Michael Gose was a student at Mission Bay High School, Occidental College, Pepperdine University, Stanford University, and as such, he had the great good fortune of reading and discussing the classics. After a visit to campus by Mortimer Adler, Gose initiated a Great Books program at Pepperdine University, and has been teaching Great Books, and writing about Socratic pedagogy, for almost forty years
"What's so great about the great books? They bring us into conversations with great thinkers and ideas, teaches reading, analysis, conversation and writing. The program lays a liberal arts foundation for the very best college education. One of the best things we did when I was president of Pepperdine University was to encourage Michael Gose and his colleagues to begin a Great Books program for the first two years of the undergraduate experience. The only thing better would have been to require every student to take it. Following the lead of the great Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago, one of the best things a college president can do is start and support a Great Books program. The model is out there, it only takes excellent teachers, like Michael Gose, and community support to accomplish it. -- David Davenport, Research Fellow Emeritus, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California Michael Gose was my Great Books professor. He helped me navigate the great conversation. Now he’s poured his wisdom from forty years of teaching Great Books into one place. This book should be given to every novice and veteran teacher of the Great Books so that they may learn or remember how to continue the tradition that was started not merely by Erskin and Adler in the twentieth century but began with Homer, Plato and Aristotle millennia ago. -- Jessica Hooten Wilson, Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts, Pepperdine University, author of ""The Scandal of Holiness"""