Books by Posner, Jacoby, Kaplan, Schippers, Gertz, Baer, Farah, Bugliosi, Barone, Buchanan, Barzun and Hart.
Note from the DDC:
It is interesting to note that the first two books (by Posner and Jacoby)
argue problems with intellectuals in America. Even more interesting is
Russell Jacoby's petty, condescending review of Richard Posner's book,
Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, in the January 27, 2002 Los
Angeles Times Book Review. Jacoby's review concludes as follows:
"...If the babble of public intellectuals irritates him, perhaps he should
practice what he preaches and clam up. If he insists on adding to the din,
his beloved market should shock him with sales figures. Don't buy this
book. If you must examine this maddening and provocative work, peruse it
in a store or borrow it from the library. Posner may get the message: His
cure for intellectual irresponsibility is worse than the disease."
The above, if for no other reason, is reason enough to buy and read Posner's
truth, which obviously hurts Jacoby and other shallow-minded critics posing
as intellectuals. It is also interesting to note that as of January 27,
2002, Barnes and Noble sales ranking of Jacoby's book was 113,548. Posner's
book sales ranking was 9,267 noting that Posner's book was temporarily
out of stock (sold out). We detect some serious jealosy here.
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Public Intellectuals: : A Study of Decline
Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
December 2001
>From the Publisher:
In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American
public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of
political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a
venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey.
With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums
for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has
yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these
two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern
academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one
of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy
proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public
intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge
were well suited to public discourse.
Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner
describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity
of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with
recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls.
And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this
market--and the quality of public discussion in America today.
>From the Critics
>From Library Journal
A U.S. Court of Appeals judge and senior lecturer at the University of
Chicago Law School, Posner (An Affair of State) defines a public
intellectual of which he himself is a distinguished example as one who plays
the role of critical commentator for nonspecialist audiences on matters of
broad public concern. After extensive theoretical and statistical analysis,
he concludes that few modern public intellectuals have the requisite
temperament, perspective, character, and knowledge to sustain the high level
of performance demonstrated by pundits of earlier years. Furthermore,
today's public intellectuals are often not prudent or even sensible in their
commentaries and predictions many of which are wrong. He shows how the
combination of more media outlets and more narrowly focused academics has
led to a greater proliferation of inaccurate public discourse. Yet Posner's
proposal for improvement a fuller disclosure of the activities and earnings
of public intellectuals that would make them more accountable is not very
convincing. An optional purchase for academic libraries. Harry Frumerman,
formerly with Hunter College.
>From Publishers Weekly
Any free society thrives on public discussion, much of which is instigated
by public intellectuals journalists, academics and writers who convey their
ideas through a complex array of media. In this extensive, if idiosyncratic,
study Posner charges that the quality of American public intellectuals'
thinking and writing has steadily declined over the past seven decades.
Posner admits that his subject is huge and "formless." But even after he
painstakingly creates his own definitions that "demarcate a coherent albeit
broad body of expressive activity," this topic still feels unwieldy. Noting
that "not all intellectuals are professors... but most are," Posner casts
his net wide discussing writers as disparate as Milton Friedman, Martha
Nussbaum, Lani Guinier, Noam Chomsky, Gertrude Himmlefarb and Stephen Jay
Gould, as well as nonacademics such as Andrea Dworkin and George Orwell.
Posner, formerly a tenured academic and now a U.S. Appeals Court judge, uses
a wide variety of criteria (hits on Web pages, mentions in print media and
books sold) for judging the appeal and effectiveness of public
intellectuals, and covers such a wide range of topics and types of
intellectuals (from the "politically inflected literary criticism" of
Stanley Fish and Michael Warner to the "Jeremiah school" of Christopher
Lasch and Robert Bork) that his attempts at synthesis often fall short of
satisfactory cohesion. While he makes many good points in charging that much
public intellectual and academic writing is flawed by sloppy thinking, overt
political advocacy and conflicts of interest, his conclusions and remedies
which include a public Web posting of "public intellectual activities" feel
impractical and, as headmits, politically dangerous. While offering the
provocative beginning of a public discussion, Posner falls far short of his
intellectual goals.
