Wallace Kaufman

Ridley takes on the most common attack on western societies and economies---that they are based on greed and thus essentially immoral. Translating greed into the less inflammatory and more precise term "self interest" he traces its varieties through the course of evolution and finds that virtue actually issues from the apparent paradox of self-interest being essential to advancing the common good in human society. How he does that is why you ought to read the book.

At the end of an interview for her first post-PhD job Tessa abandons the politically correct answers and says, "The doctrine of equity sounds good--and maybe the hearts of some of those who profess it are in the right place. But in reality, it's immoral, unfair, harmful to academic standards, and deeply paternalistic. So in response to your question, Dr. Franco, I do not promote equity in the classroom. I promote education instead." She has just decided that honesty and truth are more important than dissembling to achieve that all important first job in the English department. Tessa is the main character, the Don Quixote tilting at windbags, but windbags with political and academic power. Her Sancho Panza is a housemate, Adrian. Adrian is an overweight, yoga practicing, business major, an iconoclast, a queer and Tessa's conscience. They were schoolmates in a small, gritty working class town in northeastern Canada, and they bring their blue collar realism to the politically correct, middle class cloisters of a small Saskatchewan college.