of your 'reading life'.


5 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

rip-off, 2008-05-20
i bought this book to learn how to read, but then i found out i couldn't read it. :(

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