>From Kirkus Reviews
Is the state of public intellectualism in decline, or is Posner just really
smart and terribly grumpy? The answer: a bit of the former, a lot of the
latter. Anyone who watches cable news knows the punditocracy has lowered the
requirements of admission, as volume has replaced reason in public debates.
The proliferation of cable channels and other media outlets has created a
booming need for talking heads, but these heads often fail to talk as
intelligently as they should. Posner (An Affair of State, 1999, etc.)
strings together a slew of charts and graphs to document empirically the
decline, meticulously counting and then comparing the number of scholarly
citations of a public intellectual's works versus the number of media
citations. (In a dazzling display of his math skills, Posner also asserts
that U1(t,b)-U2(t,d)=Z1>0, but there he's just showing off.) Of course,
Posner is right in many of his assertions, especially his argument that much
of the decline is due to academics who write outside of their discipline,
but he's also a bit of a crank, one not above taking a few underhanded
swings at his personal foes. Sure, it might be clearly demonstrated that
Camille Paglia deserves ridicule, but Martha Nussbaum? If Nussbaum
represents the decline of the American intellectual, then we're in pretty
good shape. Likewise, Posner rightly savages the self-serving antics of Paul
Ehrlich and Edward Said, but he tosses Lani Guinier into the mix as well,
with not much of a hint as to what she did to deserve his opprobrium. To his
credit, Posner does achieve a left/right balance in his attacks, positioning
himself somewhat above the ideological fray, and his analyses of such
figures as Stephen Jay Gould and Noam Chomsky are detailed and articulate.
The jeremiad closes with a few impractical suggestions for improvement that
will never be adopted. It takes the wind out of a reviewer's sails when the
author predicts one's criticisms; predicting them, however, does not entail
that he doesn't deserve them. Dour.
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The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe
Author: Russell Jacoby
Publisher: Basic Books
July 2000
Another book by Jacoby:
The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy
Synopsis:
Jacoby "argues that the independent nonspecialist intellectuals of the1940's
and 50's who wrote for a large general public have been succeeded by
professors who write for one another and for tenure." (N Y Times Book Rev)
Index.
Annotation:
An incisive analysis of the disappearance of the "public intellectual" in
America that reveals how gentrification, suburbanization, and academic
careerism have sapped the vitality of American intellectual life.
>From the Critics
>From Casey Blake - The Nation
{Jacoby's} passion, wit and spiteful intelligence are the stuff of the
well-crafted essay, and his subjects . . . would be better served in essay
form.. . . {This book} is simultaneously too much and too little. Too much
because Jacoby's style grows a bit wearisome after 200 pages and because his
critique of the New Left-inspired academics degenerates into scolding as he
makes hisown long march through the disciplines. Too little because the
publication of a critical manifesto as a book promises a degree of
historical analysis and comprehensiveness that Jacoby cannot deliver.
>From Mark Crispin Miller - The Atlantic
{This} is an unusual book, in part because while it points to a certain
deterioration in contemporary culture, its author never resorts to the
banalities of the jeremiad: sweeping denunciations, glib distinctions, evils
on which everyone can lay the blame--the devices lately used, for instance,
by Allan Bloom in his bestselling polemic, The Closing of the American Mind
{BRD 1987}. This new book is no vague and crude lament but an analysis that
also tentatively seeks the causes of the problem: Jacoby prefaces his
discussion of academiawith some valuable chapters on the spread of suburbia
and the consequent disappearance of bohemia--the most pertinent social and
material developments, according to Jacoby, who invokes throughout this book
an ideal of the city as a place where intellectuals could once afford to
live and congregate as writers but which has now, for many reasons, all but
closed down.
>From Library Journal
Where are the heirs of Edmund Wilson, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, C. Wright
Mills, Alfred Kazin, the ``public intellectuals'' who have enriched American
life in our century? Nowhere, says Jacoby, who finds that intellectuals of
the postwar generation address a diminished audienceone another. His
diagnosis traces this blight to the withering of urban bohemia, to the
shrinkage of writing outlets, and above all to the suffocating growth of
academic careerism. No matter that literature and social criticism are
treated to the exclusion of science and the arts. Or that Jacoby is mainly
concerned with intellectuals on the left. Vigorous, witty, controversial,
this analysis of America's ``aging intellectual plant'' is a fine example of
the very sort of book Jacoby fears has vanished. Essential for college and
many public libraries. Robert F. Nardini, M.L.S., Chichester, N.H.
