My fourth book, Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America, drops this fall. In the midst of several false starts with other prospective projects, I plugged away at this through 2009 and the first half of 2010, completing the main manuscript late last summer. This spring, a few days after I had written an introduction, the computer on which I had crafted the book crashed. God works in mysterious ways.

At a moment when Real Housewives of Topeka, World of Warcraft 28, and a congressman's weiner capture the imagination of the everyman, and the enlightened obsess over writing scholarly articles that nobody reads and conversing in an opaque, affected manner that few understand, Blue Collar Intellectuals is a book against its times. It remembers an era when intellectuals opened the conversation to all comers and the masses reached for something higher.

The book isn't very political. The five chapters focus on figures in diverse fields of varying outlooks. Milton Friedman was a champion of the free market; Will & Ariel Durant were socialists. The common denominator is that they dedicated a large part of their intellectual work toward uplifting the masses. And why shouldn't they? Friedman wasn't born into the University of Chicago economics department; the Durants didn't begin life on the bestseller lists. The same general idea holds true for Great Books enthusiast Mortimer Adler, longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer, and short-story writer Ray Bradbury. America is a better place when historians, philosophers, economists, and storytellers occasionally eschew the rarefied clique for a broader audience inclusive of the curious layman.

Writing Blue Collar Intellectuals was a white collar endeavor. I spent a great deal of time researching in archives. It's tedious work, but somebody has to do it--particularly when snobbish academics won't. This included trips to the University of Chicago and Syracuse University to comb through Mortimer Adler's papers; to the Hoover Archives on the Stanford University campus to research Milton Friedman; and to the San Francisco Public Library and the Hoover Archives to get to know the unknowable Eric Hoffer. I read many books and a few dissertations. But part of the appeal of writing this book is that plain-old intellectuals have written too few words on blue-collar intellectuals. I also spent many long hours on the phone, in homes, and on the gmail talking to people who furthered my understanding of the subjects.

But I assure you, all this white-collar work was done in a very blue-collar way. Unable to afford lodging, I camped out on one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York when I examined boxes of archived materials at Syracuse. I piggy-backed further Adler research at Mr. Rockefeller's university upon a Second City lecture. Some new friends let me crash for an extended stay in the Bay Area when I researched at the Hoover Archives and the San Francisco Public Library. Awaiting the opening at the latter institution for several consecutive days, I was eventually mistaken by several of the urban nomads, whose morning routine also consisted of rushing the unlocked doors of the main branch, as one of their numbers utilizing the public library as a de facto daytime homeless shelter. I don't blame them. Shaving: erratic. Clothes: Goodwill chic. Stench: cigars. Daytime home: the library.

I wish I could say a beneficent foundation or a kindly millionaire bankrolled the activities that bankrupted me. I can't. But I can say that many good-hearted individuals made my travels possible. People are great.

I suppose I enjoyed writing Blue Collar Intellectuals so much because I can relate. Subjects for earlier books interested me because they were so alien; these half-dozen blue-collar intellectuals interested me we shared much in common--and because the combination of my background and interests makes me feel a bit of an alien. Before I became an author, I delivered the Boston Globe for five years, worked at Fenway Park for seven, profited as an occasional high-school ticket scalper and keg race organizer, and served in the Marines. That earlier life was followed by an adult life consumed by reading and writing. What had been a hobby became a vocation. I identify with my subjects. The average reader will more readily identify with them, too. People from ordinary backgrounds are capable of extraordinary accomplishments. The Durants, Adler, Hoffer, Friedman, and Bradbury prove this.

Intellectual leisure pursuits are often associated with wealth. They needn't be, though I understand where that view comes from. A few years back, while I read in a pub, a woman astonished with my barroom activities exclaimed that I "should be president or somethin'!" It dawned on me then how divorced working-class people have become to leisure activities involving the life of the mind. Merely reading a book seemed such extraordinary behavior to this woman that she thought I should preside over the government that presides over 310,000,000 people. Blue Collar Intellectuals explores a time when there wasn't such a gap between the interests of the everyman and of the enlightened.

Apart from being the least political of my books, Blue Collar Intellectuals differs from past offerings in other ways. It is the slimmest of my volumes. This is a very readable book. I do make some concessions to the times! My editor, Jed Donahue, is the same but the publisher, ISI Books, is new. Whereas my other books essentially examine their subjects from a critical perspective, Blue Collar Intellectuals appreciates. It's a positive, yet curmudgeonly, book. And for the first time a magazine article, "The Epic of the Durants" in the October 5, 2009 issue of National Review, served as the springboard for a broader book project. And that piece stemmed from a two-year, mid-'90s labor of love: reading the 11-volume Story of Civilization.

I encourage my freeloading internet followers to buy my book. You can do so by clicking through the book cover (Isn't it sharp!) on the right side of this page. Do this for the both of us.

I spent more than a year of my life writing Blue Collar Intellectuals. Will you take a few days of your life to read it?

Yes.

I always thought you had to have atteneded an Ivy to be an intellectual? Little did I know.

Looking forward to reading the book.

btw - some guy in a bar reading a book would probably make a better President than what we have now.

I buy and read all of your books.

Is there a facebook page or something we can 'like' and draw attention to?

I've been trying to cut back on my book purchases. But I'm going to make an exception for this one. I've been looking forward to a new Daniel J. Flynn book for quite some time now.

Thank you for putting it. I am for sure going to look for a copy.