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This book is thought-provoking despite being a bit of a reactionary manifesto against cultural studies as it exists in English departments. The general argument is to teachers, whom the author would like to see adopt the model of Robin Williams' character in the Dead Poets Society when teaching English classes. That is, he argues that literature promotes values for humanity to live by, and that the way to teach this is to inspire reverence for great books. In the process, Edmundson makes some very insightful observations about the reading process itself, especially as it relates to identification and self-development. He deplores the use of literary theory as a mechanical exercise that elevates the critic above the truth and beauty of literary work. There is validity to this critique of contemporary criticism - many people who love literature also rebel against literary critics who seem to reduce inspiring books to mere examples of ideology. Put more sympathetically, the criticism he despises is more democratic than what he advocates. It pulls works of art down to earth, rather than upholding them as idols, showing that they are products of a complex and hierarchical society at specific historical conjunctures, rather than bearers of transcendent human truth. While I agree with a certain argument he makes about both teaching and reading - that readers should think from within texts in order to understand them, and that books can be criticized based on the idea of what kind of model for life they provide, this very way of reading a book can also be understood to be exactly what the best engaged, ideological criticism actually does. The reverential attitude toward literature is often experienced by students as simply a worshipful approach to western civilization and all its inequalities - they do not feel empowered by identifying with works of literature in which characters they might identify with exist only as foils, enemies, and obstacles. Even if some of the critical work that points out these problems in western literature appears tendentious and reductive, they might be described as essentially democratic in their irreverence and iconoclasm. Edmundson's argument that critical approaches to great books are really promoting a snobbish hatred of literature is a bit of a familiar straw-man argument that uses the charge of elitism to deflect criticism of one's favorites, whatever the favorites may be.