A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had - The Well-Educated Mind

The great classic are for everyone and a book like this one shows how everyone, from whatever background originally, can come to learn to appreciate the great classics that we have all come to know and love. You too can appreciate great literature - you don't need a Harvard degree to love Jane Austen or the novel Moby Dick. Greatness is within your grasp - get out there and change your life today! Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)

I have two graduate degrees, but despite that I've always felt undereducated. I've read quite a few "important books," but they never fit together in my mind into any sort of logical progression. This book has finally made sense of the pattern! Bauer begins with a brief examination of the reading process, and then explains, clearly and intelligently, how five different genres developed, from ancient times up until the present. She also shows how the genres relate to each other. She starts with the novel, from Don Quixote to magic realism, and follows that up with autobiography because (like novelists) autobiographists are telling a story; she then goes on to history (because historians also tell a story, but have a different relationship to the "facts") and finishes up with plays and poetry. Along the way, she defines all the important literary terms you've heard floating around, and slots them neatly into their place. One of the best guides to self education I've read, and one that finally got me back on the path to serious reading. (Incidentally, what is the reviewer talking about below, when he says "the author admits she hasn't read the books"? Totally untrue--no such statement. Ms. Bauer says that she has always had trouble getting through Moby Dick, but apart from that demonstrates a great mastery of the material, and the annotations are amazingly helpful--they highlight the themes of the books and show, briefly, how the terms and developments covered in the "history of the genre" sections play into each.)

Highly recommended for any serious reader.

I thought I was educated before, but this wonderful book taught me new reading skills and whetted my appetite for the classics. Though I went to a good high school and college, I spent most of my time hearing about how "great" the Great Books were, without being much encouraged to sit down and crack one open. The Well-Educated Mind has helped to change that, which is why I disagree with the negative review posted earlier on this page. Maybe we "should" have learned how, why, and what to read in our schools, but many of us were not taught, and the Well-Educated mind aims to fill that gap. For this reason, I would highly recommend it for high-school students or for those about to start college.
The opening section alone, on getting the most out of reading, should be handed out in every local library. Don't miss the chapters on drama and poetry, either: too many people ignore these genres because of their seeming inaccessibility, but here Susan Wise Bauer provides superb keys and useful skills.
Knowledgeable without being a show-off, friendly without dumbing-down, Bauer makes an excellent guide for those who want to enter the "great conversation."

I feel more educated after reading many of these books that SWB recommends. I know I have many more to read that were not included, but I'm on a good path. I think she put a lot of thought into her work, and I've read many books that she has suggested that I'd probably not read otherwise. Some have been terrific, some I could do without, but I thank her for the suggestions.

Best homeschooling or supplemental education book out! This is my 4th copy purchased. I read it every year. Sometimes it falls apart, sometimes I give it away to someone who is interested in reading it!

The idea of studying the Great Books chronologically by genre is a fascinating one, and I think it is a pretty good idea. Not a foolproof one (for example, you'll be able to catch references to previous novels, but not anything in Shakespeare if you haven't done the Plays chapter yet) but a very interesting one that I think has a lot going for it.

I would not recommend buying the book, though. It is very condescending, and seems to be opperating under the assumption that the reader has never read anything. Another reviewer suggested that this book is for SAHMs of toddlers, but I am one, and trust me I will not be reading Pilgrim's Progress 3 times over anytime soon! Maybe in another 10 years I'll have that sort of time. There are also some glaring omissions from the list, while I personally think that a few books are less than essential.

There is also next to no meat in this book: about half of it is plot descriptions that give away the whole story! If you're telling someone to read a list of books, do you really have to give a page-long description of the book, too? It just seemed like filler.

I'd recommend taking this book out from the library and taking a look at her list, but I think that there are better lists of Great Books out there.

I wasn’t blown away by the information inside, but that might have just been because I have been an avid reader since I could understand written words. Still, this is a great guide, particularly for those who need a little help TRULY appreciating books.

