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The Book Wars: What It Takes to Be Educated in America
Does it matter which books college students read? Indeed it does, contends James Atlas. What we read has crucial implications for both our development as individuals and our ability to establish consensus on national issues. We are what we read. Where once the giants of Western thought - Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dante - had pride of place, university courses now boast authors such as Raymond Chandler, Alice Walker, and Louis L'Amour. Traditionalists argue that abandoning the "Great Books" spells doom for America's education system, a system that multiculturalists have called a white, elitist scam that fails to reflect America's multi-ethnic, non-European heritage. Has the "opening" of the curriculum gone too far? Atlas's attempt to answer this question takes him to university classrooms across America, where the canon of "Great Books" is being dismantled in the name of political correctness, and into his own past, as he considers the influence of these books on his own life. As ethnic groups reassert their identities and break from traditional assimilation, Atlas argues, America's need for common ground is greater than ever. Unless there is a set of core beliefs upon which to build consensus, there may soon be no clear idea of America, no common heritage, and no unified future. Like The Closing of the American Mind and The Disuniting of America, Battle of the Books is a powerful, unsettling argument that calls attention to a looming crisis in American education.
- GenresEducationNonfiction
91 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
1 person is currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
James Atlas
73 books16 followersJames Robert Atlas was a writer, especially of biographies, as well as a publisher. He was the president of Atlas & Company, and founding editor of the Penguin Lives Series.
He was born in 1949 outside Chicago, and attended Harvard University, studying under Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop with the intention to become a poet. He later attended Oxford University and studied under Richard Ellmann as a prestigious Rhodes Scholar. Here, he decided that he wanted to become a biographer.
He was born in 1949 outside Chicago, and attended Harvard University, studying under Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop with the intention to become a poet. He later attended Oxford University and studied under Richard Ellmann as a prestigious Rhodes Scholar. Here, he decided that he wanted to become a biographer.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 12, 2024
Though this book is almost 25 years old, it is even more relevant today than when it first came out (like most good books). It's not as good as Allan Bloom's book, but it is less acerbic. Likewise, it gets a little wimpy toward the conclusion ("the point is to be tolerant" ... not really), but on the whole this is a good book to read, especially for those who doubt the dilapidated condition of post-secondary education in the US today. Do any of those people still exist? Aside from the very people who caused/cause/further the problem, probably not. As Atlas (and Bloom and Bork and everyone at ISI) points out, the people who caused/cause/further the problem are the people most responsible for fixing the problem: college "professors," most of whom profess "truth does not exist ... but you have to buy my book anyway if you want to pass my class, the one my TA is teaching." Or words to that effect. Sure, not every college is like that, but not too many people who have been to college (or any public school) within the last couple of decades have escaped the epidemics of pragmatism and relativism.
Atlas surveys the field rather well, and despite the fact his field is 25 years old, it is still pertinent today, since most of the names he drops are still bouncing around in influence and authority - perhaps even more so, since most of them have had 25-some years to publish more books on the absence of truth or meaning and 25-some more years of students to sway down their dark paths. At least the years in which they have taken sabbaticals from taking sabbaticals.
Does Atlas have a solution? Essentially: read the core ... and keep adding to it. I suppose. I can't really argue with that, since I also read Star Trek, Star Wars, Discworld, and lots of other things not approaching canonical status. I do appreciate his willingness for much of the book (covert at times though he may be) to emphasize the necessity of becoming acculturated into one's own culture as well as the classics - the classics are not about a particular time and place, they are for everyone everywhere for all time. That's what make them classic (not just their age). This has not been lost, though - it has been outright rejected. And clearly we are paying the price for that rejection. So go read a few books about the classics, then go spend much more time reading the classics themselves. You'll rarely be disappointed.
Atlas surveys the field rather well, and despite the fact his field is 25 years old, it is still pertinent today, since most of the names he drops are still bouncing around in influence and authority - perhaps even more so, since most of them have had 25-some years to publish more books on the absence of truth or meaning and 25-some more years of students to sway down their dark paths. At least the years in which they have taken sabbaticals from taking sabbaticals.
