Radical Legacies : Twentieth-Century Public Intellectuals in the United States.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (171 pages)
Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Be Free! Globalism and Democratic Pedagogy in Henry James and Henry Adams -- 2 World War I and the Origins of the Modern Security State -- 3 Mary McCarthy's Swizzle Sticks -- 4 Herman Melville's Cold War -- 5 Turning Poetry into Bread -- 6 Legacies of the New Left -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index.
What use is thinking? This study addresses the ways in which modern American thinkers have intervened in the public sphere and attempted to mediate relations between social and political institutions and cultural and intellectual production. Chapters on both well-known and neglected public intellectuals address problems of critical dissent during wartime, the contemporary crisis of the humanities under neoliberalism, and the perils of consumer culture and popular taste, arguing that any "use-value" theory of intellectual production is limiting.
9781498512671
War and literature - United States - History - 20th century.