By Karl Schudt  Here at Online Great Books, we read books that are, well, great. The books have stood the test of time, are hefty enough to bear repeated readings, and make some contribution to the ongoing conversation that we humans have been having with ourselves ever since we learned how to commit our thoughts […]

By Katie King In our open discussion forum in Slack, OGB member Tim Suddarth had a great question. So great, we thought it needed to be fleshed out for the purpose of this blog post. Here is Tim’s question: I need help understanding the saying on the back of the t-shirt, “The noble things are […]

By Scott Hambrick, Reader-In-Chief    This essay was originally written in April of 1998.  To begin, I want to make sure the reader understands I am not writing a research paper. This is an essay on how I have interpreted Thoreau’s Walden and some of Emerson’s writing. Because this is based on my interpretation, only the […]

By Scott Hambrick, Reader-In-Chief   In The Republic, the greatest bit of political thought ever written, Plato asks us all, “What is Justice?”  In The Republic, we read that justice could be giving people what is theirs, the rule of the many, that which the strongest demand, and more.  People have wrestled with this text […]

By Katie King  How To Channel the Gadfly. Experiencing Writer’s Block? Need a Disruptor? Then Bite In.    Before sitting down to write, address the following questions:  What’s a “big” question about the text that interests you and why? In order to answer that question, what are 3-5 questions you need to address FIRST in […]

By Katie King  A How-To Guide: Weaving Narrative Writing with The Great Books  What Is It?  These short, 5-minute reads are personal reflections and editorials from our staff and seminar leaders on some aspect of the books that they have been reading and discussing in seminars. As seminar leaders, they are explicitly instructed not to […]

By Karl Schudt, Seminar Host  Here at Online Great Books, we have a problem. Sometimes, people do not attend their seminar. They keep paying and they keep receiving their books, but they don’t show up for the weekly seminar. This is problematic. Not only because they aren’t getting full value for their membership, but because […]

By Karl Schudt, Seminar Host  I fell asleep reading Herodotus last week. I awoke in his study in Halicarnassus. He’s wide-eyed, insistent, takes me by the hand, and leads me into his study. Once there, he gets me a cup of tea. I’m more of a coffee guy, but it’s good tea. Herodotus shows me […]

By Ben McAllister  Every era has a defining anxiety. Today, we live in an era of technological anxiety. We ask ourselves questions like: What are smartphones doing to us? Is social media making us miserable? Will automation lead to mass unemployment? We’ve been asking these kinds of questions since the industrial revolution. The early 20th-century […]

By Alex Fader “In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away. …You have a much better chance of understanding [the Great Book] on a second reading, but that requires you to have read the book […]