How to Read a Book

by Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren

Cover of How to Read a Book
complete 452 pages
Language Arts & Disciplines
Added: May 12, 2025 Updated: May 12, 2025

How to Read a Book

Online Description

With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material. A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them. It’s masterfully done.” –Farheed Zakaria Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text. Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works. Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed.

🔫 Author Background

🔍 Author’s Main Issue / Thesis

  • Alder argues that beginning in American High School, student stop progressing there ability to read, and this lack of education continues through college and into most American’s work lives. He then presents a method to begin learning how to read well across many genres of text.

📒 Sections

  • Approaching a New Book

    • Things to do / think about when approaching a new book.
      • LOOK AT THE TITLE PAGE AND, IF THE BOOK HAS ONE, AT ITS PREFACE. — location: 481
      • STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS — location: 484
      • CHECK THE INDEX — location: 497
      • READ THE PUBLISHER’S BLURB. — location: 504
      • LOOK NOW AT THE CHAPTERS THAT SEEM TO BE PIVOTAL TO ITS ARGUMENT. — location: 513
      • TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT. — location: 514
    • Generally you want to read the front back and inside of the book, then flips through a couple pages to attempt to understand the larger point of the text. This is all prior to reading the book, and is inline with [[1.0 Books/Grad School Essentials|Grad School Essentials]] ideas on how to approach a book too.

  • Question to Ask While Reading a Book

    • Inspectional Reading

      • I think of this as a power skim / first go through. Read the book as best as you can while finding the meaning, but with limited to no research.
        • The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter? — location: 737
        • RULE 1. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ. — location: 825
        • RULE 2. STATE THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE BOOK IN A SINGLE SENTENCE, OR AT MOST A FEW SENTENCES (A SHORT PARAGRAPH). — location: 1059
        • RULE 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE. — location: 1073
        • RULE 4. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR’S PROBLEMS WERE. — location: 1308
      • Based on the rules (and common sense lol), at the end of a inspectional reading I should be able to do an elevator pitch for the book, outline it major parts, and ID the problem the author was tackling.

    • Analytical Reading

      • BLUF: The goal of Analytical Reading is to gain a deep enough understanding of a text to enable me to form an educated critique of the text and at the end of the text determine if I agree, disagree or suspend judgment.

        • First Stage of Analytical Reading:

          • 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
          • 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
          • 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.
          • 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve. — location: 1350

        • Second Stage of Analytical Reading:

          • Rule 5. Find the important words and through them come to terms with the Author.

          • Rule 6. MARK THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCES IN A BOOK AND DISCOVER THE PROPOSITIONS THEY CONTAIN.

          • RULE 7. LOCATE OR CONSTRUCT THE BASIC ARGUMENTS IN THE BOOK BY FINDING THEM IN THE CONNECTION OF SENTENCES.

          • RULE 8. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR’S SOLUTIONS ARE. — location: 1921

          • Steps 5 to 8 put another way. (must easier to read)

          • 5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words. 6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences. 7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. 8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and as to the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve. — location: 1935

        • Third Stage of Analytical Reading

          • This stage is really about critiquing (positive or negative) a text.

          • “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.” — location: 1973

          • RULE 9. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO SAY, WITH REASONABLE CERTAINTY, “I UNDERSTAND,” BEFORE YOU CAN SAY ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING THINGS: “I AGREE,” OR “I DISAGREE,” OR “I SUSPEND JUDGMENT.” — location: 2021

          • RULE 10, and it can be expressed thus: WHEN YOU DISAGREE, DO SO REASONABLY, AND NOT DISPUTATIOUSLY OR CONTENTIOUSLY. — location: 2065

          • RULE 11, therefore, can be stated as follows: RESPECT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND MERE PERSONAL OPINION BY GIVING REASONS FOR ANY CRITICAL JUDGMENT YOU MAKE. — location: 2133

          • There are 4 reasons an author can be wrong:

          • (1) “You are uninformed”; (2) “You are misinformed”; (3) “You are illogical—your reasoning is not cogent”; (4) “Your analysis is incomplete.” — location: 2211

          • If my understanding of the text is complete, I should be able to bin any critic into one of the above categories.

