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ISBN: 0671747266

Description

From Publishers Weekly
Collected here by University of Chicago professor Bloom (author of the controversial bestseller Closing of the American Mind ) are 19 impressive, previously published essays. Scholarly but accessible to serious, determined general readers are 11 commentaries on Aristophanes, Plato, Rousseau, Swift and Shakespeare, and three on teachers--the influential political theorist Leo Strauss; Raymond Aron, "the last of the liberals"; and Alexandre Kojeve, "the most brilliant man I ever met." The last five essays are on commerce and "culture": Machiavelli and the study of texts, John Rawls's theory of justice, the crisis of liberal education and the democratization of the university. The collection is a notable demonstration of the breadth of Bloom's learning. First serial to Commentary; paperback rights to Touchstone; BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Historicism, cultural relativism, and positivism are again criticized by Bloom as contributing to a weakening of our traditional notions about good and evil, especially when applied to political philosophy. Unlike his best seller, The Closing of the American Mind ( LJ 5/1/87), this collection returns to the original texts upon which many of his ideas rest: Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau, and Leo Strauss, among others. A brief piece titled "Western Civ" answers his critics, particularly those on the left who almost universally rejected his earlier book as a wrong-headed prescription for reforming American higher education. The essays in this anthology are demanding and probably not the stuff that make a best seller. Nevertheless, the pieces are engaging efforts to address serious ideas Bloom believes have been distorted or turned into dogmas, leaving us too few universal values upon which to build a theory of social justice. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/90.
- Richard H. Quay, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Ingram
The bestselling author of The Closing of the American Mind probes deeper into America's intellectual promise and its failings with thoughts on teachers, books, and education. Written with passion, wit, and insight, these stimulating essays confirm Bloom as one of America's boldest and most controversial thinkers. "Lucid and penetrating."--Chicago Tribune.