Culture and Anarchy is one of the central texts of the western intellectual tradition and has helped to shape thinking about the tasks and requirements of culture and civil society. The book is particularly relevant now, however, because it articulates many issues about culture and cultural politics that are being intensely debated today. In the past decade, Culture and Anarchy has been the subject of discussion by both the cultural right and the cultural left, beloved by the one because it asserts the primacy of reason over the anarchy of doing as one likes, and despised by the other because...

"Classical music today is in deep trouble." With these disturbing words, Samuel Lipman introduces us to his own testimony on the current condition of music-and of our culture itself. His bold essays passionately defend the best in this culture against what Lipman sees as its growing banalization and politicization. Lipman's expertise in music is unmistakable, but he writes with the general reader in mind-lucidly, nontechnically, arrestingly.