How to Read a Book

Adler and Van Doren present a method for reading demanding books, arguing that most educated people can read for information and cannot read for understanding, and that the two are different activities requiring different techniques.

They identify four levels. Elementary reading is the decoding taught in school. Inspectional reading is systematic skimming, in which a reader examines the title page, preface, table of contents, index and key passages within a fixed time to determine what the book is, what it argues and whether it is worth full attention. Analytical reading is the thorough reading of a single book, which they break into fifteen rules covering classifying the book, stating its unity in a sentence, outlining its parts, identifying the author's problems, coming to terms with the author's key words, grasping the propositions and arguments, determining what the author solved and failed to solve, and only then criticising. Syntopical reading is reading many books on a subject to construct an understanding that no single book provides, which requires establishing a neutral terminology since different authors use different words for the same concepts.

Their most useful discipline is the rule that a reader must be able to state the author's argument in their own words before agreeing or disagreeing, and that saying you do not understand is a legitimate response distinct from disagreement.

The book is from 1940, revised in 1972, and the tone is prescriptive. The reading list appended is dated and heavily Western. It is longer than its method requires. The inspectional reading technique and the requirement to state an argument before criticising it are the two elements that transfer immediately.