MANCHESTER, N.H.

I know that this week you have been kicking yourself for not having paid more attention to Rick Santorum.

Me, too! How can we call ourselves informed citizens without a thorough grounding in the heart and mind of the man who almost won the Iowa caucuses? So, as a public service, I am concluding my job of reading books by all the Republican presidential hopefuls with the work of Rick Santorum.

So you won’t have to. Not that you were planning to anyway.

I say that with some confidence, since Santorum’s big book, “It Takes a Family,” is about as easy to acquire as an original Gutenberg Bible. It’s shocking, really. We’re up to our necks in Kindles and Nooks and iPads, yet it’s still impossible to order up the magnum opus of a former United States senator from Pennsylvania, who was defeated in a re-election bid in 2006 by one of the widest margins in national history.

I want to say thank you to the Merrimack Public Library, without which this column could not have been written.