from Michael Robbins  There is a photograph of a classroom at the Virginia Military Institute: The cadets sit in a row, all crew cuts and pressed gray uniforms. Their caps, bearing military insignia, rest before them on the desk. They are reading an assigned text for English class, each holding open a copy of a small book with a strikingly simple cover, black text against a white background. They look, to a man, bored out of their skulls.