Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: A perfect memoir, aware of its pretensions but honest always
Review: If you've never been exposed to the "Great Books" movement in higher education, you probably don't know who Robert Hutchins was. I only knew him as a dazzling champion of this almost-forgotten ideal of learning, as did his contemporaries. Milton Meyer showed me a man superhuman in his aims and yet tragically flawed. He espoused the Classics without being a true student of them, and yet was he not more Shakespearean than any of the professors he governed? Anyway, the book moved me. If you have any ability to be inspired by the story of an imperfect man, read this book.