Ms. Kenneally, a linguist trained at the University of Cambridge, covers an enormous expanse of ground as she brings the reader up to date on developments in a wide variety of disciplines touching on language evolution.
Some of this ham-handedness just comes with the genre: Stout's Archie Goodwin, like Conan Doyle's Dr. Watson before him, reads newspaper reports aloud to get his boss, and the reader, up to speed on the crime in question.
Landskipping goes at a clip – a remarkable amount has been packed into a slender 220 pages, even bringing the reader up to date on the continuing struggle to protect the ancient rights of common land championed by Cobbett.
His various series on great authors, great philosophers and great ideas ("Nabokov in 90 Minutes" is one title) promise to get readers up to speed on, say, Wittgenstein, in 100 pages or so with no dumbing-down.
To readers up on their contemporary fiction, this all may sound familiar.
Mr. Rayman broke the story in The Voice, and this book catches readers up on Officer Schoolcraft's saga, though it remains unclear how widespread the practice of manipulating crime statistics was (the Police Department acknowledges that it happened, but largely blames bad apples and says it has instituted tighter controls).
Readers up on Australian artistic pranks born, Slater theorizes, of antipodean cultural insecurity will recognize the lineaments of the real-life Ern Malley affair, which was perpetrated in 1944, by two skillful anti-modernists, Harold Stewart and James McAuley, victimizing a Melbourne magazine called, believe it or not, Angry Penguins.
If I have my way, we'll be hookin' our readers up on a regular basis.
MR: Let's catch the readers up on your history.
MR: I'd love to catch The Huffington Post readers up on your history.
MR: Let's catch our readers up on your life and career before LXD.
