Man, it’s been a long time since I succumbed to the lopsided charm of Amazons, no, wait, to the allure of Amazon.com. (BTW: DO NOT Google images of Amazons while at work – or pretty much any other time – no matter how much you’d like to kick your blog post up a notch. Just FYI.) But yesterday was that day. Adding to the pile that has filled my nightstand and overflown onto the floor, are the following:
The Social Ideas of American Educators This book was cited as a source for some of the charming ideas our crazy US Commissioners of Education spouted, out loud, even. Little known fact I just made up: assuming the proper intentions and state of mind, reading scholarly books on US education peels almost as many years off Purgatory as reading German philosophers, Of course, nothing compares to reading Germans writing about education – THAT there is a *double* plenary indulgence!
In the Cause of True Education: Henry Barnard and the 19th Century School Reform Aren’t you intrigued by how Hank B will choose to define *true* education? A mythical Kantian thaler says it has something to do with *morality*, and proper Protestant morality at that. Any takers? BTW – anybody note how, in the earlier post where I first discussed Barnard, that the complaint against schooling, the evidence that it was in disrepair, was that school was only being held 3 months a year? No discussion of what kids were learning, or any acknowledgement that it might be an open question, one to be decided by objective evaluation, whether 3 months a year of schooling was adequate.
Henry Barnard, a biography so obscure they don’t even have a picture for the cover. Hey, it’s short (138 pages) and was a $1.13.
This, I had to save for later – there are 3 volumes of around 600 pages each, and I’m not sure there are enough souls in Purgatory to warrant such an undertaking: Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year … with Accompanying Papers, Volume 1890, issue 1 From 1886 until at least 1912 (I think they may end in 1923, but I’m not sure), the Commissioner of Education gave periodic reports to the Interior Secretary. Gripping reading, I’m sure – but should provide confirmation or refutation of the crazy educational theory I’ve herein expounded. If I get through the other stuff in this lifetime, maybe I’ll bite the bullet.
Next, the fun stuff:
In honor of his birthday, ordered a bunch of John C. Wright:
The Hermetic Millennia; 
The Phoenix Exultant (Golden Age); 
Count to a Trillion;
Titans of Chaos; 
Fugitives of Chaos; 
The Golden Transcendence.
The sad truth is that I’ve only read 2 of Mr. Wright’s works so far – the first books of the Golden Age and Chaos trilogies, which were all I could find in the local used book stores. So, now I’ll catch up a bit.
Also, long overdue, got some Mike Flynn. Same story – have only read a couple of his so far:
Eifelheim and 
The Wreck of the River of Stars
When I’ve got time and are not too sleep deprived, can knock off a book – even one of Mr. Wright’s, he of the verbose muse – in a couple days. This, as they say, is often rare. Plus, still have a couple thousand pages of Hegel and Aristotle to read.
Yard Sale of the Mind 
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