The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

by Jamie Kreiner

A revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge―and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later. The digital era is beset by distraction, and it feels like things are only getting worse. At times like these, the distant past beckons as a golden age of attention. We fantasize about escaping our screens. We dream of recapturing the quiet of a world with less noise. We imagine retreating into solitude and singlemindedness, almost like latter-day monks.

But although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. As historian Jamie Kreiner demonstrates in The Wandering Mind , their attempts to stretch the mind out to God―to continuously contemplate the divine order and its ethical requirements―were all-consuming, and their battles against distraction were never-ending. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around the Mediterranean, and throughout Europe from 300 to 900 CE, Kreiner shows that these men and women were obsessed with distraction in ways that seem remarkably modern. At the same time, she suggests that our own obsession is remarkably medieval. Ancient Greek and Roman intellectuals had sometimes complained about distraction, but it was early Christian monks who waged an all-out war against it. The stakes could not have been they saw distraction as a matter of life and death.

Even though the world today is vastly different from the world of the early Middle Ages, we can still learn something about our own distractedness by looking closely at monks’ strenuous efforts to concentrate. Drawing on a trove of sources that the monks left behind, Kreiner reconstructs the techniques they devised in their lifelong quest to master their minds―from regimented work schedules and elaborative metacognitive exercises to physical regimens for hygiene, sleep, sex, and diet. She captures the fleeting moments of pure attentiveness that some monks managed to grasp, and the many times when monks struggled and failed and went back to the drawing board. Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty, illuminating account of human fallibility and ingenuity that bridges a distant era and our own. 30 black-and-white images throughout

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Psychology, Religion, Audiobook, Medieval, Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 2023

Reviews

[Steve Donoghue]

A fun, obviously-relatable book about the different kinds of distractions faced by medieval monks and clerics, long before the bottomless pits of Instagram and TikTok existed. Kreiner does a wonderfully readable job of finding plenty of individual stories of people trying to make themselves concentrate when they don't really want to. My full review is here: https://openlettersreview.com/posts/t...

[Brandon Westlake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I requested this book thinking it would lean more on using the medieval monks' methods to help current distracted people to center themselves. The book actually focused more on monks' habits and a deep dive into their study culture. In other words, you'll be reading a medieval history book rather than a psychology-focused book.
I think there is some interesting material here, especially on how monks were able to train themselves to focus so much and memorize massive amounts of material. Not an easy task to do. We often find ourselves thinking about how much distraction is present in our own lives, and that it couldn't have possibly been so in eras gone by. Not true, Kreiner effectively argues. While technology and concerns were different, they were just as much distracted as we were. All this to say, too, that reading is quite an unnatural act (and cognitive challenge at that). If anything, this book does a great job of helping us understand that we may have more in common with the monastery than we might think

[Chrystopher’s Archive · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect cozy nonfiction.

While not overly concerned with religion itself, The Wandering Mind traces the beliefs and attitudes toward attention, distraction, and the process of thinking itself in monasteries and other intellectual spaces in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Kreiner does a fantastic job of breathing life into the many individuals and, even more impressively, the ancient cultures themselves.

The section on meditation and memory techniques was especially fascinating.

Highly recommended for history nerds, culture mavens, anyone who just wants to read an interesting story well told, and even fiction writers who want to ground their worldbuilding.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drop me into the 9th century and I'd make Barsanuphius the recluse look like a modern day iPad kid

[Sloane Getz · Rating 5 out of 5]

the title of this book made me worry this would be a pop-psych book loosely based on medieval thought, but luckily that wasn't the case. While Kriener occasionally draws parallels between our digital age and the manuscript culture of the early monastics, this is a history of early medieval monastic life, albeit one written for a non-specialist audience. Kreiner does a fantastic job of writing about a pretty obscure niche in history in a way that would appeal to readers without a background in the topic without dumbing down or oversimplifying her content. Was glad to see all my Carolingian girlbosses featured!! I particularly enjoyed the sections on early medieval views on the relationship between reading and thinking. Would highly recommend!!

