------ One long-ago sweltering summer night in Seymour, Texas, a salesman sat in our living room. He wasn’t just selling books; he was peddling the concentrated wisdom of humanity, bound in majestic, burgundy volumes, gold-lettered with “Encyclopedia Britannica.”
For his closing pitch, the door-to-door entrepreneur leaned in with the confidence of a magician who possessed every secret of the univer…