Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.
Sto caricando le informazioni... American Studiesdi Louis Menand
Nessuno Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
At each step of this journey through American cultural history, Louis Menand has an original point to make: he explains the real significance of William James's nervous breakdown, and of the anti-Semitism in T. S. Eliot's writing. He reveals the reasons for the remarkable commercial successes of William Shawn'sNew Yorker and William Paley's CBS. He uncovers the connection between Larry Flynt'sHustler and Jerry Falwell's evangelism, between the atom bomb and the Scholastic Aptitude Test. He locates the importance of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer, Pauline Kael, Christopher Lasch, andRolling Stone magazine. And he lends an ear to Al Gore in the White House as the Starr Report is finally presented to the public. Like his critically acclaimed bestseller,The Metaphysical Club, American Studies is intellectual and cultural history at its best: game and detached, with a strong curiosity about the political underpinnings of ideas and about the reasons successful ideas insinuate themselves into the culture at large. From one of our leading thinkers and critics, known both for his "sly wit and reportorial high-jinks [and] clarity and rigor" (The Nation), these essays are incisive, surprising, and impossible to put down. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)973.9History and Geography North America United States 1901-Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
Sei tu?Diventa un autore di LibraryThing. |
Menand is what you might call a big-picture guy. Most of the essays in "American Studies" try to place their subjects in context: where they stand in relation to their contemporaries, to the development of ideas, to the societies in which they lived. It's not surprising, then, that the passage of time is often his most useful tool. Menand's interested, first and foremost, in ideas -- not in history in and of itself -- but it's looking back that gives Menand the clarity that makes a lot of these essays really special. Menand doesn't argue for or against his subjects as much as he wants to figure out what they really meant in the grand scheme of things. I'm tempted to think that he comes close to hitting the mark on a number of occasions here.
The essays I found most memorable here were the ones on Maya Lin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and, funnily, enough, Rolling Stone magazine. For all his perspicacity, Menand's interests are nothing if not broad. His essay on T.S. Eliot is also noteworthy, as it tries to untangle the puzzle of the author's reputed antisemitism without resorting to hyperbole or reflexively falling back on the undeniable quality of Eliot's output. "Christopher Lasch's Quarrel with Liberalism" also impressed me. In it, Menand tries to give that famously grating polemicist with whom he obviously disagrees on, well, just about everything, a fair shake. That the essay succeeds is a testament to the author's intellectual abilities and versatile mind. That Menand made its subject seem genuinely interesting to me is a testament to his considerable gifts as a writer. Recommended. ( )