Intellectuals - Paul Johnson

Intellectuals

By Paul Johnson

  • Release Date: 2009-10-13
  • Genre: Literary Criticism
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 24 Ratings

Description

"Johnson revels in all the wicked things these great thinkers have done...great fun to read."  — New York Times Book Review

A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, and Noam Chomsky, among others, are revealed as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.

Reviews

  • Intellectuals

    4
    By ClairDC
    This book exposes the motivations, character, foibles, flaws, and hubris of a number of influential persons in the liberal stable. What pleased me the most about the book was how well acquainted I felt with each person in such a short treatment. I was struck with the similarity in personality traits among the group and how the effects of their personal flaws have found their way into liberal doctrines and policies pursued by the left today. I found the book engaging and intellectually stimulating. It is intimate without being sordid. It takes a somewhat judgmental tone occasionally, but there is no sugar coating intellectual dishonesty and outright lying in order to promote an insidious cause. I very much enjoyed it

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