Whole-book seminars
A year spent reading one serious book with a good teacher can be worth more than dozens of disconnected hours. This is the format the Lyceum was built around.
Read it. Mark it. Argue about it.
Rather than a lesson about a great work, students spend a semester or a year reading the work itself with a qualified instructor.
- 01
The book, not a book about the book
Students read the actual work, unabridged wherever the age allows, at a pace built for comprehension rather than coverage. Forty to sixty pages a week is typical.
- 02
The same title at two levels
A twelve-year-old and a seventeen-year-old can both read Tocqueville here, at genuinely different depths, with different selections and different expectations.
- 03
Twelve students, everyone speaks
Seminars cap at twelve. There is nowhere to hide, which is the point. Instructors are trained in Socratic discussion, not lecture.
- 04
Hours that count
Semester and year-long seminars carry instructional hours, grades, and credits into a transcript you generate yourself.
The seminar list
Every title below is read whole. Primary sources throughout: a student studying Smith reads Smith.
Year-long courseAges 15–18Democracy in America
The year-long seminar · Ages 15–18
A full year inside Tocqueville: both volumes, forty pages a week, discussed live every Tuesday with twelve other students.
- Instructor
- Alan Hale
- Meets
- Tuesdays · 4:00 pm ET
- Meetings
- 7 live · 60 min
$56
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Semester courseAges 13–17Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
A whole-book seminar
Douglass in his own words: the Narrative read whole, plus the Fourth of July speech, with attention to how a man argued his way into freedom.
- Instructor
- Imani Bell
- Meets
- Tuesdays · 10:00 am ET
- Meetings
- 7 live · 60 min
$56
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Book seminarAges 13–18The Odyssey
A whole book in six weeks · Three mornings a week
Homer’s Odyssey read whole across one summer, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same hour. Meeting three times a week is what makes finishing it possible.
- Instructor
- James Okada
- Meets
- Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays · 10:00 am ET
- Meetings
- 18 live · 60 min
$144
$57.60 for add’l siblings
Book seminarAges 15–18Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
Selections, read closely
A student studying Smith reads Smith. Books I and IV in substantial selection, plus the passages from Moral Sentiments people forget exist.
- Instructor
- Thomas Ward
- Meets
- Tuesdays · 10:00 am ET
- Meetings
- 7 live · 60 min
$56
$22.40 for add’l siblings
Book seminarAges 15–18C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man
Three essays, six weeks
A short, difficult book about objective value, moral education, and what happens to a civilization that stops believing in either.
- Instructor
- Imani Bell
- Meets
- Wednesdays · 7:00 pm ET
- Meetings
- 6 live · 60 min
$48
$19.20 for add’l siblings
Semester courseAges 12–14Democracy in America: An Introduction
Selected chapters · Ages 12–14
The same book, the same instructor, at a pace a twelve-year-old can genuinely sustain, about fifteen pages a week from selected chapters.
- Instructor
- Alan Hale
- Meets
- Wednesdays · 5:00 pm ET
- Meetings
- 6 live · 45 min
$42
$16.80 for add’l siblings
Seminar authors, matched to student age
- Edmund Burke
- John Locke
- Adam Smith
- F.A. Hayek
- James Madison
- Alexander Hamilton
- Thomas Jefferson
- Frederick Douglass
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Thomas Sowell
- Russell Kirk
- C.S. Lewis
- G.K. Chesterton
The same book can run at multiple levels. Democracy in America: An Introduction for ages 12–14 sits beside the year-long seminar for ages 15–18. Titles rotate each year, and requests from families genuinely influence what opens next.
Begin a book
Pick a seminar and read the whole thing.
Sections cap at twelve students so everyone is expected to speak. Most fill before the term starts.