>From Mark Krupnick - The New York Times Book Review
Mr. Jacoby, who has taught at several universities, is like the
old-styleintellectuals he admires in ranging over a number of fields,
including politics, philosophy, sociology, economics and literary criticism.
. . . The heart of his book is a series of provocative critiques of a
variety of important figures, including Lewis Mumford, Sidney Hook, Dwight
Macdonald and more recent academic intellectuals like the literary theorist
Fredric Jameson and the cultural historian Richard Sennett. . . . {The
author} goes in for a lot of deploring and lamenting in this book. As a
historian he might have done more to explain, rather than simply condemn,
the recent near disappearance of the independent man of letters. . . . Mr.
Jacoby has written a challenging book about the cost of this transformation
of vocational roles, but he goes astray when he exchanges historical
understanding for prophetic anger against his contemporariesfor adapting to
these new circumstances.
>From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly
Writers and thinkers like Edmund Wilson and Lewis Mumford reached a diverse
public, but today's intellectuals cluster in universities, producing
monographs and articles read by a select few. Jacoby's thesis is that
nonacademic intellectuals capable of a dialogue with a general, educated
audience are an endangered species, nearly extinct. He notes that many 1960s
New Leftists on campus were absorbed into the university, where they have
produced a body of radical, feminist and neo-Marxist scholarship, but he
finds their work ``largely technical, unreadable, and unread.'' Jacoby,
whose books include Social Amnesia and The Repression of Psychoanalysis,
links the decline of urban bohemian intellectuals to rising rents and living
expenses. He suggests that rather than count the high proportion of Jews
among the radical intelligentsia, we should take note of how few Jewish
intellectuals have remained dissenters. His tract is bound to provoke heated
debate. (September 28)
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The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War
Author: Robert D. D. Kaplan
Publisher: Vintage Books
February 2001
Other books by Robert D. Kaplan:
The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia:
A journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy, Robert D. Kaplan
Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East,
and the
Caucasus, Robert D. Kaplan,Jason Epstein (Editor)
An Empire Wilderness; Travel into America's Future, Robert D. Kaplan
Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History, Robert D. Kaplan
Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Robert
Kaplan
>From the Publisher:
Robert Kaplan, bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts, offers up scrupulous,
far-ranging insights on the world to come in a spirited, rousing, and
provocative book that has earned a place at the top of the reading lists of
the world's policy makers.
"The breaking apart and remaking of the atlas is only now beginning. The
crack-up of the Soviet empire and the coming end of the Arab-Israeli
military confrontation are merely prologues to the really big changes that
lie ahead." So says Robert Kaplan, who foresees a host of terrors in the
wake of the Cold War. Volatile new democracies in Eastern Europe, fierce
tribalism in Africa, civil war and ethnic violence in the Near East, and
widespread famine and disease -- not to mention the brutal rift developing
as wealthy nations reap the benefits of seemingly boundless technology while
other parts of the world slide into chaos -- are among the issues Kaplan
identifies as the most important for charting the future of geopolitics.
Historical antecedents in Gibbon's Decline and Fall and in the legacies of
statesmen such as Henry Kissinger contribute to Kaplan's bracingly prophetic
framework for addressing the new global reality.
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Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment
Authors: David P. Schippers & Alan P. Henry
Publisher: Regency Publishing Worldwide
September 2000
>From Barnes & Noble Editors
Bookseller Reviews
A former Chicago prosecutor, David Schippers felt he had no political ax to
grind when he accepted the position as Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary
Committee during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. Indeed, he was a
Democrat. But, in the next few months, he became, first, frustrated, and,
then, envenomed by what seemed to be a tacit agreement by congressional
leadership to squelch the findings. This is his indictment.
>From the Publisher:
As a former Chicago prosecutor, David Schippers thought he had seen
everything -- treachery, double crosses, sellouts. But what he saw behind
the scenes at the Clinton impeachment shocked him to his core. This is his
story -- the story from a man who knows more than anyone else about what
went on behind closed doors leading up to the impeachment of President
Clinton.
David Schippers, the former Chief Investigative Counsel of the House
Judiciary Committee and a loyal Democrat, went against his party, the press,
and public opinion to build a powerful case against the most corrupt
President in American history and bring him to justice.
