The American Dream and Self-Education.

The 1950s was a decade in which middle-class Americans sought to improve themselves through self-education. In this country the path of upward social mobility is clear-cut. First comes prosperity, then respectability, and one of the components of respectability is a liberal arts education. It was too late for newly prosperous adults to return to the classroom to get the knowledge they imagined they had missed the first time through, if they had been lucky enough to receive a college education: only about 6 percent of adults had college degrees in 1950. Self-education was the next best alternative, and it was offered through the highly touted Great Books program.

Bringing the Great Books to the Masses.

The Great Books Foundation was started in 1947 by Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, "to provide the means of general liberal education...