Watch the Highly-Anticipated Evolution/Creationism Debate: Bill Nye the Science Guy v. Creationist Ken Ham

in Religion, Science | February 5th, 2014

Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy has spent his career try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has pro­duced edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams for the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, and PBS. Most recent­ly, he has gone on record say­ing that teach­ing cre­ation­ism in Amer­i­ca’s class­rooms is bad for kids, and bad for Amer­i­ca’s future. “If the Unit­ed States pro­duces a gen­er­a­tion of sci­ence stu­dents who don’t believe in sci­ence, that’s trou­ble­some” because the Unit­ed States needs sci­ence to remain com­pet­i­tive,” he warns in this video.

For some weeks, the inter­net has been abuzz about a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, the pres­i­dent of Answers in Gen­e­sis (AiG) and the Cre­ation Muse­um. The debate — some­thing Richard Dawkins called a point­less endeav­or — took place last night in Peters­burg, Ken­tucky.  It’s now online, all two and a half hours of it. We’re you’re done watch­ing the spec­ta­cle, you can view some oth­er high-pro­file reli­gion-sci­ence debates that we’ve fea­tured in the past.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

Has Sci­ence Refut­ed Reli­gion? Sean Car­roll and Michael Sher­mer vs. Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchin­son

Richard Dawkins and Jon Stew­art Debate Whether Sci­ence or Reli­gion Will Destroy Civ­i­liza­tion

Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church

Find the Stan­ford course Dar­win’s Lega­cy in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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The Notecards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Lolita: A Look Inside the Author’s Creative Process

in Creativity, Literature | February 5th, 2014

nabokovnotes1

If you picked up The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Vladimir Nabokov’s final nov­el, you’ll have seen his dis­tinc­tive index card-based writ­ing method in action. Hav­ing died in 1977, Nabokov nev­er com­plet­ed the book, and so all Pen­guin had to pub­lish decades lat­er came to, as the sub­ti­tle indi­cates, A Nov­el in Frag­ments. These “frag­ments” he wrote on 138 cards, and the book as pub­lished includes full-col­or repro­duc­tions that you can actu­al­ly tear out and orga­nize — and re-orga­nize — for your­self, “com­plete with smudges, cross-outs, words scrawled out in Russ­ian and French (he was trilin­gual) and anno­tat­ed notes to him­self about titles of chap­ters and key points he wants to make about his char­ac­ters.” That comes from a post by Dominic Basul­to at Big Think, who high­lights cards with “a full-on dis­cus­sion of the pre­cise word that Nabokov would like to describe a female char­ac­ter (fille, in French) and how best to ren­der that word in Eng­lish, while keep­ing the con­no­ta­tions and mean­ing of the word in French.” Review­ing The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Alexan­der Ther­oux describes the cards as a “portable strat­e­gy that allowed [Nabokov] to com­pose in the car while his wife drove the devot­ed lep­i­dopter­ist on but­ter­fly expe­di­tions.”

nabokovnotes2

Nabokov could thus, between thoughts of his winged objects of inter­est, use the cards for “insert­ing words, writ­ing mem­os to him­self, scrib­bling after­thoughts: ‘invent trade­name [for a med­i­cine], e.g., cephalop­i­um.’ ” They also served him ear­li­er in his career; at the Library of Con­gress’ site for its Man­u­script Divi­sion’s Nabokov col­lec­tion, you can see a cou­ple of the cards on which he wrote his best-known nov­el, 1955’s Loli­ta. Asked about his work­ing meth­ods by Her­bert Gold in the Paris Review, he described the method forth­right­ly: “The pat­tern of the thing pre­cedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the cross­word at any spot I hap­pen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the nov­el is done. My sched­ule is flex­i­ble, but I am rather par­tic­u­lar about my instru­ments: lined Bris­tol cards and well sharp­ened, not too hard, pen­cils capped with erasers.” For every craft, the prop­er tool, and Nabokov remains, frag­men­tary last book and all, one of west­ern lit­er­a­ture’s most respect­ed crafts­men of lan­guage — or, rather, lan­guages, plur­al.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a free 30 Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Alfred Hitch­cock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Let­ters and Ideas for a Film Col­lab­o­ra­tion (1964)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Together (1970)

in Music | February 5th, 2014

“I’m ready when you are, James.”

“… I know.”

Some­thing extreme­ly sweet was going on between James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell when they played togeth­er at Lon­don’s Paris The­atre in 1970. You can hear it in these record­ings, taped by the BBC and broad­cast as one of John Peel’s Sun­day Shows.

