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: Go to your local bookstore. After walking for ages by the no-name discount tables, and then the ample stacks of countless paperback volumes written in the last 5-10 years, attempt to find the small section-- probably about half the size of "occult-new age-astrology", where the books are that are ironically labelled "literature", or perhaps "clics". If this is snuck in with "fiction" you'll have a problem. You may bet your favorite pair of boxers that you will not find a hardcover Boswell's Life of Johnson available-- or, if you happen to go to a huge bookstore, you might find one for an astronomical price due to low readership. I would even go so far as to say that most bookstores do not stock even a paperback. : This was an overlong preface for a few very simple points, illustrating this book's relevance for today and suggesting that people stop embracing the chronological snobbery that results in such poor representations of the greatest written works of humanity in bookstores and many Americans' shelves. First, this book provides a rare glimpse into the everyday (I mean, down to the minutiae) life of a middle cl Englishman over the time period of the birth of our country. If Stephen Hawking is to be believed about the impossibility of time travel, this book is the closest thing mankind will ever have to a time machine warping us back to the eighteenth century. : Second, I believe it is not only valuable for historical reasons but for religious. We are told we live in a "post-Christian age". What, then, was the "Christian age" like? Has Christianity been abandoned without our knowledge or consent? This book is a way to tap into the thoughts of a man of faith in an age gone by-- when to see an academic integrating a Christian faith with a life of contemplation and philosophizing was not a strange occurrence. For the nonChristian, this is useful both as a sociological study and as a testing ground for one's own rejection of those beliefs, which can't be anything but healthy. For the Christian, it is a way to receive communication from a fellow believer of another time, and also an important opportunity to weigh another's thoughts and views and decide whether to agree or argue with them. : Third, this book is valuable as a trenchant counterpoint to much of what we hold to be true today, often without thinking. When do we ever have the opportunity to defend our implicit beliefs that social egalitarianism, rather than a social hierarchy or cl system, is the right way to go? This and other contrasts between the views of Johnson's culture and our own can help us see our own views from a new perspective, much as one sees one's own country from a different perspective after travelling to another land for long enough to absorb the culture. The only way to be sure that our own ideas are right, are to test them. And, what better way to test them than to hear opposing views, and be able to disagree coherently? : Fourth, and last because I should actually be doing other things right now, this book is valuable today as a demonstration of a point that I believe should be made today with great force: that there is nothing wrong with personal edification and education. This may sound strange, as though no one really thinks that there could ever be anything wrong with such a thing. In my experience, however, by far the majority of people I have ever known have been conscientious avoiders of edification and education. Once out of school, which is bad enough as it is and a thing to be endured rather than taken advantage of, further intellectual improvement is a "no-go". I do not know the reason for this, for I refuse to believe that it must simply be the American way to be purely pragmatic and utility-oriented, and therefore unconcerned with such things which cannot put bread on the table or provide immediate and intense pleasure to us at every moment. There is perhaps a hint of the reason in the fact that no one wants to be seen as "hoity-toity", "bookish", "ivory-tower", "priggish", "nerdy", "conceited", "pompous", or any of a number of other adjectives which often can be applied to people who read clics for personal edification. Wouldn't it be nice, though, if anyone could feel comfortable and unashamed to add to a casual conversation with a statement like "Well, what Euripides said on that subject was..." or "I like how Wordsworth saw that..."? Wouldn't it be nice if such a statement would be equally well received in a bus station as in a professor's office, in a slow line for fast food as in a private literary club meeting, among those who work with their hands as among those who work with phones or computers? Boswell's Life of Johnson shows us a picture of how things could be in this respect-- there is no reason why a yearning for intellectual improvement has to be reserved for the academic, or (even worse) rendered socially unacceptable. We have done what Johnson thought impossible-- made a working nation where everyone has the right to question authority and not accept any social hierarchy they don't want to accept. Let's not spoil the whole thing by allowing an intellectual divide to creep over us, where only a select few reward themselves by drawing upon ideas from the vast legacy of human civilization! : Sorry I have taken up so much space. : Sincerely, : David Lahti :

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