How to Read a Book

Mortimer J. Adler · Charles Van Doren

May 2011 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material.

A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them. It's masterfully done.” –Farheed Zakaria

Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.

Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.

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

Ratings and reviews

There seem to be a few people here who have given the book 1 star on the basis of the title. In doing so, they demonstrate themselves to be superficial by the very definition of their actions - they have, quite literally judged a book by its cover, and there is no pretense against it. Their reviews make me sad, because this is the very book that would have sought to eliminate the style of superficial reading that causes such reviews to come into being

I did some "inspectional (superficial) reading" in this oe, now call me a "sophomore", but this book is wayyyy too long! Distintions that I liked: Diferences between learning by distintion and discovery I did learn that: "some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested" Normally I would read all books as if they where to be digested.

I read the first edition of this book. As someone who hates reading, it helped me work through some personal issues I had with reading. For you trolls posting here, it's not going to teach you how to read, but how to get the most out of what you read. Everyone in the education field should read this book.

About the author

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler was Chairman of the Board of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, Honorary Trustee of the Aspen Institute, and authored more than fifty books. He died in 2001.

Dr. Charles Van Doren earned advanced degrees in both literature and mathematics from Columbia University, where he later taught English and was the Assistant Director of the Institute for Philosophical Research. He also worked for Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago.