Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Volume 713Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1963 - 434 pages In this award-winning classic work of consensus history, Richard Hofstadter, author of The Age of Reform, examines the role of social movements in the perception of intellect in American life. Professor Hofstadter sets the standard for the dissection of many facets of U.S. history. Here he tells the tale of the intertwining factors of American culture and politics that lead to prevalent anti-intellectualism. Although published in 1963, this remains the definitive work on the distrust of elites and experts and is sadly relevant to the present day. Thanks to Columbia University's Richard Hofstadter we have at last a fresh, forceful, fluent look from "the nether end" at various aspects of anti-intellectualism in America, past and present, and although it is self-styled a fragmentary rather than a formal study, the work is far-ranging, artfully approached and filled with a spirited, sensibility, without pedantry or polemic. It presents both the historical and socio-psychological aspects of its theme, pinpointing the middle-and-low-brow responses via our go-getter economy, the common man's traditional resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind, and the cyclical ambivalence which seems always to have greeted the scholar or expert when venturing into a democratic culture. For although the Founding Fathers, were a worldly elite, starting with Jefferson, too-much-book-larnin' soon became a political black mark. |
À l'intérieur du livre
Résultats 1-3 sur 82
Page 49
... American soul is " hard , isolate , stoic , and a killer . ” As a sexual mystique , it has become a powerful moving force in American letters , taking its most exaggerated form in recent years among those writers who have been impressed ...
... American soul is " hard , isolate , stoic , and a killer . ” As a sexual mystique , it has become a powerful moving force in American letters , taking its most exaggerated form in recent years among those writers who have been impressed ...
Page 82
... American denominationalism is that churches became voluntary or- ganizations . The layman , living in a society in which no church enjoyed the luxury of compulsory membership and in which even traditional , inherited membership was ...
... American denominationalism is that churches became voluntary or- ganizations . The layman , living in a society in which no church enjoyed the luxury of compulsory membership and in which even traditional , inherited membership was ...
Page 137
... American Catholic intellectual impoverish- ment had an overwhelmingly favorable reception in the Catholic press . * Two formative circumstances in the development of early Ameri- can Catholicism made for indifference to intellectual ...
... American Catholic intellectual impoverish- ment had an overwhelmingly favorable reception in the Catholic press . * Two formative circumstances in the development of early Ameri- can Catholicism made for indifference to intellectual ...
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Expressions et termes fréquents
academic Adams agricultural alienation Ameri American intellectuals Andrew Carnegie anti-intellectualism Baptists beatniks became become believe Billy Sunday Boston businessmen Catholic cent century character child church civil service clergy common criticism culture curriculum democracy democratic Dewey Dewey's educa England established evangelical experience farmers fundamentalists Gerald L. K. Smith Gilbert Tennent H. L. Mencken high school ideal ideas institutions intel interest Jefferson kind labor Lawrence Cremin leaders learning lectual less liberal life-adjustment literature living ment mental Methodist mind ministers ministry modern moral movement mugwump party political popular practical preachers preaching problems professors Progressive era Progressivism Protestant pupils Puritan reformers religion religious remarked revivals role Roosevelt Scopes trial secondary education seemed sense social society teachers teaching things thought tion tradition vocational writers wrote York