But in this startling book, Schippers shows how the entire impeachment
process was what Chicago politicians call a "First Ward election" -- a
rigged ball game, a sellout. And he tells you who took the dives.
>From the Critics
>From Booknews
Schippers, the former Chief Investigative Counsel of the House Judiciary
Committee and a loyal Democrat, went against his party, the press, and
public opinion to build a case against President Clinton and bring him to
justice. He shows how the entire impeachment process was rigged, and gives
insider information on why Democrats and Republicans conspired to conceal
evidence of criminal offenses, how Clinton tried to keep his women quiet,
and how Republicans cooperated with Janet Reno's Justice Department to keep
secret the report on possibly impeachable Clinton-Gore fundraising offenses.
Schippers has been a practicing trial attorney for some 40 years. Annotation
c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security
Author: Bill Gertz
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc., An Eagle Publishing Company
May 1999
Synopsis
Defense reporter Bill Gertz tells the whole story of how the Clinton
administration has sold out the national security and has gone to great
lengths to cover it up. Gertz uses sources within the government and
confidential documents to expose the Clinton administration's deals for
political gain.
>From the Publisher:
No reporter has done more than Bill Gertz to expose the threat the Clinton
administration poses to American national security. Now, using his unrivaled
access to confidential documents and sources at the Pentagon, the State
Department, and the White House, Gertz tells the whole sordid story of how
the Clinton administration has weakened our military, given comfort to our
enemies, and endangered American safety.
>From the Critics
>From Mark P. Lagon - The Weekly Standard
...[M]akes the solid and convincing case that over the last six and a half
years, the president's foreign policy has regularly betrayed American
interests and principles for a variety of political, personal, and financial
expediencies.
>From John Corry - The American Spectator
Betrayal...provides a long and carefully reported list of arms-control
failures. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, says Betrayal will be the
administrations's least favorite book on its foreign poicy, and he may very
well be right.
>From Mark P. Lagon - The Weekly Standard
...[M]akes the solid and convincing case that over the last six and a half
years, the president's foreign policy has regularly betrayed American
interests and principles for a variety of political, personal, and financial
expediencies.
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The China Threat: How the Poeple's Republic Targets America
Author: Bill Gertz
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
November 2000
>From the Publisher:
In his New York Times bestseller Betrayal, Bill Gertz exposed the sorry
state of America's foreign policy and military preparedness.
Now, in The China Threat, Gertz reveals the tragic consequences of America's
misguided foreign policy. Through missteps, fumbling, and outright
appeasement, the United States has helped establish the People's Republic of
China as a new global power that threatens American national security and
world stability.
Shocking, previously unreported stories allow Gertz to tell the unvarnished
truth: The Communist Chinese dictatorship has targeted the United States
with an aggressive espionage campaign and aims to push America out of the
Pacific with a barrage of ever-increasing military threats. In addition to
his eye-opening revelations, Gertz offers a clearheaded strategy for
countering the China threat.
Gertz lays out how the Chinese are adhering to Mao Zedong's famous maxim:
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And he shows how the
barrel is pointed at the United States.
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See No Evil:
The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War against Terrorism
Author: Robert Baer
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
>From the Publisher:
"Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in
the Middle East." -Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker
"Robert Baer [was] one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the
past twenty years." -Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Atlantic Monthly
In See No Evil, one of the CIA's top field officers of the past quarter
century recounts his career running agents in the back alleys of the Middle
East. In the process, Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism
works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington
politics sabotaged the CIA's efforts to root out the world's deadliest
terrorists.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the terrible
result of that intelligence failure with the attack on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, Americans were left
wondering how such an obviously long-term, globally coordinated plot could
have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert
Baer was not surprised. A twenty-one-year veteran of the CIA's Directorate
of Operations who had left the agency in 1997, Baer observed firsthand how
an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post-cold war world and
refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of
Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East and elsewhere.
A throwback to the days when CIA operatives got results by getting their
hands dirty and running covert operations, Baer spent his career chasing
down leads on suspected terrorists in the world's most volatilehot spots. As
he and his agents risked their lives gathering intelligence, he watched as
the CIA reduced drastically its operations overseas, failed to put in place
people who knew local languages and customs, and rewarded workers who knew
how to play the political games of the agency's suburban Washington
headquarters but not how to recruit agents on the ground.
