Great Books?

There's various pieces around the Internet pertaining to Alex Beam's A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books, which describes the impact of the Great Books of Western Civilization series (essentially works by dead white men). They were selected by University of Chicago academics in the middle of the twentieth century.

• Washington Monthly review
• Chicago Tribune review
  
• Column in University of Chicago Magazine
• Great Books reading lists, St. John's College
• A Great Books forum at the Brittanica blog
• Interview with Beam on The Marketplace of Ideas