Ticklish Ideas

I got my Powells Bookstore newsletter the other day, and it linked to a wonderful interview with Sarah Vowell, a fellow American Studies buff and a This American Life contributor. She does a kind of work that I sometimes aspire to: she takes dry history and makes it into trade paperbacks that are a joy to read. Ms. Vowell on her trade:

[the speaker warned] 'We must avoid easy entertainments.' And I was just
sitting there thinking, Lady, entertaining is hard. Anybody can bore something
up, but making some of this stuff entertaining is the hardest thing there is.