> Do you seriously expect me or any other serious programmer in a business environment sorting a million integers in a million different ways?

Well my apologies for not immediately understanding your specific situation... I can assure you I meant it as a kind suggestion.

Perhaps you could look at Clojure In Action[1]? It's supposed to be a pragmatic introduction for people with some existing programming experience. From the Amazon page, "is a hands-on tutorial for the working programmer who has written code in a language like Java or Ruby, but has no prior experience with Lisp."

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Action-Amit-Rathore/dp/1935182...