This book analyzes crucial episodes in the history of American higher education in order to discover the best way to rescue the humanities. It urges apologists to stop focusing on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of poorly defined skills and envisions a globalized approach to education based on humanistic masterworks. Eric Adler could not have had the coronavirus in mind when he wrote The Battle of the Classics, but the timing worked out well. The humanities, so we are told, have been undergoing a series of crises for years, and the scene has only grown bleaker of late.