Publisher Comments:

The Closing of the American Mind, a publishing phenomenon in hardcover, is now a paperback literary event. In this acclaimed number one national best-seller, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers argues that the social/political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. Allan Bloom's sweeping analysis is essential to understanding America today. It has fired the imagination of a public ripe for change.

Synopsis:

The Closing of the American Mind, a publishing phenomenon in hardcover, is now a paperback literary event. In this acclaimed number one national best-seller, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers argues that the social/political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. Allan Bloom's sweeping analysis is essential to understanding America today. It has fired the imagination of a public ripe for change.

Contents

Foreword by Saul Bellow

Preface

Introduction: Our Virtue

PART ONE. STUDENTS

The Clean Slate

Boob

Music

Relationships

Self-Centeredness

Equality

Race

Sex

Separateness

Divorce

Love

Eros

PART TWO. NIHILISM, AMERICAN STYLE

The German Connection

Two Revolutions and Two States of Nature

The Serf

Creativity

Culture

Values

The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa

Our Ignorance

PART THREE. THE UNIVERSITY

From Socrates' Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede

Tocqueville on Democratic Intellectual Life

The Relation Between Thought and Civil Society

The Philosophic Experience

The Enlightenment Transformation

Swift's Doubts

Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University

The Sixties

The Student and the University

Liberal Education

The Decomposition of the University

The Disciplines

Conclusion

Index

Allan Bloom is Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College and co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago. He has taught at Yale, University of Paris, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, and Cornell, where he was the recipient of the Clark Teaching Award in 1967. His other books are Plato's Republic (translator and editor), Politics and the Arts: Rousseau's Letter to d'Alembert (translator and editor), Rousseau's Emile (translator and editor), and Shakespeare's Politics (with Harry V. Jaffa). He lives in Chicago.