[Jackson Greer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting premise, execution was not so much.

[Shain Verow · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely gorgeously detailed and well written book on a problem that has clearly plagued humanity across cultures and ages.

The choice to study on the habits, writing, and techniques of early Christian monks, on the surface, seems to lack a lot of practical connection to the modern world. However, the author clearly outlines the relatability between the struggles for attention and mental resources that so many of us face today. There are so many distractions, seemingly more external stimuli competing for our attention than ever!

The monks, throughout the early Christian monastic movement, found themselves similarly struggling with attention and distraction, perhaps suggesting that the problem is not truly external, but rather resides within ourselves?

Of course, why do we even want to pay attention and avoid distractions? Well, that’s where the history here gets interesting and continues on into the territory of the fascinating. It turns out that the concerns of monks from over a thousand years ago still persist in our culture today, and that their beliefs still frame our relationship with our own inner selves.

All in all, there’s a lot of useful and interesting information here, it is very well presented in an engaging and clear manner, and the author’s reading of the audiobook as is extremely well done. This book is not even a very long book, so if you’re struggling with attention you can still find what might be of use to you here.

[Matthew McLain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, I thought it was such a fun way to learn about different medieval monks and some of their best practices. I don’t think the book is very good for what it advertises to be but I think it’s a really interesting book of history and little anecdotes about monks. Their desire to give their whole attention to God is super inspiring and convicting.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun read about the historical dangers of distraction, I really liked all the research the author did in making this book relatable

[Leah Massa · Rating 4 out of 5]

highly impressive historical research boiled into an easily consumable book. sometimes, however, i wished that the author would allow for deeper historical analysis.

[Farida Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Positives are that the ideas behind this book are original and timely as humanity lives in a perpetual zombie state, thanks to over reliance on cheap hand held smart phones. As Society is ready to embrace the Metaverse, The Wandering Mind could be just the thing to help pull us back to some kind of normality.
Negatives are that there is alot of monk name-dropping - which I am unable to follow - as medieval monks are not household names - yet. Monks are extensively written about- it would have been great to have more excerpts of historical autobiographical writings.
The Wandering Mind does have an extensive Bibliography and detailed chapter notes. This publication is highly specialised and assumes alot of historical references to the lives of monks.
It was difficult to rate this book as the writer has laboured to produce a highly researched publication. and is a good writer and historian. However, sadly the content of the book is not what this reader was expecting to read.

[Collin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not totally convinced that a lot of this book is actually about monastic distraction specifically, but I don't actually care because this general topic of religion in the Late Antiquity/early medieval periods is one of my favorite things to read about for any reason whatsoever. I feel like buying the book would be more than worth it if you're interested in further reading, too; there are 65 pages of (dense) Notes and Sources. As entertaining as some of the stories are, further reading sounds great to me.

[Carolyn Kost · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read the reviews in the media as I did, you may be led to believe that this book will provide insight into how to avoid distraction or achieve greater mindfulness or concentration in your personal life. I wonder if they read the book, since it in no way does that. This is about early Christian monasticism (300-900 CE) from Iran to Ireland. It is descriptive, but not analytical. Kreiner is loath to put herself in the place of these monastics. And she seems to skirt the God question, which is unfortunate.

The introduction was so dull that I nearly did not persist, but I decided to forge ahead anyway. The book turned out to be a quick read, not great, but I enjoyed some of the anecdotes about monastic zaniness. The book has six areas of concentration: The World, Community, Body, Books, Memory, and Mind. There was no agreement about details from one abbot or abbess to the next, just that some constraints were preferable to none, and benefits must be weighed against the risks.

The World, "family, friends, property, work, and daily routines...the thrill and trauma and banality of everyday life that overloaded your attention" (23), which interfere with meditation and prayer. The goal of the monastic life was not meditation and prayer, which is how Kreiner expresses it. Rather, the goal is to develop a relationship with God. I am unconvinced that Kreiner had any idea how to approach that crucial aspect of this subject. Contact with family pull one back into the world. Nevertheless, monks had a "separated but symbiotic" role to play in the world: problem-solver, liaison, mediator, etc., and magical abilities were often attributed to them, which also helped to fund them, particularly when the Emperor believed monks' presence affirmed his power.

