Menand writes essays. This book is a compilation of detailed essays on certain individuals and certain intellectual movements before and during the Cold War. Menand has the gift, a remarkable one, of being able to explain—to explain almost anything. He deftly opens up the complex inner workings of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism; the assumptions and mode of analysis embodied by structuralism; the troubled reasoning behind Isaiah Berlin's two views of freedom; and the “niche marketing” of The New Yorker magazine, by which its “culturally insecure” readers could be reassured that they were liking the right things for the right reasons and that “any culture worth having could be had without special aesthetic equipment or intellectual equipment.” A New Yorker staff writer himself, one gifted with capacious range and curiosity, he is also aware of the taste and sensibility of his reading audience. But since his book comes...
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Book Review|
January 01 2022
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
Menand, Louis,
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
(New York
: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
, 2021
), 857
pp.
William M. Chace
William M. Chace is president emeritus of Emory University and honorary professor emeritus of English at Stanford University. His books include One Hundred Semesters; Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics; and The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
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Common Knowledge (2022) 28 (1): 144–146.
Citation
William M. Chace; The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. Common Knowledge 1 January 2022; 28 (1): 144–146. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9713619
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