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elief that the American education establishment and society itself have failed to teach us mental discipline, independence of thought, individual responsibility, or even the right books. From The Gift of Fire's first chapter, "Who Is Socrates, Now That We Need Him?" to the book's stunning, emotionally moving conclusion, Mitchell decries "feel good," "I'm OK, You're OK" American public education-based on teaching to the lowest common denominator-and argues for a return to studies based on the work of thinkers like Socrates, Aquinas, and Ben Franklin. In this way, all of us learn to think for ourselves, not just the privileged.
Here, too, are Mitchell's beautifully written, exquisitely argued explorations of not what but how to think about the knotty moral issues that face us every day: ambition, violence, nuclear weapons, political conflict, patience, duty, love, and even child-rearing. In the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mitchell considers the world around him in a manner that is thought-provoking, fascinating and entertaining,
Thousands of enlightened readers know Richard Mitchell as one of our most brilliant, passionate, funny, and quintessentially American thinkers. Join them in reading The Gift of Fire. It will change your life -- or at least how you think about it.
About the Author: Richard Mitchell is editor and publisher of The Underground Grammarian and a professor of classics at Glassboro State College. He is the author of Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, and The Leaning Tower of Babel.
Introduction
I suspect that those who have read some of my other works will be a little surprised by this one. I am a little surprised by this one.
That, in itself, is nothing new. I have never yet written anything, long or short, that did not surprise me. That is, for me at least, the greatest worth of writing, which is only incidentally a way of telling others what you think. Its first use is for the makin