What Are Intellectuals Good For?

by Scialabba, George; McLemee, Scott

• ISBN13: 9780978515669
• ISBN10: 0978515668
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-01
• Publisher: Pressed Wafer Pr

Summary

Nonfiction. Politics. Literary Criticism. WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR? appraises a large gallery of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Randolph Bourne, Dwight Macdonald, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Isaiah Berlin, William F. Buckley Jr., Allan Bloom, Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Christopher Lasch, Edward Said, Ellen Willis, and Christopher Hitchens. It also includes two essays on intellectuals and politics and concludes with one on moral consequences of our species cyber-evolution. George Scialabba, a columnist for the Boston Globe and contributor to the Boston Review, Dissent, the American Prospect, and the Nation, is admired by a circle of discerning readers. WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR?, his second essay collection, brings his voice to a larger audience. Scott McLemee, the Intellectual Affairs columnist of InsideHigherEd, has contributed a foreword.

Author Biography

George Scialabba was born (1948) and raised in East Boston, MA, and attended Harvard (AB, 1969) and Columbia (MA, 1972). He has been a social worker (Mass. Dept. of Public Welfare, 1974-80), a clerical worker (Harvard University, 1980 to the present), a faculty member of the Bennington Graduate Writing Seminars (2007-8), and a freelance book critic. His column, "New Thinking," appears bimonthly in the Boston Globe book section. In 1991 he was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing of the National Book Critics Circle. His first collection, Divided Mind, was published in 2006 by Arrowsmith Press.