Books, Articles, and Items of Academic Interest

In Short

Space is at a premium in this issue of Academic Questions, so I have decided to mention only short books and pocket-sized items. Candide, Heart of Darkness, Animal Farm, and The Old Man and the Sea, already having received some exposure, will have to fend for themselves. Ditto The Call of the Wild. The shortest book in the Old Testament is Obadiah, which consumes less than a page. Obadiah prophesizes the destruction of the men of Edom for their failure to help their neighbors during a calamity: “Neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress” (1:12). This seems apt counsel for our times, and for higher education in particular.

Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets fit neatly onto seventy-seven pages, each fourteen lines in sequent toil hastens to its end—except Sonnet