          • Note: Of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the light of the last point. — location: 2330

    • Aids to Reading

      • This section cover multiple chapters must most where so close, they don’t feel like different ideas, ie dictionary vs encyclopedia.
      • The extrinsic aids to reading fall into four categories. In the order in which we will discuss them in this chapter, they are: first, relevant experiences; second, other books; third, commentaries and abstracts; fourth, reference books. — location: 2388
      • the rule in the case of extrinsic reading is that you should not read a commentary by someone else until after you have read the book. — location: 2467

      • Words can be viewed in 4 ways. (This section, gah lol)

        • 1. WORDS ARE PHYSICAL THINGS — location: 2554
          • Like they have letters, no shit again
        • 2. WORDS ARE PARTS OF SPEECH. — location: 2556
        • 3. WORDS ARE SIGNS. — location: 2559
          1. WORDS ARE CONVENTIONAL. — location: 2564

      • Facts also have 4 attributes

        • 1. FACTS ARE PROPOSITIONS. Statements of fact employ words in combination, such as “Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809,” or “the atomic number of gold is 79.” — location: 2620
        • 2. FACTS ARE “TRUE” PROPOSITIONS. Facts are not opinions. — location: 2623
        • 3. FACTS ARE REFLECTIONS OF REALITY. Facts may be either (a) informational singulars or (b) relatively unquestioned generalizations, but in either case they are held to represent the way things really are. — location: 2630
          1. FACTS ARE TO SOME EXTENT CONVENTIONAL. Facts change, we say. — location: 2638

  • Poems, Epics, etc (not relevant to me)

    • Skipped

  • Reading History

    • BLUF: history is really story telling with facts and assumptions, so to have a close to “real” view, multiple histories of the same time period / event must be read.

      • Let us sum up these two suggestions for reading history. The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now. — location: 3382

    • There are four questions to ask when reading history

      • 1. What does the author want to prove?

      • 2. Whom does he want to convince?

      • 3. What special knowledge does he assume?

      • 4. What special language does he use? 5. Does he really know what he is talking about? — location: 3512

  • Reading Science and Mathematics

    • BLUF: do it quickly and for fun, since depth isn’t need just and understanding of the facts.

      • That leads to the second point we want to make. If your intention is to read a mathematical book in and for itself, you must read it, of course, from beginning to end—and with a pencil in your hand, for writing in the margins and even on a scratch pad is more necessary here than in the case of any other kinds of books. But your intention may not be that, but instead to read a scientific work that has mathematics in it. In this case, skipping is often the better part of valor. — location: 3719
      • First, they contain relatively few descriptions of experiments (instead, they merely report the results of experiments). Second, they contain relatively little mathematics (unless they are popular books about mathematics itself  ). — location: 3755

  • Hints for Reading Philosophy & Making Up Your Own Mind

    • Plato said it best, a the worst type of man is one that refuses to join a conversation about philosophy.

      • The controlling idea of Plato that conversation about philosophical subjects is perhaps the most important of all human activities. — location: 4035
      • Plato seems to be saying here, though not explicitly, that it is a betrayal of man’s deepest nature to refuse to join, for whatever reason, in the search for truth. — location: 4041

    • When reading philosophy the goal is to find the authors principles and determine if they are consistent, this is the difference between good philosophy and poor.

    • Once you have found an author’s controlling principles, you will want to decide whether he adheres to them throughout his work. — location: 4064

    • The philosophical problem is to explain, not to describe, as science does, the nature of things. Philosophy asks about more than the connections of phenomena. It seeks to penetrate to the ultimate causes and conditions that underlie them. Such problems are satisfactorily explored only when the answers to them are supported by clear arguments and analysis. — location: 4071

    • In Philosophy the only way to understand it is to read it and think through the problem, external aids don’t help because it is ultimately up to the reader to determine if it is true.

      • A philosopher, faced with a problem, can do nothing but think about it. A reader, faced with a philosophical book, can do nothing but read it—which means, as we know, thinking about it. There are no other aids except the mind itself. — location: 4095
      • It is, indeed, the most distinctive mark of philosophical questions that everyone must answer them for himself. Taking the opinions of others is not solving them, but evading them. And your answers must be solidly grounded, with arguments to back them up. This means, above all, that you cannot depend — location: 4108

  • Reading Theology and Canonical Books

    • Reading Theology and Canonical works deeply and well can be done, but both rely on the suspending of believe to do so, since the texts can’t be questioned, if the reader can’t suspend their believes then they will bring bias into the reading that won’t allow them to take away a full understanding.