Written for anyone who wants to read more deeply, this book gives practical, do-able guidelines for in-depth reading. The book also includes a comprehensive suggest book list complete with reviews and tips for how each work should be approached. I have benefited greatly from this resource, as has my daughter and wife. Truly an amazing resource!

Organizes homeschooling into How to.
Her expectations are HIGH!
Hope you are not afraid of hard work!
She covers everything and is very knowledgeable. If you homeschool based on her curriculum guidelines, you will be doing an absolutely tremendous job! If you fall short, your still doing great. Great ideas. Great guidelines. Great coverage. For starters, combine this with "What Every Kindergardener Needs to Know" and "Cultural Literacy" both by ED Hirsch.

As a librarian, I was disappointed in this "guide" to the well-educated mind. It's format was in long general chapters, without helpful lists of sources or lists of great books by subject matter. More important,because of the lack of specific works of literature, there was not an enumeration of specific reasons why these books would have been selected as great.

Unfortunately, this purchase was a waste of money and not worthy of my in depth attention.

There seems to be wildly divergent views on the merits of this book, and there is likely truth to all of them. It's an appealing concept, but in the end the best thing about the book is the short summaries of all the listed novels. egardless, the division of old and new classics into useful cateogories and then short summaries to help the reader pick and choose the most suitable books for him / her is very helpful.

Here are the problems, however, with the 1/4 of the book that strives to teach you a self-education system. First, the author writes down to the reader like the reader is utterly incompetent, such as the first step in "how to read a novel" is to "look at the title, cover, and table of contents"!!!!! The author seems to say at numerous points that a liberal arts education is overblown and you will just learn to follow the herd, and then in the next sentence proceeds to tell you exactly how you should read a novel in lockstep with the herd.

Different people will take away different impressions and lessons from the "classics." That's the point. This book is way too touchy-feely while at the same time way too strict in demanding that you follow this 12 step plan. Buy the book if you want the summaries of what is admittedly a broad and great list of classics, but don't be fooled into thinking it is any form of revolutionary idea or self-education process. It's really like a pompous professor dryly lecturing you in the privacy of your own home, which does not seem like "self education" to me.

While the teaching of reading is an admirable goal, the selection of texts here demands more than a little caution. There might be agreement in a dozen countries that Cervantes, Herodotus and Homer are classical, but there is no agreement even in this country that writers like Ulrich, DeLillo, Gilroy, and Rita Dove constitute a classical or even a liberal education. Juxtaposing classics with recent writing of dubious merit insinuates that these writers too are "classical" and therefore good. You should educate your children at home, precisely in order to avoid their being subjected to writers like DeLillo and the others. And incidentally, although reading Cervantes and the others does broaden your cultural sophistication, it does not result in a "well-trained mind."

Susan Wise Bauer does an excellent job of sucking all the joy out of reading and turning it into a chore! Thanks for all the detailed instructions on the multiple lists, notes and outlines that are apparently required to read "correctly". However, I'll just stick to actually enjoying my reading instead. She does write in a clear, organized manner, so I gave it two stars. To be fair, I should also note that I didn't finish the book. I got to the end of Chapter 5 and decided that, since I had absolutely no intention of following her protocols and wasn't overly impressed with her reading list, my time was probably better spent on some pleasurable pursuit instead.

Section one of this book was fine, maybe even very good. I took notes and adopted some of her tips on reading critically. However, Section 2 seriously ticked me off. If I am reading a book for the first time I want o experience it for myself. Sure I want to know generally what it is about and if other people enjoyed it or not. I frequently read the store reviews prior to making a purchase, but I don't want to be told explicitly what happens and how to feel about it. I cant imagine not experiencing for myself the source of Pips inheritance in "Great Expectation" or what the impediment to Jane's marriage to Rochester might be etc. . The author of this book retells the entire plot of all the books which she describes and spoils everyone of them.. Why? Why?

