The High Road and the Low Road

I think immediately of three places one can go to learn the Most Important Ideas (MII) relating to a topic. The best place takes the most time and involves compiling many books and articles relating to that topic, then combing the index, footnotes, and bibliography for the authors, ideas, and books that appear most often. Next you read all those authors, learn about those ideas, then sit down and write out how they all inter-relate, what the MII are, and why they are important. This is what I am attempting to do over the next two years.

The other two ways involve (a) opening a Google page, typing in said topic, and reading the first three links that come up, or if you are really lazy or pressed for time, just the Wikipedia page. This is very tempting.

Or (b), and only slightly more respectable than option a, is going to Amazon.com and typing in the topic, reading the summary and reviews for the topic, as well as the books that Amazon says, "the same person who bought this book also bought..." This is also very tempting. I will say, however, that I am curious how they will compare. Will the MII come from the books Amazon recommends? Or are the real gems hiding under heavier rocks?

My gut instinct is that while a number of the "classics" will come up on such searches, many popular books on Amazon are a little "Social Enterprise Light" and many of the best academic ideas are published in journals and best found through J-STOR or the like. We'll see.

It is incredible how many topics I probably seem very knowledeable on that have only encountered the second two processes. Gritty research is like cooking Thanksgiving dinner though--a hellava lot of work but totally worth it at the end.