Does Atlas have a solution? Essentially: read the core ... and keep adding to it. I suppose. I can't really argue with that, since I also read Star Trek, Star Wars, Discworld, and lots of other things not approaching canonical status. I do appreciate his willingness for much of the book (covert at times though he may be) to emphasize the necessity of becoming acculturated into one's own culture as well as the classics - the classics are not about a particular time and place, they are for everyone everywhere for all time. That's what make them classic (not just their age). This has not been lost, though - it has been outright rejected. And clearly we are paying the price for that rejection. So go read a few books about the classics, then go spend much more time reading the classics themselves. You'll rarely be disappointed.
April 8, 2009
James Atlas, an editor for The New York Times, no doubt wishing to cash in on the coattails of such as Allen Bloom and Eric D. Hirsch, summarizes what he considers to be the basic debate between the traditionalists (read Great Books and Dead-White- European-Males) and the radicals (read multiculturalists who would have us read gay and Hindu literature) who espouse cultural relativism. His Battle of the Books: The Curriculum Debate in America will not overload your shelves, physically or mentally.
Tradition, I suppose, is useful for building stability and creating a reference point from which to examine new ideas, but it seems to me that both sides of the issue miss the point; both sides want to operate in a world exclusive of the other, rather than take the best of both.
Allen Bloom, who started the whole thing, or at least brought the debate into the open, argues that democracy and its desire for equality, really is at fault; that the cultural relativism of the sixties removed us from the traditional values of the "Great Books", which, of course gave us slavery and colonialism. Atlas, who comes down on the side of the "canonists," (those arguing for a traditional canon of reading) -- along with William Bennett -- forget that the classics of today were the radical nonsense of yesterday. Surely a century that has seen genocide and the creation of weapons of universal destruction, can stop to examine the literature of the present in the context of the current century. And, surely, in a world in which all countries must rely on each other, it is useful to examine and understand the history, politics and social milieu of other peoples. After all, Hirsch argues that if we do not all have a common base of knowledge we will not be able to communicate with each other. Surely it becomes important to communicate with other than just ourselves.
Both sides are engaged in a political struggle: the Left wanting more attention paid to the disenfranchised, and the Right fearing the trend away from traditional values. Both sides suffer from an extreme naivete if they believe that excluding the literature of either side will carry the day for their own point of view.
Atlas wanders all over the place, blaming the univerities' "publish or perish" requirement for the decline of scholarship and the trend away from the classics. (How much more can be said about Shakespeare or Milton?) He is a fan of assimilation of other "cultures"; that it's important to maintain the superiority and power and righteousness of the United States of America. (Stand up and salute at this point.) The problem is, of course, that mainstream, white society has never permitted the assimilation of those who look or act differently from their own male WASP society; hence, perhaps, the trend toward valuing uniqueness and values other than those of the Dead White European Males.
Ultimately, I agree with Brumwich, who argues that the real purpose of education is not to transmit a point of view, -- although I see nothing wrong with that -- but to help students to think and make rational choices based on knowledge rather than opinion. Whether we've done that, of course, is a whole other debate.
Tradition, I suppose, is useful for building stability and creating a reference point from which to examine new ideas, but it seems to me that both sides of the issue miss the point; both sides want to operate in a world exclusive of the other, rather than take the best of both.
Allen Bloom, who started the whole thing, or at least brought the debate into the open, argues that democracy and its desire for equality, really is at fault; that the cultural relativism of the sixties removed us from the traditional values of the "Great Books", which, of course gave us slavery and colonialism. Atlas, who comes down on the side of the "canonists," (those arguing for a traditional canon of reading) -- along with William Bennett -- forget that the classics of today were the radical nonsense of yesterday. Surely a century that has seen genocide and the creation of weapons of universal destruction, can stop to examine the literature of the present in the context of the current century. And, surely, in a world in which all countries must rely on each other, it is useful to examine and understand the history, politics and social milieu of other peoples. After all, Hirsch argues that if we do not all have a common base of knowledge we will not be able to communicate with each other. Surely it becomes important to communicate with other than just ourselves.
Both sides are engaged in a political struggle: the Left wanting more attention paid to the disenfranchised, and the Right fearing the trend away from traditional values. Both sides suffer from an extreme naivete if they believe that excluding the literature of either side will carry the day for their own point of view.
