SEARCHING FOR GREAT IDEAS: READINGS PAST AND PRESENT shares two guiding principles with its predecessor, Great Ideas: Conversations Between Past and Present: that the development of clear thinking, critical understanding, and effective writing skills requires nourishing food for thought, and that because the problems we face today are rooted in the past, we can understand them better when we see them in a historical context. One of the most significant developments in the history of ideas, which this text, like the previous one, attempts to reveal is changes in attitudes in the authority of the past. The new title clarifies this concern, while it preserves the essence of what the former text implied by the subtitle: a searching and continuing conversation abiut questions as well as answers to some of the most pressing priblems of the last 3500 years.