Of course, I mean: Why read books and, moreover, why read great books? As for the “book” part, I don’t care what so-called delivery system you use. If you like, bring your text on stone tablets, like those Moses inscribed on Mount Sinai, or on an electronic tablet, as long as you can readily flip to the page we’re all on. As for the “great” part, come with some faith in the faculty’s reading list. And that brings me to a first reason.

One. Great books held in common and conversation about them is the cause of the warmest, most long-lasting, least problem-fraught friendships life has. The friends you room with, work with, play with come and go as the occasion arises and falls apart; reading friendships survive the decades. I’m speaking from experience here.

There used to be a name for this club: the Republic of Letters, whose citizens are cosmopolitan in reach of interest and global in human sympathy. A faculty that has the preparation and the courage to choose and require a reading list like yours is a small sub-community of this commonwealth. Belonging requires preparation because to compose such a list you have to read extensively and critically; it requires courage because you have to be willing to judge decisively and articulately. The same demands go for you students in reverse order: You have to have the guts to commit yourself to real, substantial study and then you have to prepare your assignments with concentration. It’s way different from the flabbily social relations of casual friends focused on fun, or that pretended cosmopolitanism of, say, eating falafel or wearing a sari—all good fun, but not quite for real. To see and hear another human being expressive in the light of greatness is a pleasure of a higher order.

So the first reward is simply invaluable: There is no price you can put on it. It’s that communion of friends, that commonwealth of readers, I’ve just described. I should soberly qualify the extent of such friendships here. You’ve read Aristotle on friendship and might recall that he inquires into the number of friends it is possible to have: at the most as many as live nearby. He would have been simply disgusted at the inhuman greed for quantity that is now called “friending.” It follows that the global friendship of readers is potential. You will gain a world of people who could well, who might be, your friends, real friends, soul-mates. Some, a few of these, will be actual, face-to-face or voice-to-voice friends.
    Why Should We Read? (Eva Brann, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)

Eva Brann was a teacher, administrator, author, etc. much revered in conservative circles. You could choose practically any essay linked below and be edified by reading it. I’ve chosen this one to highlight simply because great books have recurred as a topic of conversation recently. Likewise, there is much fretting about how men don’t read anymore. Meanwhile, there is a recognition that the publishing world (at least the Fiction/Literature division) hardly publishes any books for men anymore. Walk into your local chain bookstore or look at the Times Bestseller List or the Amazon featured page and pretty much all you see are books aimed at women’s book clubs.

On the other hand, when actual men discuss books these days, you will notice that their subjects are texts by Cormac McCarthy, the Aubrey/Maturin adventures of Patrick O’Brian, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc. We might argue that men have not abandoned books, but rather, that publishing has abandoned men. We might also say, looking at such a list, that the field of classics has been largely abandoned to men. Even when a “male” bestseller breaks through-one thinks of Gentleman from Moscow-its main character and political/moral concerns are rather classical, not at all modern.

Personally, I’m with Professor Brann here: we ought to be encouraging folks to read the great books, not wondering why guys don’t buy up the latest Colleen Hoover. The most anticipated movie of the Summer-The Odyssey-adapts one of the very greatest of great books. It should be everyone’s beach book too.

(Reviewed:05-Jul-26)

