A Better Understanding of Evil

Working in Texas, in the panhandle, there are few bookstores. There are convenience stores aplenty, some fast food joints, a number of BBQ spots along US 287 and oil, of course. Bookstores? Not many, but I did find a rather storied one in Archer City.

Wandering the almost overwhelming inventory sent my mind in many different directions. I love history, political theory, the literary masters, etc. This bookstore has the greatest selection of rare and valuable books I have ever seen, if a bit haphazard in their stock due to the fact that they are all used books.

Anyone who loves books, especially used books, understands that there is a mystical sort of “voice in the wilderness” quality to searching for a book in a used bookstore. It is not so much that you go looking for it, as you wait to be inexorably drawn to it. I was wandering such a bookstore once and there on the shelf, for the most ungodly of reasons, was a geophysical log interpretation manual that I just had to have.

This is how I came upon Pontynen and Miller’s “Western Culture at the Crossroads.”