Mm, just lis­ten to Sweet Baby James’ “mag­ic fin­gers boo­gie up and down those gold­en frets.” Is it any won­der he became the sub­ject of so many songs, two of them Joni’s?

(For the record, here are crit­ic David B. Wil­son’s Top 5 Songs About James Tay­lor:

  1. Joni Mitchell, “See You Some­time”
  2. Car­ly Simon, “We Have No Secrets”
  3. Joni Mitchell, “Just Like This Train”
  4. Car­ly Simon, “Jesse”
  5. James Tay­lor, “That’s Why I’m Here”)

Accord­ing to Joni’s own web­site, James’ “You Can Close Your Eyes,” above, is about her. (That would explain the lit­tle gig­gle at the top.)

He per­formed it solo on his 1971 release, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Hori­zon.  Joni con­tributed back­ing vocals else­where on the album. In return, he played gui­tar on her Blue.

The gen­er­al pub­lic had to wait anoth­er year to hear  “See You Some­time,” David Wilson’s pick for the num­ber one song about James Tay­lor, but Joni must’ve made sure that James got a pre­view.

As she  lat­er told  Bill Flana­gan of Musi­cian Mag­a­zine, “I wrote a song for James Tay­lor that men­tioned his sus­penders. And then on his next album he went and wore his bloody sus­penders on the cov­er! Well, then the cat was com­plete­ly out of the bag!”

Oh, Joni, I’m not so sure the sus­penders were the give­away.

As for the young man she talks about after “For Free”—the guy who felt he was over the hill at the ripe old age of 21—it’s not James. It’s Neil Young, and the song his gloomy mood inspired was “Cir­cle Game.”  (Good luck find­ing that cut. Once a ubiq­ui­tous boot­leg, with the excep­tion of the songs post­ed here, the con­cert has all but dis­ap­peared, though those who still lis­ten to cds can put it in their bas­kets on Ama­zon’s UK site.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

Watch Joni Mitchell Per­form “Both Sides Now” on the First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was intro­duced to this con­cert as a WBEZ Uncon­cert in the ear­ly 80’s and wor­ries that her home­made cas­sette may one day cease to exist. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Drawings of Franz Kafka (1907–1917)

in Art, Books | February 4th, 2014

Run­ner 1907–1908

Runner 1907-1908

UK-born, Chica­go-based artist Philip Har­ti­gan has post­ed a brief video piece about Franz Kaf­ka’s draw­ings. Kaf­ka, of course, wrote a body of work, most­ly nev­er pub­lished dur­ing his life­time, that cap­tured the absur­di­ty and the lone­li­ness of the new­ly emerg­ing mod­ern world: In The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Gre­gor trans­forms overnight into a giant cock­roach; in The Tri­al, Josef K. is charged with an unde­fined crime by a mad­den­ing­ly inac­ces­si­ble court. In sto­ry after sto­ry, Kaf­ka showed his pro­tag­o­nists get­ting crushed between the pin­cers of a face­less bureau­crat­ic author­i­ty on the one hand and a deep sense of shame and guilt on the oth­er.

On his deathbed, the famous­ly tor­tured writer implored his friend Max Brod to burn his unpub­lished work. Brod ignored his friend’s plea and instead pub­lished them – nov­els, short sto­ries and even his diaries. In those diaries, Kaf­ka doo­dled inces­sant­ly – stark, graph­ic draw­ings infused with the same angst as his writ­ing. In fact, many of these draw­ings have end­ed up grac­ing the cov­ers of Kafka’s books.

“Quick, min­i­mal move­ments that con­vey the typ­i­cal despair­ing mood of his fic­tion” says Har­ti­gan of Kafka’s art. “I am struck by how these sim­ple ges­tures, these zigza­gs of the wrist, con­tain an econ­o­my of mark mak­ing that even the most expe­ri­enced artist can learn some­thing from.”

In his book Con­ver­sa­tions with Kaf­ka, Gus­tav Janouch describes what hap­pened when he came upon Kaf­ka in mid-doo­dle: the writer imme­di­ate­ly ripped the draw­ing into lit­tle pieces rather than have it be seen by any­one. After this hap­pened a cou­ple times, Kaf­ka relent­ed and let him see his work. Janouch was aston­ished. “You real­ly didn’t need to hide them from me,” he com­plained. “They’re per­fect­ly harm­less sketch­es.”

