1. One book that changed my life: The Abolition of Man by
C.S. Lewis. Published in 1943, this book remains relevant and
insightful. My favorite passage: ?The task of the modern educator
is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right
defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.
By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey
to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be
avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft
head.?
2. One Book I’ve Read More Than Once: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.
3. One Book I Would Want on a Desert Island: The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. I assume that
there will be Rock Cornish game hens on this island. Think about it – passages
such as this one would be helpful if stuck on a desert island: ?The first
thing to do with ah coconut, of course, is to get at it. Lacking
power tools, you drop the large fruit onto a rocklike substance.
If it doesn?t crack open enough so that the husk pulls away, use your
trusty axe. Out comes a fiber-covered nut. Shake it.
A sloshing noise means that the nut is fresh and that you can count on
some watery liquid erroneously referred to as milk??
4. One Book that Made Me Laugh: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by Laurence Sterne. I could not get enough of Walter Shandy ? a
ridiculous man who composes a ?Tristrapoedia? to properly educate his
unfortunate (and inadequate, hee hee) son Tristram.
5. One Book that Made Me Cry: The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy.
6. One Book that I Wish Had Been Written: A book composed entirely of wingdings.
7. One Book I Wish Had Not Been Written: Democracy and Education
by John Dewey. According to Jacques Barzun, education reformers
engage in ?preposterism? when they treat a philosophy like a recipe.
And this book inspired some bad recipes. For good recipes, see #3
above.
8. One Book I’m Currently Reading: Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States 1820-1850
by Frank Tracy Carlton. Before Carlton, histories of education
were Whiggish. After Carlton, histories of education became
skittish.
9. One Book I’ve Been Meaning to Read: Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II
by Jaroslaw Kupczak, O.P. Before he emerged as one of the greatest
pontiffs in history, Karol Wojtyla was a brilliant philosopher ? a
phenomenologist, a Christian humanist, and something of a
Thomist. This book is an introduction to Wojtyla?s thought.
