Shortly after I moved to New York at the age of 19, a friend bought a set of the Great Books of the Western World, published by the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a wonderful set.

ON JUNE 28, MORTIMER J. ADLER, propagandist for the reading of great books, indexer extraordinaire, and the world’s highest-salaried philosopher, died at the age of ninety-eight. I worked for ...

Object Details Author Hutchins, Robert Maynard 1899-1977 Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc University of Chicago Notes "Limited to 500 numbered copies signed by the editor." L.C. copy neither numbered nor ...

These books form the backbone of the Western tradition and include the dialogues of Plato, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the works of Shakespeare, the Old and New Testaments, and a host of other ...

Adler’s Syntopicon, as the index has since become known, would go on to be published as volumes two and three of the encyclopedia’s Great Books of the Western World 54-volume compendium.

There, great books of the Western tradition are part of the required core curriculum. He went on to earn his PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, where he teaches today.