לפי דעת ר' שמעון יוסף מלר איז אין בריסק געווען אן ענין טיילען פעטש פאר די קינדער

אזוי איז משמע פון דעם נייעם ביכל וועלכע איר זעהט דא אינעם בילד. און דער מלקט/מחבר ברענגט עטליכע ראיות פון דריי דורות  - אנהייבענדיג פונעם בית הלוי ביז צום בריסקער רב הגאון ר' יצחק זאב. אפשר אז ער וועט נאך אמאל שרייבען וועגן זיין רבי'ן רבי משולם דוד הלוי וועט ער ממשיך זיין די הנהגה צו א פערדן און פינפטן דור...  

I don't know אדון מלר, I've never met him. As you can see his latest work is on Reb Chaim Brisker. I borrowed this book for a few days, until he owner finishes his thousands of other new books and gets around to reading this. Lots of nice pictures, many of them thanks to the world wide web and frum forums. Lots of agenda too, in this case wannabe קנאות like in his other Brisker books. Like he'll quote extensively from Reb Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) but never by name. Just בנו הצעיר של הנצי"ב זצ"ל. Reb Yoshe Ber from Boston is respected, but mostly in the footnotes, not in the פנים. Reb Yehuda Leib Don-Yichye, the Chabadsker Mizroch'nik who has a talmid of RCS in Volozhin is just all the other great talmidim, quoted extensively despite his Zionist sympathies. What am I saying "sympathies?" he was a full-fledged Tziyoni! So go figure! Like most other biographies published these days, many, many pages are devoted to the "times" of the protagonist. In this case there's tons of material on the Volozhiner Yeshiva, of which Reb Chaim was a part of for several years and where he taught his new derech haLimud.

 So there's biography and there's dissection of character, or whatever that's called. Basically the author deciding on a topic and then deciding how Reb Chaim fits into that mold. For some reason there was a need for the author to tell us how both the Beis HaLevi, RCS and the BR all needed to hit their children in order for them to keep on learning and chazzering all the time from a very young age. And how the Rov supposedly condoned that behavior, referring to himself and saying "We obviously see that it worked!" Other than prove to those that say that the extreme hanhogos and shiurim stem from נערווען.... what does that add to the story? Reb Aron Leib Steinman, the more liberal יליד בריסק, doesn't buy all the hitting in the chinuch and he says that the only time that the BR got petsh from his father was when he disrespected his zeide Reb Refoel Shapira as a young lad of 13 at his Bar Mitzvah pshetl. Which is more in line with "normal" chinuch, especially of children of Rabbonim who had good heads and took to learning from a very young age. But we all know what the Briskers think of RALS. "Real" Brisker chinuch includes a good dose of petsh! But I will say this much for Meller: He manages to make all others and their mesorah of derech haLimud totally inferior to Reb Chaim and Brisk! As if until they חלילה almost wasted their time on pilpul and sevoros....