There are so many wonderful books about books out there which don't do that. Beowulf on the Beach for example is fantastic. Jack Murnaghan writes lovingly about many classic works but his essays succeed in making me want to know more about each book instead of thinking why bother if I already know everything that happens?
***SPOILER ALERT***

I am reminded of how cross I was when my husband innocently asked me If Uncle Tom had been beaten to death yet? while I was reading Uncle Tom's Cabin for the first time. His response was, " but everyone knows that". Obviously not EVERYONE. Maybe that is Ms Wise Bauers attitude also. Maybe she sees these books as works to be studied and not read for the sheer pleasure of it. Either way what she has succeeded in producing in section 2 is a collection of crib notes which would enable anyone to discuss a book which they have not read as if they had. Shame!

This is the best book on homeschooling. If you are going to undertake the difficult yet rewarding task of homeschooling, this is the book to read. This is not just a book on the theory of homeschooling using the classical method, this book offers detailed instruction, help, and encouragement. Even if you think you do not want to homeschool using the classical model, this book offers solid, practical advice to help you school at home.

We get lists of novels, autobiographies, poetry, and a bit of non-fiction too. All together maybe 80 book. I get the strong impression that the author has just read these books and then decided to write a book about it. I do not get any feeling that the author actually knows literature on a deeper level, like having read 500 books and then narrowed down the list to 80 books.

I am not too impressed with the selection of readings. There are too many English books, as compared to translations (e.g. French or Russian). Having said that, before the Internet, the lists would have been as good as any. However, today it is so easy to find good lists on the internet, so I do not appreciate the author's, largely politically correct, selection. Except that she out of the blue suggests that we read Hitler's My Kampf.

We get information about which edition to buy, but the recommendations are always about which edition is the cheapest. Nothing about which edition has the best explanatory notes or translation. Not everyone is cash strapped.

We get long descriptions of how to read the books. Honestly, this is a little bit over the top. I do see the value in forcing school children to read a novel and take notes. However, realistically, it is silly to suggest that we should read her selected books three time. Yes that is correct, three times. If you want to know how to read a book three times, read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (A Touchstone book). If you just want to get some recommendations of classic books, do spend some time on the Internet and then go out and buy second hand copies for a couple of dollars. However, for an elitist long list of books read Adler's book. In comparison, Bauer is just scratching on the surface.

This book doubtless has some good things in it, but it also includes a host of one-page synopses of great works---sort of a Cliff Notes of the Cliff Notes---which generally miss the point but never miss a spoiler. I feel bad for the person who stumbles across these and, in reading them, ruins the experience of reading the book synopsized for themselves for the first time. This is a terrible book.

I bought this book based upon the glowing reviews I read on this site and upon a recommendation from a friend. I have to say I was dissapointed - I think I was expecting more of a scholarly work on how to read the classics I missed in college. I was inspired to do this after reading "Great Books"by David Denby.
I think this book is probably ok for those who haven't had an extensive education or exposure to university-level literature courses because it doesn't assume either of these. But if you have, I think you will be sadly disappointed at the simplistic advice given on how to read and take notes (really!) and an abbreviated Cliff Notes type of synopsis of the works recommended, which makes me wonder about the depth of knowledge the author had regarding these works in the first place.
At any rate, if you are really looking for intellectual depth in pursuing your classical education, I would recommend "How to Read a Book" by Van Doren paired with "The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought" by Mortimer Adler (this has actual thought-provoking essays on great works). And read Denby's book for inspiration.

This book is pervaded by typos and poor diction. More significantly, it contains mostly plagiarism and shameless filler. Bauer surreptitiously regurgitates Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book; all of the "how to" parts of Bauer's book and the advice on better reading can be found in Adler and Van Doren's book, and they explain it better.

Aside from a barrage of trivial tangents, most of the rest of this book is dedicated to brief bios of authors and summaries of their masterpieces (with spoilers)--there is no reason to read this if you have access to Wikipedia and a list of the people and books considered most important.

Don't waste your time--just start reading the classics and keep at it.

And to sum up all the advice on how to read: just don't kid yourself--if you can't explain to someone what you have read, you didn't understand it and should read again more carefully.

