Sages and Commoners in Late Antique, Harris, Israel

The best book that I never recommend to anybody is called Sages and Commoners in late antique, Harris, Israel. One of the things that he demonstrates really conclusively is that one of the most influential forces or external forces on the development of the Jewish intellectual tradition is urban development. And any time you have stories in rabbinic literature of figures who try to or who kind of get too big for their britches, it's always rural sages who are too big fortheir britches.