Anyone who has squirmed in his seat as a university professor touts the obfuscating nihilism of the deconstructionists certainly owes Mr. Kimball a huge debt of gratitude. The best expose of the deconstruction sham there is. Hard-hitting and scathing . . . guaranteed to raise eyebrows.

Kimball is a very learned voice in the culture wars, an insightful art critic who's breadth of reading harkens to a bygone era. As a matter of fact, the book sometimes feels as though it's from another era celebrating the myriad views of Hulme,T.S. Eliot, Muriel Sparks and once again ravaging the birth and ascent of deconstructionism/moral relativism. All the essays are well written if somewhat unsuprising at this stage, with the real gems being the attack on Cioran and the retrospective view of the novels of Robert Musil. There's also a fun bashing of Foucault who I find to be so tiresome you wouldn't think he'd needed to be bashed again except you'll still find his name in campus catalogs.

On the whole my reading experience was satisfactory, due more to Kimball's style than content. I've been moved to check out anew some of the author's he speaks about in the reviews, and I'm all for supporting an author who's done so much to bring the reading public's attention to David Stove. I might even suggest that someone jump right to Stove's work, especially the stunning volume edited by Kimball.

Contrasting Stove to Kimball is useful in illustrating why Kimball is not quite as enjoyable to read. Both are cultural warriors, with an obvious axe to grind from the right. While Kimball is easier to digest (he never reaches Stove's scathing pitch), you can't help but suspect that's partly because he has more sacred cows to protect. Stove doesn't leave anything worth skewering off the barbecue, not even religious inanery. Interestingly, Kimball liberally utilizes Stove arguments in his attacks, but ignores those that might land unfavorably on his own shoulders.

But very high shoulders they are, the writing is first rate, and his understanding can sometimes awe you. He's a proper heir to much of modernisms archness. If he isn't a British citizen, perhaps he should be made an honorary one.

Most critics of American culture are able to see broad causes for contemporary problems. Their insight is almost oversight. Roger Kimball has an amazing ability to see the spawning wisp of the thread that weaves through the matrix of our cultural decline. These series of essays look back over the last century at the critics, novelists, and philosophers who stood on either side of the question, "Is reality real or can I make it what I wish?" Those ascribing to the latter, tended to be cultural heroes for their encouragement of a new kind of freedom which Kimball shows is really a decaying licentiousness. Most of these experimenters against reality were celebrated by the intelligentsia of the time for discovering a new kind of happiness. The only problem, as Kimball points out, is that their suggested liberations have led to misery both personally and culturally. There are also excellent essays describing the stalwarts who stood astride the decline of society yelling "Stop". Primary amongst these is Mr Kimball himself whose essay, "The Trivialization of Outrage" will be a classic as he decries the lack of beauty in today's "art". This is a book that needs to be studied to be appreciated. A little effort brings great rewards. Hopefully we will learn as Kimball so rightly puts it that "the liberations we crave have served chiefly to compound the depth of our loss."

I have read most of the essays in this volume in their earlier versions; yet they seem to me as fresh and intellectually invigorating as at my first go round. This is partly due to having read some of the works discussed since Kimball inspired an interest in them, but mostly because each essay encompasses a superabundance of insights and ideas reqquiring a second look. The author writes so clearly and forcefully that his pages generally go by a little too fast to catch all that they have to offer at one go.

The essays on T.E. Hulme Muriel Spark, Josef Pieper, James Fitzjames Stephen, and Robert Musil are outstanding among a uniformly excellent collection. I recommend them strongly for those who have no familiarity with these writers.

The examinations of Foucault and E.M. Cioran are of such quality that their admirers will remember his essays with violent emotions long after they have abandoned their subjects for even more flapdoodlious energumens. Kimball's style in dealing with such freaks is exactly right. He does not strain himself to tease some arcane significance out of their dramatic posturings. He does not treat them as PostMod Titans. He recognizes them as the pus and vomit of a sick culture and applies the antiseptic of wit, clarity, and logic.

Kimball's essays evoke memories of classroom disputes over philsophy. Classical philosophers seemed so self-focussed that attempts to translate them into a global human framework proved futile. This essay collection reinforces that image admirably. As "Lives", each essay offers a pithy biography of his subjects with references to recent studies of their work. It's not quite accurate to label this collection book reviews - for starters you must go the Index to retrieve the titles. A "collection of observations" seems more accurate, since there's no common theme nor particular view endorsed. He ranges from Plutarch to David Stove [who?] with pauses in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Kimball's focus on classical philosophers allows him to steadfastly ignore the many advances made in cognitive science over the past generation. This severely limits his views and our enjoyment of an otherwise lively series.

In dealing with his subjects, Kimball places strong emphasis on their capacity for expression. The sole graphic artist in the collection, Daumier, is extolled for his vivid caricatures, providing an interesting comparison with Wodehouse in that Kimball sees them both as "timeless". Whether any of the philosophers fall into that descriptive is left for the reader to determine. Philosophy, which purports to deal with "universals", isn't granted that capacity here - the subjects being entirely Western European [and its colonies]. Kimball's entertaining style diverts us from that narrow outlook. Still, if he is dealing with "the Mind" it might do well to reach a bit further than he has in this collection.

