I’ve been a student or professor of great books for more than two decades. And I have investigated the history of ideas and the sources of a great tradition for just as long. With passion and conviction, I can say that the great books are among the best resources for virtue formation in education. The phrase “Western civilization” can be misleading; it sounds like it misses the confluence of great ideas and writers from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. To uphold a “Western civilization” canon with only Western writers, a person would have to strain a gnat from the sand.