And?

I don't get it. Why highlight the Leakeys, whom Brooks acknowledges have been exhaustively profiled, as templates for the examining, questioning life?

It's cool that they can fix their car engine with cow parts. But most of us would go to Pep Boys or Meinecke.

Learning Is Dangerous

Why not focus on more ordinary people who manage to read, debate, question, teach and learn while doing all those mundane, quotidian things like go to a job every day and raise kids? Maybe juxtapose the Leakey way of living against Brooks's Republican compatriots, who view learning and knowledge as threats and questioning as irreligious.

Now that would be relevant.

Name-Drop Quotient

High. Might as well call it "Hey, Everybody! I'm chums with Philip Leakey!