Readings | (Enrich Your Vocabulary) | Fundamentals List | Adam Kissel

"Read never anything for thee to seem better taught or wiser. Study for mortification of sins and vices for that shall avail thee more than the knowledge of many hard questions."
              Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (English translation 1504)

• Abbott, Andrew, "Futures of the University [of Chicago]," 1996. The best kind of manifesto: one grounded in the facts. Also, data from the Alumni Survey of 1996, showing that the University of Chicago has done an excellent job of preparing undergraduate students for life, with the Core the most significant contribution. Also, a discussion of the data in "Remarks" at Shoreland Hall, Annual Senior Dinner, 14 April 1996, which includes statistically significant data that stepping on the Seal is linked to longer time till graduation.
• Adams, The Education of Henry Adams. Teaches the high society of Boston and London, the Civil War, politics and diplomacy.
• Adkins, Arthur, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values. Very helpful regarding the rhetoric and philosophy of arete.
• Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book.
• Aeschylus, Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenides. The latter is my favorite, with the trial of Orestes. Prometheus Bound; Seven Against Thebes (better than advertised).
• Alter, Robert, The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1989). Good explanation of how to read for fun without turning off your brain. More worthwhile than Adler's.
• Aquinas, selections.
• Aristotle, Rhetoric; Poetics; Categories; Nicomachean Ethics. Secondary Sources (esp. Garver, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character, 1994; Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, 1975).
• Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans. About 800 of the 1200 pages are well worth it, and the Platonism is quite clear. Augustine totally demolishes most every argument that Gibbon later tries to make, which makes Gibbon's snubbing of Augustine understandable but quite reprehensible. Also On Christian Doctrine; Confessions; secondary sources (esp. Preus, Eloquence and Ignorance in Augustine's On the Nature and Origin of the Soul, 1985, the first chapter of which makes very clear A's relationship with rhetoric); Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (1967), a clear, engaging, truly scholarly biography.
• Bacon, Francis, Essays (surprisingly more political than expected)
• Bellow, Saul, Herzog (Oh Ramona!); The Victim.
• Bergman, Joanne B. 1991. Metacognitive Strategies in Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. Ph.D. diss., University of South Florida. - Qualitative research and startling discoveries.
• Berkson, Isaac B., Theories of Americanization: A Critical Study (NY: Columbia, 1920), an amazingly prescient work about assimilation, ethnicity, and the kind of pluralistic democracy everybody is all excited about nowadays. "With Special Reference to the Jewish Group." The best-reasoned exposition of this subject I've read: "Americanization" vs. "Melting Pot" vs. "Federation of Nationalities" vs. "Community" theories of society.
• Berry, Stephen, et al., editors. The Transition from Paper, forthcoming, American Academy of
       Arts and Sciences and a publisher to be named later.
• Berry, Wendell, The Memory of Old Jack (1974). Remarkable insight into an exceedingly old, ambitious, able, but not particularly wise farmer's mind and memories. The funeral scenes at the end are a formalization [you'll see what I mean] of others' memory of Jack. A nice flavor of some themes of Genesis.
• Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind. Excellent, well worth the time, but this book does not explain the cult following Bloom has among some elements on the University of Chicago campus.
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy. Mix of themes from Nicomachean Ethics with good sections on fame, fortune, and free will.
• Booth, Wayne (these items in no particular order)
• "The Idea of a University As Seen by a Rhetorician," 1987 Ryerson Lecture and Intro by Hanna Gray.
• with Colomb and Williams, The Craft of Research. Excellent preparation for great research.
• For the Love of It (1999), in defense of amateur pursuits and aesthetics (esp. regarding chamber music and the cello). (My name is in the acknowledgments and in a footnote, too! woo-hoo!).
• several items relating to Booth's course on Rhetorics of Science and Religion.
• some past and some pre-publication essays of Booth; e.g., "Rhetoric and Religion: Are They Essentially Wedded?" [yes] for a festschrift for David Tracy;; "Three Unfinished Projects" (autobiographical)
• autobiography [in progress].
• Rhetoric of Fiction (best are the first 150 pages and the last 50). Somehow I remember paging through Rhetoric of Irony, but maybe that's because RF also discusses irony.