"From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is. They could only be dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly; but, since military and commercial rivalry are no longer important, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect."
-George Orwell, 1984

"Education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."
-Bertrand Russell, quoting Johann Fichte, inventor of The Prussian School System (currently used throughout The West to educate the masses)

In the book "The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had" Susan Bauer completely omits any instruction or mention of the ancient science and art of classical logic and rhetoric. She also very conspicuously fails to mention that since the times of ancient Greece and Rome classical logic and rhetoric were always considered essential to a proper classical education. To this day people who are well educated in private schools are taught Aristotelian Logic, classical rhetoric, and what John Taylor Gatto calls "active literacy".

Why does Susan Bauer make no mention of this?

Dorothy Sayers, author of "The Lost Tools of Learning" wrote that to teach a child to read without teaching them to reason is to leave them at the mercy of the written word.

The state has deliberately left us and our children at the mercy of the written word. And Susan Bauer has with this book made herself party to that offense.

I bought this book hoping that it would have a few pearls of wisdom about logic and rhetoric. I was sorely disappointed.

If you're interested in why the state would like to deny you the ability to reason and thus control you see:
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
9/11 Missing Links
Dr Alan Sabrosky, former Director of Studies at the US Army War College
The Ultimate History Lesson by John Taylor Gatto
All on YouTube

Don't buy this book unless you enjoy being talked down to. The author assumes the reader is a product of the flawed public school system and is a bit dim. So perhaps it is intended for people who learned nothing in high school and perhaps went on to learn nothing in a liberal arts college. That would be fine, the book has an audience at least, but the other major shortcoming of the book is that it consists mostly of half page summaries of the classics. If you cut those out there isn't much book left. It certainly couldn't have taken much effort to put this book together. As far as the actual content goes it isn't anything I didn't learn in high school, but I went to a good high school so perhaps other people will be excited by it. The only insightful tip I gleaned from the book was to read the classics in the order they were written. The time spent reading the rest of the book would be better spent reading one of the classics it gives a summary of, or sleeping, which is probably what will end up happening to you if you don't stay annoyed with the superior tone of the book.

Please, don't waste your money on this book. Check it out from the library if you must, but know that it takes a very, very scattershot approach to what is essentially a great books reading program.

The author's choices are often poor, both in recommended material and approach- for example, there is no reason to chide us not to read our email in the morning, yet because this doesn't work for the author, well, by God, it doesn't work at all.

I would strongly suggest looking around at university courses on Great Books, browsing their syllabi, and developing your own program instead. It will be a better use both of time and energy.

Thoreau once compared a serious reading of the Classics to the training of an Olympic athlete. Ms. Wise Bauer, on the other hand, recommends a mere 30 minutes a day, four days a week with weekends off, and "flex mornings" to catch-up with paperwork, be there when the plumber arrives, or when the toddler develops stomach flu (see below). By the end of the first chapter, the author has effectively reduced her audience to stay-at-home moms.

The writer begins the book by lamenting her return to graduate school, feeling awkward and out of place in a room full of teenage-looking students, at the freshly minted age of thirty. We then hear of scheduling conflicts with family time, low university pay, inadequate health insurance, and anesthesia during childbirth- all in the first paragraph of Chapter 1. Two paragraphs later, the author tells of her "work-induced psychosis": staying up late finishing papers and getting up early with the baby; writing her dissertation on the living room floor with a Thomas the Tank engine nearby; spending the night before an upcoming French exam washing her four-year old's sheets and pillows after he catches the stomach flu; and, finally, attending required workshops that were a total waste of her time.

The author then takes an abrupt turn by quoting Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew on the rewards of self-education. The reader must then unscramble the mess in order to get her point. What the author is supposedly trying to say is that graduate school, for the pursuit of a liberal education, comes at too high a cost for the rewards it renders, and that interested students should instead consider reading books on their own and discussing them with their neighbors. Except of course in South-Central Los Angeles where a disagreement often ends up with someone dead.

