I have used this text for five years with 10th - 12th grade students. At first there was borderline panic among a few and caution with the rest. Most students had an initial guess that we were going to spend a semester discussing a utopian city. But their interest perked up when it hit them early in the reading that the aim of The Republic "...concerns no ordinary topic but the way we ought to live (352d)." Grube' s translation seems to grow on students. He is clear and concentrates rather than dilutes meanings. When we arrived at the section defining school as "the craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do so...(518d)," one student exclaimed, "My eight bucks was the best investment I made in a book."