Intellectuals? Bah, humbug!
In his book Intellectuals, Paul Johnson takes a close look at some key figures of modern times whose thoughts and writings have had a huge effect on people’s thinking for a long time, right down to today. Johnson examines the personal lives of these famous men (Lillian Hellman is the only female intellectual in this book), and [...]
Book Notes – Liar’s Poker
Cover via Amazon Michael Lewis, freshly graduated with a Master’s degree in economics from LSU, got a job working for investment bank Salomon Brothers in 1984 (how he got the job is a story to itself; as encouragement to read this witty book, I’ll just tell you it involves the late Queen Mother). Salomon Brothers [...]
Book Notes – The Shadow University (2)
Following on… Catherine MacKinnon and Stanley Fish… are explicit in their disdain for the First Amendment‘s absolutist and noncontextual approach. In her influential book Only Words, MacKinnon, a feminist legal scholar at the University of Michigan, introduced her chapter “Equality and Speech” with the blunt statement that “the law of equality and the law of [...]
Book Notes – After Liberalism
Image via Wikipedia After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (New Forum Books) by Paul Edward Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethstown College. An analysis of what happened to the meaning of “liberalism” in the United States in the 20th century, focusing on the post-WWII period. It examines the roots of “political correctness”, and [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling Society (2)
Image via Wikipedia Following on… For most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. ((From the introduction.) the existence of the university is necessary to guarantee continued social criticism (p. 37) The man addicted to being taught seeks his security in compulsive teaching. (p. 39) once the self-taught man [...]
Book notes – The Shadow University
(Part 1 of 2. Part 2 is here). Ralph Raico mentioned this book in a speech he gave on the occasion of his being awarded the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty. (Read the speech on the Mises Institute website.) Here’s the relevant section from the speech: Today America [...]
Book Notes – Deschooling society
Image via Wikipedia Here are some quotes from chapter 1 of Ivan Illich‘s classic Deschooling Society, which I recently re-read. The quotes are sentences or ideas that caught my attention. They are not necessarily representative, either of the book itself, nor of Illich’s or my thinking; that is, you won’t get an objective summary of [...]
