A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books

Beam, Alex

ISBN 10: 1586484877 / ISBN 13: 9781586484873

Published by PublicAffairs, New York, 2008

About this Item

pp. vii, 245. 8vo. Black and white photographs. Very good+ in very good+ dustjacket.

Seller Inventory # 053268

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
• Publisher: PublicAffairs, New York
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586484877
• ISBN 13: 9781586484873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literary Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

Today the classics of the western canon, written by the proverbial “dead white men,” are cannon fodder in the culture wars. But in the 1950s and 1960s, they were a pop culture phenomenon. The Great Books of Western Civilization, fifty-four volumes chosen by intellectuals at the University of Chicago, began as an educational movement, and evolved into a successful marketing idea. Why did a million American households buy books by Hippocrates and Nicomachus from door-to-door salesmen? And how and why did the great books fall out of fashion?

In A Great Idea at the Time Alex Beam explores the Great Books mania, in an entertaining and strangely poignant portrait of American popular culture on the threshold of the television age. Populated with memorable characters, A Great Idea at the Time will leave readers asking themselves: Have I read Lucretius's De Rerum Natura lately? If not, why not?

About the Author

Alex Beam is an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, the New York Times and many other magazines. The author of Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, and of two novels, he lives in Boston.