In this special edition of How to read a Book, I can make clear what was not entirely clear when the book was first published in 1940. Readers of the book knew, though its title did not indicate this with complete accuracy, that the subject was not how to read any book, but how to read a great book. In 1940 the time was not yet ripe for such a title, with which the book might not have reached the large audience that it did.