Grade: (A+) Orrin C. Judd

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Eva Brann Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Eva Brann
    -ENTRY: Eva Brann (National Association of Scholars)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Eva Brann (Paul Dry Books)
    -AWARD: Eva Brann National Humanities Medal 2005 (National Endowment for the Humanities)
    -ENTRY: Eva Brann (Classical U)
    -ENTRY: Eva Brann (Alchetron)
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    -INDEX: Eva Brann (Voegelin View)
    -INDEX: Eva Brann (Circe Institute)
    -INDEX: Eva Brann (MuckRack)
    -INDEX: Eva Brann (Claremont Review of Books)
    -VIDEO INDEX: Eva Brann (YouTube)
    -INDEX: Eva Brann (Imaginative Conservative)
    -INDEX: Eva Brann (Renovatio)
    -OBIT: Eva Brann, Beloved Tutor Emerita and Former Annapolis Dean, Dies at Age 95 (Kirstin Fawcett, 10/29/24, St. John’s College)
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    -The Practical Wisdom of Eva Brann (Zena Hitz, Winter 2024, The Lamp)
    -TRIBUTE: Eva Brann RIP (Titus Techera, Oct 29, 2024, Postmodern Conservative)
    -TRIBUTE: Eva Brann, National Treasure (Shaun Rieley, January 20th, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
    -TRIBUTE: Longtime St. John’s College instructor was ‘greatest philosopher of our time’: Eva Brann, a beloved author, friend and colleague, died on Oct. 28 at the age of 95 (Cayla Harris, 11/19/2024, Baltimore Banner)
    -TRIBUTE: Giving Thanks for Annapolis Tutor Eva Brann (Kirstin Fawcett, 11/22/23, St. John’s College)
    -ESSAY: Why Should We Read? : a talk at the Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University, La Mirada, CA (March 2016) (Eva Brann, Oct. 31st, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Reading of the Gettysburg Address (Eva Brann,March 2015,, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Facts For Fictions (Eva Brann, 11/22/22, Renovatio)
    -LECTURE: Learning for Its Own Sake: A Commencement Address (Eva Brann, 6/22/21, Renovatio)
    -INTERVIEW: Where Do Imaginary Figures Come From?: A conversation on the origin of fictional beings and the notion of artistic creativity (Eva Brann, 3/05/21, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Myths versus Novels (Eva Brann, 2/19/21, Renovatio)
    -INTERVIEW: Conversing with a National Treasure: Wisdom and Wit with Eva Brann: Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College, converses with Eva Brann, the sagely long time educator and author of St. Johns College in Annapolis Maryland about philosophy, wisdom, and wit.(Hamza Yusuf, 4/24/19, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: How We Split the World Apart: The Separation of Faith and Philosophy (Eva Brann, 6/12/19, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Other People's Truths: Reading Sacred Scripture in Secular Settings (Eva Brann, 6/05/18, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Self Addressed Speech: The Soul Speaking to Itself (Eva Brann, 12/11/18, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Great Books and Small Colleges (Eva Brann, 10/20/17, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Equal To?: Equality is a relation, but a more consequential relation is between inequality and liberty. (Eva Brann, 10/28/21, Renovatio)
    -ESSAY: Soul, World, and Idea: Interpreting Plato (Eva Brann, October 14th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Was Thomas Jefferson a Philosopher? (Eva Brann, October 22nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: “A Suitable Boy” (Eva Brann, October 28th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Understanding Hegel’s Theory on Time (Eva Brann, November 4th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Where, Then, Is Time? (Eva Brann, November 11th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Pre-Socratics or First Philosophers? (Eva Brann, November 25th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Love, Peace, and War in Italy: A Memoir (Eva Brann, December 9th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Jacob Klein: European Scholar and American Teacher (Eva Brann, December 2nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Enduring Legend of “Antigone” (Eva Brann, December 16th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Tales Salutary to the Soul (Eva Brann, March 1st, 2020, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Castalia and St. John’s College (Eva Brann, June 2nd, 2020, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The “Eumenides”: Patriotism & Moderated Modernity (Eva Brann, October 4th, 2020, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Is Equality An Absolute Good? (Eva Brann, March 8th, 2021, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Courage Nailed Down: Plato’s “Laches” (Eva Brann, July 4th, 2021, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Can We Be Friends? Spirit, Duty, & Our Canine Companions (Eva Brann, August 26th, 2021, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Manifesto for Liberal Education (Eva Brann, February 18th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Seal With Seven Books (Eva Brann, March 27th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Reflections on Imaginative Conservatism (Eva Brann|, uly 9th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Perfection of Jane Austen (Eva Brann, July 17th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Liberal Learning: Faithful & Useless? (Eva Brann, August 16th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On the Timelessness of the Tradition (Eva Brann, September 9th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On the Originals of Fictive Mental Images (Eva Brann, September 27th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Letter to a Young Essayist (Eva Brann, January 19th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Do You Know What an Odyssey Is? (Eva Brann, January 20th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Writer’s Life (Eva Brann|, anuary 20th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Myths versus Novels (Eva Brann, April 