A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books

by: Alex Beam

Published by: Public Affairs

Reviewed by Gene Hayworth

A Great Idea at the Time: the Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books is an entertaining, illuminating, thought-provoking book.

Those readers who may have curiosity but only a passing knowledge of the Great Books philosophy will be delighted to discover the history and impact of the concept through the historical details Beam deftly provides. But the book covers a lot more territory than its title suggests. The author deftly intertwines a history of education in the U.S., fascinating biographical details about the men involved in producing the Great Books series like Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins, and William Benton; the negotiations between the University of Chicago and the Encyclopedia Britannica to publish the Great Books of the Western World series; and information about other great books projects.

A Great Idea at the Time has a casual tone, which makes it an easy read, but occasionally the gossipy style leads to muddled sentences like this one, about Mortimer Adler: “A notorious philanderer, he divorced his first wife after thirty-three years of marriage and later remarried an attractive Britannica secretary more than thirty years his junior.”(p. 32). When, you might want to know, did Adler marry the Britannica secretary the first time?

Beam writes for The Boston Globe, where his twice-weekly column has appeared since 1987. He is the author of two novels, Fellow Travelers (1987) and The Americans Are Coming! (1991), and he has also published an earlier work of non-fiction, Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital (2002).

A Great Idea at the Time: the Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books was named among the Notable Books in the annual list compiled by the New York Times Book Review.

Armchair Interviews says: Those looking for advice on reading may appreciate the list of great works published in the 89 volumes of The Great Books of the Western World included in the book.