How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Mortimer J. Adler · Charles Van Doren

Jul 2010 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Edward Holland

About this audiobook

How to Read a Book, first published in 1940, is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader-a living classic. Now it has been completely rewritten and updated. This book will teach you about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them, from elementary reading and systematic skimming to inspectional reading and speed-reading. Learn how to pigeonhole a book, x-ray it, extract the author's message, and criticize. The authors offer different reading techniques for various types of books, and finally, a recommended reading list and reading tests for measuring your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed.

About the author

Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), an American philosopher, educator, and popular author, served as the chairman of Encyclopaedia Britannica's board of editors, was the founder and director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, and was an honorary trustee and founder of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. He authored the well-known How to Read a Book and the intellectual autobiography Philosopher at Large and was coeditor, with Charles Van Doren, of Great Treasury of Western Thought, declared the Reference Book of 1977 by the American Library Association.

Charles Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor. He earned a bachelor's degree from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and went on to earn a master's in astrophysics and a doctorate in English from Columbia University, where he later taught English. He is also the author of A History of Knowledge.

Edward Holland is an audiobook narrator whose credits include Confessions of a Spy, Vietnam, and How to Read a Book.