11th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Odysseus: Patron Hero of the Liberal Arts (Eva Brann, February 19th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Graduation Day: Do You Want to Change the World? (Eva Brann, May 27th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance”: A Jewel of Republican Rhetoric (Eva Brann, June 21st, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Declaration of Independence: Translucent Poetry (Eva Brann, July 3rd, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Some Advice to Fellow Lovers of Liberal Learning (Eva Brann, October 10th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Immediacy: The Ways of Humanity (Eva Brann, August 24th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Liberal Learning, Great Books, & Paideia (Eva Brann, October 23rd, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: “Little Places” and the Recovery of Civilization (Eva Brann, June 6th, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Kant’s Imperative (Eva Brann, April 21st, 2024, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Intellect and Intuition: Longing for Insight? (Eva Brann, April 8th, 2019, imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY:“Paradise Lost”: Hidden Meanings? (Eva Brann, April 15th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Wonders of the “Odyssey” (Eva Brann, April 22nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Depth and Desire (Eva Brann, April 29th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Plato’s “Timaeus”: A Unique Universe of Discourse (Eva Brann, May 6th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Dreams Belong to the Now: Time to Commence (Eva Brann, May 20th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Hegel & Spirit: The Logic of Desire (Eva Brann, May 27th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Poet of the “Odyssey” (Eva Brann, June 3rd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Dispassionate Study of the Passions (Eva Brann|, une 10th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Telling Lies (Eva Brann, June 17th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: “Death in Venice”: The Problem of Romantic Reaction (Eva Brann, June 24th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Mental Imagery (Eva Brann, July 29th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Past-Present (Eva Brann, July 22nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Eva Bran, |August 5th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Socrates on Statesmanship: The Actual Intention (Eva Brann, August 12th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Converting the Cosmos of the Mind (Eva Brann, August 19th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Ecstasy of Love (Eva Brann, August 26th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: What Has Athens To Do With You? (Eva Brann, September 2nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Understanding Imagination (Eva Brann, September 18th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The “Eumenides” of Aeschylus: Whole-Hearted Patriotism & Moderated Modernity (Eva Brann, September 23rd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Was Thomas Jefferson a Philosopher? (Eva Brann, October 22nd, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Soul, World, and Idea: Interpreting Plato (Eva Brann, October 14th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Imagining a World Without Time (Eva Brann, October 7th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Momentary Morality & Extended Ethics (Eva Brann, March 18th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On the Timelessness of the Tradition (Eva Brann, October 10th, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Power of Pregnant Speeches (Eva Brann, October 28th, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Kant’s Philosophical Use of Mathematics: Negative Magnitudes (Eva Brann, December 12th, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Children’s Literature: Through Phantasia to Philosophy (Eva Brann, December 19th, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Mo and Mao: How the East Might Revive the West’s Tradition (Eva Brann, December 27th, 2016, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Why Read? (Eva Brann, March 3, 2016, The Scriptorium Daily)
    -ESSAY: The Great Tradition (Eva Brann, Spring 2012, Academic Questions)
    -ESSAY: Faith and Reason: The Way to Truth? (Eva Brann, January 30th, 2017, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: “Fat Wednesday”: Ludwig Wittgenstein on Seeing & Speaking (Eva Brann, February 7th, 2017, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On Profound Ignorance (Eva Brann, February 13th, 2017, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Don Quixote and Imaginative Places (Eva Brann, March 29th, 2017, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Competition vs. Illumination in Learning (Eva Brann, January 17th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On Studying Imagination (Eva Brann, January 30th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: How to Constitute a World (Eva Brann, February 27th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Moral Imagination & Imaginative Conservatism (Eva Brann, July 16th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Plato’s “Republic”: Impossible Polity (Eva Brann, July 23rd, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Welcome to Colonus: The Theban Plays of Sophocles (Eva Brann, August 13th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Other People’s Truths (Eva Brann, August 6th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Student’s Problem (Eva Brann, August 20th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Student’s Problem (Eva Brann, August 20th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Politics and the Imagination (Eva Brann, September 3rd, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Yin and Yang: “Dualisms” (Eva Brann, October 1st, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: On the Imagination (Eva