The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric Kindle Edition

It is a difficult book to read but worth every letter your eye registers (many sentences you may need to reread). This book if fully understood is probably worth a few years of our modern education system. The content assumes no previous knowledge so it starts off a bit slow and definition oriented but that is because the rest of the book builds on those initial chapters so they're worth the struggle.This book will equip you with tools to be a lucid and articulate thinker. It is a gem that deserves a spot in all home libraries.

This is a classic teaching the importance of and way to a classical education. I purchased this book in paperback at a home school convention. I am 71 and have a master's level formal education but failed to receive a true liberal arts education consisting of logic, grammar and rhetoric. These are basic to any communication beyond the 140 character limit of social media. I highly recommend this book even though, or maybe because of, it was written in the 1930s. This book and the one by Susan Wise Bauer, "The Well Educated Mind" (Norton) and "Invitation to the Classics" by Louise Cowan and Os Guiness are great guides to the task of life-long learning. I highly recommend all three.

On the front cover of my copy of this book occurs the following quote from Eva Brann of Saint John's College:"Whoever owns this book owns a treasure."I couldn't agree with her more. Between the covers of this excellent book the reader will find a wonderful introduction to Logic, Rhetoric, and Grammar. These three disciplines were known to Scholastics collectively as The Trivium. They formed the foundation for the Liberal Arts and stood as the first three of these Liberal Arts. Simply speaking, logic is about clarity of thought. Grammar is about clarity of writing. And Rhetoric is about clarity of expression, or communication. Excellence in each discipline is achieved through clarity. And clarity is one factor that is sorely missing in much of the discourse of our modern world.As a lifelong student, I highly recommend this wonderful little book. It is a treasure, to be sure. Yet, is also a joy to use this book as a guide to delve into the deep riches of understanding the nature and function of language. Although I understand that the book was intended to serve as material for a first year college course, I believe that students of any age can richly benefit from a serious, and joyful, study of this essential material. God bless.

This is a staple of a good and classical education. 3 of the 7 keys to higher knowledge. I would recommend this for instructing children in their education and for anyone interesting in relearning and retooling their learning for important nuances, which they may have missed in their PRIMARY education. By today's terms the knowledge in this book is anything but trivial...In short, in today's world of "informational overload" it would be wise to seek and use the tools to broaden one's understanding of the sciences involved in the art of communication to be able to decipher what is really being "said"...or not. As the book states, learning the trivium offers the learner qualities that will stay with them forever and which can not be removed by an outside force, and which will enhance their overall experience of life and effectiveness in life. Freedom of Mind is everyone's business! Enjoy.

The Trivium is a spectacular book, but the reason I gave it four stars instead of five is due to an elongated focus in chapter seven through nine on syllogisms. Other than that this book is a marvel, really displaying how it is these grammatical functions work and all. If you are interested, or want to be a writer, or want something to do with English then pick this up.

My thanks to Sister Miriam Joseph for compiling and synthesizing what should be a required reading in Western Culture. I was fortunate to have a fairly well-rounded liberal studies education (no, I am not flipping burgers - I specialized in grad school). This book is a great summary of the great "soft" arts. Not necessarily an easy read (at first) but well worth it.

By chance I ran across Sister Miriam Joseph's 'The Trivium' listing here on Amazon--and was pleasantly surprised to see that her classic had been resurrected from oblivion.As a Saint Mary's student in the 60's I can remember Sr. Miriam Joseph. We were all assigned this book as well as her 'Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language' (Columbia University Press) sometime during our years there.I have to agree with one of the other reviewers that the new footnotes and examples help to explain A E I O and S and P and M, etc. etc.--or maybe it's that I have gained a deeper understanding of the importance of grammar, logic, and the language arts during the passing years...for those who are interested in studying language and writing clearly "The Trivium" is highly recommended.

This wonderful book is marred by the use of the politically corrected personal pronoun (I mean the self-conscious and inappropriate use of "she" when what is meant is the generic "he").Everyone knows that "he" is generic. And if one really cannot stand to abide by this convention, then one can use the (equally generic) "they".The use of "she" in this "edited" version of the book is both incorrect, and injects awareness into the mind of the reader that his reading material is being used by the publisher as a platform to shoehorn a Socialistic ideology into his subconscious. And, among those bright enough to understand this fact, the result both detracts and distracts from the value of the reading material itself.Obviously, the good Sister would not in 1937 have indulged in such Orwellian activities, and nor would any publisher of the time have inflicted such stupidity upon her work.If people wish to express their left-wing ideologies, they are welcome to do so – on their own recognisance, and under their own name. But using another person's work (someone long dead) to promote this vapid form of Cultural Marxism – especially since that person would have disagreed with such a policy – seems morally objectionable to me.I am not alone in finding the tendency I have identified above highly irritating, and I now avoid publishers – as well as individual authors – on this basis.

This is a wonderful book - but don’t get it in this edition! It has been badly edited: the text has in many places been chopped, rephrased and rearranged, and the wonderful test questions that the author included at the end of each chapter to test understanding (and which demonstrate how effective the author’s approach is) have been deleted. Instead, get the original, unmodified version: The Trivium in College Composition and Reading (Martino Books).

Great book covering the trivium in a concise manner. A word of warning though is that it has a text book style about it so if your looking for something that is a bit more easy going then this maybe not be for you. Having said that it is almost a 'one-stop-shop' on the subject once you get into it. I have the Kindle edition and there were no problms with the format.Check out BBC Radio 4's In Our Time on some of the topics (notably logic and rhetoric), it may help to add to your understanding.

A must have book! After reading and learning the principles of this book, most people wouldn't be able to pull the wool over your eyes with their subjective and over-emotional rhetoric. You will lose friends, lol.

This book is a gem. If you got to this book you have come to the right place. It will last you a lifetime and you won't look back. Really helped with learning latin and philosophy too.