• with the Boyer Commission, "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities," quite valuable and also short. See: http://www.sunysb.edu/boyerreport.
• The Vocation of a Teacher (1988).
• Booth, Phyllis, and Ann Jernberg, Theraplay, 2^nd ed., MS (1998). Fun becomes a therapy for kids of all ages; often a first goal is to form a secure attachment. (My name is in the acknowledgments! woo-hoo!)
• Boyer, John W., Three Views of Continuity and Change at the University of Chicago (1999). All three views are Boyer's. The first two are solid and only slightly biased; the third does not reach their high standard. Boyer, ed., The Aims of Education, a dozen perspectives on the College of the University of Chicago (Booth, Doniger, Gray, Kass, Mueller, Nicholas, Redfield, Shweder, Smith, Stone, Strier, Weintraub), is one of the best educational projects around.
• Boyle, Robert, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature: Made in an Essay Addressed to a Friend. Also other stuff for Lorraine Daston's course.
• Bucanan, Richard, essays on Wicked Problems in Design and related topics.
• Buckley, Jr., William F., God and Man at Yale (1951). Unfortunately, this book is even more relevant today in many respects. (Fifty years later, today's universities remain all too godless and manless.) Hard question: how should a private university teach the right values?
• Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). The 1789 French Revolution was bad because it replaced an improveable monarchy with a random, anarchic, tyrannical "democracy." A good defense of conservatism in general. Also, Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, a target of Burke's ire.
• Chaucer, "Pardoner's Tale."
• Cicero, Topica; De Inventione; De Oratore: Very useful defense of rhetoric as even more important than mere philosophy. Much convergence with Franklin and Lerner. Not much in the way of specific direction for shaping oratory.
• Comenius (Jan Amos Komenský), Great Didactic (Didactica Magna) with wonderful introduction by M.W. Keatinge; so-called Analytical Didactic (Didaktika Analytická) with Introduction by Vladimir Jelinek (Univ. of Chicago, 1953). Foundations of the modern, Western, educational system for K-12 and beyond.
• Comte, Auguste, introductions to the Positive Philosophy and Positive Polity books.
• Cornford, F. M. Microcosmographia Academica: Being a Guide for the Young Academic Politician (1908, but timeless). Indispensable. There are ways to succeed, if you know how to play.
• Desan, Philippe, ed., engaging [sic] the Humanities at the University of Chicago, rev. ed. (Garamond, 1997). Written as though for undergraduates, though mostly applicable to all. Make sure to read Kass, Hutchins, Redfield, Booth, Strier, Marty, also Graff (because he misses the target, but barely). For a superb example of polite argument on the side of advocacy, read Trumpener (though I disagree, and was surprised by footnote 3; see for yourself). Read Williams if you don't have time for his The Craft of Research (above)--better, read both.
• Dewey, John, Human Nature and Conduct (1922). Morality for Dewey is all about taking good actions and thinking good thoughts in the present, both for their own sake and so as to create a maximally productive and enjoyable future in which more such actions and thoughts can occur.
• Dostoevsky, Feodor, Crime and Punishment.
• Dupré, Louis, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (Yale, 1993). Wide-ranging intellectual history of the West.
• Ellis, John, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities (Yale, 1997). A must-read for those interested in what's happening in the humanities in our universities.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Essays: First and Second Series; "American Scholar"; "Divinity School Address."      glossary | Secondary sources
• Engell, James, The Committed Word: Literature and Public Values (Penn State U, 1999). Superior essays on Giambattista Vico and Robert Lowth, among many other strong essays.
• Erskine, John, "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent," ca. 1915. I've paged through other addresses of his, and they don't reach the standard set by MOBI.
• Euripides, Alcestis, Medea, Heracleidae, Hippolytus, Cyclops, Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen. Don't miss this great tragedian!
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott, This Side of Paradise (1920). College as the most profoundly life-altering education.
• Fitzgerald, Tom D., The Great Brain. Inventive and moving kids' book, well constructed for that audience.
• Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. "The best autobiography in existence," Frank W. Pine. Also, Benjamin Franklin's writings and letters including Poor Richard's Almanack series. Secondary sources on Franklin.