Community was both distracting and helpful. "In almost every community, the schedule centered on the trifecta of manual labor, reading, and prayer....the differences were in the details" (55). Work "was designed to help monks concentrate on God against an array of enticing alternatives. Submitting to that shared routine was supposed to reorient the mind itself" (57). Except, of course, when monks and nuns competed, gossiped, and argued with each other, and when aristocratic renunciants aired their "elitist grievances," as at Holy Cross (69), one of the few times class is mentioned in the book. My favorite part of this chapter was the reference to a Gallic monastery's tradition that Mary had lived as a monastic in Solomon's temple, preparing her soul for the Incarnation (55).

Kreiner uses the term monk in a broad way. It doesn't refer only to "merits or members of monasteries," but anyone "committed to renunciation, discipline, and prayer," who often "lived at home [or] moved around and subsisted on begging or patronage or both...physical isolation was not necessarily the key ingredient to the making of a monk" (31). There were twice as many women as men who lived "as an ascetic at home" (32), which was probably the most common form of the ascetic life. Many of the mentioned monastics, presumably widowed, had children, which is somewhat unexpected. "'There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.' It was the 'cell of the heart' that mattered most" (37). This reminds me of the quote from The Secret of the Golden Flower: “If one cultivates one’s action while mingling with the world and is still in harmony with the light, then the round is round and the angular has angles; then he lives among men, mysterious yet visible, different and yet the same, and none can compass it; then no one notices our secret actions.”

The Body chapter refers to the ways monastics sought body-mind balance and controlled their needs and desires for sleep, food, sex, hygiene, and appearance. "And if a body got everything it wanted, its pleas would only become more persistent" (74). Bathing was often to be avoided as polluting. The desert mother Silvania reported, “I am sixty years of age, and apart from the tips of my hands, neither my feet nor my face nor nor any one of my limbs ever touched water" (77). The expected tonsure was by no means ubiquitous. Some of the monks' actions were obsessive and exaggerated, like Simeon the Stylite's severing "his own festering foot" (82); some castrated themselves; some fasted to extremes. Saint Augustine recommended that "rich people who had converted to monasticism should be allowed to have special bedding...bodies were inescapably conditioned by class" (85).

Books could be distracting if too engrossing: "It becomes iron...and is excised with difficulty" (103). How much time was best to spend reading each day was debated, like everything else. Punctuation, marginalia, palimpsests, experimental design layouts "to achieve the greater goal of gently shaping readers' attention." It was intriguing to see an early version of Gospel Parallels, comparing all four gospels' texts with graphic organizers to serve as a mnemonic device with "spatial organization, subdivision, and sense-activating details" (161). Another graphic organizer using the illustration of six-winged angel figure is discussed in the Memory chapter. "Slow reading, communal reading, repeated reading" were all ways to moderate the distraction of books.

Searching and recording scriptural keywords, images, and murals assisted monks in meditation. In the memory chapter, Kreiner at last states, "The rituals that took place in these same churches involved powerful stimuli of song and scent and motion and even taste. These sense experiences were not ornamental; they were essential to the body-mind partnership. The overlapping of sensory perspectives helped a person come to grips with the complexity of God and the universe he had created. It also made things memorable" (140). That's it. That's all the reader is given about the role of the senses. It is so reductive it's breathtaking and terribly disappointing. On pages 161-2, Kreiner mentions that her college freshmen use Hugh of Saint Victor's Little Book about Constructing Noah's Ark (1126-1130 CE) to establish connections and build a system of mnemonic devices.

