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

<p>The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition.</p><p>Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven't because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise.</p><p>Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from the earliest works of Hippocrates to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs) , The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres -- fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science -- accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter -- ranging from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking -- preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.</p><p>The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the &quot;Great Books&quot; without a guide and a plan. Bauer will show you how to allocate time to reading on a regular basis; how to master difficult arguments; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre -- what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary? -- and also between genres.</p><p>In her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children; that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. Followed carefully, her advice will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.</p>