Atlas wanders all over the place, blaming the univerities' "publish or perish" requirement for the decline of scholarship and the trend away from the classics. (How much more can be said about Shakespeare or Milton?) He is a fan of assimilation of other "cultures"; that it's important to maintain the superiority and power and righteousness of the United States of America. (Stand up and salute at this point.) The problem is, of course, that mainstream, white society has never permitted the assimilation of those who look or act differently from their own male WASP society; hence, perhaps, the trend toward valuing uniqueness and values other than those of the Dead White European Males.
Ultimately, I agree with Brumwich, who argues that the real purpose of education is not to transmit a point of view, -- although I see nothing wrong with that -- but to help students to think and make rational choices based on knowledge rather than opinion. Whether we've done that, of course, is a whole other debate.
January 27, 2026
This 1990 book was written near the height of the battle between those who fought a losing battle to preserve the traditional cannon of humanist books, the Great Books, and those who saw that cannon as a tool of oppression and suppression of alternative voice. The pro-cannon crew, let by people like Hirsch and Bloom, argued that the cannon was an essential element of who we are as a culture, but the left swing in academia routed that old guard in favor of a loose-goosey anything-goes approach to reading lists. Although you might thing a book describing a particular moment in the history of the academy circa 1990 might be pretty dated, I found the book still speaks to where we are the continuing effort to find some sort of center that will hold with respect to having a shared curriculum that will continue to connect the present and future generations with those that have gone before. Atlas's own take is that the cannon as it was, circa 1950, cannot be defended, the interests of those who teach and rule the academy have changed too much for that, and rightfully so, he would say, I think. On the other hand, he reminds us (me at least) about the pleasure there is to be found in reading the classics, whether they be Greek, European, or American, and how these books continue to tell us about who we are and where we are as a people. He writes:
"This isn't to say that we should ignore minority literature, Third World literature, the literature of peoples around the globe. But without a common culture, a culture that possesses certain shared assumptions, there will soon be no America to imagine, no common myth around which to organize our aspirations. The study of American literature invests us in our own society by enabling us to recognize ourselves in it--to find there a general representation of our experience" (p. 131-2). No doubt some will say that they don't see themselves represented in that experience, but he points out that many who have come from minority or immigrant experiences have nonetheless emersed themselves and found themselves reflected in that same trove of English literature. As Maya Angelou said of her experience in reading "The Merchant of Venice", "No one else understands it, but I know that William Shakespeare was a black woman." Atlas makes a good argument and I found his reminiscences about what it was like for him as a new college student amidst all the treasures of our cultural literary wealth, I found myself reflected in his own experience.
He concludes, "What do Great Books have to do with the fragile edifice of culture? Doesn't it always need shoring up against the forces of barbarism? To my mind, the connection isn't fanciful. The new curriculum [that which was in the process of replacing the canon with a much wider list of texts] is an effort to validate the claims of the individual. But what about the claims of society? Who will argue on its behalf? Only a nation schooled in its own past can grasp the negotiation between personal freedom and collective self-interest that is the essence of our American democracy. Those ideas are learned in books. The Great Books. The best that is known and thought in the world. The canon."
"This isn't to say that we should ignore minority literature, Third World literature, the literature of peoples around the globe. But without a common culture, a culture that possesses certain shared assumptions, there will soon be no America to imagine, no common myth around which to organize our aspirations. The study of American literature invests us in our own society by enabling us to recognize ourselves in it--to find there a general representation of our experience" (p. 131-2). No doubt some will say that they don't see themselves represented in that experience, but he points out that many who have come from minority or immigrant experiences have nonetheless emersed themselves and found themselves reflected in that same trove of English literature. As Maya Angelou said of her experience in reading "The Merchant of Venice", "No one else understands it, but I know that William Shakespeare was a black woman." Atlas makes a good argument and I found his reminiscences about what it was like for him as a new college student amidst all the treasures of our cultural literary wealth, I found myself reflected in his own experience.
He concludes, "What do Great Books have to do with the fragile edifice of culture? Doesn't it always need shoring up against the forces of barbarism? To my mind, the connection isn't fanciful. The new curriculum [that which was in the process of replacing the canon with a much wider list of texts] is an effort to validate the claims of the individual. But what about the claims of society? Who will argue on its behalf? Only a nation schooled in its own past can grasp the negotiation between personal freedom and collective self-interest that is the essence of our American democracy. Those ideas are learned in books. The Great Books. The best that is known and thought in the world. The canon."
