Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures

Eight lectures, each a winding path through one man's attempt to make sense of human nature. George W. Bain was there for the Civil War. He shook hands with General Grant. He watched humanity at its worst and best, and what he learned, he shares here with startling candor and disarming humor. These aren't dry moral proclamations but rather the musings of someone who refused to accept easy answers about who people are and what they owe each other. Bain argues, with stories rather than sermons, that prejudice is dangerous, that sympathy is revolutionary, and that we judge others far too quickly based on fragments of their lives. The prose crackles with wit even as it tackles serious questions about labor, equality, and what it means to be decent in an indecent world. This is old-fashioned wisdom literature, yes, butrefreshed by a voice that feels remarkably contemporary: warm, skeptical, generous, and unwilling to let anyone off easy, including himself.