The best thing I've been reading lately is E. W. Bovill's English Country Life 1780-1830. Boring title, but a great book. His Golden Trade of the Moors is fabulous.
Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, I bet he's at the library checking it out right now. :)
But while we're recommending books he doesn't want, I would like to suggest W.P. Montague's, The Ways of Knowing.
Particularly, it's explanation of authoritarianism, when it's appropriate and when it's not, has been indispensable.
To whet your appetite, I'll say this much:
Montague asserts that if you want to fill your head with true beliefs (this stuff called knowledge) about reality, then you should be aware of five distinct types of evidence that a human can collect and five distinct logical theories with which to process (Rationalism, Empiricism, Authoritarianism, Pragmatism, Mysticism). The more mastery, the more knowledge.
The book is slow going but not for the usual reasons. Each page made me want to pause and sit and think until I had totally reprocessed all my life's experiences and questioned all my now seemingly ill-formed conclusions in the new light of my increased powers of reasoning.
If I found a genie in a lamp and he granted me one wish, I would wish that everyone in the world would read the first chapter of that book... or for a puppy.
You can get a nice ~1930's copy for like $6 at an antique book store.
Ineed. Mayson, I hope there are a few copies of the Ways of Knowing left on AbeBooks because that's where I scored about six copies a few months back.
I realize now that in littering my friend's apartments with these books, I've been trying to transform my town into Cambridge (or into what PG says Cambridge is). But I seem to be a size too small for that job. Or as Montague might say, I don't command the prepotency needed to elicit that kind of change... yet.
So I'm taking a break from all that to compare Cities and Ambition with my own experience. My train leaves for Cambridge in a few weeks.
