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

Beam, Alex

3.35

337 ratings by Goodreads

9781586487768: A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586487760 ISBN 13: 9781586487768

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2009

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A witty history of an unlikely literary fad and an American pop culture phenomenon of the 1950s and early 1960s examines the overwhelming popularity of the Great Books of Western Civilization and how and why they rose to and fell out of fashion.

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About the Author:

Alex Beam is an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, the New York Times and many other magazines. The author of Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, and of two novels, he lives in Boston.

Review:

"Britannica Blog," December 9, 2008 "Marvelously entertaining" "New York Times Notable Book of the Year"" "" Los Angeles Times," September 7 2008 "What if all you needed to know could be gleaned from a select number of books? That was the idea behind the Great Books of the Western World project launched in 1952 by the University of Chicago and the Encyclopedia Britannica. No mind that you'd attempted Aeschylus in a freshman seminar and found it musty. All it needed was a snazzy binding and "poof" -- education for the masses. Or at least something to fill up those capacious bookshelves in the den. Alex Beam's "A Great Idea at the Time" (PublicAffairs) looks at the postwar fascination with the Great Books, evoking a moment when pop culture and education merged." Marjorie Kehe, "Christian Science Monitor," November 20, 2008 "A breezy and lucid account [of the Great Books enterprise]....Beam's excellent book is about much more than a passing fad; it's a pity primer to one of the most important debates in educational history." Ellen Emry Heltzel, "Seattle Times," November 20, 2008 "Witty and useful...Probing one small chapter of our intellectual history, "A Great Idea" ends up making a modest claim: The legacy of the Great Books, which captured a certain zeitgeist, is that the life of the mind still matters. Not a radical idea, just a great one." "Library Journal," November 15, 2008 "An intriguing look at the marketing phenomenon and cultural-icon status of the Great Books....Beam's book will have readers looking at volumes in the series from a whole new perspective." Kevin Carey, "Washington Monthly," November 24, 2008 "A smart, engaging new book." James Campbell, "New York Times Book Review," November 16, 2008 .,."a good guide to the rise and fall of the [Great Books] project." Robert Landers, "Wall Street Journal," November 10, 2008 "[Beam] wanted his informal history of the Great Books movement in America....to be 'brief, engaging, and undidactic...as different from the ponderous and forbidding Great Books as it could possibly be' - and so it is." Peter Terzian, "Newsday," November 16, 2008 "Beam has a light, journalistic touch - he ends up having a pretty good time, and relishes the kind of discussions he hasn't had since college." publishersweekly.com "By lauding the intent and intelligently critiquing the outcome, Beam offers an insightful, accessible and fair narrative on the Great Books, its time, and its surprisingly significant legacy." "Kirkus," STARRED review, October 1, 2008 "A witty look at the publishing program that aimed to bring high culture to the masses...or at least the aspiring middle class." "Los Angeles Times," September 7 2008 "What if all you needed to know could be gleaned from a select number of books? That was the idea behind the Great Books of the Western World project launched in 1952 by the University of Chicago and the Encyclopedia Britannica. No mind that you'd attempted Aeschylus in a freshman seminar and found it musty. All it needed was a snazzy binding and "poof" -- education for the masses. Or at least something to fill up those capacious bookshelves in the den. Alex Beam's "A Great Idea at the Time" (PublicAffairs) looks at the postwar fascination with the Great Books, evoking a moment when pop culture and education merged."

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