Commentator David Brooks was very funny for the first part of his appearance at the packed Harris Theater. Then he got to the topic of his new book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life and receded into preachiness reminiscent of a Sunday morning TV sermon, citing examples of others’, but not his own, humane behavior, discussing how his discovery of the moral life had led him out of a dark place, while failing to mention  that during that time period he got divorced from his wife of 27 years and married his former research assistant, 23 years his junior, and without making a case for there being anything in his book that hasn’t been said before in a basic psychology class in regard to character development.

Professor David Wooten, speaking on virtue at the SAIC Ballroom of the School of the Art Institute, was even more disappointing to his much more meager audience, because he wasn’t even funny, just droningly pompous, as evidenced by the sleep-inducing effect he had on several audience members. He basically gave a short shrift overview of philosophies of Aristotle, Hume, Hobbes, Machiavelli and a few others, all as background leading up to his criticism of a modern day philosopher, whose name, unfortunately, escapes me (as I’d like to create my own objective view of her thoughts), who wrote about the fragility of courage.

Fortunately the day was saved by Maude Maggart, a wonderful cabaret singer from New York who presented material from the Great American Songbook, demonstrating a silvery voice with an engaging personality to a full house at Venue Six10. At the end of the hour, the crowd applauded on and on, hoping to encourage her to come back for an encore, but, alas, the Humanities Festival runs on a tight schedule and she did not reappear, the only disappointing part of her performance.