American Studies Contributor(s): Menand, Louis (Author) |
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ISBN: 0374529000 ISBN-13: 9780374529000 Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl OUR PRICE: $20.70 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2003 Annotation: This collection of review essays "demonstrates Menand's status as his generation's premier critical talent" ("Los Angeles Times"). From this thinker, 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. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 20th Century - History | Social History - Literary Collections | Essays |
Dewey: 973.9 |
LCCN: 2002022813 |
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.85 lbs) 306 pages |
Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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's New Yorker and William Paley's CBS. He uncovers the connection between Larry Flynt's Hustler 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, and Rolling 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Menand, Louis: - Louis Menand is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Metaphysical Club and American Studies. He is the Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a staff writer at The New Yorker. |