In a season when a determined minority of parents are happy to say that the mass-
education emperor has no clothes, it is good to have this little manual from Dorothy Sayers’ pen to provide a well-grounded model of what a real emperor just might look like, fully clothed.
A portion of this 1947 broadside (for in spite of its exquisitely respectful prose, this is precisely what it was) by a British classicist and novelist is that Sayers sounds as though she is writing in early 21st-century America. Via an argument that fast-forwards with magnificent ease, she dares to suggest that Western culture has in a sense gone mad and is employing the mechanics of education to assure that its children remain just as loony as their parents. In other words, Lost Tools is a polemic against those who are responsible for the misplacement of the darned things and/or committed to their non-discovery.
Sayers thinks that education was once done well in the West, and that its hammer, saw, and chisel are recoverable with a bit of effort. (more…)
It is a fortunate and powerful thing moment when a thinker trained for policy analysis finds his voice as a story-teller. That Ian Toll has lent that voice to narrating events in ‘the other war’ is a profound boon.
is what we used to call a ‘sprawling’ work.
When a book like Lynn Vincent’s and Sara Vladic’s Indianapolis lies open on lap or desk, a reader sometimes forces himself from page to page. This one does, at any rate.
deep into two volumes on World War II history, a pair of explanations of Colombia’s unending cycles of political violence (I live in Colombia), and the occasionally disturbing adventure by the late Robert Pirsig so memorably titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Canter Bridge 