More re-reading during these days of quarantined tedium. In “The Unexpected Professor” John Carey  recalls his high school soccer days, the regular shock, every Saturday, of seeing their opponents for the first time, so intimidating, so huge. Just like “that bit in the Book of Numbers,” says Carey, “where the Israelites send out spies to size up the opposition, in this case the Sons of Anak, and the spies come back aghast to report that they are giants, and ‘we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.’”

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