November 7, 2008
I found this book while searching for something to help me develop a curriculum for homeschooling my four small children. At first, this book seemed to be not quite what I needed, as it did not apply to the hear and now. Most of the focus is, in fact, on the curriculum debate in college. However, as I continued to read it, that idea changed, and later reading "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by DeMille re-affirmed much of what I had read in this book.
The author begins with the premise that he is going to attempt to remain neutral as he relays both sides of the ongoing debate over curriculum in the US. In particular, he ponders the question of whether or not we can - or should - establish a canon of "good" or "core" books that all educated college students should read.
He manages a fairly evenhanded retelling of both sides, although I do think that you can clearly see which side of the issue he is on. My worry, however, is that he is so busy giving both sides of the arguements that he does not focus more on the 'why'. I do not know if this is a fault in the logistics of those debating, or if he is simply trying too hard to appear "balanced".
The reasons he provides for having a "core" knowledge is, primarily, similar with E. D. Hirsch. By the way, as a homeschooler, I do not agree with Hirsch, and so this actually meant I read the arguements with raised eyebrows. While I knew my reasons for disagreeing with Hirsch, however - first, his reasons for attaining a similar culture seem very juvenile to me; that is, I don't believe students should read "The Great Gatsby" and Shakespeare so that they can make allusions over the boardroom table and thus impress those they are dealing with; and second, I am not sure it is possible to pour the exact same amount of knowledge into every student in the nation's head with the exact same ratio, simply because children are not machines - (go back and re-start this sentence, now, to see where I am coming from; or, wait, I will) while I knew those reasons for disagreement, I did not fully concede that a knowledge of the classics was unnecessary. And so I read this book hoping to be wooed back into the classics, as every good English major ought to be.
The stimulus I found, however, came from the aforementioned "Thomas Jefferson Education", which pretty much states that the reasons we should have for reading the classics is to learn how to think and act. (Mind you, this is a summarized version; I highly encourage you to read the book.) And so, with that in mind, I was able to look back at Atlas' book and see the problems that he states comes with the distancing from the classics we currently experience.
One point that I really appreciated that Atlas made was the fact that the classics are the classics simply because they apply to every person, regardless of race, sex, or nationality. Too many people look at the authors and - without bothering to read - dismiss them as a group of old white men who have no experience with "my" suffering. Perhaps these men were never enslaved or downtrodden (wait, wasn't Poe pretty trodden upon?), perhaps they were men of privilige, but that does not dismiss the things that they wrote. Aren't lonlieness, love, rage, and regret universal? And so, when we read the classics, we can choose to do so with either an eye towards what the authors missed OR with an eye towards those things that resonate within us. Those resonances are the things that make these books classics.
One other point I think he made that resonated strongly was the "trickle down" point. That is, the colleges are, in fact, determining the foundation of education for the public schools, or at least for college-bound students. College boards write the exams for the AP tests, and so they determine the bias of what students should, in their opinion, be learning. As more and more teachers "teach to the test", that means that the "diversification" of history and classics will be taught in high school. Although he does not say it, it should be obvious that more and more middle schools will prep their students for high school by teaching part of the same, and I wouldn't be surprised to find more and more elementary schools prep kindergardeners the same way. I find this both fascinating and appalling - kind of like the twenty-car pile up on the side of the road, at a national level. It makes me wonder just how much of the crumbling of American education started at the college level. (Never fear, there is more than enough blame to go around; I'm not laying it solely at the college's feet.) It was quite thought-provoking.
Atlas did manage a fairly evenhanded discussion of the debate, and was never overly biased, I don't think (I could, of course, be oblivious since I agree with him). He laid out the facts and many of the reasons used, and I think gave some interesting reasons for why we should have classics in our education. I think that he left some arguements out - but as I said, that may well be because they had not yet been made. All in all, this was a very interesting read that did, in fact, affect my determination regarding how I would homeschool my children - if only because it is obvious that they will be able to make it through college without a foundation in the classics, and so ought be prepared before they go, or at least inspired to explore the classics themselves.
The author begins with the premise that he is going to attempt to remain neutral as he relays both sides of the ongoing debate over curriculum in the US. In particular, he ponders the question of whether or not we can - or should - establish a canon of "good" or "core" books that all educated college students should read.