See No Evil is not only a candid memoir of the education and disillusionment
of an intelligence operative but also an unprecedented look at the roots of
modern terrorism. Baer reveals some of the disturbing details he uncovered
in his work, including:
* In 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with Iran to
coordinate terrorist attacks against the United States.
* In 1995, the National Security Council intentionally aborted a military coup d'etat against Saddam Hussein, forgoing the last opportunity to get rid of him.
* In 1991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and ignored fundamentalists operating there.
When Baer left the agency in 1997 he received the Career Intelligence Medal,
with a citation that says, "He repeatedly put himself in personal danger,
working the hardest targets, in service to his country." See No Evil is Baer
's frank assessment of an agency that forgot that "service to country" must
transcend politics and is a forceful plea for the CIA to return to its
original mission-the preservation of our national sovereignty and the
American way of life.
>From The Preface:
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier's career in the other cold war,
the one against terrorist networks. It's a story about places most Americans
will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we
don't need to do business with.
This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work,
where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope
this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why
I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every
American and everyone who cares about the preservation of this country
should be angry and alarmed, too.
The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty
Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats
were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them
was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to
bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council
became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed
the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged
and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11,
2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the
world to see.
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This Land Is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property
Authors: Richard Pombo - with Joseph Farah
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, Inc.
>From the Publisher
This Land Is Our Land is the first book to explain the importance of
property rights to everyone - rancher and city-dweller alike. It
demonstrates how government, together with huge environmental organizations,
ignore or distort the meaning of the Constitution and other important
documents to further their own agenda - one that is more often concerned
with the green in their bank accounts than the greening of America. Among
the revelations: the Nature Conservancy manages oil drilling and production
on several of their preserves, as does the National Audubon Society; while
the Sierra Club urges private landowners to restrict timber harvests to ten
to twenty percent of the total volume, its northwest regional director
cleared seventy percent of the standing timber on his own land for money to
repair his vacation home; San Bernardino County spent $3.3 million to redraw
plans for a new hospital because of the presence of eight flies on the
property - money totaling the average cost of treatment for 23,644
outpatients; if your land is declared a wetland or critical habitat, you
still have to pay taxes on that unusable property - for as long as you own
it, and with no compensation for its loss; and many provide land donations
to environmental groups end up being sold to the federal government for huge
profits. This Land Is Our Land exposes these hypocrisies and more, as it
attempts to link the worthwhile goal of ecological safety with the needs of
the private property owner - the true steward of the nation's lands.
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BETRAYAL OF AMERICA:
How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President
Author: Vincent Bugliosi
Publisher: Avalon New York
April 2001
Read Bugliosi's Bush v. Gore article in THE NATION
magazine
February 2001
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THE NEW AMERICANS
Author: Michael Barone
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
May 2001
>From the Publisher
Sometime in this century, we are told, the United States will become a
"majority-minority" country -- that is, a nation where whites make up less
than 50 percent of the population. Many believe this signals a fundamental
change in America. Does it? Is the Melting Pot a thing of the past?
Absolutely not, says political historian Michael Barone. In The New
Americans, Barone reminds us that the United States has never been a
homogeneous, monoethnic nation. He reveals how the new Americans of today
can be interwoven into the fabric of American life just as immigrants have
been interwoven throughout U.S. history.
In fact, Barone demonstrates the startling and important similarities
between today's new Americans and nineteenth-century immigrant groups: "in
many ways," he writes, "blacks resemble Irish, Latinos resemble Italians,
Asians resemble Jews." We need to recognize such similarities and learn from
America's success in assimilating earlier immigrants, as well as from the
mistakes that were made along the way.
Barone shows that the biggest mistake we can make is to act as if we are at
a wholly new place in history. "America in the future will be multiracial
and multiethnic, but it will not -- or should not -- be multicultural in the
sense of containing ethnic communities marked off from and adversarial to
the larger society, any more than today's America consists of unassimilated
and adversarial communities of Irish, Italians, or Jews." He also refutes
the notion that the situation today is different because today's minorities
are of different races; as he points out, "a hundred years ago the Irish,
Italians, and Jews were considered to be other races" as well.
If we heed the lessons of America's past -- and avoid misguided policies and
programs that hinder rather than help assimilation -- the Melting Pot will
work as well as it always has.
