Noah Oppenheim and David Kidder II

Oppenheim and Kidder spiritedly say that the book 'revives the mind and completes the education' so that one can 'roam confidently with the cultured class,' but I would argue that their premise moves even beyond this and is decidedly more important. It is certainly true that the book has neatly and beautifully framed 365 entries, one for each day of the year, and that an adult or a child stands much to learn from it. In the introduction to Oppenheim and Kidder's interview with Matt Lauer about The Intellectual Devotional, a news announcer can be seen on the street asking basic questions to passers by a la Jay Leno: “Do you know what the Taj Majal is?” “What are the Four Seasons” (answers: duh, a restaurant, I don't know, a hotel?). Certainly, this book fills a place in a culture where apparently even our teachers don't know what to teach. But in my mind, this is also a clever and peaceable effort to extract what is a natural spirituality out of the wonderful productions of humanity. It is simply not fair, and in this day it is increasingly dangerous, for one group to accuse another of a lack concern or a merely “secular” interest in the world. The sum total of this work suggests that the secular is often sacred, and offers up 365 examples of how this is so.