Literary Criticism An Autopsy Mark Bauerlein "It's later than you think Literary critics, practicing and prospective, had better take a close look at Mark Bauerlein's mordant and humorous 'autopsy.'"--Frederick Crews, editor, Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend "There isn't another book like this: a primer and a polemic on the jargon of literary study, impressive in its range of examples and uncompromising in its critique. Bauerlein describes the motives of several prospering forms of contemporary obscurantism, analyzes the conditions in which they arose, and maps the...

A study of the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its relevance for the neopragmatism of thinkers like Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. In offering neopragmatism, a theory of the mind taken from Emerson, James, and Peirce, this book suggests that the neopragmatists' arguments can be sharpened across a variety of disciplines.

This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.
The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture.
For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought...

John Andrew Rice's autobiography, first published to critical acclaim in 1942, is a remarkable tour through late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. When the book was suppressed by the publisher soon after its appearance because of legal threats by a college president described in the book, the nation lost a rich first-person historical account of race and class relations during a critical period--not only during the days of Rice's youth, but at the dawn of the civil rights movement.
I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century begins with Rice's childhood on a South Carolina...

In 1987, Allan Bloom s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America and Americans unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing.
That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far...

In 1987, Allan Bloom s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America and Americans unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing.
That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far...