e is for esculent

It is one of the characteristics of the present age that books of the previous century are reissued with more or less--usually less--learned prefaces. The point is partly that the new edition should have something new in it; partly that the reader should be told what a great classic will confront him when he is done with the preface. The reader wants to be reassured that he is not going to waste his time. And he is also supposed to be anxious to know what he should think of the book--which is another way of saying that he is supposed to be afraid of having think for himself, though this is after all the only kind of thinking there is. In Kierkegaard's words, the reader must be reassured that 'something is going to happen,' for 'ours is the age of advertisement and publicity.' Indeed, the preface is expected to say what is going to happen--or, more precisely, which parts of what is about to happen may be safely forgotten, which points are memorable, and what observations about them should be remembered for use in conversation.--from the preface to Kierkegaard's "The Present Age"