In the interest of full disclosure, I've known Dean Hannotte as a community leader, advocate and some-time mentor for more than forty years. I've long admired his writing on psychology and social anthropology, especially his views on the capacity of his fellow human beings to live engaging lives of creative thought and action. I feel so enthusiastic about his work including this most recent collection because I find it so brutally honest, direct, and important to the work of maintaining science and civilization against its growing number of enemies. In close to forty (mostly short) essays Dean raises questions about morality, religion, education, psychology and lots else in a clear voice. Rachel Bartlett has given some welcome cohesion to the writings which were composed at different times. Besides Rachel's helpful grouping of the themes by general topic there is an engaging progression from the reasonably self-evident works to those which require closer attention. These appear towards the back of the book.

Dean is a prolific writer and scholar in diverse fields (which includes computers and dinosaurs) and the talented urban polymath in him comes out to move us off our backsides. He does this as a man of the people without footnotes or other academic embellishments. The author is a sharp and funny observer of the human scene and he is a spot on critic of what he has experienced. His canvas covers the alpha and the omega of human existence in a social work sense. It should be noted that a large part of his formative experience was spent as the intellectual partner of the innovative psychological theorist Paul Rosenfels. This partnership evolved during some twenty years of Rosenfels' work in and around the Ninth Street Center and as a psychiatrist in Manhattan's East Village. Getting back, throughout this little book Dean demonstrates his unique gift of perception when his sensors are in the vicinity of a fraud. In this pursuit he's as good as Sherlock Holmes.

Even so, through these essays you'll discover that there are few limits to the author's vision or imagination. For Dean, a world can arise where all men and women live, love, and work together in a cooperative of wisdom and strength. A wealth of fables, half-truths and cave-bound visions of morality will have to die or be overcome — and that's the simple part. It's all spelled out clearly in a friendly and informal way, but I feel and see more than a little bit of playful irony in the book's title and in many of the essays. What I think the author and his editor are trying to tell us about is the sophistication, understanding and human engineering skills that are the unseen foundations of many of the "simple" concepts and truths that he presents. It seems to me that Dean does this to set us free to find our own paths to self-hood and greatness.

Here's what I'm talking about. Isn't there usually some real confusion in trying something new, in working to get rid of a bad habit or a way of thinking, or in trying to establish a good habit or a way of thinking? Concepts and projects such as these might be easy enough to contemplate, but they can be painful or disturbing to do. What Dean and Rachel find "simple" is a place in your head that you might be too angry or afraid to go to — that is, without some preparation. I think that that's the sort of start up work that most of these essays are encouraging us to do. Our minds are urged into chores like these: to begin the mental calisthenics of self examination; to get used to thinking more rigorously about what is true and right and to allow some flexibility in how one lives one's life and in how one sees him/her self and others. Of course, this is all very simply presented and Dean is upfront in his delivery. But I think we're being tickled and coaxed into some rough work. In the main, a life-long work that will require some tough thinking and hard action is what's really being offered here — insert the smiley-face icon of your choice.

I'll briefly note three essays that I especially liked. The first is "Is belief in a supreme being harmless?" This is one of the best recapitulations of agnostic thinking that I've ever encountered. Dean does not ask anyone to abandon cherished beliefs if they are comforted by them, only to be open to the truths that science and experience reveal in understanding the real nature of things. And this might include some grand and simple unities that are waiting to be discovered and understood. The author names a faith that I've felt strongly about for a long time but have not always practiced: Comte's "Religion of Humanity." Dean suggests that this religion has grown from ordinary roots in a "belief in the future, and faith in mankind." As no special days of observance or family dinners are required, it will always be a faith of mine. Like the author, I want to believe (no X-Files here) that the accumulation of knowledge will triumph over the accumulation of facts and will in time bring about new discoveries and questions. These will clarify, baffle and astound in ways that the standard brands of psychology and religion of our times cannot.

