Ever talk about Plato at four in the morning in a doughnut shop with a well-read blue-collar stranger? That’s the feeling this book evokes. The author doesn’t describe the ways to get accreditation, academic legitimacy, or even intellectual power. He tells how to find out the things that would change your life if you took the trouble to learn them, how to tell other people about them, and how to support yourself meanwhile. The methods include reporting and cultivating experts, but mainly forming the kind of relationship with libraries that master chefs have with their food suppliers. The book is full of anecdotes about independent researchers like Eric Hoffer that make you want to follow up everything they ever wrote; but more important, it’s full of solid advice, the kind that will be news even to people who have