“Kaf­ka slow­ly wagged his head to and fro – ‘Oh no! They are not as harm­less as they look. These draw­ing are the remains of an old, deep-root­ed pas­sion. That’s why I tried to hide them from you…. It’s not on the paper. The pas­sion is in me. I always want­ed to be able to draw. I want­ed to see, and to hold fast to what was seen. That was my pas­sion.”

Check out some of Kafka’s draw­ings below:

Horse and Rid­er 1909–1910

Horse and Rider 1909-1910

Three Run­ners 1912–1913

Three Runners 1912-1913

The Thinker 1913

The Thinker 1913

Fenc­ing 1917

Fencing 1917

via Arts­Cen­tre

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

in Music | February 4th, 2014

The arrival of the com­pact disc was thought to be the death sen­tence for LPs. Vinyl was big, impre­cise, and stuck in the past: CDs were the wave of the future. Recent years, how­ev­er, have seen a sur­pris­ing trend. Vinyl col­lec­tors have man­aged to weath­er the dig­i­tal music storm of the ‘80s and ‘90s, while com­pact discs, hav­ing seen bet­ter days, have dropped in pop­u­lar­i­ty. In fact, accord­ing to The Tele­graph, LP sales are bet­ter than they’ve been at any point over the past 12 years. Although it is the hob­by­ist col­lec­tor and the DJ who have buoyed vinyl sales for many years, the recent surge in LP pop­u­lar­i­ty is, in part, due to younger fans who pre­fer the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to vinyl records over dig­i­tal down­loads. Daft Punk, Arc­tic Mon­keys, The Nation­al, and Vam­pire Week­end are just some of the A‑list bands tak­ing advan­tage of the trend.

But how are LPs man­u­fac­tured today? Pret­ty much the exact way they’ve been pro­duced through­out the past 50 years, actu­al­ly. Many of the LP press­ing plants use restored press­es, bought sec­ond-hand for about $25,000. The video above, made in 1956 by RCA Vic­tor, gives a detailed descrip­tion of the process. After the sound record­ing, the audio is trans­ferred to a lac­quer mas­ter disc.

The play­ing time of the music dic­tates the num­ber of grooves on the disc, and the sound dynam­ics deter­mine the dis­tance between them. As the video explains, the loud pas­sages need more room, while qui­et ones need less. A fine­ly ground and elec­tri­cal­ly heat­ed piece of sap­phire cuts the vinyl with pre­ci­sion. Once it is com­plete, the mas­ter disc is coat­ed in var­i­ous met­als, which, when sep­a­rat­ed, cre­ate a new, sil­ver-faced mas­ter copy. This metal­lic mas­ter can’t be played, and is used to cre­ate a mold, which must be checked for sound qual­i­ty. Final­ly, the mold is used to make a stam­per, which stamps the appro­pri­ate grooves on the records. The record press heats the plas­tic, turn­ing it into a warm, mold­able goo, press­es it, and cools its once the grooves have been stamped. If you got lost some­where along the way, don’t wor­ry. Visu­als help, and the video above should give you an idea of how things hap­pen.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

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Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos

in Creativity, Life, Radio | February 4th, 2014

”All of us who do cre­ative work,” says Ira Glass, cre­ator This Amer­i­can Life, quite pos­si­bly the most respect­ed pro­gram on pub­lic radio, “we get into it because we have good taste.” Yet despite this dis­cern­ment, or indeed because of it, “there’s a gap: for the first cou­ple years that you’re mak­ing stuff, what you’re mak­ing isn’t so good. [ … ] Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re mak­ing is kind of a dis­ap­point­ment to you.” For this rea­son, Glass argues, the taste­ful often fail at their cre­ative endeav­ors entire­ly. “Most every­body I know who does inter­est­ing cre­ative work,” he con­tin­ues, “they went through a phase of years where they had real­ly good taste, and they could tell what they were mak­ing was­n’t as good as they want­ed it to be.” This astute diag­no­sis of a “total­ly nor­mal” syn­drome comes extract­ed from Glass’ talk on the craft of sto­ry­telling, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

For­tu­nate­ly for those of us strug­gling with the very taste-abil­i­ty mis­match Glass describes, a solu­tion exists. If you want a quick fix, though, pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. “Do a lot of work,” he flat­ly advis­es. “Do a huge vol­ume of work. Put your­self on a dead­line so that every week or every month you know you’re going to fin­ish one sto­ry. Because it’s only by actu­al­ly going through a vol­ume of work that you’re actu­al­ly going to catch up and close that gap.” These words have proven inspir­ing enough that they’ve sure­ly spurred lis­ten­ers on to plow paths of sheer pro­duc­tion through their cho­sen rocky yet fer­tile cre­ative fields. Two lis­ten­ers in par­tic­u­lar, David Shiyang Liu and Frohlocke, appar­ent­ly found them­selves imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized to work with the words them­selves, result­ing in the typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions above. Only one ques­tion remains: how large a vol­ume of typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions of Ira Glass’ words did they have to cre­ate before they could make ones this impres­sive?

