THE LIFELONG LEARNER

A Brooklyn housewife parlayed a liking for pomodoro tomatoes into a million dollar business; an Arizona electric company worker corresponded with New World experts and exposed von Daniken's slipshod theories; a Cleveland woman lugged home law books from the library, cross-examined professionals, and became an authority on children's rights in school. All of these people--and more famous ones like Malcolm X and Eric Hoffer--are exemplary free learners, self-directed and resourceful. Gross is a hortatory believer in such individual enterprise and this is his catalogue for the ""Invisible University."" Maintaining that ""intellectual accomplishment is not the exclusive domain of traditional academic scholarship,"" he introduces the happily self-taught, gaining college credit, job promotions, and immense satisfaction from private reading and personal experience. He also suggests numerous sources--library services, local clubs, TV courses, small newsletters, cassettes, even those correspondence schools--which the industrious can pursue. A more exuberant outlook than Nyquist's College Learning Anytime, Anywhere (p. 277), emphasizing human potential rather than the acquistion of credentials.