I know it’s fashionable to display a haughty contempt for algorithmic recommendations, but Amazon suggested to me what looks to be a very interesting book by Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. I found one appreciative review here which I’d missed back in the summer, and, to quote another few from the publisher’s website:
“Hitz’s memoir is profoundly affecting as she describes how academic life made her lose her love of learning before, finally, she found a meaningful path.”
“[Lost in Thought is] full of wonder, full of the joyful smiles of somebody who’s been saved, or saved herself, from empty toils of ledger-sheet learning. In her good-natured way, Hitz chastises the increasing commodification of intellectual endeavor. . . . This is a book to savor in your quietest reading nook. Which is very much the point.”
“In her rich and rewarding book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, Professor Zena Hitz argues that the goal of education is not the status or privileges it confers upon us, or even the valuable life skills it demands that we acquire. In line with classical pagan and Christian traditions, she argues that we have a natural desire to understand the world outside of us, and that a true education carefully cultivates this natural love of learning and helps to bring it to its full maturity. . . . [A] rich, timely book, a book educators and students alike would do well to read.”
(While we’re on the theme, you should read what another guerrilla-philosopher-in-exile from the realm of Arts & Letters had to say recently.)