Academics discover the gravy train or Tall Poppies Rule OK

[pantodragon]

I am currently reading: A Concise History of the Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes.

Pipes is a prominent American historian/academic who served in the Reagan administration as an advisor on Russian affairs.

This book is a “careful abridgement” of two earlier tomes on the same subject. Whereas the earlier books were written for a specialist readership, this abridgement is aimed at the general reader.

However, enter Pipes’ world at your peril! He certainly ain’t playin’ my tune! This book is totally unsuitable for general readers. It supposes a rather more specialised knowledge than the author has a right to suppose --- really, one wonders if he has done more than cut and paste and cut down on the academic references so as to reduce the two volumes to one, with minimal effort. In other words, he has made no attempt at all to accommodate the general reader.

This is becoming ever more common as “names” sell books and the quality becomes increasingly less important than the “name”. What happens then is that we live in a shrinking world of books where all the richness of literature produced by enthusiasts and others is lost while “names” regurgitate the same stuff over and over.