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• Classic-Fiction

234

The Elusiveness of Historical Facts 285 • Theories of History 287 • The Universal in History 289 • Questions to Ask of a Historical Book 241 • How to Read Biography and Autobiography 244 • How to Read About Current Events 248 • A Note on Digests 252

17. How to Read Science and Mathematics 255

Understanding the Scientific Enterprise 256 • Suggestions for Reading Classical Scientific Books 258 • Fac-viii Contents

ing the Problem of Mathematics 260 • Handling the Mathematics in Scientific Books 264 • A Note on Popular Science 267

18. How to Read Philosophy

270

The Questions Philosophers Ask 271 • Modem Philosophy and the Great Tradition 276 • On Philosophical Method 277 • On Philosophical Styles 280 • Hints for Reading Philosophy 285

On Making Up Your Own

•

Mind 290 • A Note on Theology 291 • How to Read

"Canonicar' Books 298

19. How to Read Social Science

296

What Is Social Science? 297 • The Apparent Ease of Reading Social Science 299 • Difficulties of Reading Social Science 301 • Reading Social Science Literature 304

PART FOUR

THE ULTIMATE GOALS

OF READING

20. The Fourth Level of Reading: Syntopical Reading 309

The Role of Inspection in Syntopical Reading 318 •

The Five Steps in Syntopical Reading 316 • The Need for Objectivity 323 • An Example of an Exercise in Syntopical Reading: The Idea of Progress 325 • The Syntopicon and How to Use It 829 • On the Principles That Underlie Syntopical Reading 333 • Summary of Syntopical Reading 335

21. Reading and the Growth of the Mind 337

What Good Books Can Do for Us 338 • The Pyramid of Books 341 • The Life and Growth of the Mind 344

Appendix A. A Recommended Reading List 347

Appendix B. Exercises and Tests at the Four Levels of Reading

363

Index

421

PREFACE

How to Read a Book was first published in the early months of 1940. To my surprise and, I confess, to my delight, it immediately became a best seller and remained at the top of the nationwide best-seller list for more than a year. Since 1940, it has continued to be widely circulated in numerous printings, both hardcover and paperback, and it has been translated into other languages-French, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Italian. Why, then, attempt to recast and rewrite the book for the present generation of readers?

The reasons for doing so lie in changes that have taken place both in our society in the last thirty years and in the subject itself. Today many more of the young men and women who complete high school enter and complete four years of college; a much larger proportion of the population has become literate in spite of or even because of the popularity of radio and television. There has been a shift of interest from the reading of fiction to the reading of nonfiction. The educators of the country have acknowledged that teaching the young to read, in the most elementary sense of that word, is our paramount educational problem. A recent Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, designating the seventies as the Decade of Reading, has dedicated federal funds in support of a wide variety of efforts to improve ix

x Preface

proficiency in this basic skill, and many of those efforts have scored some success at the level at which children are initiated into the art of reading. In addition, adults in large numbers have been captivated by the glittering promises made by speed-reading courses-promises to increase their comprehension of what they read as well as their speed in reading it.

However, certain things have not changed in the last thirty years. One constant is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different-appropriate-speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, "When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing." Since speed-reading has become a national fad, this new edition of How to Read a Book deals with the problem and proposes variable-speed-reading as the solution, the aim being to read better, always