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Reading Books Made a Man Out of Me
Shilo Brooks hosts the new Free Press podcast, Old School. (The Free Press)
And why I’m launching ‘Old School,’ a new podcast about great books and how they can make us better men.
By Shilo Brooks
10.09.25 — Old School with Shilo Brooks
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Last year, our reporter Frannie Block told me about a lecturer at Princeton who was teaching a class on “greatness,” firmly rooted in the classic books of the Western canon. He would open his course by telling students that if “the greatest thing, the best thing, the noblest thing about you on your deathbed is that you got into Princeton, you didn’t do …

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Shilo Brooks
Shilo Brooks is President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at SMU, and host of the podcast Old School. Winner of Princeton University’s Phi Beta Kappa teaching award, he has also taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College.
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