    • Theology

      • There are two kinds of theology, natural theology and dogmatic theology. — location: 4113
      • Natural theology is a branch of Metaphysics used to apply unknown causes (god) to the limits of ideas in philosophy, such as the infinite regression of the idea that everything has a cause.
      • Dogmatic theology is that of the church
      • Dogmatic theology differs from philosophy in that its first principles are articles of faith adhered to by the communicants of some religion. — location: 4118
      • The first mistake is to refuse to accept, even temporarily, the articles of faith that are the first principles of the author. — location: 4124
      • The second mistake is to assume that, because the first principles are dogmatic, the arguments based on them, the reasoning that they support, and the conclusions to which they lead are all dogmatic in the same way. — location: 4126
      • For Dogmatic theology, the suspense of believe is required to agree on the premises, ones the premises are agreed upon the text can be read like any other book.

    • Conical Books

      • Anything that is derived from a high sources of authority, commonly thought of as the church, but can also be the military (JP and the link), politics (marx), or any other source that limits questioning.
      • The notion of a canonical book can be extended beyond these obvious examples. Consider any institution—a church, a political party, a society—that among other things (1) is a teaching institution, (2) has a body of doctrine to teach, and (3) has a faithful and obedient membership. The members of any such organization read reverentially. They do not—even cannot—question the authorized or right reading of the books that to them are canonical. The faithful are debarred by their faith from finding error in the “sacred” text, to say nothing of finding nonsense there. — location: 4138

  • Reading Social Science

    • Reading Social Science is hard because like 2nd order questions in Philosophy, there is no normal pattern or structure to the texts, additional there is no capstone works. In general the same principles as Analytical Reading can be applied but the last question of “What of It?” is difficult to answer.
    • But the last question, What of it?, requires considerable restraint on the part of the reader. It is here that the situation we described earlier may occur—namely, the situation in which the reader says, “I cannot fault the author’s conclusions, but I nevertheless disagree with them.” This comes about, of course, because of the prejudgments that the reader is likely to have concerning the author’s approach and his conclusions. — location: 4277
    • Because the texts are so speculative (soft science) really many works on the same topic must be read to gain a full understanding of the topic, this is similar to how History must be read as well.
    • More than once in the course of this chapter we have employed the phrase “social science literature” instead of “social science book.” The reason is that it is customary in social science to read several books about a subject rather than one book for its own sake. — location: 4282
    • Finally no one really knows what Social Science is, ever school uses different definitions so it is really a grab bag of readers choice.

  • Syntopical Reading

    • Syntopical reading, is the version of reading where you read multiple books at the analytical level about the same topics to get a full idea of the topic area. It involves reading even more texts at the inspectional level to determine if they are relevant or not first.

      • In a somewhat analogous fashion, both inspectional and analytical reading can be considered as anticipations or preparations for syntopical reading. — location: 4379
      • The first thing to do when you have amassed your bibliography is to inspect all of the books on your list. You should not read any of them analytically before inspecting all of them. — location: 4386
      • First, it will give you a clear enough idea of your subject so that your subsequent analytical reading of some of the books on the list is productive. And second, it will allow you to cut down your bibliography to a more manageable size. — location: 4389
      • He also discovers, in the very short time it takes him to inspect it, whether the book says something important about his subject or not. — location: 4398

    • The key to this first step of syntopical reading besides cutting down the list of texts is also to determine what needs to be read fast and what should be read slow.

