Author: Mortimer Adler

MORTIMER J. ADLER, who died in 2001, left an indelible mark on American culture. Beginning in the 1930s, Adler was the major force in promoting the Great Books idea as an educational paradigm. He founded the Institute for Philosophical Research, launched the Paideia movement for educational reform, and revolutionized the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Dr. Adler edited hundreds of books and authored over sixty, ranging from original philosophical contributions to popular best-sellers like How to Read a Book.KEN DZUGAN, a graduate of MIT, had enjoyed a varied career in business, city planning, and real estate development, when in 1990 he read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. This experience transformed my life. It dramatically changed what I read, how I read, and why I read.” In his role as Archivist at the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas, Dzugan is working his way through over 200, 000 pages of Dr. Adler’s papers, and has found over four hundred works never listed in any Adler bibliography, including one entire completed book.