>From the Critics
>From Booknews
Conservative writer Barone offers an optimistic portrayal of the state of
immigration in American society. He argues that new groups of immigrants
such as Asians, Latinos, and African-Americans (here termed new because
they've only recently gained legal equality) can be compared to the older
immigrant groups of Jews, Italians, and Irish, respectively. He argues that
if these other groups just learn English and assimilate American culture as
their metaphorical forebears did, than there are few, if any, barriers to
their eventual success in American life. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,
Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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The Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation and a Dying Faith
Are Killing Our Culture and Country
Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, Inc.
December 2001
>From Barnes & Noble Editors:
Three-time presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan believes that the West
is dying. Its rapidly declining birth rates, coupled with population
explosions elsewhere, have helped set in motion shift in world power. The
resolutely outspoken Buchanan argues that unchecked immigration in the
United States and Europe is draining their strength and that the Western
countries (including Russia) are endangering their own chances for economic
survival. A love 'em, hate 'em, read 'em author.
>From the Publisher
The West is dying. Collapsing birth rates in Europe and the U. S., coupled
with population explosions in Africa, Asia and Latin America are set to
cause cataclysmic shifts in world power, as unchecked immigration swamps and
polarizes every Western society and nation.
Drawing on U. N. population projections, recent U. S. census figures, and
expert policy studies, prominent conservative Pat Buchanan takes a cold,
hard look at the future decay of Europe and America and the decline of
Western culture. In The Death of the West, Buchanan contends that the U. S.
now harbors a "nation within a nation", that Europe will be inundated by an
Islamic-Arab-African invasion, and that most First World nations, including
Japan, have begun slowly to vanish from the earth.
And aside from a rapidly aging population, Buchanan argues that the
counter-culture of the 1960s has now become America's dominant ethos, and is
systematically demolishing America's history and heritage.
Bold, powerful, and persuasive, The Death of the West details how a
civilization, culture, and moral order are passing away and foresees a new
world order that has terrifying implications four our freedom, our faith,
and the preeminence of American democracy.
Author Biography: Patrick J. Buchanan, a senior advisor to three American
presidents, ran twice for the Republican nomination for president in 1992
and 1996, and was the Reform Party's presidential candidate in 2000. The
author of five other books, including the bestsellers, Right from the
Beginning and A Republic, Not an Empire, he is a syndicated columnist and a
founding member of three of America's foremost public affairs shows, NBC's
The McLaughlin Group and CNN's The Capitol Gang, and Crossfire.
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>From Dawn to Decadence:
500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present
Author: Jacques Barzun
Publisher: HarperTrade
May 2000
>From Our Editors
Jacques Barzun, one of the master historians of the 20th century, takes an
encyclopedic look back at the past 500 years of Western culture, showing how
the events of that period have played a huge role in defining what we are
now. Touching on art, manners, morals, and religion, Barzun does a masterful
job of literary synthesis. What's more, he writes in a lively, accessible
style -- a wonderful surprise, given the subject matter.
Synopsis
In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian
Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world.
Each has brought profound change-for instance, the remaking of the
commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the
decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little
studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as
decadent.
To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written
survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing
events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of
Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of
Michelangelo and Leonardo and, he adds, the scientific foundations for
today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the
16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake
of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of
individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the Me
Decade. Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel,
defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional
sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides.
Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative
position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the
historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic
practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or
not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or
little-explored in thisattractive venture into cultural history.
>From the Publisher Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500. In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. He introduces characters and incidents with his usual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have been forgotten or obscured. His compelling chapters--such as "Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarchs' Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester"--show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras. The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the normal close of great periods and a necessary condition of the creative novelty that will burst forth--tomorrow or the next day. Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume. ************** Return to GRAB BAG
Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning
Jacques Barzun - Morris Philipson (Editor)
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
April 1992
Synopsis
This is a collection of fifteen essays and articles written since 1950 with
new introductions by the author. "Some of the topics Barzun addresses
include the inadequate ways in which reading is taught; . . . methods of
teacher training; the counterfeit 'social studies' programs which are the
offshoot of combined geography and history curriculums; the benefits of
reading the classics; and the effects of television on learning." (Libr J)
Index.
Annotation
In this powerful, eloquent, and timely book, Barzun offers guidance for
resolving the crisis in America's schools and colleges. Drawing on a
lifetime of distinguished teaching, he issues a clear call to action for
improving what goes on in America's classrooms.
>From the Publisher
In this powerful, eloquent, and timely book, Jacques Barzun offers guidance
for resolving the crisis in America's schools and colleges. Drawing on a
lifetime of distinguished teaching, he issues a clear call to action for
improving what goes on in America's classrooms. The result is an
extraordinarily fresh, sensible, and practical program for better schools.
"It is difficult to imagine a more pungent, perceptive or eloquent
commentary on contemporary American education than this collection of 15
pieces by Jacques Barzun."-- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"Mr. Barzun's style is elegant, distinctive, philosophically consistent and
much better-humored than that of many contemporary
invective-hurlers."--David Alexander, New York Times Book Review Jacques
Barzun is University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and the
author of many books including the classic Teacher in America and The
American University.
*************** Return to GRAB BAG
Teacher in America
Author: Jacques Barzun
Publisher: Liberty Fund, Incorporated
October 1995
A critical look at what's wrong with the way America's teachers are trained
>From the Publisher
Now considered a classic, this volume is one of the most widely read and
highly acclaimed works ever published in the field of education. It is a
provocative, often witty and irreverent personal commentary on teaching by
one of America's most brilliant philosophers and historians. The book goes
beyond a mere discussion of education by attempting to illuminate the whole
question of our national culture. Originally published by Atlantic Monthly
Press in 1944.
Author Biography: Jacques Barzun is Literary Advisor to the Charles
Scribner's Sons company.
************ Return to GRAB BAG
Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe:
Toward the Revival of Higher Education
Author: Jeffrey Peter Hart
Publisher: Yale University Press
August 2001
Note:
Hart was on C-Span Booknotes Jan 13, 2002. Criticized multiculturalism as
too different, rather than assimilating into one culture. The American
culture. He said that it started in the 60's when they spelled America with
a K - Amerika, but it's started to turn around since Sept. 11th.
>From the Publisher
Although the essential books of Western civilization are no longer central
in our courses or in our thoughts, they retain their ability to energize us
intellectually, says Jeffrey Hart in this powerful book. He now presents a
guide to some of these literary works, tracing the main currents of Western
culture for all who wish to understand the roots of their civilization and
the basis for its achievements. Hart focuses on the productive tension
between the classical and biblical strains in our civilization-between a
life based on cognition and one based on faith and piety. He begins with the
Iliad and Exodus, linking Achilles and Moses as Bronze Age heroic figures.
Closely analyzing texts and illuminating them in unexpected ways, he moves
on to Socrates and Jesus, who "internalized the heroic," continues with Paul
and Augustine and their Christian synthesis, addresses Dante, Shakespeare
(Hamlet), MoliŠre, and Voltaire, and concludes with the novel as represented
by Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby. Hart maintains that the
dialectical tensions suggested by this survey account for the restlessness
and singular achievements of the West and that the essential books can
provide the substance and energy currently missed by both students and
educated readers.
Author Biography: Jeffrey Hart is professor of English emeritus at Dartmouth
College. The author of many books, he is also senior editor for the National
Review.
>From the Critics:
>From Paul Cantor
Hart's broad perspective gives his book a richness and depth seldom seen in
literary criticism these days.
>From Library Journal
According to Hart (English, Dartmouth Coll.), the interaction between Athens
and Jerusalem, between philosophical-scientific ideas and scriptural-moral
thought, has made Western civilization unique. Similarly, the literature of
Western civilization from the Iliad and Exodus, to the Divine Comedy and
Hamlet, and on to Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby has continued
this "dialectical tension," the melding of these two seemingly opposite
premises. Hart believes that it is imperative that college students continue
to study Western civilization and its literature but asserts that more and
more institutions of higher learning have pushed such courses aside,
favoring the more politically correct concept of multiculturalism. Hart's
ideas aren't necessarily new, but his call to arms is justified. Studying
the dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem forces us to examine not only
other cultures but also our own prejudices. The tension created between
intellect and faith, Hart rightfully suggests, aids freedom and democracy.
Primarily for academic and larger public libraries. Terry Christner,
Hutchinson P.L., KS Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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