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. |
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Page 176
... less they wasted on thought ; men who sprang from the soil to power ; apt to be distrustful of them- selves and of others ; shy ; jealous , sometimes vindictive ; more or less dull in outward appearance , always needing stimulants ; but ...
... less they wasted on thought ; men who sprang from the soil to power ; apt to be distrustful of them- selves and of others ; shy ; jealous , sometimes vindictive ; more or less dull in outward appearance , always needing stimulants ; but ...
Page 236
... less for the arts and learning than in Europe , culture has always been dependent upon private patronage ; it has not been any less dependent in recent decades , when the criticism of business has been so dominant a concern of ...
... less for the arts and learning than in Europe , culture has always been dependent upon private patronage ; it has not been any less dependent in recent decades , when the criticism of business has been so dominant a concern of ...
Page 309
... less clear and less subject to common agree- ment . Many Americans were troubled by the suspicion that an edu- cation of this kind was suitable only to the leisured classes , to aristocracies , to the European past ; that its usefulness ...
... less clear and less subject to common agree- ment . Many Americans were troubled by the suspicion that an edu- cation of this kind was suitable only to the leisured classes , to aristocracies , to the European past ; that its usefulness ...
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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