Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different
A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
by Alex Beam
- Used
- good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Good
- ISBN 10
- 1586487760
- ISBN 13
- 9781586487768
- Seller
-
Mount Vernon, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
This is the story of great books; not just any great books, mind you, but the 54 volumes launched in Chicago in 1952 as the Great Books of the Western World. In the course of just over 200 brisk pages, Alex Beam explains how, and why, such an entity came into being.
Beam locates the origin of the Great Books project in two late-19th-century developments: middle-class anxiety about what the newly literate working classes were reading, and the introduction of specialisation in the university curriculum. At the very moment that Charles Eliot was transforming Harvard from a gentleman's college into a modern university, he launched Harvard Classics, a popular version of the broad education he had argued was obsolete.
Beam locates the origin of the Great Books project in two late-19th-century developments: middle-class anxiety about what the newly literate working classes were reading, and the introduction of specialisation in the university curriculum. At the very moment that Charles Eliot was transforming Harvard from a gentleman's college into a modern university, he launched Harvard Classics, a popular version of the broad education he had argued was obsolete.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Reviews
On Nov 4 2008, MaxWeismann said:
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
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- a brennan bookseller (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- Biblio 175
- Title
- A Great Idea at the Time
- Author
- Alex Beam
- Format/Binding
- Good
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 1586487760
- ISBN 13
- 9781586487768
- Publisher
- Public Affairs
- Place of Publication
- New York
- This edition first published
- 2009-10
- Note
- May be a multi-volume set and require additional postage.
Terms of Sale
a brennan bookseller
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
a brennan bookseller
Biblio member since 2008
Mount Vernon, New York
About a brennan bookseller
We have a small but growing inventory of new, used and rare books sold exclusively online.