Critical Companion to William Shakespeare: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Vol. 2 Book

Having been a student of the "Great Books" for more than twenty years I came to this book with a certain bias in favor of them. I found that Alex Beam has written an interesting exploration of some aspects of the Great Books phenomenon in American culture. I say some aspects because, while I do not disagree with many of his observations, I came away from the book with a feeling that he never developed a fundamental understanding of the importance of the Great Books. Whether the canon should be limited or not is not the most important question, rather the question is what value there is in recognizing, reading and developing an understanding, however limited, of the works of the greatest minds of the world. Reading and studying and discussing the Great Books and the ideas encompassed in them provides an education that cannot be obtained any other way. Most importantly it provides a base for continuing to grow and flourish as a human being. The author spends much of the book discussing attempts, some misguided and some not, to encourage and spread the reading of Great Books. Whether any of these attempts succeeded depended not so much on the value of the books themselves, which I believe cannot be doubted, but on the methods used by the purveyors of the Great Book experience. I can only look back on and continue my own experience which I have found invaluable in my own life. The Great Books are very much alive for me and many others. While the author discusses finding himself "occasionally succumbing to creeping great-bookism", I would suggest that thoughtful human beings would be better off by incorporating the lessons of the Great Books into to their lives.