      • But their efforts are enormously wasteful because they do not understand how to read some books faster than others. They spend the same amount of time and effort on every book or article they read. As a result, they do not read those books that deserve a really good reading as well as they deserve, and they waste time on works that deserve less attention. — location: 4395
      • Either the book is one to which he must return for light, or it is one that, no matter how enjoyable or informative, contains no enlightenment and therefore does not have to be read again. — location: 4400

    • The Five Steps of Syntopical Reading

      • STEP 1 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: FINDING THE RELEVANT PASSAGES — location: 4418

        • In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books that you read. — location: 4422
        • Therefore, to try to identify the relevant passages at the same time that you identify the relevant books is often perilous. — location: 4431
        • Above all, remember that your task is not so much to achieve an overall understanding of the particular book before you as to find out how it can be useful to you in a connection that may be very far from the author’s own purpose in writing it. — location: 4437

      • STEP 2 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: BRINGING THE AUTHORS TO TERMS — location: 4444

        • This is probably the most difficult step in syntopical reading. What it really comes down to is forcing an author to use your language, rather than using his. — location: 4449
        • Not only must we resolutely refuse to accept the terminology of any one author; we must also be willing to face the possibility that no author’s terminology will be useful to — location: 4455
        • Syntopical reading, in short, is to a large extent an exercise in translation. — location: 4459

      • STEP 3 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: GETTING THE QUESTIONS CLEAR — location: 4464

        • Propositions are made up of terms, and of course we must do a similar job on the works we are reading syntopically. But since we ourselves are establishing the terminology in this case, we are faced with the task of establishing a set of neutral propositions as well. The best way to do this is to frame a set of questions that shed light on our problem, and to which each of our authors gives answers. — location: 4467

      • STEP 4 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: DEFINING THE ISSUES — location: 4485

        • The task of the syntopical reader is to define the issues in such a way as to insure that they are joined as well as may be. Sometimes this forces him to frame the question in a way that is not explicitly employed by any author. — location: 4494

      • STEP 5 IN SYNTOPICAL READING: ANALYZING THE DISCUSSION — location: 4501

        • The special quality that a syntopical analysis tries to achieve can, indeed, be summarized in the two words “dialectical objectivity.” — location: 4541
        • The syntopical reader, in short, tries to look at all sides and to take no sides. Of course, he will fail in this exacting ideal. Absolute objectivity is not humanly possible. — location: 4542
        • That is, he must constantly refer back to the actual text of his authors, reading the relevant passages over and over; and, in presenting the results of his work to a wider audience, he must quote the opinion or argument of an author in the writer’s own language. — location: 4551

      • Syntopicon is a collection of the greatest works of the wester world catagorized by topic, and cover a chapter in the book as a method for starting an index of books to read on a topic. The idea is to use the Syntopicon to get directly linked to a passage in a “great text” so you can know about a topic / book before fully reading it.

        • It helps us to read in the great books before we have read through them. — location: 4641
        • Finally, syntopical reading with the aid of the Syntopicon works instructively, in three distinct ways. — location: 4645
          • First, the topic in connection with which the passage is being read serves to give direction to the reader in interpreting the passage. — location: 4647
          • Second, the collection of a number of passages on the same topic, but from different works and different authors, serves to sharpen the reader’s interpretation of each passage read. — location: 4650
          • Third, if syntopical reading is done on a number of different subjects, the fact that the same passage will often be found cited in the Syntopicon under two or more subjects will have its instructive effect. — location: 4654

    • Full write up of the process in the authors words.

      • I. SURVEYING THE FIELD PREPARATORY TO SYNTOPICAL READING
        • 1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books.
        • 2. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject. Note: These two steps are not, strictly speaking, chronologically distinct; that is, the two steps have an effect on each other, with the second, in particular, serving to modify the first.
      • II. SYNTOPICAL READING OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY AMASSED IN STAGE I
        • 1. Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages.
        • 2. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not.
        • 3. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not.
        • 4. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern.
        • 5. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated. — location: 4706

🥰 Who Would Like it ?

  • Fizzle since he recommended it, and probably anyone who is about to start a Masters or PhD program.

📚Related Books

  • [[1.0 Books/Grad School Essentials|Grad School Essentials]]

☠️ Agree, Disagree, or Suspend

  • Agree. I think the author makes a compelling argument that Americans generally stop learning how to read and reading, and to over come this, people should practice reading books at the different levels he recommends.

🗂 Thoughts / Quotes

  • Over all I think a good book for prepping for SAASS, if someone is looking for a shorter version, “Grad School Essentials” delivers largely the same content in a shorter and quicker read.