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules For Reading: Seek Enjoyment, Spurn Fads, Read What You Like

in Books, History | February 4th, 2014

Theodore_Roosevelt_circa_1902

Ted­dy Roo­sevelt seems to us a para­dox today, and did in his time as well: A man’s man hunter, cow­boy, and war hero, who sup­pos­ed­ly saved the game of foot­ball from extinc­tion (Roo­sevelt wor­ried that ban­ning the game would pro­duce “mol­ly­cod­dles instead of vig­or­ous men”); also, a Har­vard-edu­cat­ed New York pro­gres­sive and tree­hug­ging con­ser­va­tion­ist hero, who re-defined pres­i­den­tial style with Brooks Broth­ers three-piece suits and uni­forms. And for all of his pub­lic hero­ics, Roo­sevelt was also a dot­ing father who gave his nick­name to the most uni­ver­sal­ly cud­dly species of bear. Per­haps some of the best rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Roo­sevelt’s per­son­al ethos are pho­tographs of his com­bi­na­tion library and gun room, hung with hunt­ing tro­phies and skins in the home he built for his fam­i­ly in Oys­ter Bay, New York (below—see more at the appro­pri­ate­ly named “Art of Man­li­ness”).

trfirstfloorlibrary

One sig­nif­i­cant rea­son Roo­sevelt could embody seem­ing­ly wide­ly diver­gent traits was that he was a devour­er of books, read­ing tens of thou­sands in his life­time, absorb­ing thou­sands of points of view from every pos­si­ble source. But Roo­sevelt did not read the way we do today—rapidly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion for its own sake, with auto­mat­ed ser­vices com­pil­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the meta­da­ta (a phe­nom­e­non Susan Jaco­by has indict­ed as part of our hyper-par­ti­san, group­think cul­ture). He read accord­ing to his whim, putting plea­sure ahead of prof­it and dis­dain­ing fads and rigid cul­tur­al norms. He was, lit­er­ary site Book Riot sup­pos­es, “prob­a­bly the most well-read pres­i­dent, and per­haps one of the most well-read men in all of his­to­ry.”

Book Riot points us toward a few pages of Roosevelt’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, in which—amidst picaresque chap­ters like “In Cow­boy Land” and heavy ones like “The Pres­i­den­cy; Mak­ing an Old Par­ty Progressive”—Roosevelt paus­es to detail his thoughts on read­ing in a par­tic­u­lar­ly prag­mat­ic chap­ter titled “Out­doors and Indoors.” Although Roo­sevelt does not present his con­tem­pla­tion as an eas­i­ly digestible list of rules, as is the fash­ion now, Book Riot has seen fit to con­dense his thought. Below see the first five of their list, “Ted­dy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Read­ing.” I’d be will­ing to bet that if every­one fol­lowed Teddy’s advice, we could up the woe­ful nation­al lit­er­a­cy quo­tient with­in a few short years.

1. “The room for choice is so lim­it­less that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make cat­a­logues which shall be sup­posed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er with writ­ing lists of the One Hun­dred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library [a ref­er­ence to the Har­vard Clas­sics]. It is all right for a man to amuse him­self by com­pos­ing a list of a hun­dred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hun­dred books that are best for all men, or for the major­i­ty of men, or for one man at all times.”

2. “A book must be inter­est­ing to the par­tic­u­lar read­er at that par­tic­u­lar time.”

3. “Per­son­al­ly, the books by which I have prof­it­ed infi­nite­ly more than by any oth­ers have been those in which prof­it was a by-prod­uct of the plea­sure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked read­ing them, and the prof­it came in as part of the enjoy­ment.”

4. “The read­er, the booklover, must meet his own needs with­out pay­ing too much atten­tion to what his neigh­bors say those needs should be.”

5. “He must not hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly pre­tend to like what he does not like.”

Head over to Book Riot for the remain­ing five of Roo­sevelt’s “rules,” along with some wit­ty com­men­tary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule’: Lis­ten to Theodore Roo­sevelt Speak­ing 100 Years Ago Today

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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