Quotations from "Philosophy Illuminates Minds Darkened
by Misfortune" New York Times, March 29, 1999.

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

"But in his
1997 book on American
poverty, "New American Blues" (W. W. Norton),
Shorris also tells of prisoners in
a maximum-security prison reading
Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," 
and of yet another prisoner who recommended
that Shorris take his homeless students 
to museums and teach them Plato's 'Allegory
of the Cave.'"

"It is startling to read about lives that
have been ruined by criminal
choices, crippling addictions, disturbed
minds or accumulated misfortunes
being so touched by Great Books and High
Art."





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