Edmundson's literary interests aren't as wide-ranging as you would think - he likes the Romantics, Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Whitman, Emerson, etc. In the Romanticism class I took with him, all of these thinkers were touched on, with the occasional reference to Beck or the Notorious B.I.G. to appeal to the Gen Xers. I left the class with more to think about, which is a sign of good teaching. I got interested in John Keats especially, who is the least cosmic of the Romantic bunch, but probably the most gifted with language

This lucid defense of the humanities and critique of the corporate university feels weary. We have essentially lost this battle. There are no literary heroes held up by the mainstream to point the way forward. We are much more concerned with the fate of UVa's basketball team than about its soul as academic institution.

I am guilty of having the collector's mindset about my own intellectual pursuits, as evidenced by the relentless cataloguing of everything I read on this website. I have very rarely been transformed by a book, although Dostoevsky gets me there, as does Austen and Dickens, along with a lot of poetry (Dickinson, Yeats, Lowell). The trap in modern society is for easy answers, a Manichean polarization, enmity towards those who disagree. The humanities should be our shared culture, our shared heritage. Unfortunately, the academy has turned the liberal arts into another political battlefield. By doing so, they have muddied the waters and turned education into a political position instead of the process not only of soulmaking but also of citizenship. Everyone in American should read Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man before they can join the conversation on race.

Let's save literature! Let's save our souls! ( )

Though Edmundson can be a bit pretentious/self-congratulatory at times, his essays are very thought-provoking. He calls to account the "business" of higher education and presents a chilling glimpse of the current college student's mindset and how the activity carousel we have our younger children spinning on contributes to it. Ouch! ( )

This collection of previously published essays offers witty, scathing critiques of higher education. A recurring theme in Edmundson's critique is the commercialization of higher education where colleges and universities are more focused on marketing themselves than educating people. The student has become the customer who is always right and the job of the educator is to provide tools to the students so that they can become better tools of our society and fit into the global economy. Edmundson rightly fears for the future of the humanities as it is increasingly marginalized in favor of more utilitarian and profitable departments. These essays remind me of Richard Mitchell, a wonderful professor I had as an undergraduate at Glassboro State College, who wrote his own erudite, acerbic and wickedly funny critique of education, The Graves of Academe. That book, published over thirty years ago, seems more relevant than ever. Essential reading for anyone with a stake in the future of high education. ( )

A book of essays that center on the value of education and the ways an education these days is diverging from the path of an education in the past. Thoughtful. ( )