Full review, complete with the odd bit of related multimedia embedding, is HERE. ( )

Bowles wrote a smooth, glinting prose well-suited to capturing the sensation of seeing an unfamiliar place for the first time. In the Foreword to this collection of essays written in the 1950s, he expresses the wish that every new place be as different as possible from the places he already knows—but what his writing makes clear is that wonder at the unfamiliar is less about the features of location and more about one’s mental furniture. Bowles' uncluttered perception bespeaks impartiality and a generosity of spirit that in a world of contentious identities looks very much like sagacity and sound judgment. Would that his observations on the diversity of Muslim cultures from sixty years ago held broader currency today.

Abdeslam is not a happy person. He sees his world, which he knows is a good world, being assailed from all sides, slowly crumbling before his eyes. He has no means of understanding me should I try to explain to him that in this age what he considers to be religion is called superstition, and that religion today has come to be a desperate attempt to integrate metaphysics with science. Something will have to be found to replace the basic wisdom which has been destroyed, but the discovery will not be soon; neither Abdeslam nor I will ever know of it.

Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
Paper City Holyoke Dam Ale