Author : Tom Bethell
Publisher : Hoover Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 24,67 MB
Release : 2013-09-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0817914161
Drawn from Eric Hoffer's private papers as well as interviews with those who knew him, this detailed biography paints a picture of a truly original American thinker and writer. Author Tom Bethell interviewed Hoffer in the years just before his death, and his meticulous accounts of those meetings offer new insights into the man known as the "Longshoreman Philosopher."
Author : Jonah S. Rubin
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 98 pages
File Size : 46,14 MB
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1351351699
Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century. It exemplifies the powers of creative thinking and critical analysis at their best, providing an insight into two crucial elements of critical thinking. Hoffer is likely to go down in history as one of America’s great creative thinkers – a writer not bound by standard frameworks of thinking or academic conventions, willing to beat his own path in framing the best possible answers to the questions he investigated. An impoverished, largely unschooled manual laborer who had survived the worst effects of the Great Depression in the United States, Hoffer was a passionate autodidact whose philosophical and psychological education came from omnivorous reading. Working without the help of any mentors, he forged the fearsomely creative and individual approach to problems demonstrated in The True Believer. The book, which earned him his reputation, examines the different phenomena of fanaticism – religious or political – and applies Hoffer’s analytical skills to reveal that, deep down, all ‘true believers’ display the same needs and tendencies, whatever their final choice of belief. Incisive and persuasive, it remains a classic.
Author : Daniel J. Flynn
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 48,41 MB
Release : 2023-09-26
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1684516706
Stupid is the new smart—but it wasn’t always so Popular culture has divorced itself from the life of the mind. Who has time for great books or deep thought when there is Jersey Shore to watch, a txt 2 respond 2, and World of Warcraft to play? At the same time, those who pursue the life of the mind have insulated themselves from popular culture. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation. It wasn’t always so. Blue Collar Intellectuals vividly captures a time in the twentieth century when the everyman aspired to high culture and when intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman. Author Daniel J. Flynn profiles thinkers from working-class backgrounds who played a prominent role in American life by addressing their intellectual work to a mass audience. Blue Collar Intellectuals tells the fascinating story of the unschooled hobo who migrated from skid row anonymity to White House chats with the president and prime-time TV specials. Blue Collar Intellectuals tells the fascinating story of: •The scandalous teacher-student romance that spawned a half-century labor of love in writing the history of the world. •The Ivy League Ph.D. who held neither a high school nor college degree, and fittingly launched a renaissance in reading the great books outside of formal schools. •The scholarship student who experienced the free market firsthand waiting tables and peddling socks, and who became one of capitalism’s most influential exponents. •The impoverished outcast who became the poet of the pulps, elevating millions of readers along with heretofore marginal genres. Guiding us through a world now vanished, Flynn causes us to look anew at our own digital age and its nostrums: Video gaming is just a new form of literacy, Reality shows . . . Challenge our emotional intelligence, and Who cares if Johnny can’t read? The value of books is overstated. Blue Collar Intellectuals shows us how much everyone intellectual and everyman alike has suffered from mass culture’s crowding out of higher things and the elite’s failure to engage the masses.
Author : Stan Weir
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 13,75 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 081664294X
Written throughout Stan Weir's decades as a blue-collar worker and labour educator, 'Singlejack Solidarity' offers a rare look at modern life and social relations as seen from the factory, dockside and the shop floor.
Author : Kevin Starr
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 601 pages
File Size : 45,3 MB
Release : 2011-09-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0199924309
A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.
Author : John R. Shook
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 2759 pages
File Size : 34,85 MB
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1843710374
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, anda large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectualsinvolved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, politicalscience, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in thelate nineteenth century.Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, abibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers arepresent, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers,including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern AmericanPhilosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be anindispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.
Author : Laird Wilcox
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 40,77 MB
Release : 2011-01-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1615928545
A remarkable collection of quotations, aphorisms, and epigrams relating to beliefs, ideologies, superstitions, and fanaticism, covering more than fifteen categories, among them: - civil liberties - fanatics and true believers - intolerance - individual liberties and personal freedom - mysticism and religion - public opinion and mass media - rationalism - skepticism - state power - utopianism, idealism and reformist zeal Included are selections from classic and modern authors in all literary genres, both prose and poetry, including Brooks Adams, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, William F. Buckley, Jr., G.K. Chesterton, Clarence Darrow, Henry Fielding, Thomas Jefferson, Baron de Montesquieu, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Seneca, William Shakespeare, G.B. Shaw, Jonathan Swift, Margaret Thatcher, Voltaire, W.B. Yeats, and hundreds of others. Quotations in all categories are listed alphabetically by author and indexed for ease of reference. This will prove a standard reference work for writers, educators, students, and all those committed to intellectual freedom and individual liberties.
Author : Calvin Tomkins
Publisher :
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 12,94 MB
Release : 1969
Category : Aphorisms and apothegms
ISBN :
Author : Rob Asghar
Publisher : Wheatmark, Inc.
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 38,75 MB
Release : 2010-01-15
Category : Culture conflict
ISBN : 1604943696
An immigrant's son shuns his heritage and his homeland, only to see them come to dominate headlines in a manner that forces him to come to a deeper understanding of himself and his world. This notable collection of personal stories and cultural insights illuminates anew the grand American immigrant experience. Just as notably, Lessons from the Holy Wars is invaluable for anyone seeking insight into the encounter-or collision-of Islam and the West. Filled with wonder and wit, it offers a revealing perspective on the events of our day.
Author : John M. Robertson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 33,97 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 041589042X
First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