While the essays provide Kimball opportunity to take of few swipes at things he finds distasteful, such as rock music and "political correctness", his reach sometimes leads him to stumble. In resurrecting the Australian philosopher and social critic David Stove, Kimball launches into a diatribe against Darwin's natural selection being applied to humans. "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" has long been viewed askance by philosophers for a variety of reasons. Kimball, using Stove, exhibits this abhorrence vividly, launching an assault on Richard Dawkins' "selfish gene" concept while ignoring the power of memes as cultural transmitters. In his tirade, he displays Stove's lack of understanding of natural selection. In Stove's case, there might be some excuse - for Kimball it demonstrates his ignorance of a generation's research.

Most of Kimball's commentary may be forgiven in a man with a classical outlook. One paean stands out for remarkable shortsightedness, however. In his essay on Santayana, he declares as "eloquantly said" the philosopher's assessment of British Imperialism: "Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master"! This of a people who foisted smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans, expanded the harshness of human slavery beyond anything the ancient world would have condoned and declared an entire continent "devoid of humans" as the rationale for its occupation and conquest. Hardly "sweet" or "just".

Classical European philosophers struggled mightily to understand the human mind. Kimball's chosen representatives of that effort exhibit the intensity they endured in their striving. Descartes chose "dualism" - an idea that persisted for three centuries. Kimball's presentation shows the concept isn't yet fully cast away. He "doesn't admire" Hegel, but we remain unclear whether it's the philosophy or the man. Bertrand Russell is "a brilliant, tortured enigma" struggling to merge technical competence with social causes. With Wittgenstein, however, we see the futility philosophy endured. Kimball cites him as agonizing over his realisation that "the unsayable alone has genuine value" - thus empirical knowledge cast into the philosophical dustbin.

Kimball's collection is a comprehensive glimpse into the lives and works of noted and forgotten figures in philosophy and the arts. He deals well with what he knows, but his errors are glaring. His style is deceptively readable, but the reader is cautioned that there is little of substance here. Read him, then go to the works he reviews, thence to the originals. Keep in mind that cognitive science is rapidly widening the view we have of the mind and its workings. There is much to be learned and dwelling on classical speculations is turning away from what needs to be done. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I enjoyed this book very much. I purchased it after reading a review by Stephen Barbara, writing in the Weekly Standard, who wrote: "'Lives of the Mind' is a work of generous humanity.

"The intention of 'Lives of the Mind' is to hold various intellectuals up to ethical standards, so that figures from Schiller to Kierkegaard are judged in part by their use of their intellectual gifts.

"The essays are so well written, and in general so full of color and biographical anecdote, that even the intellectuals Kimball comes out against, like Hegel, survive."

I'd say this commentary is right on the money.

Roger Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion, a neo-conservative journal of arts and letters. I gather that most of these essays were published as book reviews and essays in that publication. (Strangely, the book nowhere tells you where the essays come from.)

I enjoyed this book a great deal. Kimball is an excellent writer and all of the essays are well written and lively. Because many of the essays are book reviews, the essays actually provide handy introductions to certain thinkers. The essays on Schopenhauer and Descartes are a good mix of biographical background and philosophical explanation. There is also an enjoyable introduction to David Stove, an Australian philosopher that Kimball helped introduce to the American public when he edited a collection of his essays a few years back (called AGAINST THE IDOLS OF THE AGE).

So writes Roger Kimball in this book's final paragraph. This collection of ten essays seeks to stave off the latter through discussions of what is permanent in politics, art, law, medicine, education, and social values.

As a collection of essays, the book is naturally somewhat uneven; some of the pieces have a much broader range than others, and the tone varies widely from one to another.

Worth the price of the book is Mark Steyn's hilarious and brilliant polemic on "the West's anti-Westernism." In examples that might make one weep if they weren't so funny, he describes how a remarkable variety of people from the West have bent over backward and forward to apologize for all sorts of supposed crimes against an ever-increasing roster of victims.

Others to single out include the one by Robert Bork. If you're a recovering liberal, you'll read this essay at first with a touch of queasy fascination that will then become enthusiastic head-nodding, as Bork explains just how in the name of Hollywood we have, in a short generation, come to the point where ... obscenity are fully privileged (and thus everwhere visible and audible) and any expression of religious faith in the public square has become Verboten (and thus everywhere hidden and inaudible).

In addition, Keith Windschuttle, whose subject matter overlaps to some degree with Mark Steyn's, rebuts the views of Edward Said and his Orientalism; Roger Kimball, among many other things, illustrates why we should be re-reading Matthew Arnold and ignoring Susan Sontag; and Kenneth Minogue, in discussing what he calls "the new Epicureans," shows how the modern "avoidance of the burdensome" has led people to forgo the responsibilities of marriage and family.

