…well, not dummies, but the uninitiated anyway. Scholarship that is digestible to the common man is a prerequisite for a modern virtuous society. The pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of Wisdom. Wisdom prompts virtuous action, which in turn leads to a virtuous society. So how do we make scholarship available? We start by encouraging scholars to stop obfuscating Truth and start building straight bridges towards it.Timothy Burke, a polymath professor at Swarthmore, writes about Wendy McClure’s new book, The Wilder Life:
The book is offering no strikingly new findings about the Ingalls or their place in history. As McClure points out, it’s not even the first book to offer a travelogue of journeys to important Ingalls-related tourist sites. But it is a smart, personal engagement with the big questions that the Little House books pose: why were they written and published? (By whom, in fact?) Why do we like them? (Which ‘we’?) What have they done to and with national, religious, cultural and gender identity in the United States over the last forty-odd years?
We need more writing like this.
Steve P Brady 