Just over 100 years ago Columbia's John Erskine started a General Honors program that was the precursor of the Great Books programs popularized by his student, Mortimer Adler. As a set term "Great Books" has elicited more than some controversy, especially because most relatively short lists of such works mostly features "dead white men". However, most any group in America has made the Great Ideas their own. This book explores the benefits of reading "Great Books," and is virtually unique in detailing what a series of Great Books classes has looked like over the past decades.

Michael Gose was a student at Mission Bay High School, Occidental College, Pepperdine University, Stanford University, and as such, he had the great good fortune of reading and discussing the classics. After a visit to campus by Mortimer Adler, Gose initiated a Great Books program at Pepperdine University, and has been teaching Great Books, and writing about Socratic pedagogy, for almost forty years.