Looking over the table of contents again, I can find only two essays that I found either hard to penetrate (in one case) or narrow in scope (in another).

Although there's no recipe in this book purporting to contain the magic ingredients needed for the survival of culture, the essays as a whole will help readers think through, and resist, the assault on permanent values.

4.5 stars.

Written by a team of two sailing CPAs and a lawyer, this comprehensive guide covers what you need to know to help you identify your most effective tax-planning strategies. It is quite possible that maintenance, depreciation, and operating expenses will be tax deductible, provided certain strategies are adopted now. Not only have the authors clearly explained these points of tax law, they have illustrated them by example and provided sample documents to help you confidently adopt a tax plan for your yacht.

The simple reason Stove's ideas are often called 'unorthodox' or 'controversial' is obvious: Because most of them are wrong. The reason why they've attracted so much attention is less clear.

Editor Richard Kimball has divided this collection of essays into three thematically related sections:

The first deals with Stove's criticism of postmodern philosophers of science - In particular, Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, and Lakatos. He lambastes them collectively for intellectual 'sabotage', like using scare quotes to illegitimize counter-arguments, and Popper in particular for deliberately confusing the concepts of 'unfalsifiable' and 'irrefutable.'

I have to admit, in Stove's favor, much of his criticism here is valid and is enjoyable to read in the same way that it's 'enjoyable' to drive slowly past the site of a car accident. It's more of a morbid fascination with the dissection of another person's life work than the true pleasure of an epiphany. But it would have been easier to handle if Stove wasn't so quick to dismiss entire schools of thought with the wave of a hand, which he does repeatedly.

A much more interesting and better documented paper trail of the follies of postmodern philosophy can be found in Alan Sokal's _Fashionable Nonsense_ (1996), which I'd highly recommend over Stove's book on this topic, in large part because Sokal, being a physicist, is able to take liberties in his condemnation of postmodern philosophy that Stove, a philosopher, is unable to.

The second selection of essays include some of Stove's biggest attention-getters, including "D'Holbach's Dream", where he claims that atheism is the reason totalitarian governments are inclined to repress and murder (Conveniently ignoring the catholic Nazis or the muslim Taliban), "The Intellectual Capacity of Women", where he makes the unsupported evolutionary claim that "a woman does not need to use her brains to have a baby", whereas hunting and defending territory require much greater intelligence (Despite the fact that he spends the last third of the book arguing against the theory of evolution), and "Racial and Other Antagonisms", where he claims that racism is often justified ('nuff said about that). Suffice it to say, Stove makes bald and offensive statements to get attention with a frequency that would make Allan Bloom proud, without offering any support besides a well-worded insult.

The book reaches its low point in the third section, his criticism of Darwinism. As he strays further from the field of philosophy, Stove finds himself on unfamiliar ground, and often relies on the same techniques he was sharply critical of in earlier essays. The misstatements he makes, both errors of fact and errors of logic, are numerous and diverse. For instance, in the first sentence of the first essay of the section he makes both kinds of error by saying: "If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive..." On the contrary, nothing in Darwin's theory precludes cooperation (Robert Axelrod has written a couple of excellent books on the subject) - in fact, it has been shown to be one of the most successful evolutionary strategies - and further, Stove makes the classical error which he himself criticizes others for making of 'level confusion' - Species don't compete to survive, individuals do.

Probably his most glaringly erroneous argument is his 'refutation' (note scare quotes) of the Malthus Principle, the idea that populations tend to grow until limited by external factors, what Malthus labeled "misery and vice." See how many errors you can spot in his argument: Based on Darwin's admission to having read Malthus' "Essay on the Principle of Population", Stove renames the Malthus Principle the "Malthus-Darwin Principle" (and then uses it interchangeably with "neo-Darwinism" in the same way that Popper did with "irrefutable" and "unfalisifiable") and claims that if it is wrong, then Darwinism is false. He asserts that the Principle implies that all populations always increase as fast as possible (and, subscribing to Goebbel's maxim that a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted as the truth, reiterates this claim as often as possible throughout his argument) and provides a list of specific cases where this is known to not be true, including: domestic pets, animals in captivity, and animals in game reserves. "Since this [population increasing as fast as possible] does not happen always and everywhere," he later asserts, as if the Malthus principle was a metaphysical truth rather than a general principle, "the Malthus-Darwin principle is false." Ergo, Darwinism is false.

And this just touches one the errors of logic he makes - The number and severity of plainly false statements easily rivals these. For example, he claims that no other species besides humans engage in infanticide (though lions have been observed to do this), suicide (which lemmings are famous for, precisely for the purpose of reducing resource shortages), or voluntary sexual abstinence (_Chimpanzee Politics_, Frans de Waals' classic study of a group of chimps living at a zoo in the Netherlands, describes a female named Puist who does exactly this). Kimball backs him up in the introduction by saying that if Darwinism were true, there would be no "abortion, adoption, or [expletive], just to start with the 'A's", even though none of these activities is believed to have a genetic component.

Again, given the transparency of his illogic, the reason why Stove's work has attracted so much attention is a mystery. But then again, I guess, anyone foolish enough to fall for Stove's sleight of hand wouldn't be reading his work in the first place.

During the fifties and sixties the United States government looked around the world for intellectuals who would support their cause in the cold war. Using the surreptitious services of the CIA they funded a number of magazines, the most famous being the journal Encounter. But they also funded magazines in France and Italy, and while the intellectuals in my native Canada were either too mediocre or too reliable to get their own special subsidy, Australia's conservative intellectuals got their own special magazine Quadrant. Now there is something deeply hypocritical in proclaiming your independence and intellectual courage while relying on patrons who, when not enjoying your latest polemic against Jean-Paul Sartre, are engaged in torture, assassination and narcotics trafficking. It is from this disingenuous milieu that the late David Stove, a philosopher of science from New Zealand worked in, and it is his collection of essays that is the subject of this book. But if hypocrisy and disingenuousness were the only problems with Stove's attacks on feminism, Sir Karl Popper, Darwinism and historians of science this would be a much more tolerable book. There is no doubt that Stove is forthright and sincere in the defence of his convictions. But he is also cheaply abusive and deeply incapable of appreciating an opposing argument.

Do we have proof of this? We do indeed. Stove has the very irritating habit of referring to opposing arguments as childishly stupid, easily refutable, patently stupid, and similar terms. It is not just myself who finds this abuse directed at Hobbes, Huxley and D'Holbach very irritating. Even Roger Kimball, the editor, agrees this doesn't really do justice to Plato or Kant. Critics of Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins should easily turn to The New York Review of Books instead of bothering with Stove's own polemics. The essay on D'Holbach is basically a truculent attack on the claim that ignorance is the greatest evil affecting man and that increasing knowledge would help reduce suffering. Stove concedes nothing in this essay, though it should have occurred to him that his not dying of smallpox is a triumph of 18th century science, much as his loved ones not dying in childbirth because of pupereal fever is a triumph of 19th century science.

As for failing to get the point of one's opponents, consider Stove's essays on Darwinism. A basic tenet of Darwin's theory starts from the fact that when living beings reproduce they do more than replace their parents. Anyone who has ever owned a dog or a cat know that litters have more than two children. Human beings do not stop having sex once they have produced two children. Insects can have thousands, possibly millions of offspring. Now if these rates of reproduction were maintained, the world would be overwhelmed not merely with humans, but with roses, eucalyptus trees, octopi, emperor penguins and panda bears. Obviously, this has not happened. There is in fact, a great struggle for existence, and it is this struggle which sets the stage for natural selection. What Stove does, however, is to amend Darwin's theory to say that Darwinism stands for the proposition that everywhere and always populations are filled to the bursting point and that populations seek to reproduce as many of themselves as conceivably possible. Having misstated the theory, Stove easily shows that it is wrong, since often people are celibate, they rarely engage in incest, pets are often neutered (though this is done to prevent them from breeding out of control) and population numbers are often kept low by predation. But Stove has not refuted Darwinism, he has simply engaged in polemical slight of hand. Likewise in arguing about the evolution of humans he argues against the idea that we have mitigated the effects of natural selection by asking why the first original men did not simply eat their mates and children. Well, at the risk of being very obvious, any species which did engage in such behaviour would very likely end up instinct, while those who avoided that would, on impeccably Darwinist grounds, be much more likely to survive.

And then there is Stove's essay on the intelligence of women. Stove's essay argues that since most of the intellectual achievement of the past was by men, it must be because they are in fact really more intelligent than women. The flaws in this argument are many and numerous. It is like arguing that since Russian literature before Pushkin had never produced a poet as great as Dryden or a novelist as fine as Swift it would never in the future. One might point out that 140 years ago there were virtually no female doctors or lawyers or conservative philosophers of science in the English-speaking world because women were excluded from the education that would allow them to hold such a position. As these barriers have dropped the percentage of doctors and lawyers who are female has risen to 5% to 15% to 25% to over 30%. Is there any reason to doubt that they will eventually reach 50%? None that Stove provides. Stove provides an argument for the intellectual inferiority of women by invoking biology. Yet I doubt whether he would invoke a biological argument designed before, say, 1960. If the intellectual inferiority of women is so true and so widely held, why is proving it so difficult? I doubt even Stove thinks Aristotle's arguments on this pass muster. Finally, if women are intellectually inferior, what does this say about their rights? Nothing from Stove on this matter, yet the conservative tradition that he supports and in contrast to the liberal tradition he sneers has from 1800 to 1950 argued that inferior intelligence or morals on the behalf of women, the Irish, African-Americans and Jews means lesser rights for them. It is rather disingenuous of Stove to evade this point.

Stove's book is rather hard to rate. On one hand it allows one to see old ideology that is likely repugnant to anyone who is not chained to some Newtonian universe - trapped much like a fly in amber. But anyone with an iota of intelligence will likely be seriously offended by most of Stove's central themes making it hard to give a "good" rating to the book.

Stove, perhaps best known for his essay on why women are intellectually inferior to men, captures the essence of all that is (after reading the reviews here, one hesitates to use the term 'was'...) wrong with the idols of the age of modernism. Stove attacks the so-called "Jazz Age" of philosophy yet at root it is apparent that not only does he miss the point of the postmodernists but that his arguments are nothing more than blisteringly hot air.

No doubt the writing is amusing but anyone who can dismiss Plato in a sentence and Popper in a paragraph has erected a soap box made of old toilet paper rolls. I believe his essay on the "Jazz Age" should be required reading to demonstrate exactly how 'idols' and anger obviously cloud intelligence.

Stove reveals his ignorance for science in the final paragraph: "No doubt this is partly to be explained by the remoteness of their work from everyday applications." This is Stoves explanation for why theoretical scientists have seen the validity of Kuhn, Popper and Feyeraband's views on the irrational nature of science - not so much an explanation as a cry to those who understand to give up and regress to the safe old world of Newton. One wonders if he actually knew anything about science - without the theoretical scientists we would not have anything beyond Newton and certainly people like Godel, Prigogine, Einstein and Chaitin (to name very few) would not qualify as "pure" scientists under Stove's criteria.

Stove also has some interesting and childlike conceptions of cornerstones such as truth and knowledge. His essay on Idealism is interesting in that he points out the problems of arguing from "the Gem" (starting an argument from a tautology) yet seems to conveniently ignore the fact that the entire concept of truth is built upon tautology. Oh well, or, as Stove frequently wrote, "Ha ha."

Stove makes passing mention of Wittgenstein but one wonders whether he actually read any of it. Certainly he didn't understand but that doesn't seem to stop Stove in any of his work; perhaps this is one of the best points in the collection. It is better to attack (and ad hominem is certainly acceptable) with shadows and pompous gesturing than with any substance when one feels threatened.

The real reason to read Stove is the fact that he was the perfect foil to the other holy grail of his age: Darwinism. If ever one requires a yin to Dawkins' sanctimonious pandering then Stove would be my choice. He slices and, at times, bludgeons Dawkins' idiotic arguments and puffy prose to expose the rotten core. Read these essays and then return the book to the library.

An early sally countering irrational trends in humanities studies, Kimball provides an overview of the impact of "deconstructionism." He sees the humanities in a state of crisis. At issue is the aim of the "new left" to displace the values established by the Enlightenment, replacing them with "politically correct" ideals. These ideals include "feminist studies," multi-cultural values, and various forms of "text analysis" asserting culture drives scholarship. These new ideals have crossed the Atlantic from their home among modern French "philosophes." Kimball argues these ideals have taken root and spread firmly throughout North American universities. They are eroding the traditional aims of universities to teach critical thinking, replacing that with slogans and a political agenda.

Kimball identifies the "Western canon" - the establishment of a hierarchy of valuable works of literature, history, critical studies based on value. That canon is represented by works of what the British refer to as "the Greats." While conceding that the membership of these "Greats" is Eurocentric, he counters that the Enlightenment has been successfully exported around the world. It is not the writers or critics themselves that have been received successfully elsewhere [although that's often the case], but the methods and values from the Enlightenment that have gained ascendancy. In contrast, the new "postmodernist" thrust seeks to abandon not only the people representing the canon, but the very methods of thinking and writing that gave rise to it.

Recognizing that the movement asserts it is making academia more "democratic," Kimball argues that in scholarship, democracy isn't a replacement for merit. Why, he asks, should a student "place Shakespeare on a par with Bugs Bunny"? Characterising the rise of deconstruction as an "intellectual spree" he mourns its nchallenged wide acceptance. He goes on to present numerous examples of the thinking [or lack of it] expressed by its advocates. The items range from magazine editorial policies to convocations of educators planning curricula. Perhaps the most jarring note is his description of the impact of deconstruction on architecture. Although that seems almost humorously self-contradictory, Kimball provides valid examples.

His presentation is passionate, perhaps even alarming to the unwary reader. A strong advocate of traditional Western ideals, Kimball sprinkles the work with his aversion to Marxist tenets. If the book has a serious shortcoming, it is that blatant political orientation. Since this book was published, other surveys have appeared. None have truly replaced this seminal work in examining the pronouncements of those setting the academic agenda today. This book deserves attention and study. The issues have not faded since it was published.

Roger Kimball's work is a refreshing look at the sad state of the Humanities today. Is the book rather one-sided in its views on the 'culture wars'? Yes, but then again one will not get much vigorous debate on the subject in most Humanities departments today-and this is exactly Mr. Kimball's point. Even putting aside the complete contempt for truth these scholars show, if this neglect and subversion of Humanities departments were simply an academic affair, perhaps Mr. Kimball would sound histrionic, but he clearly identifies the real victims-the students. Indeed, the book comes off at points almost conspiratorial, as Mr. Kimball implies that the failed radical fight these scholars fought while students is now being played out for the hearts and minds of contemporary students. Sadly, that argument is not without some merit. The adolescent postures of these scholars that are lauded as arguments by the so-called 'cultural Left' make amusing, if at times frustrating reading for those accustomed to the naive belief that the universities existed for higher learning in pursuit of such feeble contemporary notions such as truth. Mr. Kimball lances the proponents with their own words and ideas, not their backgrounds or politics, something his opponents should take note of.

exposes the intellectual, moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern university academy. Populated with Leftist retreads from the 60's and teeming with vapid anti-intellectual dogma, today's university professors prattle on endlessly about marxism-leninism-environmentalism-anti-globalism and anti-capitalism, without any connection to the world outside that has passed them by. All the while ignoring the fact that throughout the world, their beloved doctrines of "humanism" and "caring for the oppressed" and "protecting the proletariat" have brutally enslaved more people and are single-handedly responsible for more human misery than any other political system known to humankind. This book clearly and concisely catalogues the absolutely non-sensical (and sometimes frighteningly assinine) drivel modern Leftists (you know them as anti-globalist activists) have been spoonfed by their handlers in the academy. As for criticisms from the Leftists that this book, its author, and other thinkers in the same vein, are "anti-humanist", it's called and ad hominem attack, and it's simply what happens to little minds when they run out of intellectual firepower and are forced to look at the destruction their procrustean dogma has wreaked. All in all, the book is a little dated, but still offers a glimpse into why your son or daughter went off to the university a bright-eyed, intellectually curious student, and came back an inthinking, mind-numbed robot from planet Woodstock.

Roger Kimball has written a very entertaining book tracing the roots of our current cultural malaise from the faux posturings of the Beats, Susan Sontag and Charles Reich, among others, to the present day, where radical thought and politics have become the norm, not only at our universities, museums, and other centers of higher learning, but also in our culture, morays, and seemingly every part of our everyday life.

Kimball is correct in his assessment of the situation. All one need do is to but look around to see the climatic change the 60s has wrought in our culture. Feeling has replaced thought; hedonism has replaced the sense of duty a citizen felt to his or her country or community; tribalism has replaced the sense of unity, as reflected in the current multicultural craze; and the concept of Original Sin has given way to the notion of inner perfectibility.

Of course, as Kimball notes, it didn't just come about because of the radicalism of the 60s; no, the 60s were merely the catalyst for a change that had been building up since the end of World War II. He compares it with the Rousseauian fervor that tore France apart in 1789, and there is some solid justification here, as both Robespierre,the Beats and Sontag alike are children of the Enlightenment, for it was the Enlightenment that stressed the role of reason over that of faith in determining the course of humankind. In other words, man was perfectible, if he would only use his reason. The last World War shook our faith in reason and saw its replacement with a self-fulfilling postmodern philosophy of perfection through feeling. Marxist thought filtered through Freud, with a solid mixture of mysticism, both East and West, thrown into the mix. The Counter-Culture, far from being the antipode to Western culture, instead was absorbed into Western culture, changing it in the process.

But while Kimball gives many fine examples of the intellectual silliness that has engulfed us, including an excellent exposition on the influence of Norman O. Brown (who was way more influential on people I knew than either Sontag or Marcuse, who were too obtuse), he falls woefully short on the "whys" of the matter. How could a philosophy, spawned by people so outside the mainstream, not only triumph, but become the dominant mose of thinking? Can we simply blame it on the anti-Vietnam 60s radicals permeating society? Or is there something else, without which the radicals would come to a complete halt? Why would a culture permit the musical stylings of the last thirty years to set the musical standard? The same for television and movies asx well.

The answer is quite simple and can be found in the amorality that is capitalism. If these stylings were not profitable, they would not exist, while legitimate voices are drowned out as being of little or no commercial potential. The roots of the Counter-Culture can be found in the product of Madison Avenue in the late 50s and early 60s. It is no accident that Allen Ginsburg toiled for Madison Ave. or that Jerry Rubin turned to Wall Street. The Hippie and the Establishmentarian are closer than we think. Witness Bill Clinton. It is the paradox that stops Kimball from reaching the conclusion he is leading us to.

Roger Kimbal augments the growing body of work debunking the myth of the 60s as an epoch of wonderful, progressive times. In the vein of Tom Wolfe and David Horowitz, he fully exposes the media darlings of the time, the Panthers, the Weather Underground, the FSM,Susan Sontag, et. al., as the the morally bankrupt scoundrals they were then and in most cases are still today. Mr. Kimballs unique addition to this work is his distruction of the myth of the Beat generation. Mr. Kimball fully exposes this group of reprobates as the frauds they were, not to mention the laughing stocks and bums they became. Hopefully Mr. Kimball will cross over to the arena of fiction at some point, as Wolfe did, to further enlighten the growing counter culture movement that this body of work is feeding. This is a must read.

I'm old enough to remember a little of what went on politically and culturally in the 1960's, but too young to be conversant when it comes to the noted writers, activists and others who set the tone for the "revolution" that took place toward the end of the postwar baby boom. To me, "The Long March" served as a great documentary introduction to this time period that changed the social agenda for many.

Roger Kimball is a conservative who can't stand the influence of the 1960's (actually, the late 50's through the early 70's) in creating what he calls the "liberal establishment" that evolved from that era. His book is a superbly written (and yes, conservatively biased) account of the progression of thought and activism through a little more than a decade, spurred on by a group of influential artists and "avant-garde" intellectuals of the time. The author focuses primarily on the literary aspects of 60's radicalism, with a wealth of commentary on works by authors/poets such as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Susan Sontag, Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver. In addition, Mr. Kimball chronicles the activism involving the Black Panthers and the student revolts at Berkeley, Cornell and Yale Universities.

Most of Mr. Kimball's efforts are aimed at trashing quotes (literary or otherwise) by every guru that happened to hold sway over the 60's youth and associated political/social "counterculture." I must say, he does a good job of it. He possesses a wonderful way of taking what at the time were much revered literature and speechmaking, and turning them into the most inane, irresponsible drivel one has ever read or heard. The author is particularly unfriendly to pacifists, riot inciters, and advocates of unrestrained sex, drug use, and rock music. Okay, rock 'n' roll ruled, but my views aren't far off from his on the other issues.

What impressed me the most about this book was the author's erudite, witty narrative and his command of the English language. Even though I have no time to get stressed out over what happened 30-40 years ago, I thought this was a great read. That Mr. Kimball's views are right up the conservative alley might leave you either very pleased or horribly distressed. If you happen to think highly of people such as Mailer, Sontag, Leary, Cleaver, or even Tom Hayden, you won't be happy with this book. For others, note the perspective, keep an open mind, and enjoy reading.

IF you like the FOX NEWS CHANNEL or the 700 CLUB, this is the book for you. Since the authors are clearly far-rightists and much more "elitist" in their thinking than anyone can possibly imagine, its amazing to see them defending principles of "Freedom" against the encroachment of the state and its "elites", until you realize that what is being bemoaned is the "natural" elite's eroding ability (as these cranks see it) to exploit and suppress the mob of unwashed scum (blacks, women, etc.) who insist on being treated decently when we all KNOW they are all INFERIOR, right?

Add the authors' names to the list of those NOT TO BE SAVED.

This olio of essays explores a variety of factions where true liberalism has been hijacked by groups with an agenda that is anything but liberal. In issues as diverse as tobacco to gun control to federal funding of the arts, the modern so-called liberals are virtually identical in their beliefs to Adolph Hitler-someone who never wore the title of liberal.

The nine authors are a mixed lot, but all have obviously done their homework, and even the less-than-stellar efforts will stimulate any open mind. Some of the pieces prove very readable, while getting through others is a tad of a struggle. Among the strongest are Robert Conquest's "Liberals and Totalitarianism" which examines the growing unnatural alliance between these strangest of political bedfellows. His reasoned suasion piqued my interest to read his current "Reflections of a Ravaged Century." Australian thinker Keith Windscuttle (an unusual last name must have been a prerequisite for contributing to this tome) covers "Liberalism and Imperialism" in another standout exploration.

Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball who co-edited the volume contributed a joint exordium that clearly sets the parameters of this disquisition. Kimball also contributes an essay on the philosophy of freedom that contains this courageous common sense gem, "notwithstanding the slogans of our cultural commissars, 'diversity' itself is neither good nor bad." Despite the somewhat sluggish pace of a few entries, this concoction warrants a perusal especially by those pure liberals who resent the piracy of their nomenclature.

This collection of papers explores various aspects of the decline of the liberal movement, ostensibly dedicated to peace and freedom, sweetness and light, into the coercive utopian form that dominates in the western world at the present time. As a result of this process the term liberalism has ceased to mean anything unless it is qualified in some way.

All of the contributors have something valuable to offer, especially Keith Windshuttle and Robert Conquest. Windschuttle has studied the waxing and waning fortunes of British liberalism, especially in relation to imperialism and the Empire. Adam Smith and David Hume saw no future for overseas dominions other than as friendly trading partners and similar views were held by the 19th century Manchester radicals such as Cobden and Bright. However one evil led to another because the threat of Napoleon prompted Britain to establish a worldwide system of naval bases to protect their sea trade and later these became the entry points for colonization of the pink coloured empire that extended around the globe. The philosophical counterpart of this movement was the philosophy of T H Green and the later Mill. The new nationalism and jingoism of the late 19th century resulted in some of the most squalid episodes in British history, of which the worst was probably the Boer War.

Robert Conquest's essay examines the record and credibility of the fellow-travelers with communism. During the Cold War Arthur Koestler speculated that the future of civilization might depend on the outcome of the struggle between communists and ex-communists because only ex-communists could comprehend how the cause could capture the loyalties of some of the best of men and also the worst of men. The best had to undergo crises of conscience when the reality could not be avoided. Little Louie, the fictional communist dockworker in Darkness at Noon committed suicide but more sophisticated western fellow travelers generally lack his integrity.

The collection has strengths and weaknesses. First the positives.For a long time it has been apparent that true liberalism could win any number of battles on economic policy but still lose the war through being outflanked on the cultural front. It often seems that true liberals of the libertarian kind have not been very active on this front or even aware of the issues at stake. Conservatives tend to be more alert to the dangers in this area and more active in responding to them, as the contributors to this collection have done.

Some market liberals may need to be reminded that we do not live by bread and technology alone. Our lives gain meaning and purpose from the myths and traditions which constitute our non-material heritage. At a lower but no less important level our daily transactions are dignified and lubricated by civility and good manners. Both the higher and lower orders of this fragile structure of civilisation are perpetuated by
cultural practices and by institutions such as the family and the universities. Many of these freedom-enhancing and life-enriching traditions, like the private domain itself, are under threat from various doctrines of the debased kind of liberalism that is targeted in this collection of essays. Many schools of thought which run counter to true liberalism are part of intellectual heritage. For this reason, if we lose the capacity to subject our tradition heritage to imaginative criticism, we run the risk that the good tendencies will be driven out by the bad. Some would say that this process is well advanced.

On the negative side, those contributors to this book who take up philosophical issues have hardly drawn upon the two most powerful liberal philosophers of our time, namely Hayek and Popper. There are some fleeting references to Hayek but none at all to Popper. This is rather like going into a big ball game with your two strongest players on the bench. Some of the contributors (Scruton, Kimball and Windschuttle) would probably not even want Popper on the squad,
judging from their comments on his work in other places.

The economic agenda of liberalism was not under the spotlight in this collection, still it was disconcerting to find that John Silber comes across as an unreconstructed New Dealer. Hadley Arkes, writing on "Liberalism and the Law" deplored the equivocation of Justice Harlan faced with a youth in his courthouse wearing a coat emblazoned with "Fxxxx the Draft". No doubt this was an obscene act but the conscription of young man for Vietnam was the great obscenity of the time, not only in its own right but for the way that it resulted in the loss of the war (through loss of support at home) after it had been effectively won on the ground in Vietnam. In the same way that conscription was the great moral mistake of the sixties, the War on Drugs threatens to shred the fabric of civil liberties and due process in our time. John O'Sullivan referred to the fall in crime "plainly the result of greater use of imprisonment" but the fall in crime is much more likely to be result of demographic factors (and possibly abortion law reform two decades ago) while the rise of imprisonment is a result of the War on Drugs. Another factor that undermines respect for even-handed justice and promotes racial tension is the racism of aggressive affirmative action programs such as college set asides and quotas for hiring.

Hayek pointed out that there are tensions between conservatives and Old Whigs, even while we form common cause against radicals and modern liberals (someone wrote "I vote libertarian if I can, otherwise I hold my nose and vote Republican"). These tensions
need to be explored so that economic liberals become more attuned to the culture war and conservatives become more sensitive to the erosion of freedoms by the State when it attempts to act as a custodian of morals.

I happen to think a great deal of good has been created by DWM (dead white males), and that they have much to say to us, despite the homogeneity of their ilk. But, these writers' prejudices about incidental matters (e.g., homosexuality) tend to throw the authors off subject into temperamental tangents of irritating, often infuriating, polemics. Indeed, this tendency among these so-called conservative illuminati make them seem borish, immature, and wildly inflammatory about all the wrong things. Rather than lead us to appreciate the "best" in human history, after the excellence of Matthew Arnold, they tend to approach the matter by eloquent straw man sophistry. It makes them appear collectively as myopic narcisists, whose only worldview is what they hate. I hate "jello," but what relevance does jello have with the excellence of a Berlioz composition? About as much as homosexuality has to the excellence of John Maynard Keynes' economics. Shooting the tree and getting lost in the forest is not a good sign for any critic; yet, nearly all are "victims" of this polemic. For individuals who despise victimhood, they fail to see their essays are filled with it; what they write often begets the very thing they profess to deplore. As articulate as these essays are, they are not very well-written. If looking to the past opens doors to the future, then reading Allen Tate, Isaiah Berlin, and Aldous Huxley are much better road maps to great ideas and fine literature, and much better critics than most of these amateurs.

Now I have to read this work. Could it possibly be more "irritating" than the January fifth review?! We shall see. All in all, it sounds like the perfect antitode to today's unconscious and helpless relativism.

This is a brilliant and compulsive book, though in its dissection of our cultural malaise far more terrifying than any escapade by Hannibal Lecter. Read it if you care about the future of civilization.