Education: How and What to Read

As attested by the popularity of speed-reading courses, many people think that reading better means simply reading faster. To Mortimer J. Adler, who for 32 years has been teaching Americans How to Read a Book, great speed is of value "only if what you have to read is really not worth reading." To keep serious readers from becoming "literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well," he wrote his self-help guide, which over the years has sold more than 420,000 copies. Now, for the post-television generation, he has produced a new...