In the Mind chapter, we read that monks practiced metacognition, thinking about their thinking, "learning, through progressively harder exercises, to observe one's thoughts, evaluate them, animate them, enlarge them, and...make them motionless" (165). Alan Watts said the same thing as a 7th century monk, who recommended letting thoughts wander, but while Watts suggested watching them like fish in an aquarium, early monks recommended launching oneself upon them "vehemently and unawares...to make your mind likelier to choose better thoughts the next time it was let loose" (166).

Again, despite the promise of the title, there are actually very few references relating Late Antiquity to modern times, and most occur in the final chapter, Mind, as on page 167, "The New York Times tech journalist Kevin Roose has argued that 'attention guarding' and 'digital discernment' ¬–that is, learning to evaluate the information we're bombarded with on our screens– are essential tactics that humans will need to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence and automation." More significantly,

"...questions about whether a demon is misleading us, and whether we're living inside a digital simulation, are both rooted in the desire to find out if the things we think we know are bring manipulated by something else without our knowing it. And just as techno-philosophers have argued that the possibility of simulated realities is a nontrivial issue, early Christian monks treated thought-detection with utter seriousness..." (169).

I was struck by he practice of some monks in dissociating themselves from their thoughts by speaking of them as "active subjects," as in 'the thought tells me' or visualizing themselves "thinking those thoughts" is similar to the technique that the contemporary San Germain (I AM) Foundation uses, even referencing past experiences as "The body experienced...."

For those persistent and patient readers who actually make it to the final chapter, there is a reward for some helpful counsel regarding prayer: treat it as "an active exercise that required...sincere effort" (172); gather thoughts as a shepherd her sheep, "call to them and cry our, 'Come! Let us worship and fall down before Christ..." (170); set goals as a blacksmith 'a lump of iron...first decides what he is going to make of it...Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labor in vain' (174).

I was surprised by only one reference to "death-centered thinking," since memento mori has been so important in many monastic traditions around the world, from Buddhist contemplation in the presence of a corpse and medieval monks praying from caskets. I found the reference to females as monks rather than nuns irritating, and I can't find any justification for this choice. The word origin is μοναχός, which is masculine. μοναχή (monachí) is the feminine. Some people have made the decision to use masculine words in English as gender neutral, like waiter, actor, sculptor, comedian, when they are not, effectively erasing the female forms.

Presumably to keep publication costs down, the illustrations are in grayscale. The photographs are so light in tones of gray as to be positively useless and contribute nothing to the book. The text describe the glorious colors of the gray illuminated manuscripts, but at least two were helpful to understanding regardless. This book should have a website where the curious reader can access the illustrations as they should appear, in full color.

There were monks in the "Syriac-speaking world... in the Persian Gulf...[who] explored and mapped the mental processes that pure prayer entailed" (181) mainly for solitude, not in a community settting, "as the ultimate stage in a cognitive and spiritual sequence of prayer," the result of "other forms of physical, social, codicological [the study of manuscripts], and mental training. It's "going off-book...possible only if you'd begun with books in the first place" (183). Monks could see the entire world before the photos from satellites or the moon.

"Whereas researchers today blame distraction on sleep deprivation, boredom, poorly designed workplace cultures, and technological triggers, among other things, Christian monks ultimately faulted demons and deficiencies, the will, and the original split of humanity from union with the divine. But we share a fixation on the problem of distraction —thanks in no small part to the monks who cast it as a moral crisis in the first place— any suspicion that our predecessors were better at dealing with it" (192). And every generation, even the ancients, thought concentration was easier in the previous age.

Is the book worth a read? For those who are interested in history, yes. For those interested in the promise of the title, i.e., what medieval monks tell us about distraction, skip to the last chapter and don't bother with the rest. It's just a distraction. *wink*

[Candace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Distraction from WHAT, is my question. Overall somewhat interesting but there was no takeaway for me.

An interesting point on illustrating books (esp. in really early days of books): Ch. 5 - it was a lot to pack into a simple page, but images weren't supposed to be a shortcut. Rather, they encouraged the reader to pore over their difficult but beguiling puzzles, and in the process to form a rich set of ideas and memories that could be revisited even when the manuscript was out of sight. Graphics also helped monks organize their memories in order to learn new things from them. If images could be used to connect different ideas...they could also be used to sort them into groups. Ancient and medieval analysts of the memory knew that it's much easier to retrieve memories when they're divided, or chunked, into a handful of units. Monks therefore used actual images, or described images for others to picture, not only to bring ideas together, but to differentiate them. They loved to picture ladders, for example, whose rungs represented ethical choices that scaled higher and harder.

[Laura Fabrycky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific footnotes; appreciated the research depth in this text, while also being readable.

It's always interesting to watch folks from other disciplines (social psychologists, or whatever we call the various neuroscientific/cognitive productivity-focus-behavioral design folks) "raid" and interpret ancient Christian and other religious monastic thought and practices to distill the essence of 'this or that' that fits our contemporary framing. There's a lot of valuable insight in this text, including that maybe what these ancients unearthed remains available for ordinary people still, and that what they suffered and found frustrating is fairly standard stuff still.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, but wanders a bit from the subject as described in the title. But lots of interesting details about the concerns and practices of Christian monks from about 350 AD until about 1000AD.

Don’t expect any great tips about dealing with distractions but understand that it’s a problem long predating mass media and smartphones!

[Marie Fouhey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author looks at medieval monks and the various ways they tried to keep focused on God, not on the world. Frequently they took this to an extreme, not wanting to even admire a grape or say they'd like to eat one. The book also discusses bad behavior (being late to mass, falling asleep during devotions, watching other monks too closely to point out their sins, thinking that because they had higher social status outside the monastery, they were superior to their fellow monks) and the methods their superiors developed to correct bad behavior. An entertaining look at a very different world.

[Rolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a social history of monastic life than a self-help book addressing distraction, but as someone who enjoys well-written social history and didn’t know a lot of this detail about monastic life throughout the medieval period, I really enjoyed it.

[Landon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about what monks thought about attention.

It’s a pretty sterile and detailed look at Monks.

I thought there would be more comparisons with what we experience today.

Monks were funny, I had a good time.

[David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Archeological excavations of monasteries ranging from modern-day Iraq to Ireland reveal a rich tableau of insights into the lives of monks during Christianity's first millennium. Concerns about hunger, sex, evil thoughts, personal relationships with fellow monks, supplicants constantly seeking spiritual support, boredom, reading too much or too little, sleeping too much or too little, personal indulgence, and work requirements fostered persistent feelings of spiritual inadequacy and self doubt. Monks described distractions like "smells luring a dog around a meat market, an infestation of mice, a treacherous swamp, or flies that needed swatting away."

In an effort to draw closer to God, monks developed all manner of strategies to focus their minds and enhance their spirituality. Fasting, isolation, penance, obsessive repetition of scripture, and the sharing of best practices were common. However, a monk's capacity to develop a rich memory-based life of the mind seems to have been one of the most efficacious means of drawing closer to God. Monks constructed elaborate mental rooms and ladders and draped them with memories, scripture, and the tenets of their beliefs.

While we are likely far more distracted (perhaps we choose to be) than a seventh-century monk, for most of us, our spiritual goals relatively modest. I'm not sure if the relative modesty of our spiritual objectives enables us to cope with greater distraction, but the lives of these monks demonstrate that distraction may be part of the human condition.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you know much about monasticism (historically, sociologically, theologically) already, this book might be too redundant for you. Personally I found the first 3 chapters - the world, community, body - to be a disappointing litany of “monks, they’re just like us!” That said, the latter 3 chapters - books, memory, mind - had a lot of interesting info to offer and you might find them as engaging as I did.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

More history. Less self-help.

Monks and their lives.

Really fascinating.

Ages 16+

[Pooja Mathur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. I like that it was short. It didn't overdo any topic. I appreciated the author's natural use of different genders to talk about monks. I listened to it, so I didn't catch any of the citations, and am giving the author the benefit of the doubt that it was well researched. It definitely sounded like it.

[Christina Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn’t what I expected based on the title, but I found this very interesting. Distraction has proven itself to be a centuries-old issue that goes beyond smartphones and social media. The act of taming the mind is as complex and impossible as taking the tongue.

However, the monk girlies were also so dramatic!!!! I loved the monastic tea, learning about trans monks, and the conversation of class/privilege surrounding many monastic traditions. All I can say, undiagnosed OCD me would’ve gone mad and thrived as a monk 😅

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

As pointed out in other reviews, this book had only a very tangential focus on what historical monks could teach us about the art, and battle, of concentration, which is what i was most interested in, seeing as monasticism is the art of setting aside ALL else to focus single-mindedly on a higher purpose, in their case God but in our case it could be any higher purpose of our choosing. This is the war which can never be won, but must always be fought. I learned an incredible amount about the history of monasticism, but unfortunately, I will probably forget 99% of it a year from now. But I enjoyed it while I read it.

Some things I learned which I hoped to remember:

Monks were some of the original thinkers on distraction. They were morally obligated to fight against it, to reach in thought for the higher and push against the lesser.

If someone with so much at stake, even the fate of their own and others souls on the line, could still get distracted, someone whose religion built stone temples and cathedrals precisely to block out all worldly sound, then so can you.

A monk’s promise and commitment to give up all of their worldly possessions was simply the precursor to giving up what really mattered, their mind, and more importantly, their attention

In a surprise to absolutely no one, monasticism itself was endlessly argued over. What it means to be a monk, the importance of asceticism, the importance of location and proximity to others. The point was that distraction and worldliness could find you anywhere, regardless of your set up.

Just like any complicated social system, monasteries were incredibly complex and nuanced in their implementation. No two monasteries were the same, whether it be sleeping quarters, speech rules, ownership, work patterns, and schedule.

“If the eyes of the mind are open, every word contains a volume”

What we can learn from Monks on distraction:
1. If you want something that can banish distraction, you need something worthy enough to devote your entire concentration to. It has to be worth the war.
2. You achieve constancy only through motion. A single fixed point gotten to by a thousand different strategies is the entire point

[Brandi]

Feels unfair to rate this one. My enjoyment level was around 2 stars, but I should probably have DNF'ed midway; I kept going just to fit a nonfiction book into my monthly TBR and this was fairly short (five and half hours on audio).

The subtitle mislead me a bit, as did the Scribd listicle that prompted me to check this out. I expected the book to draw more connections between the monks' beliefs and practices and how people nowadays deal with distraction. It's not the book's fault that I assumed that. Read this only if you're interested in learning detailed facts about the lifestyles of medieval monks, as it won't really offer much in the way of relatable insight/advice.

[Jerry Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Informative about the ancient monks.
The author did very little to tie it in with modern distraction.
Truthfully, I would have rated it higher if it weren't for the bait and switch and just been a book about ancient monks.

[Franklin · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are looking for monastic history, this is for you. If you are expecting strategies for your wandering mind you are in the wrong place.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 26%

Actually a misbranded unfocused nonfiction about the history of monks.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dense book full of medieval history and quotes from the Desert Fathers and Mothers but it is also an interesting and compelling examination of how monks (male and female) tried to improve their focus among the many distractions in their life. The book has many, many pages of notes and references but they are separate at the end and can be skipped if necessary. I intend to follow up on some of the names I hadn’t come across before.

There are also lessons for modern people about how to be sure we can spend our time wisely rather than the endless danger of social media videos and twitter feeds.

There are some great quotes here to make you think:-

"there are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thought."

It was the ‘cell of the heart’ that mattered most. This is profound to an introvert like me.

The idea isn’t that we never have distracting thoughts but that we don’t allow them to ‘sink in’. The monks spent a lot of time thinking about thinking and about how they could corral their flitting thoughts like little sheep. Christian monks faulted demons, deficiencies in the will, and splitting off from the divine. It’s also clear that given the time spent by our ancestors on trying to control their minds, they maybe weren’t much better at it than we are.

There is much to learn in this lovely, intelligent book.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley