I rarely blog here but I want to call attention to the uncorrected page proofs of a forthcoming book review I wrote of Matteo Bortolini’s biography of Robert Bellah, A Joyfully Serious Man.
Anyone interested in Bellah’s work or life should read this book.
I conclude my review writing:
“The truth Robert N. Bellah embodied was intellectual curiosity. I experienced this myself in 1989 when, as an undergraduate in his famous Sociology of Religion course, I visited him during office hours almost weekly. I would pepper him with juvenile questions he no doubt had heard before. Still, he listened to me in perfect silence, chin in hand, as if he had never heard the questions before, patiently answering each. As Matteo Bortolini’s beautiful biography shows over and over, the importance of intellectual curiosity is the ultimate lesson of Bellah’s life and work.”
DAVID YAMANE 