With half a million copies in print, this remains the best known guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, rewritten and updated from the edition Mortimer J. Adler first published in 1940 and later revised with Charles Van Doren.

The book sets out four levels of reading - elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical - and teaches each in turn: when it is legitimate to judge a book by its cover, how to X-ray a book before reading it closely, how to read critically, and how to read several books against one another on the same question. A general-education classic rather than a Christian title, and a useful one for anyone who reads for study.