He manages a fairly evenhanded retelling of both sides, although I do think that you can clearly see which side of the issue he is on. My worry, however, is that he is so busy giving both sides of the arguements that he does not focus more on the 'why'. I do not know if this is a fault in the logistics of those debating, or if he is simply trying too hard to appear "balanced".
The reasons he provides for having a "core" knowledge is, primarily, similar with E. D. Hirsch. By the way, as a homeschooler, I do not agree with Hirsch, and so this actually meant I read the arguements with raised eyebrows. While I knew my reasons for disagreeing with Hirsch, however - first, his reasons for attaining a similar culture seem very juvenile to me; that is, I don't believe students should read "The Great Gatsby" and Shakespeare so that they can make allusions over the boardroom table and thus impress those they are dealing with; and second, I am not sure it is possible to pour the exact same amount of knowledge into every student in the nation's head with the exact same ratio, simply because children are not machines - (go back and re-start this sentence, now, to see where I am coming from; or, wait, I will) while I knew those reasons for disagreement, I did not fully concede that a knowledge of the classics was unnecessary. And so I read this book hoping to be wooed back into the classics, as every good English major ought to be.
The stimulus I found, however, came from the aforementioned "Thomas Jefferson Education", which pretty much states that the reasons we should have for reading the classics is to learn how to think and act. (Mind you, this is a summarized version; I highly encourage you to read the book.) And so, with that in mind, I was able to look back at Atlas' book and see the problems that he states comes with the distancing from the classics we currently experience.
One point that I really appreciated that Atlas made was the fact that the classics are the classics simply because they apply to every person, regardless of race, sex, or nationality. Too many people look at the authors and - without bothering to read - dismiss them as a group of old white men who have no experience with "my" suffering. Perhaps these men were never enslaved or downtrodden (wait, wasn't Poe pretty trodden upon?), perhaps they were men of privilige, but that does not dismiss the things that they wrote. Aren't lonlieness, love, rage, and regret universal? And so, when we read the classics, we can choose to do so with either an eye towards what the authors missed OR with an eye towards those things that resonate within us. Those resonances are the things that make these books classics.
One other point I think he made that resonated strongly was the "trickle down" point. That is, the colleges are, in fact, determining the foundation of education for the public schools, or at least for college-bound students. College boards write the exams for the AP tests, and so they determine the bias of what students should, in their opinion, be learning. As more and more teachers "teach to the test", that means that the "diversification" of history and classics will be taught in high school. Although he does not say it, it should be obvious that more and more middle schools will prep their students for high school by teaching part of the same, and I wouldn't be surprised to find more and more elementary schools prep kindergardeners the same way. I find this both fascinating and appalling - kind of like the twenty-car pile up on the side of the road, at a national level. It makes me wonder just how much of the crumbling of American education started at the college level. (Never fear, there is more than enough blame to go around; I'm not laying it solely at the college's feet.) It was quite thought-provoking.
Atlas did manage a fairly evenhanded discussion of the debate, and was never overly biased, I don't think (I could, of course, be oblivious since I agree with him). He laid out the facts and many of the reasons used, and I think gave some interesting reasons for why we should have classics in our education. I think that he left some arguements out - but as I said, that may well be because they had not yet been made. All in all, this was a very interesting read that did, in fact, affect my determination regarding how I would homeschool my children - if only because it is obvious that they will be able to make it through college without a foundation in the classics, and so ought be prepared before they go, or at least inspired to explore the classics themselves.
January 7, 2025
This is to me a wonderful resource book.
June 17, 2015
Say what you will about the ultimate conclusions James Atlas comes to, I believe that he does give significant voice to both sides of the debate regarding the literature that is to comprise our schools' core curricula. Are the "Great Books" programs that include such epics as Homer and Shakespeare and Locke fostering an idea of the white male and his ideas as supreme? Should the schools of the western world include more books from places like Asia and the Middle East? Do other races and women in the USA have their struggles and hopes reflected in the "Great Books"? Read this book, and whether or not you come to a conclusion for the first time or you change sides in the debate, you will at the very least have a more well-rounded understanding of the players and what's ultimately at stake.
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June 30, 2009superfluous addition to the curriculum debates, passed on to me by a well-intentioned older friend. i really don't understand how this got published.
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