The Free World:Art and Thought

by Louis Menand

A Book Review

Howard Hunter

A death knell for the Humanities has sounded for some time. Roughly four percent of college students major in literature, history, philosophy, or foreign language. For those who see this as a concern (and there aren’t many who do), there is always a society to blame that values technology and STEM. But if the truth be told, we can look to universities themselves, home to arcane literary theory and research driven by ideology and academic self-interest rather than disinterested inquiry. Nevertheless, there is a disconnect here because there is no shortage of good books written for the public by members of the vaunted academy—a veritable “substance of things hoped for” offered to those who think ideas matter.

One of the more prolific of the public scholars is Louis Menand, Harvard English professor and regular columnist for The New Yorker. Referred to by one critic as “The Great Explainer,” Menand articulates complex ideas with economy and lucidity without dumbing down. His Pulitzer-winning work TheMetaphysicalClub traces the development of American Pragmatism after the Civil War, the only original and coherent philosophical movement in the history of the United States. It fostered a whole new way of thinking at the dawn of the 20th century and fueled significant changes in the social sciences, jurisprudence, and education. Ideas bounce off the pages through notable interconnected figures as John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Chauncey Wright, Charles Peirce, Jane Addams, and Alaine Locke.

Menand’s latest tome, TheFreeWorld:ArtandThoughtintheColdWar, attempts to once again explain ideas through 30 personages loosely connected across generations from World War II to the debacle in Vietnam thirty years later. The Free World may be a bridge too far in that it lacks the focus of TheMetaphysicalClub, and 727 pages minus the notes can be a bit daunting. But it’s worth it, even in parts (see the earlier essay “Reading History”). Art, literature, music, philosophy, and