Download or read book The Opening of the American Mind written by Lawrence W. Levine and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1997-08-14 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publicly greeted as the definitive answer to recent attacks on the university, Lawrence W. Levine's book is a brilliantly argued positive vision of American education and culture.
Download or read book The Opening of the American Mind written by The Point and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-11-06 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a cultural landscape dominated by hot takes and petty polemics, The Point stands for something different. Informed by the conviction that humanistic thinking has relevance for everyday life, the magazine has long maintained a rare space for thoughtful dialogue between a wide range of political views, philosophical perspectives, and personal experiences: its contributors include liberals and conservatives, philosophers and activists, Marxists and Catholics, New Yorkers and Midwesterners. A little more than a decade since its founding on the campus of the University of Chicago, it offers a unique and revelatory look at the changing face of America, one that speaks not only to way American minds have been forced to “open” by a decade of trauma and transformation, but also to the challenge of remaining open to our fellow citizens during our deeply divided present. Featuring award-winning and highly acclaimed essays from The Point’s first ten years, The Opening of the American Mind traces the path of American intellect from the magazine’s inception in 2009, when Barack Obama was ascending the steps of the White House, to the brink of the 2020 election. The essays, chosen both for the way they capture their time and transcend it, are assembled into five sections that address cycles of cultural frustrations, social movements, and the aftermath of the 2016 election, and provide lively, forward-looking considerations of how we might expand our imaginations into the future. Spanning the era of Obama and Trump, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and renewed attention to reparations, this anthology offers critical reflections on some of the decade’s most influential events and stands as a testament to the significance of open exchange. The intellectual dialogue provided by The Point has never been more urgently needed, and this collection will bring the magazine’s vital work to an even broader readership.
Download or read book The Coddling of the American Mind written by Greg Lukianoff and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book • Bloomberg Best Book of 2018 “Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities.” —Jonathan Marks, Commentary “The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.
Download or read book Closing of the American Mind written by Allan Bloom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.
Download or read book The Splintering of the American Mind written by William Egginton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely, provocative, necessary look at how identity politics has come to dominate college campuses and higher education in America at the expense of a more essential commitment to equality. Thirty years after the culture wars, identity politics is now the norm on college campuses-and it hasn't been an unalloyed good for our education system or the country. Though the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay pride led to profoundly positive social changes, William Egginton argues that our culture's increasingly narrow focus on individual rights puts us in a dangerous place. The goal of our education system, and particularly the liberal arts, was originally to strengthen community; but the exclusive focus on individualism has led to a new kind of intolerance, degrades our civic discourse, and fatally distracts progressive politics from its commitment to equality. Egginton argues that our colleges and universities have become exclusive, expensive clubs for the cultural and economic elite instead of a national, publicly funded project for the betterment of the country. Only a return to the goals of community, and the egalitarian values underlying a liberal arts education, can head off the further fracturing of the body politic and the splintering of the American mind. With lively, on-the-ground reporting and trenchant analysis, The Splintering of the American Mind is a powerful book that is guaranteed to be controversial within academia and beyond. At this critical juncture, the book challenges higher education and every American to reengage with our history and its contexts, and to imagine our nation in new and more inclusive ways.
Download or read book The Hacking of the American Mind written by Robert H. Lustig and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts."—David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker The New York Times–bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease. While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery—our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover. Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin—because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated—with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape. With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.
Download or read book The State of the American Mind written by Mark Bauerlein and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1987, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America—and Americans—unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing. That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far beyond what many in the 1980s dreamed possible. And yet, the state of the American mind seems to have deteriorated further. Benjamin Franklin’s “self-made man” has become a man dependent on the state. Independence has turned into self-absorption. Liberty has been curtailed in the defense of multiculturalism. In order to fully grasp the underpinnings of this shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have brought together a group of cultural and educational experts to discuss the root causes of the decline of the American mind. The writers of these fifteen original essays include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Dennis Prager, as well as Daniel Dreisbach, Gerald Graff, Richard Arum, Robert Whitaker, David T. Z. Mindich, Maggie Jackson, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Kay, Ilya Somin, Steve Wasserman, Greg Lukianoff, and R. R. Reno. Their essays are compiled into three main categories: · States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline These essays broach specific mental deficiencies among the population, including lagging cultural IQ, low Biblical literacy, poor writing skills, and over-medication. · Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests These essays turn to specific mental behaviors and interests, including avoidance of the news, short attention spans, narcissism, and conspiracy obsessions. · National Consequences These essays examine broader trends affecting populations and institutions, including rates of entitlement claims, voting habits, and a low-performing higher education system. The State of the American Mind is both an assessment of our current state as well as a warning, foretelling what we may yet become. For anyone interested in the intellectual fate of America, The State of the American Mind offers an accessible and critical look at life in America and how our collective mind is faring.