The next essay is entitled "What is correct, politically?" In this one, Dean says: "This idea that the public must always be soothed and mollified is insulting to our human dignity." That's right on target: I just don't get how doing a great dance around the truth will help us resolve the injustices of our times. How will great wrongs ever be righted if all of us must be thought of as equal in all ways? How will special talents and abilities ever be acknowledged if no one's feelings are to be hurt? I can never hear or see the word "challenged," that famous PC suffix for being less than standard or able without experiencing a painful afterthought of sarcasm. It's all absurd, and future generations will laugh at us for the ignorance and immorality that were approved in this practice. Equality of opportunity is something else, and I'm always in favor of that. What follows is a little story from my early childhood. It's from a time and place way before first grade: I drew a crayon drawing as badly as I could as a test of my Mom's often overbearing positivism. When I got the expected response of "How lovely, darling!" I knew that I was being had. But that really wasn't so bad in the long run because she also taught me something about testing the truth and I'll always be grateful for that.

The nightly news of these times amazes me. For the most part, facile PC storytelling takes precedence over any concern for honesty about what's being given to us as true and right. This seems to be so even if the survival of our species and all else depends upon it. Covering up the truth never helps, neither in society nor individuals, especially in the long run. Learning that a battle between the good guys and the bad guys is really a battle between the bad guys and some really bad guys can kill human interest in the decent folk stuck in between. Or, finding out later on that your locally praised talents and skills shine only in the smallest of ponds back home can be shameful and disorienting. If anyone really cared about you or what might become of you, they would have been more honest or asked for more. In this short and feisty selection Dean lays out some provocative examples of PC fibs that do more harm than good. As he says:"What exactly are we afraid of here?"

"Why is it so hard to write an autobiography?" is the third and last essay that I'll discuss. This comes with a closing note of full disclosure: I haven't written my own history yet. But I'm likely to be the first person to suggest the task at-hand to most any acquaintance who seems unique or interesting. Maybe that's why this essay grabbed me the way it did. Like Dean, I feel that it's instructive to share the narrative of one's ambitions, successes and failures with those who arrive later on.

I'm an aging gay man of 67 years, long out of the closet. I'm still aware of the feelings that I had in my younger days that there just couldn't be anyone else out there that could possibly understand me. That was wrong-headed thinking on my part, formed during an emotional crisis, but it's a commonly held mind-set among people with problems. The part of my story that is unique and worth sharing was that I had a desire to understand and help others that was larger than the usual scene could handle. Also, that it took me a while to find a community of like-minded explorers of the mind. And further, that I had some truly great as well as some truly awful experiences along the way that could serve as guideposts to others. The "others" here would be those with big dreams about improving human understanding and communication on this planet, but who are a bit shy in the abilities expected in this sort of thing. Those who are "academically-challenged," as one might say in politically correct lingo. A common gift of autobiography is that it demonstrates that reinventing the wheel is not a prerequisite of civilization, and that there are (or were) others out there who might have a clue or a way of doing things (or not doing) that might help.

According to Dean most of us think that all of our work must be written as though for all humanity for all time — just like the laureates. On this problem (which plagues me) he says: "We write best when we know who our audience is — what culture they're from, maybe how old they are, how much we can assume they already know." If we happen to chose fiction for teaching new ideas, he suggests that a good framework can be crafted "by presenting a picture of a situation that a reasonably sensitive but curious reader has never experienced." I'm sure these ideas will improve my writing and I'm glad that Dean brought them up.

A little human interest story that touched on the theme of Dean's essay follows. It happened because I'm an avid fan of Public Radio — you know the type. Recently on the Moth Radio Hour a reformed drug dealer and jail-house moonshine maker shared the news that he was hard at work work putting together the story of his life for publication. I was both delighted and disturbed by this. "Well, why shouldn't he?" I had to ask myself. This on-air raconteur shared some lessons about the trials of friendship in very bad circumstances and about learning from several very outlandish mistakes brewing booze for sale and barter while incarcerated. And there was some hope for his future when he spoke about his late blooming desire to become a counselor to others in trouble. In my heart I wished him the best. Even stories like his say something at a very elementary level about not quitting on one's self and about taking steps toward independence, and that's a good thing.

I hope you'll spend some thoughtful time with Dean and Rachel's new book "It's Simple." It's iconoclastic, challenging and fun and both your brain and your mind will thank you. This is from a guy who thought that he was way too cool for junior high school with a copy of Bertrand Russell's Unpopular Essays in his back pocket.