Summary of Roosevelt Montás's Rescuing Socrates

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was a freshman at Columbia in 1992, and I was required to take Literature Humanities, which was taught by Wallace Gray. The first book on the syllabus was the Iliad. I had read these lines half a dozen times already, but they still seemed thoroughly strange.

#2 I began to read books on the syllabus, and each one brought new questions and challenges. I was beginning to realize just how much I didn’t know.

#3 The Literature Humanities course was modeled on a course invented by John Erskine in 1919 at Columbia College called General Honors. The course was based on the simple but radical idea that undergraduates would benefit from an intensive, non-disciplinary course consisting of reading, usually in translation, one classic each week.

#4 In 1937, Columbia turned the Colloquium on Important Books, a premier undergraduate course, into a universal first-year requirement. The course raised questions about what Columbia had undertaken to do, and whether it could replace the education of English gentlemen by reading a score of books in translation.

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Release date

Ebook: 6 June 2022