How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
How to Read a Book was incredibly important and valuable when it was first published in 1940, and it remains so today.
New York: Touchstone, 1972 (revised edition)
426 pp. $14.99 (Kindle)
We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word “competent” implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming. —Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
These words were first written in 1940, in the first edition of _ How to Read a Book._ They are as relevant as ever.
The print version of the book is a hefty 426 pages, all of which explore different aspects of one central idea: the difference between reading as a means of absorbing information uncritically and understanding that information. The latter requires several skills that take a lot of practice, such as identifying bad reasoning, extrapolating from incomplete or poorly organized data, and evaluating claims in the proper context.1
The book sets out to offer the average reader a set of high-leverage intellectual tools that can vastly enhance the depth and value of his reading, and it succeeds; its flaws are minor in comparison to its achievements.
The authors begin by highlighting a societal problem that is centuries old, although many think of it as a modern phenomenon:
[Media such as radio and television] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). . . . The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think. (loc. 364)
It is uncontroversial that, in today’s world, the internet—and social media in particular—have further exacerbated this problem. Although they wrote before the age of social media, Adler and Van Doren’s prescription is nevertheless helpful. They advocate reevaluating how we teach children to read so that they might become sharp, fair, and objective readers by adulthood—readers with high degrees of intellectual independence and resistance to misinformation.
Adler and Van Doren identify four cumulative levels of reading and hold that students should become competent readers at all four levels by their late teens:
Elementary reading, in which new readers (usually young children) are taught the fundamentals of reading, such as the relationship between marks on a piece of paper, the sounds those marks represent, and the basic meanings that those marks and sounds convey;
Inspectional reading, which is similar to speed reading in that it enables the reader to quickly gain a broad and basic understanding of the subject matter;
Analytical reading, which is the most complete reading of which a given reader is capable;
Syntopical reading, which involves “reading many books [analytically], not just one, and placing them all in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve” (loc. 385).
This section of How to Read a Book is packed with valuable insights into the nature and purpose of each level of reading. The authors allege that most literate adults are only functionally literate, meaning they are stuck at the elementary level—or, if they are capable of inspectional reading, they don’t do it well and consistently. In other words, the average adult can read almost anything in the sense that he can understand the text’s meaning on a superficial level and perhaps accurately recall that information later, without really understanding it. To deeply expand one’s understanding of a given topic, the authors hold, he must actively practice inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading, which are rarely taught in schools today.
Most of the remainder of the book is a deep dive into the various ways in which one can practice inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading, especially the latter two. Within this system of learning (or relearning) to read, the ultimate goal is to master syntopical reading, which is incredibly valuable to any independent thinker because, “With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books” (loc. 392).
In other words, learning to read deeply as opposed to only widely, and for thorough understanding as opposed to merely for the absorption of information, is one of the most powerful skills we can learn toward the end of integrating our knowledge—and an integrated body of knowledge about the world is a prerequisite to a rich, value-oriented life.
In its later pages, How to Read a Book introduces tactics such as “pigeonholing,” a useful method of “pre-reading” that enables a reader to glean a surprising amount of information about a book in just a few minutes by carefully scanning its cover, table of contents, foreword, and the first few sentences of each chapter. (This is one type of inspectional reading—acquiring a broad and basic understanding of a text in a short time.) Pigeonholing also primes an active-minded reader to gain much more from a deep, analytical read of the text than he otherwise would. If you’re already an avid reader, as I am, you may think you have little to learn from such tactics, but you may be surprised—I certainly was.
Another useful idea Adler and Van Doren present is what they call “coming to terms” with an author. This concept subsumes a number of questions to ask and answer before you begin deeply reading a book, such as:
Based on an inspectional reading of the book, what premises does the author want me to accept or reject?
If an inspectional read suggests that I have substantial disagreements with the author, can I still gain significant value from reading the book? (Often, the answer is “yes.”)
How do I gain significant value from this book, even though it may be antagonistic to my current views, or even my core values?
How to Read a Book is not flawless. For instance, it sometimes implies (but doesn’t outright state) that fiction reading is less valuable or less important than nonfiction reading.2 It also errs in its analysis of certain social issues, such as the root causes of illiteracy in schoolchildren. One such cause is the so-called whole word method of reading, which the authors regard as “successful for some pupils” despite it having already been thoroughly debunked decades before the revised edition of How to Read a Book was published (loc. 421). In a few cases, ideas are confusingly worded and not clarified by further explanation, such as “Set forth the major parts of the book, and show how these are organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and to the unity of the whole” (loc. 1144). Overall, though, the book’s failings are few, minor, and far between.
How to Read a Book was incredibly important and valuable when it was first published in 1940, and it remains so today. Although it presents itself mostly as a tool that average readers can use to correct bad reading habits and thus improve their critical thinking abilities, it’s so packed with clear, accessible, and oft-overlooked wisdom that even expert readers will find it an indispensable addition to their libraries.