The interesting brief article tells of an ex-academic who argues that academic historians need to get out of the ivory tower, where "their careers depend on getting articles into tiny journals on abstruse topics, not conveying the importance of that research to the public. As a result, students get stuck with 'eye-glazing survey textbooks and monographs ...'" Here's her full article.

You'll note that she is also promoting her book, "Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer". A subject near and dear to our hearts.

Well, I haven't read the article (and I will...it's just too late now), but I've heard the argument before. As an academic, it really is important to study the abstruse topics in order to comprehensively understand a subject and to make connections between different concepts. Vocational education will get students jobs, but it doesn't pique their curiosity and teach them to think critically, which is what I see as the purpose of undergraduate education anyway. BTW, a good teacher (and we've all had them) can study abstruse subjects and still be an excellent teacher. Likewise, I have seen some boring vocational educators.

I am sure there are those who disagree with me.

The academic-turned-author whom I mentioned above is Maureen Ogle, and Ms. Ogle and her beer-book also have exposure in our local paper today and in major national meda shortly.

When the recent e-mail came, historian Maureen Ogle dearly hoped that her new book had either won the prestigious Bancroft Prize or been named a Pulitzer finalist. Instead, she learned that Hustler magazine had picked it as the "book-of-the-month" for April.

But, as she recounts in a rollicking tale in the March-April Historically Speaking, she's pretty darn happy, given "The Perils and Pleasures of Going 'Popular.'"

This publication of the Boston University-based Historical Society includes a fun essay from Ogle, an academic iconoclast who waited tables and worked as a cabdriver, janitor and construction worker until she was 30; then got a doctorate in the history of technology and science from Iowa State University, and ultimately taught college for 13 years before quitting in 1999 to join "the ranks of losers."

She hated "academic history" and its alleged accent on the narrow and arcane, accentuated by a general "contempt for the public." And though she realized that densely footnoted academic history serves an important purpose, she was less interested in laboring in isolation and in shaking paradigms than getting larger audiences to understand and care about the past.

So she wrote the book that caught Hustler's attention, "Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer" (Harcourt, 2006) -- even if she suspected it would be dismissed by old-guard historians.

Though she concedes that she slightly exaggerates her argument, she firmly believes there's a disconnect between the profession and the public. That's why she loves going on local TV talk shows and on drive-time radio and listening to readers' life stories at book signings.

And that's why she's now "thrilled that the folks at Hustler chose my book for the magazine's club." So what if they don't get to her until they "get past the pictures"?!