April 30, 2004

Purdue Professor Offers E-Book With Adaptations of 18th-Century Writings to Modern Issues

By BROCK READ

What would Samuel Johnson, the British lexicographer and critic, make of the poststructuralist movement? How would Lord Chesterfield, Johnson's contemporary and nemesis, handle a position at a modern university?

Such questions might not be the stuff of dissertations or survey courses, but they've proved to be fertile ground for Alan T. McKenzie, a professor of English at Purdue University's campus in West Lafayette, Ind. For nearly a decade, Mr. McKenzie has taken works by his favorite