The author then tiptoes around the Great Books, careful not to offend the reader by placing too much demand on their time or alleviating them of the responsibility to think by providing them with endless analyses and interpretations. Her book annotations, while beginning to whet the appetite, ultimately serve only to disappoint those unfamiliar with the texts by giving away the ending rather than a general preview. Many quotes used throughout the book, especially in the opening chapters, were distracting when the author's own voice would have been a far better choice in connecting with and perhaps even inspiring her audience.

A series of indiscriminate, rambling entries directed at no one in particular, "The Well-Educated Mind" reads like a journal randomly pasted to a manuscript. Although noble in her efforts to promote the Great Books, Ms. Wise Bauer has embarked on more of a personal enterprise rather than torchbearer for the classical education you never had.

This book is a stuffy and pretentious effort of a bibliophile to lionize the value of certain books as being essential to the development of a learned mind. Though she doesn't state she has is tradionalist in her concept of education-and I doubt she has done much reading about the history or philosophy of education, Ms Bauer promulgates a dated, simplistic and "other directed" kind of learning by reading "great" books. She must have either not read or found worthless the works of the transcendentalists like Emerson, or the pragmatists like Dewey, or works of the Frankfurt school as her orientation to books fails to consider the orientation of these movements. In addition, though she suggests the reader take careful notes she mentions nothing about marginalia, or ideas about scaffolding ones reading with advance organizers or visual organizers or any advanced ideas about journaling via Progiffs at a journal Workshop. For someone who wants to tell others how to be well read- she seems to have not done sufficient reading, from my viewpoint. So to me her book lacks a lot of virtue. In additions, she doesnt want books to free the reader to go beyond the limits of books into developing their own understanding as the educational theorist Howard Gardner advocates in The Disciplined Mind. On that point Dewey, too would consider her kind of learning too bookish to be of genuine value.Genuine learning from books requires more reflection and engagement with real life then Bauer seems to understand. It seems to me as Dante said she has become rich in books-and impoverished in herself. This results from her orientation of revering books without critically, freely and fully digesting them. Bibliphile-heal thyself!
Books can be used to further learing if the right approach is taken. In my mind, the author shows that she has failed to approach her book thoroughl-she is given to partial knowledge and hence she has "einschrankunged" to use Heideggers term not only the reading process and what can be gained from the books she mentions but the learning experience, as well.
Whats most remarkable abnout this book is the authors failure to do much reading of the reading research literature which is quite rich and developed.
Bauer fails to understand ideas as prominant as Barthes notion of readerly vs writerly texts. She doesnt understand what Balzac and other authors with respect to ""textual anxiety"-that authors ideas dont always translate well into words. Bauer is a logocentric as she fails to understand the reading proces often involves use of images- the "dual code processing" or any of Simply put this book is "one dimensional" and "disenchanting" as the author failed to do much research-much reading about the reading experience. She also fails to understand that some like Julia Cameron in The Artists Way know reading too much or too often can stifle creativity. With books like Bauers its understandable why we have aproblem with aliteracy in this country. This books value lies in providing an annotated bibliography of some classics-beyond that it just bears witness to the authors ignorance and failure to approach the subject of reading with virtue

I am greatly disappointed in the content as it has (in my opinion), a tendency to steer the reader in a direction that conveys the authors bias to a christian base of interest. I do not object to Ms. Bauers ideas, but I believe it would have given the option to know her evangelical background as to whether I would consider her information on what she considers a list of books to read that constitutes a "well educated mind." After reading with some consternation, up to page 157, I decided to google Susan Wise Bauer and found that of course she is an Evangelical Christian English instructor at the college of William and Mary. I am not interested in reading any further books of hers for this reason. Someone else may be and that is great. I'm saying somewhere in the reviews I would have been interested in knowing this. This is my opinion.
R.Leonard

Susan Bauer includes in the bibliography book list "Mein Kamph" by Hitler, but not "Night" by Eli Wiesel. Why anybody would waste their time and money to read Meim Kamph is beyond me, but to tell people to read that book and not include a book showing the consequences of Meim Kamph (the result of his crazy views being implemented) is scary. In my opinion, it is a major red flag. What other "one side of an issue" book selections is she including.