• Gibbon, Edward, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (I stopped after the first thousand pages, which got me through two out of six volumes). The prose is nearly unbeatable; the history is not as impartial as Gibbon claims; in fact, it is blatantly manipulative. Pretty much everybody in the whole empire for the duration fell very far short of Gibbon's ideal philosophic statesman, to say the least. Memoirs (Penguin ed., with intro by Radice)--not as good as Franklin's, by far, but a good read about a world-class scholar.
• Gutmann, Amy, and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (JC423.G925 1996), introduction, Chs. 1-2. Introduction: deliberative democracy vs. our usual ways of democracy. Reciprocity, publicity, and accountability. Liberty and fair opportunity. Very good study of specific issues--esp. life/choice.
• Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Genesis (and secondary sources on Genesis); Exodus, and bits and pieces from all the rest and also the NT. Moral: God always wins. See below, Milton.
• Heller, Joseph, Catch-22. Lots of fun.
• Herodotus, The Persian Wars.
• Hesk, Jon, deserves honorable mention for Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens (2000)for his treatment of Athenian views of things like deception and lying (e.g. Plato on noble lie) and what uses deception (or even noble lie) has for democracy. I breezed through it for the parts I wanted, but it deserves more.
• Hesse, Hermann, If the War Goes On, collection of anti-war writings--a side of Hesse unseen in the novels.
• Homer, Odyssey.
• Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables, unabridged. Don't cheat yourself by reading an abridged version. Amazing story, superb writing (even in translation it soars). The best paragraphs I've seen in literature. Listen to Schumann while you read.
• Hutchins, Robert Maynard, Education for Freedom; The Higher Learning in America; No Friendly Voice; The University of Utopia; The Conflict in Education (lectures which mostly repeat the first four books).  Also, weak challenges to RMH by Dewey and by Gideonse (Higher Learning in a Democracy, 1937).
• Isocrates, Antidosis. Athens really had philosophers, orators, and sophists, despite the fact that the latter two kinds get conflated. Isocrates is an orator of the best kind.
• John Paul II, Collected Poems (tr. Jerzy Peterkiewicz). My favorite line: "Do you remember that first step which you are still/taking all the time?" Also, some plays: Job; The Jeweler's Shop; Radiation of Fatherhood.
• Jordan, Mark, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1997). A one-sided "reinterpretation."
• Kafka, Franz, "The Metamorphosis" (man wakes up, finds he is dung beetle, languishes, dies) and other shorter pieces.
• Kass, Amy, "The Liberal Arts Movement: From Ideas to Practice."
• Kimball, Bruce, Orators and Philosophers (College Entrance Examination Board, 1995). Detailed, descriptive near-total history of liberal education, describing the tension between the "liberal-free ideal" and the "liberal arts ideal," and their accommodations to each other in terms of freedom and social responsibility, skills and content.
• Koontz, Dean, False Memory. One of my college professor once told me Koontz is the best contemporary writer writing in English. With this book I understand why.
• Kors, Alan Charles, and Harvey A. Silverglate, The Shadow University. Excellent exposure of the crazy censorship and totalitarian policies that have made it into colleges and universities in the form of speech codes in this decade. See many reviews, all of which say about the same thing.
• Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Accomplishes its now intuitive and well known (thanks to the "structure of the disciplines" movement--see Westbury's book on Schwab, who wrote on the topic in 1961) goal of explaining the dynamics of wide-ranging scientific reassessments. The stories of scientific "discovery" are the best part.
• Lawrence, D.H., Studies in Classic American Literature: "Forward" through Ch. 3.
• Lerner, Ralph, Revolutions Revisited (UNC, 1994). Good brisk walk through Franklin, Burke, Lincoln, Tocqueville. Most important is the sense of rhetorical and national purpose illustrated in these men: "a politics of finesse."
• Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera.
• Levine, Don, parts of Powers of the Mind (MS in process); "Challenging Certain Myths About the 'Hutchins' College" (The University of Chicago Magazine, Winter 1985)--the unflattering perception of Hutchins turns out to be at least partly untrue. "The Liberal Arts and the Martial Arts" (Liberal Education, Autumn 1984); "Martial Arts As a Resource for Liberal Education: The Case of Aikido" (1991)--paths toward paideia for the whole person. "The Physical Sciences Among the Liberal Arts." "Where Are Our Educational Traditions Now That We Need Them?" (2000)--the four senses of "general" in "general education."
• Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves (1960). Till We Have Faces (1956), a nice retelling of the Cupid & Psyche story and nice background for Four Loves.
• Mailer, Norman, The Gospel According to the Son (1997). A bit heretical, but valuable for providing fresh perspective on the Gospels via an imagined first-person account.
• McGrath, Earl J., Should Students Share the Power? A Study of Their Role in College and University Governance (Phila.: Temple UP, 1970). Answer = yes. Also, The Liberal Arts College and The Emergent Caste System (Columbia Teachers College, 1966). Three decent essays. One excerpt.
• McKeon, Richard, Essays.
• Milton, Paradise Lost. God wins, but Satan puts up a good fight. Man falls, for now. (& secondary sources.)
• Murphy, Nancey, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Cornell, 1990): Not for those without some college work. A really excellent, thorough, and readable account, historical, theological, and philosophical, of how theology has (been thought to) fit or not fit with scientific reasoning. Gets bogged down, however, in drawing models of Catholic Modernism, ch. 4, while all other chapters are admirably clear. Belief as both individual and communal; doctrine and apologetics as the responsibility of the community (195).
• National Association of Scholars, The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993. The facts are clear: every educational requirement has diminished within this century, in some areas dramatically. Also, state reports of the same ilk.
• Nef, John U., Universities Look for Unity (1943), the powerful founding manifesto of the Committee on Social Thought.
• New Testament, selections.
• Newman, Cardinal John Henry, The Idea of a University; a bunch of the Lectures on Faith and Reason; 90^th Tract from Tracts for the Times. Newman's writing dramatically improves between the earlier and later pieces.
• Olmsted, Wendy, and Walter Jost, eds., Rhetoric and Religion in Our Time (forthcoming, Yale, 1999), some parts, e.g., (1) Wayne Booth, "Kenneth Burke's Religious Rhetoric: 'God-Terms' and the Ontological Proof," is more of an ontological proof of the identity of Burke as logo-theologian. (2) Debora Shuger, "The Philosophical Foundations of Sacred Rhetoric," is exactly on the subject of the Renaissance combination of reason and emotion that I try to develop in my paper on Troilus and Cressida. (3) Olmsted (4) Tracy
• O'Neill, Eugene, Desire Under the Elms. Ephraim reminds me of Old Jack.
• Ovid, The Metamorphoses (tr. Horace Gregory), through most of Book XI. Some tales are better than others.
• Peiss, Kathy, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (1998). The first book I've seen that does a truly excellent job in the field of "culture studies." It looks primarily at the 19^th and 20^th centuries, is well documented, and engages the moral and cultural issues involved with a real scholarly gaze. Cosmetics is much more of a valid academic issue than you think!
• Perelman, Chaim, and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (U. Notre Dame, 1969), a super but long analysis of the basics of rhetoric.
• Philosophy and Literature (excellent journal): "Symposium: Is Morality a Non-Aim of Education?" (Mearsheimer's "Aims of Education Address" gets hit hard by Booth, Brann, et al.), 22:1. "Symposium: Ethical Criticism" (Nussbaum and Booth debate Posner on ethics vs. aesthetics), 22:2.
• Pirsig, Robert, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Makes a lot more sense if you're familiar with the University of Chicago.  (So does, to a lesser degree, Bellow's Herzog.)
• Plato (the whole corpus, in John M. Cooper, Plato: Complete Works). Here are a few reading notes on Apology (tr. James Redfield, in Desan) and Republic; less on Phaedrus, Charmides, Meno; paper on Gorgias (to be posted soon).
• Plutarch, "How a Young Man Should Hear Lectures on Poetry"; "The Right Way to Hear"; "The Education of Boys" (ps.-Plut.). Excerpts here.
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria XI.ii (on memory) and XII (the more virtuous person becomes the better orator).
• Ramus, Peter, Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian (1549, tr. C. Newlands 1986).
• Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph, In the Beginning . . . : A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995). A short, good collection of homilies with a concise look at the (wrong) challenges against a full appreciation of Creation today.
• Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue, ed. by W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman. New York: Routledge, 1996. A collection of essays with Foreword by Ian Barbour: "These chapters draw from recent work in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion, such as the claim that a scientific theory (or a religious belief) is not tested individually against data, but is assessed as part of a network of theories (or beliefs) and assumptions tested together" (ix).
