[KB] "Gregory Clark's" Book and Article

[Edward C Appel]

Burkophiles,

After the service yesterday at the U.U. Church of Lancaster (PA), I went across the street to the Chestnut Hill Cafe to get coffee and read the Sunday Times, as is my wont.  The lead article in the Sunday Review section was entitled, "Your Ancestors, Your Fate: Surnames Reveal That Social Mobility Is Much Slower Than We Think," by an author named Gregory Clark.  Clark said the research and findings he discussed in the piece were the result of work by scholars/scientists at Harvard and Cal Berkeley, yet Clark gave indication that he was involved in the study, also.  I found the information so important and useful, I wrote some quotes all over my church bulletin, in case I couldn't come by a copy at, say, Barnes and Noble, where I knew the NYT was on sale---if their copies had not already been bought.

Not the case.  I got my Sunday Times, print edition, the "Sunday Review" in front of me as I write.  Also by my side is Rhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth Burke, a book by one Gregory Clark.  Could it be, I queried, could this "Gregory Clakr," author of "Your Ancestors, Your Fate," be OUR Gregory Clark, Burke scholar extraordinaire, so gifted a teacher he had several students of his deporting themselves with great insight at the Clemson Conference, 2011?

I googled the matter and found that our Gregory Clark has a new book out, from Princeton University Press, entitled, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility!

If anyone, including Clark himself, can clue me in further on the research project so compellingly summarized in yesterday's paper, and surely expanded on in the book from Princeton U. P., I'd be much obliged.

Really, really interesting.



Ed