The Solemn Responsibilities of Book Reviewing

By ALAN WOLFE

Those who write books are painfully aware of how few people actually read them. To be sure, outlets of chain bookstores are now as ubiquitous as espresso bars, and World-Wide Web sites for purchasing books, such as Amazon.com, render unnecessary even a trip to the mall. But any writer of books dealing with serious ideas is aware of how far libraries have cut down on orders, how much university presses have cut back on academic monographs, and how much commercial publishers have threatened