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Original Essays | February 8, 2012

Kent Hartman: IMG A Raider by Any Other Name

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Perhaps you are aware of the fact that there is an oddly popular trivia game floating around that a group of clever (and likely bored) college... Continue »
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eBook editions

The Closing of the American Mind

by Allan Bloom

The Closing of the American Mind Cover

ISBN13: 9780671657154
ISBN10: 0671657151
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The Closing of the American Mind, a publishing phenomenon in hardcover, is now a paperback literary event. In this acclaimed number one national best-seller, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers argues that the social/political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. Allan Bloom's sweeping analysis is essential to understanding America today. It has fired the imagination of a public ripe for change.

Review:

"Brilliant....No other book combines such shrewd insights into our current state....No other book is at once so lively and so deep, so witty and so thoughtful, so outrageous and so sensible, so amusing and so chilling....An extraordinary book." Wall Street Journal

Review:

"Remarkable....hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy." New York Times

Review:

"Rich and absorbing....A grand tour of the American mind." The Washington Post Book World
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About the Author

Allan Bloom is Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College and co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago. He has taught at Yale, University of Paris, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, and Cornell, where he was the recipient of the Clark Teaching Award in 1967. His other books are Plato's Republic (translator and editor), Politics and the Arts: Rousseau's Letter to d'Alembert (translator and editor), Rousseau's Emile (translator and editor), and Shakespeare's Politics (with Harry V. Jaffa).
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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Saul Bellow

Preface

Introduction: Our Virtue

PART ONE. STUDENTS

The Clean Slate

Boob

Music

Relationships

Self-Centeredness

Equality

Race

Sex

Separateness

Divorce

Love

Eros

PART TWO. NIHILISM, AMERICAN STYLE

The German Connection

Two Revolutions and Two States of Nature

The Serf

Creativity

Culture

Values

The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa

Our Ignorance

PART THREE. THE UNIVERSITY

From Socrates' Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede

Tocqueville on Democratic Intellectual Life

The Relation Between Thought and Civil Society

The Philosophic Experience

The Enlightenment Transformation

Swift's Doubts

Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University

The Sixties

The Student and the University

Liberal Education

The Decomposition of the University

The Disciplines

Conclusion

Index

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
TOM723, June 6, 2007 (view all comments by TOM723)
Sounds like a Great Book. Maybe I will take a look at it very soon.
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Billy the Dik, June 6, 2007 (view all comments by Billy the Dik)
This book is pure tripe and only serves to exploit the population's hunger for fake pomposity and need to appear "smart." Bloom's celebration of the "classics" is really just his pathetic fear of knowledge he hasn't memorized. He despises what he fears and he fears what he doesn't understand. His defense of yesterday is his damnation of today and his paranoid little book is a terrible reflexion on the "American Mind."
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Miss Gretchen, June 6, 2007 (view all comments by Miss Gretchen)
Conservatives loved this book when it came out, but there is plenty inside for progressives to ponder. After all, aren't we the ones complaining these days about "a flock of parrots trained to squawk whatever brainless propaganda is fed into their empty vapid heads?" Bloom's arguments for education in the liberal arts are compelling, and a core curriculum need not exclude anyone other than a Dead White Male. An open mind can take certain of Bloom's concepts and rearrange them to fit one's own predilections -- if someone is not a reader of the Christian Bible, then whenever Bloom says "Bible," insert your own religious, spiritual, or secular humanist ideals (unless, of course, Bloom is referring to the Christian Bible as a literary or cultural reference.) As a companion book, one can read Michael Berube's What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and Bias in Higher Education.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780671657154
Author:
Bloom, Allan
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Foreword by:
Bellow, Saul
Foreword:
Bellow, Saul
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Education
Subject:
United states
Subject:
United States - 20th Century
Subject:
Education, higher
Subject:
Education, humanistic
Subject:
Education, Higher -- United States -- Philosophy.
Subject:
General Social Science
Subject:
Philosophy
Subject:
Education, Humanistic -- United States.
Subject:
United States Intellectual life.
Subject:
Politics - General
Copyright:
c198
Edition Number:
1st Touchstone ed.
Edition Description:
B102
Series Volume:
v. 1
Publication Date:
19880531
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
400
Dimensions:
8.44 x 5 in 11.515 oz
Age Level:
09-12
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The Closing of the American Mind Used Trade Paper
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$3.95 In Stock
Product details 400 pages Simon & Schuster - English 9780671657154 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Brilliant....No other book combines such shrewd insights into our current state....No other book is at once so lively and so deep, so witty and so thoughtful, so outrageous and so sensible, so amusing and so chilling....An extraordinary book."
"Review" by , "Remarkable....hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy."
"Review" by , "Rich and absorbing....A grand tour of the American mind."
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