Asking for a Friend

A delightful history of Americans' obsession with advice -- from Poor Richard to Dr. Spock to Miss Manners Americans, for all our talk of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, obsessively seek advice on matters large and small. Perhaps precisely because we believe in bettering ourselves and our circumstances in life, we ask for guidance constantly. And this has been true since our nation's earliest days: from the colonial era on, there have always been people eager to step up and offer advice,