Two Books Press

Two Books Press

The myth saw in part. The Gospel reveals in full.

A family of classical curricula for Catholic high schoolers — literature, history, composition, and the trained art of memory — built on original stories, whole primary sources, and teacher materials written for parents who have never studied any of it.

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Now in pilot with homeschool families. First materials available for the 2027–28 school year.

The Cumaean Sibyl, an aged woman in heavy robes, reading a large book while two children look on.
The Cumaean Sibyl, engraving by Giovanni Volpato after Michelangelo, 1784–90. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why we built this

Most students entering high school can write a topic sentence, and could not place Caesar Augustus within five hundred years. That is not their fault. They have been handed summaries of summaries — history without the historians, literature without the literature, and writing instruction without a method.

The common response is to thin the material out. Ours is to make it worth the work. Each of these curricula rests on the same three convictions: that a true story carries knowledge further than any outline; that students should read the sources themselves — Virgil, not a paragraph about Virgil; and that a method proven over two thousand years beats one invented last decade.

And one more: that a parent who has never studied any of this can teach it well, when the teacher's book does its job. Every teacher manual we write assumes no background at all — it gives you the questions to ask, the answers to listen for, and what to say when the conversation stalls.

Four curricula. One standard.

Each stands alone. Used together, they answer one another — but nothing here requires anything else.

Scala Gentium

Reading God's Two Books with the Gospel of Matthew

Thirteen original stories track the Gospel of Matthew across the ancient world. Each unit opens with a story — Rome and the Sibyl, Persia and the Magi, Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia — then opens that story into its history, its mythology, and its theology. Each week ends in a Study Day where students set what the nation saw beside what the Gospel reveals, reading the Douay-Rheims with the great commentator Cornelius a Lapide at their elbow.

In the box, per unit: Reader, Workbook, Teacher Manual, History Companion, and a Shelf Reader carrying an anchor classic — Unit 1 reads Aeneid VI entire.

Credits: history and theology, four years.

Explore Scala Gentium

Gradus ad Montem

The Progymnasmata

The fourteen graded exercises that trained writers from ancient Athens through the Renaissance, taught in order over four years: fable to narrative, maxim to speech-in-character, and at the summit, the thesis essay. Every exercise works on a real text, and every week ends with finished writing. Transcript name: English I: Literature and Composition — Classical Rhetoric I.

In the box: Student Workbook, Teacher Guide, and an optional pre-printed commonplace journal.

Credits: English, four years.

Explore Gradus ad Montem

The Craft of Memory

A trained memory was once the first mark of an educated mind, and the craft behind it was taught, not wished for. This four-year course recovers the medieval arts of memory — places, images, and the discipline of recollection — and runs on the same 36-week calendar as Gradus ad Montem, giving students a permanent hold on what the other courses teach.

In the box: Student Book, Teacher Book, Record Sheet, Drill Cards.

Explore The Craft of Memory

The Two Cities In development

Duae Civitates: A Providential History of the World and America

Three years of history and civics: the world from Creation to the present in two, then American history with government and economics in the third. Long excerpts from the master historians and the primary witnesses, stitched by a connective narrative; the contested chapters — Crusades, Inquisition, Galileo, conquest — faced head-on with the evidence on the table. Built with enough rigor to support AP European History, AP U.S. History, and AP U.S. Government.

Follow its progress

See the pages

A curriculum lives or dies in its materials, so look at ours before you read another word about them. These are actual pages from the pilot packets — set in EB Garamond, illustrated from the public-domain masters, and printed to be held, marked, and kept.

Two Reader pages: instructions for marking the book on the left, and the opening of the Prologue on the right with glossary notes in the outer margin.
A Reader spread, with the glossary in the margin where the student's eye already is.
Two Teacher Manual pages: an appendix introducing the conversation, and a page titled If Your Student Gives You Three Words, with lines to read aloud printed in red.
A Teacher Manual Socratic script — the questions, the answers to listen for, and what to do when you get three words back.
Two Workbook pages with numbered questions, writing lines, and a two-column comparison box setting the myth beside the Gospel.
A Workbook Study Day: the week's myth set beside the Gospel, in the student's own hand.
Two History Companion pages: a map of Italy in the year of the Cumaean song, and an essay on Virgil illustrated with a Roman mosaic.
A History Companion page, with its maps and timeline drawn in-house.

Browse the sample pages →

Catholic. Classical. Comparative.

These curricula are Roman Catholic without apology — and without presumption. The Faith here is argued, not assumed: students meet the strongest the nations had to offer, honestly presented, and weigh it against the Gospel with the evidence in front of them. Non-Catholic students are welcome, and are asked to do exactly what Catholic students are asked to do — make their case, in writing, and make it well.

Read about our approach →

Three kings on horseback lead a caravan through a barren valley.
James Tissot, The Magi Journeying, 1886–94. Brooklyn Museum.