Overview
In this new collection of essays spanning seven years of contributions to The New Republic, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and other high-profile idea venues, Alan Wolfe displays the courage necessary to write honestly-yet free of ideology, cant, and piety-about the things Americans take seriously.
Wolfe thinks big; indeed, the table of contents of An Intellectual in Public is a daunting list of mega-issues:
Country, God, Race, Sex, Consumption, and Left and Right. Beginning and ending the book are new essays dealing with the public intellectual's role, with the introduction describing how Wolfe believes that role ought to be filled.
An Intellectual in Public is not only a demonstration of Wolfe's fierce intellectual independence, but a model for his belief that "severely ideological thinking" is inappropriate for some of our most difficult problems, and that "neither the right nor the left can speak for all of America."
Synopsis
Unforgettable observations on key issues from a leading authority on contemporary American culture.
Editorials
From the Publisher
". . . proof that the spirit of the free-ranging public intellectual is still very much alive."-Newsday
"Alan Wolfe is one of liberalism's last and most loyal sons. His mind is naturally decent and diversified; large enough and fair enough to contain both conviction and doubt. His profound respect for real people does not interfere with his profound respect for real thought. The criticism that he practices is, I fear, a dying art, but it is also one of the glories of American democracy."
-Leon Wieseltier, New Republic
"Alan Wolfe is one of America's indispensable essayists. On a broad range of topics-race, religion, politics, the marketplace, the university, and more-he combines a scholar's erudition with a historian's feel for the past and a journalist's keen attunement to the shifting patterns of the current scene. Above all he is a true writer, graceful but fearless, who ponders the deep questions so often ignored in the clamor of our ongoing civic conversation. Anyone who wonders what the term 'public intellectual' really means will find the answer-in fact many answers-in this scintillating collection."
-Sam Tanenhaus, Vanity Fair