Issue No.
57
June 2012
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| Welcome to June’s review of books |
 Tim Black
At the time of its publication 25 years ago, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind had an explosive impact. It rankled, inspired and divided like few other books in recent memory. In 400-odd pages, the battle lines were drawn of what were to become America's culture wars. On the one side were the conservatives who loved Bloom's book for what they saw as its support for tradition, Great Books and good old-fashioned morality. On the other were the liberals, who took its assault on relativistic humanities professors as a personal affront. But re-reading it today, Sean Collins discovers a very different book, one that was as critical of the right as it was of the left. We also have James Heartfield on insurrectionary history, Rob Lyons on the Olympics, me on Sartre and Camus, and Nancy McDermott on the late screenwriter Nora Ephron. Plus much more. [Cover illustration by Jan Bowman.] |
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