Download or read book Media and the American Mind written by Daniel J. Czitrom and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-02-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fascinating and comprehensive intellectual history of modern communication in America, Daniel Czitrom examines the continuing contradictions between the progressive possibilities that new communications technologies offer and their use as instruments of domination and exploitation.
Download or read book Battle for the American Mind written by Pete Hegseth and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! FOX News host Pete Hegseth is back with what he says is his most important book yet: A revolutionary road map to saving our children from leftist indoctrination. Behind a smokescreen of “preparing students for the new industrial economy,” early progressives had political control in mind. America’s original schools didn’t just make kids memorize facts or learn skills; they taught them to think freely and arrive at wisdom. They assigned the classics, inspired love of God and country, and raised future citizens that changed the world forever. Today, after 16,000 hours of K-12 indoctrination, our kids come out of government schools hating America. They roll their eyes at religion and disdain our history. We spend more money on education than ever, but kids can barely read and write—let alone reason with discernment. Western culture is on the ropes. Kids are bored and aimless, flailing for purpose in a system that says racial and gender identity is everything. Battle for the American Mind is the untold story of the Progressive plan to neutralize the basis of our Republic – by removing the one ingredient that had sustained Western Civilization for thousands of years. Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin explain why, no matter what political skirmishes conservatives win, progressives are winning the war—and control the “supply lines” of future citizens. Reversing this reality will require parents to radically reorient their children’s education; even most homeschooling and Christian schooling are infused with progressive assumptions. We need to recover a lost philosophy of education – grounded in virtue and excellence – that can arm future generations to fight for freedom. It’s called classical Christian education. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Battle for the American Mind is more than a book; it’s a field guide for remaking school in the United States. We’ve ceded our kids’ minds to the left for far too long—this book gives patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurgency that gives America a fighting chance.
Download or read book Reforming Education written by Mortimer Jerome Adler and published by Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press. This book was released on 1977 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America s Revolutionary Mind written by C. Bradley Thompson and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
Download or read book American Mind written by Henry Steele Commager and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Religion and the American Mind written by Alan Heimert and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the richness of American thought and experience in the mid-eighteenth century, Alan Heimert develops the intellectual and cultural significance of the religious divisions and debates engendered by one of the most critical episodes in American intellectual history, the Great Awakening of the 1740's. The author's concern throughout is to discover what were the essential issues in a dispute that was not so much a controversy between theologians as a vital competition for the ideological allegiance of the American people. This is not a standard history of any one area of ideas. Mr. Heimert's sources include nearly everything published in America from 1735. His study, in its range and conception, is an original contribution to an understanding of the relationship between colonial religious thought and the evolution of American history.
Download or read book Creating the American Mind written by J. David Hoeveler and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007-04-09 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nine colleges of colonial America confronted the major political currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while serving as the primary intellectual institutions for Puritanism and the transition to Enlightenment thought. The colleges also confronted the most partisan and divisive cultural movement of the eighteenth century--the Great Awakening. Creating the American Mind is the first book to present a synthetic treatment of the colonial colleges, tracing their role in the intellectual development of early Americans through the Revolution. Distinguished historian J. David Hoeveler focuses on Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia), the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), Queen's College (Rutgers), the College of Rhode Island (Brown), and Dartmouth. Hoeveler pays special attention to the collegiate experience of prominent Americans, including Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison. Written in clear and engaging prose, Creating the American Mind will be of great value to historians and educators interested in rediscovering the institutions that first fostered American intellectual thought.
Download or read book The Reopening of the American Mind written by James W. Vice and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reopening of the American Mind: On Skepticism and Constitutionalism explores the connection of moderate skepticism with attachment to constitutionalism through the thought of five writers. The features of this skepticism were concisely delineated by James Madison in the 37th Federalist as a recognition of the complexity of political matters, the limitations of human reason, and the shortcomings of language. The position was first articulated by Cicero who connected it with the idea of a mixed or republican constitution developed by trial and error over generations. Cicero was influential in the world of David Hume, Edmund Burke, and Madison. The skeptical/constitutional connection found its most articulate recent advocate in Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and underlay his advocacy of judicial restraint. Current events have revived interest in the primacy of the legislative branch in balancing interests and rights, in the States as laboratories for democracy, and in an experimental approach to the solution of social problems in what might be called a reopening of the American mind. The five central chapters explore the skeptical/constitutional connection and the spirit of moderation in these political thinkers. Without an appreciation of this tradition of avoiding dogmatism, people will continue to demand simple answers to complex problems. The book is not, however, primarily a tract for the times but a reflection on the on-going search for a more civil world.
Download or read book Essays on the Closing of the American Mind written by Robert L. Stone and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Expanding the American Mind written by Beth Luey and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares fiction and non-fiction - their relative respectability in the eyes of reading experts and in the opinions of readers themselves. This title traces the roots of popularization from the Middle Ages onwards, examining changes in literacy, education, and university politics
