In my sophomore year at the University of Chicago, I read a book called Sick Societies , a critique of cultural relativism by the anthropologist Robert Edgerton. On a whim, I decided to write a review of it in the style of a magazine to which my father had introduced me a few years earlier. After showing him the review, he said: “Why don’t you send it to COMMENTARY?” The review was published in the June 1993 issue. I was 19. My parents must have bought a dozen copies at various New York