Brann, November 12th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Empires of the Sun and the West (Eva Brann, November 5th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Tiny Essay on Taking Offense (Eva Brann, November 19th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening (Eva Brann, December 10th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Inner and Outer Freedom (Eva Brann, December 3rd, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Logos of Heraclitus (Eva Brann, December 25th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Tolerance or Respect? (Eva Brann, December 31st, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Writer’s Life (Eva Brann, January 14th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: What is a Book? (Eva Brann, February 18th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Roots of the World: The Program of St. John’s College (Eva Brann, February 25th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Socrates & the Un-Willed Life (Eva Brann, March 4th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: A Manifesto for Liberal Education (Eva Brann, March 25th, 2019, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Declaration of Independence: Translucent Poetry (Eva Brann, 1976, The College)
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    -REVIEW: of The Raj Quartet: Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet”: The English “War and Peace” (Eva Brann, September 9th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Great Books at Berkeley in the Sixties (Eva Brann, Academic Questions)
    -REVIEW: of The Pleasures of Virtue: Political Thought in the Novels of Jane Austen by Anne Crippin Ruderman (Eva T. H. Brann, Review of Politics)
    -REVIEW: of One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, by Wade Davis (Eva Brann, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW: of The Moral Imagination from Burke to Trilling by Gertrude Himmelfasrb (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Plato’s Republic: a Reading by Stanley Rosen (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of The Theban Plays of Sophocles, translated by David R. Slavitt (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities , by Martha C. Nussbaum (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements," by David Berlinski (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of (Eva Brann, Claremont Review of Books)
    -VIDEO: Lesson 1: How to Read Homer by Eva Brann (Classical U)
    -VIDEO: Dean's Lecture Series: Eva Brann: "On the Originals of Fictive Mental Images” (St. John's College)
    -VIDEO: SONNET 94: SHAKESPEARE’S UNMOVED MOVER with LOUIS PETRICH & EVA BRANN (St. John's College, Continuing the Conversation)
    -VIDEO: Eva Brann on Compromise, Good and Bad (Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard)
    -VIDEO: The Vice of Sloth: The Seven Deadly Sins in the Modern World (Eva Brann & Hamza Yusuf, 2/23/22, Renovatio)
    -VIDEO: Eva Brann & Winston Elliott:"Liberal Learning the Human Person & Plato's Meno Let's Reason Together” (Hauenstein Center, 6/11/14)
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    -PODCAST: The Image of AI ft. Eva Brann (Untimely Meds)
    -PODCAST: Only a God Can Save Us ft. Eva Brann (Untimely Meds)
    -PODCAST: Episode 120: A History of “Will” with Guest Eva Brann (Mark Linsenmayer, 7/27/15, The Partially Examined Life)
    -INTERVIEW: Liberal Learning and Plato’s “Meno”: Interview With Eva Brann (W. Winston Elliott III, September 3rd, 2022, Claremont Review of Books)
    -PROFILE: Eva Brann on Liberal Education (Ian Lindquist, November 10, 2021, Real Clear Education)
    -PROFILE: Eva Brann’s Dialogue (Elizabeth C'de Baca Eastman, Winter 2020, Academic Questions)
    -PROFILE: Never Too Old to Go Back to School (Jackie Graves, Bay Weekly)
    -PROFILE: Eva Brann pushes students rethink the common good in education (Ross Jacobs, May 2, 2008, The Bowdoin Orient)
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    -STUDY GUIDE: Eva Brann: The Music of the Republic Study Guide, 2011-2014 (Steven Alan Samson, Liberty University)
    -ESSAY: What Matt Cohen and Eva Brann Have in Common (Brad Birzer, June 30, 2014, Progarchy)
    -REVIEW: of Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested by Eva Brann (Joseph M. Keegin, First Things)
    -REVIEW: of Pursuits of Happiness (Peggy Ellsberg, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Pursuits of Happiness (Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Feeling Our Feelings: What ­Philosophers Think and People Know by Eva Brann (David G. Bonagura Jr., First Things)
    -REVIEW: of Eva Brann, Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of the Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It (Matthew Linck)
    -REVIEW: of Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It by Eva Brann (Macarena Pallares, First Things)
    -REVIEW: of Unwilling (Matthew Linck)
    -REVIEW: of The Logos of Heraclitus by Eva Brann (Chris McCaffery, Hillsdale Forum)
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    -REVIEW: of Eva Brann, The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings (Mitchell Miller)
    -REVIEW: of Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. Eva T. H. Brann (John von Heyking, Voegelin View)
    -REVIEW: of Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad by Eva Brann (W. Winston Elliott III, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW: of Eva Brann’s “Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested (Peggy Ellsberg, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of The Music of the Republic by Eva Brann (Mitchell Miller, International Journal of the Classical Tradition)
    -REVIEW: of Plato's Sophist by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Owen Goldin, Marquette University)
    -REVIEW: of Doublethink/Doubletalk, Naturalizing Second Thoughts and Twofold Speech by Eva Brann> (Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Doublethink/Doubletalk: Naturalizing Second Thoughts & Twofold Speech (University Bookman)

Book-related and General Links: