A good book review ...

... is one that lets you know enough about the book underreview and the reviewer
s reasons for liking or disliking it to enable you to make up your own mind. Scott McLemee's review of George Scialabba's Divided Mind is just such. Scott obviously like the book. I doubt if I would.

I find this interesting:

“The most radical division it is possible to make of humanity,” Ortega y Gasset declares, “is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort toward perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.”
Something in Ortega y Gasset’s statement must have struck a chord with Scialabba. He quotes it in two essays. “Is this a valid distinction?” he asks. “Yes, I believe it is....” But the idea bothers him; it stimulates none of the usual self-congratulatory pleasures of snobbery. The division of humanity into two categories — the noble and “the masses” — lends itself to anti-democratic sentiments, if not the most violently reactionary sort of politics.
At the very least, it undermines the will to make egalitarian changes. Yet it is also very hard to gainsay the truth of it.
I am very fond of Ortega y Gassett. But here I think he got things wrong by posing a false dichotomy. One of the demands one must make on oneself involves understanding who one is, what one's limitations are, and working within them. The hidden assumption here is that tormenting thoughts somehow make one more authentic than the poor schlub who just gets up every morning, goes to work and earns a living for his family. Therein lies the source of "the anti-democratic sentiments" likely to afflict intellectuals, by whom I mean people who see life principally in terms of categories of thought.