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 158
... natural " America ; they feared that their own advancing civilization was “ artificial ” and might estrange them from Nature . Jackson's advocates praised him as the representative of the natural wisdom of the natural man . Among his ...
... natural " America ; they feared that their own advancing civilization was “ artificial ” and might estrange them from Nature . Jackson's advocates praised him as the representative of the natural wisdom of the natural man . Among his ...
Page 371
... natural development . At least some children might well study languages , Hall thought ; what is especially interesting to a contemporary reader , look- ing back over the span of seventy years , is that Hall felt that he knew quite ...
... natural development . At least some children might well study languages , Hall thought ; what is especially interesting to a contemporary reader , look- ing back over the span of seventy years , is that Hall felt that he knew quite ...
Page 373
... natural , animal process , and education is a social process . Growth in the child , taken literally , goes on automatically , requiring no more than routine care and nourish- ment ; its end is to a large degree predetermined by genetic ...
... natural , animal process , and education is a social process . Growth in the child , taken literally , goes on automatically , requiring no more than routine care and nourish- ment ; its end is to a large degree predetermined by genetic ...
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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