academic like me viewed that as a feature, not a bug, in a learned tome of intellectual history, I knew that many of Carl’s potential readers would not have the time or appetite to wade through so many of his finer, nuanced discussions. So I emailed Carl, praising the book as essential reading at our moment in time for scholarly specialists to digest and wrestle with, as they considered how we got here—and what we need to do to return to sanity. But I also suggested that he consider writing a shorter,