An Everyman's Library

"And while most of the million sets of the Great Books that finally were sold may have served merely as 'colorful furniture' (in Hutchins's sardonic phrase), Mr. Beam notes that 'thousands of copies, perhaps tens of thousands, were actually read, and had an enormous impact on the lives of the men, women, and children who read them.' Earlier versions of the Great Books concept, less ponderous and expensive, may eventually have reached even more readers."

In The Wall Street Journal, Robert K. Landers reviews Alex Beam's A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books (and mentions Dwight Macdonald's 1952 The New Yorker essay "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club").