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On the Social Contract.
• Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Great fun! Fourth book is far too long.
• Ryken, Leland, Windows to the World: Literature in Christian Perspective (1985). Fine intro to some issues.
• Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline; Jugurthine War. These stories have morals. Histories (available only in fragments), tr. Patrick McGushin, 1994--can't do much with the fragments absent the commentary, though the speech of Macer is worth noting.
• Sayers, Dorothy, "The [adjective] [mystery-word] of the [Man with the Copper Fingers]" and other detective stories of the same name. "Man with the Copper Fingers" is terrific. The tavern group is like a Franklinian Junto.
• Schrag, Calvin O., The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge (Indiana U. Press, 1992). The title says it all. He bogs down in chapters 3 and 4, but the other chapters are good.
• Schwab, Joseph, College Curriculum and Student Protest (1969). If we educate our students better, they will have no grounds on which to protest.
       "The Three-Year Program: Its Foundations," in "The Science Programs in the College of the University of Chicago," in McGrath, Earl, ed., Science in General Education (1948). A superb yet very brief demystification of the generalities and vagueness used to describe terms like "scientific method" and "understanding." A rhetorological view of science and science education.
       Several essays in Ian Westbury and Neil J. Wilkof, eds., Science, Curriculum and Liberal Education. Ch. 1: "The Three-Year Program in the Natural Sciences," Ch, 3: "Eros and Education: A Discussion of One Aspect of Discussion," and Ch. 12: "The Practical: Translation into Curriculum," are some of the better.
      Several other essays.
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet; Julius Caesar; Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth; Antony and Cleopatra; Cymbeline; Measure for Measure; All's Well That Ends Well; As You Like It; The Tempest; Troilus and Cressida and Secondary sources on Troilus and Cressida.
• Simmel, Georg, "The Conflict in Modern Culture"; "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Good sociology.
• Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. portions
• Suetonius, De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus [On Teachers of Grammar and Rhetoric], tr. Robert A. Kaster (1995); The Twelve Caesars (I like Augustus best).
• Tacitus, "Dialogue on Oratory." The rhetor, poet, and antiquarian duke it out. Annals, bks. I-II, mostly uninteresting except for digression on law.
• Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (English translation 1504).
• Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War.
• Tolkien, The Hobbit. Mostly for kids or people who can't get enough of trolls, dwarves, etc.
• Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis. Two points of origin for Modernity: 16th-c humanism and 17th-c perfectionism; cosmopolis expresses the desire to see connections between the natural cosmic order and human political order.
• Tracy, David, "Fragments of Synthesis? The Hopeful Paradox of Dupré's Modernity" (TS). Dupré retrieves from early modernity some resources for rejuvenating late modernity, especially manifestation-via-form, and creating a new kind of synthesis that remains true to our skeptical age. Cf. McKeon on rhetoric. Also, other essays.
• Vonnegut, Kurt, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
• Watson, Walter, The Architectonics of Meaning: Foundations of the New Pluralism (UCP 1985). A perfect demonstration of what a good McKeonite University of Chicago education can do for you. Indispensable starting-point for "archic analysis," but ofttimes too reductive; the categories sometimes seem somewhat arbitrary.
• Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; The Rational and Social Foundations of Music; "The Social Psychology of the World Religions"; "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions."
• Weinberg, Steven, Dreams of a Final Theory (Random House 1993).
• White, James Boyd, When Words Lose Their Meaning (1984). Constitutions and reconstitutions.
• Whitehead, A.N. "The Aims of Education": education is for LIFE. "The Rhythm of Education." "Universities and their Function": "the way in which a university should function in the preparation for an intellectual career . . . is by promoting the imaginative consideration of the various general principles underlying that career . . . . Thus the proper function of a university is the imaginative acquisition of knowledge. . . . This survey shows that the management of a university faculty has no analogy to that of a business organisation" (96, 99).
• Lots of material for Joe Williams.
• Wilson, E.O, Consilience (1998), mainly last chapter, "To What End?"
• Wright, Benjamin D., "A History of Social Science Measurement." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (Winter 1997) 33-45, 52.