Crack The Book: A Beginner's Guide to Reading the Great Books

This week on Crack the Book, we dive into a fascinating mix of political and philosophical texts from Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List: the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Communist Manifesto, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

I revisit the Declaration with fresh eyes—its sharp list of grievances and its insistence on mutual respect still sparkle with clarity...

This week is all poetry—our first all-poetry week of the Immersive Humanities project! After struggling through young Werther, I decided I needed to step back and understand Romanticism as a movement. I offer a brief review of the history leading up to Romanticism; after all, most movements are reactions against what precedes them. The printing press and Protestant Reformation blew open European thought, leading to centuries o...

This week we leave the Middle Ages far behind and land squarely in the emotional whirlwind of Romanticism with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Written in 1774 when Goethe was just twenty-five, the novel became what might be the first true worldwide bestseller—so influential that young men across Europe dressed like Werther, and suicides even spiked in imitation of his tragic end.

Werther himself is…a lot. His passio...

Ted Gioia warned this would be a tough week—and he wasn’t kidding. Week 33 of the Immersive Humanities Project had me wrestling with three giants of philosophy: Descartes, Kant, and Spinoza. I started with Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, where his famous “I think, therefore I am” felt surprisingly direct and human. His four rules for reasoning—question, divide, simplify, and review—made him seem less like an abst...

This week on Crack the Book, we move from Rousseau’s Social Contract to his Confessions, and let’s just say my opinion hasn’t improved.

Before we get to the books, I share some strategies for getting through a book you don't like (because I needed to take my own advice this week). Then we move on to our two books for the week.

In Confession's Book One, Rousseau recounts his early life with all the self-importance...

This week on Crack the Book marks a jarring shift in tone — and in time. After months steeped in medieval imagination, we start there with  Niccolò Machiavelli and end firmly in the Enlightenment with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Their works, The Prince (1513) and The Social Contract (1762), straddle that uneasy moment when faith and hierarchy gave way to “rational” thinking. And wow, does it sound different. I didn’t realize how ac...

This week we pair two early-modern comedies that show how laughter can reveal truth. But first, we do a quick review of European history, looking at France, Spain, Italy and England, trying to place the things we're reading inside history. (I knew next to nothing about Spain at this time so it was really helpful for me!)

Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605) introduces a middle-aged dreamer who decides to become a knight-errant, s...

After three (very full!) weeks of Shakespeare, we reluctantly leave England for Italy—and step into the vivid world of Renaissance art. Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List serves up a refreshing change of scene with Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography.

Both were brand-new to me, and both were a delight. Vasari, himself an accomplished painter and architect, profiles ...

This week on Crack the Book, I’m still in awe of Shakespeare — and not ready to leave him behind. Somewhere between Falstaff’s jokes and Othello’s heartbreak, I realized just how much I’ve climbed the Shakespeare learning curve. The language that once felt impossible now feels like music, and these plays — Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, and Othello — have been my favorite week yet.

To start, though, I covered a ...

Back with more Shakespeare! Before we get started with Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest, I share a little about my experience with Shakespeare before this project.

In short, it was almost ZERO.

I tell you this so you can have confidence as you start your own Shakespeare journey. I have been shocked, amazed and gratified at how rewarding the time put in with Shakespeare has been. And now, on to the plays!

T...

After the last three weeks with Dante, we jump to another three-week series with Shakespeare and NINE plays!

Shakespeare can be daunting, so I offer a few thoughts on how to approach him:

• Watch a movie FIRST
• Get a good edition (hello, Folger Shakespeare Library)
• Keep a one-line-per-scene summary as you read
• Enjoy!! It will get easier and the plays are so very worthwhile.

Hamlet dazzles with layered characters and razo...

Jack is back as we discuss Paradiso, Jack's favorite part of Dante's Divine Comedy. I absolutely love getting to chat with him again (see a couple of earlier episodes linked below). We talk about why he loves Dante in general, and Paradiso in particular. Highlights include:

• Dante's bravery (or chutzpah!) in writing his poetry and scholarly works in Italian rather than Latin;
• Who Dante is for (spoiler--it's for YOU), and why (the...

My very dear friend Lisa Beerman joins me for this episode, and we talk all things Purgatory. Since we share a deep love for this book of the Divine Comedy she's our perfect companion for this part of the journey.

We have a wide ranging conversation about translations, "ways in" to the Comedy, and the usefulness of Dante in everyday life. I hope you enjoy this conversation! Links to a few of the resources we discussed are below.

We l...

This week it’s Dante, and it will be amazing. Full stop. Of all the classics you could read, The Divine Comedy may be one of the most intimidating, but it’s also one of the most necessary. In this episode I’ll break it down and share how to make the journey approachable. You can do this.

We begin with Dante’s early autobiographical work, the Nuovo Vitae (“New Life”), a short book of prose and poetry reflecting on his youth and his g...

This week marks the halfway point in my year-long reading project through Ted Gioia’s *Immersive Humanities* list, and instead of turning to Dante just yet, I’m stopping to take stock. Call it my “halftime report.”

When Gioia built his list, he gave himself some rules: keep each week under 250 pages, make it global not just Western, mix in art and music, and move (mostly) in chronological order. I’ve tried to follow his structure, b...

How is this project different than reading books in school? Well, I'm going a lot faster, but it's more than that. I reflect a little on the differences to get us started. I'm grateful that reading on my own is giving me time to reflect on goodness and Beauty-with-a-capital-B. And did this week ever deliver on the Beauty!

This week’s reading was the letters of Peter Abelard and Heloise, a glimpse into one of the most famous love sto...

This week’s stop on Ted Gioia’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities List took me to Africa for two epics: Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali and The Mwindo Epic. One was a pleasant surprise, the other… well, I’d like my hours back.

Sundiata follows a young prince who can’t walk or talk, is exiled, then returns to save his homeland with his griot (advisor and best friend) at his side. I accidentally ordered the children’s ed...

This week on Crack the Book, we take a big leap forward—from Augustine’s Confessions in the ancient world to 14th-century England—with selections from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. No translation was needed, technically, but the Middle English still felt like a new language.

Both were new to me, which now feels shocking—how did I miss even a snippet of C...

What happens when a brilliant young skeptic is prayed into faith by his mother? This week I finished Confessionsby St. Augustine. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but the first nine books were a revelation.

Written around 400 A.D., Confessions traces Augustine’s path from pagan philosopher to Christian convert. His story is deeply personal, full of reflection on education, desire, ambition, and the slow turning of a...