Thanks to the diligent sleuthing of an Sedona, Arizona, archivist, a series of classic conversations about the art of reading, between the late philosopher Mortimer J. Adler and his acolyte Charles Van Doren, are once again available on video from Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas.

The discussions between the two public intellectuals, produced by Britannica in the 1970s, were lost for many years until they were rediscovered recently by Ken Dzugan, archivist for the Center. They’re now available on a single DVD and may be ordered online at http://www.thegreatideas.org/HowToReadABook.htm.

Titled “How to Read a Book,” the video was originally produced in conjunction with the third edition of Adler’s classic book of that title, published in 1972 and coauthored by Van Doren. The book’s first edition was a runaway best seller when it was published in 1940.

After going out of print many years ago, the original videotaped product of the Adler-Van Doren conversations disappeared from Britannica’s records. It would have languished in eternal obscurity had it not been for Dzugan’s pluck. After getting a tip from Center member Steve Rossiter, Dzugan searched through an international database of library holdings, located a library that had the original videotapes, borrowed them and approached Britannica, seeking permission to reproduce them. . . .

Read the rest of the story in the press release.

Coming to a library near you:

Beginning in January of next year, Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World will be available electronically, in its entirety, at libraries and institutions. Through an agreement between Britannica and Ingram Digital, the Great Books will be accessible through Ingram’s industry-leading MyiLibrary e-book platform.

The electronic Great Books will contain precisely the same contents as the printed version, with hypertext links from entries in the Syntopicon—the idea index—and the places in the text those entries refer to. The digital corpus will be fully searchable.

If your library doesn’t subscribe, you will have the option of purchasing the electronic version of the Great Books yourself. We’ll have more details when the product becomes available next month.

The Art of Reading
Another new Great Books product we’re delighted to announce is a series of long-lost videos on the art of reading with Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, which will be distributed by the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas.

Adler’s How to Read a Book was an off-the-charts bestseller when first published in 1940. In 1972 he and Van Doren collaborated on the book’s third edition, and a few years later they sat down for several conversations on the book’s main themes. The result was a series of thirteen videos that Britannica issued in the late 1970s.

Somehow, those videos got lost in the sturm and drang of the past three decades, and they would have remained forever so had it not been for the intrepid sleuthing of the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, which tracked down what may have been the only extant set and made it possible for them to be reissued today on a single DVD.

We’re happy now to work in partnership with the Center to make these intriguing conversations available again. To get more information about the DVD, watch a sample, and place an order, go to:

www.thegreatideas.org/HowToReadABook.htm.

Reposted from the Britannica Blog