One of the things I love about working at Cosimo is that I’m constantly discovering wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully weird!) old books that I’ve never even heard of before, as well as getting regular reminders of great classics that I either haven’t read since school or have never read at all (and should). But even more surprising is that the more I look through books published 50, 100, 150, even 200 years ago, the more I see that the topics that fascinate readers today are, in many instances, the same ones that booklovers were gobbling up decades and centuries ago.

Every week, I take a look at the current New York Times best-seller lists and point out a few Cosimo Classics that connect to today’s hottest books. Cuz all true readers know that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame is back on the Times paperback nonfiction list with his Teacher Man: A Memoir, at No. 8. His concerns seems a bit less philosophical than what legendary and influential educator Maria Montessori was dealing with when she developed her groundbreaking The Montessori Method, but her ideas continue to be urgently necessary today as “traditional” methods of early-childhood schooling seem to be failing us. Published in Italian in 1909 and first translated into English in 1912, these revolutionary theories focus on the individuality of the child and on nurturing her inherent joy of learning to create schools and other learning environments that are oriented on the child. Eschewing rote memorization and drilling, Montessori’s method helps to foster abstract thinking and to fulfill a child’s highest potential, emotionally, physically and intellectually, and parents and teachers today still find the ideas herein immensely valuable.

Over on the Times paperback fiction list this week at No. 16 is The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream, by Paulo Coelho, which features a journey to mystical Egypt. That fabled land has long inspired travelers and seekers after wisdom, as in Pierre Loti’s mesmerizing Egypt. Called one of the finest descriptive writers of his day, and certainly one of the most original, Loti, a French writer and sailor, traveled the world in the late 19th century and painted what he saw in prose acclaimed as extraordinarily rhythmic and lyrical. This 1909 novel is a dreamlike reverie of travels through Egypt just before it became overrun by Western tourists. For readers today, it serves as a window into a world forever lost.

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