A Scathing Review of a Book Nobody Has Read Yet

I cannot recommend this book.

After careful examination, I have discovered that it contains ideas.

The author expresses them with alarming confidence, and the publisher has made no attempt to suppress them. On the contrary, modern typography and explanatory footnotes have been employed to make these ideas more accessible to the general public.

Most disturbing of all, neither the author nor the publisher appears the least bit apologetic. The publisher even admits that much of this material has been neglected for over three hundred years. One is naturally led to wonder whether such neglect might have been a mercy.

The danger is obvious.

The joke is, of course, that the ideas contained in these books are only dangerous or offensive to those who are afraid of them.

John Bunyan certainly was not.

In the preface to A Book for Boys and Girls, Bunyan critiques society by observing that many of his contemporaries, despite looking like adults, spent their lives playing with toys. Some toys are made of wood and string. Others are made of pride, fashion, vanity, and folly. The years had passed, but the childishness remained.

His solution was unusual.

Rather than demanding that everyone rise to his level, Bunyan declared that he would cast his "very beard behind the bush" and join the "artificial babes" of his age. He wrote of candles, birds, butterflies, trees, and other ordinary things in the hope of rousing his audience from lethargy and indifference.

Three centuries later, the strategy remains surprisingly effective.

For all our sophistication, we are not so very different from Bunyan's audience. We still love distractions. We still chase trifles. We still need someone to interrupt us long enough to make us think.

Beware: You just might learn something.