page 49

You're right, I do have Booker T Washington and George Washington Carver mixed up.  George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, a boon to mankind.  Though you have to wonder what was so hard about that, just grind up a bunch of peanuts, but maybe you have to mix it just right or maybe it is one of those things where nobody just happened to think of it before him.

I did a little wiki on DuBois, and he was at least a comsymp in his later days, but it was mostly because he thought they would be more on his side than the US Government.  I wonder about that too, what comes first, the attitude or the philosopher.  The way history is written, generally by scholarly types, you get the impression that at some point some philosopher came up with an idea and everybody follows, but I think it is more that the idea was around and the philosopher put it into fancy words, well probably the two things work together.

But these guys are clearly scholarly types.  They want to fit all these things into philosophical categories, and sometimes the reader is just saying come on, get with it. 

And I'm with you, once they start getting into the real world things begin picking up.  I'm at, lessee, page 49, just a bit into chapter three.  I guess what is surprising me here is how long ago blockbusting was used.  I had thought it was an invention of the fifties.

The writing is still a little tough though, but like you said, you kind of get used to it.  A lot of that old timey language gets on my nerves.  Especially the way people wrote around the time of the civil war, so flowery.  I hated listening to those letters that were always being read in the Ken Burns thing on the civil war.  You wonder how they ever got anything done, talking that way.

I wonder if it had something to do with literacy not being so universal in those days and the people who were literate being proud of it and wanting to show off.

I have heard from a lot of people who were once grad students about being taken advantage of by their professors and the impression I get is that it happens all the time and it is just something you have to live with.  I don't know if that's the case in this because Anderson is way past grad student age, but I have to admit that I know nothing about this Pickering guy.  That letter I sent to the publisher never got a response, so maybe a little more research is called for over the weekend.