Yale’s Open Courses Inspire a New Series of Old-Fashioned Books

Last month we report­ed on Yale’s addi­tion of sev­en new online cours­es to its grow­ing ros­ter of free offer­ings. Now we’ve learned that Yale is inau­gu­rat­ing a new series of books based on its pop­u­lar open cours­es.

“It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a dig­i­tal project to move into books and e‑books, because these are a much more con­ven­tion­al way of pub­lish­ing,” Open Yale Cours­es found­ing project direc­tor Diana E.E. Klein­er told The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion last week. But the books are in keep­ing with Open Yale’s mis­sion of “reach­ing out in every way that we could.”

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press is bring­ing out the first six titles this year. The paper­backs are priced at rough­ly $12 on Ama­zon, with e‑book edi­tions going for clos­er to $10.  The first three vol­umes–The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture by Paul H. Fry, New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture by Dale B. Mar­tin, and Death by Shelly Kagan–are avail­able now, while three addi­tion­al titles–The Moral Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­tics by Ian Shapiro, Intro­duc­tion to the Bible by Chris­tine Hayes, and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy by Steven B. Smith–will be pub­lished lat­er this year. The pub­lish­er says the books are “designed to bring the depth and breadth of a Yale edu­ca­tion to a wide vari­ety of read­ers.”

For more open edu­ca­tion resources, take a moment to explore our col­lec­tion of 450 free online cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.