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In these perceptive essays, the highly regarded historian Gertrude Himmelfarb critically examines the cultural and ideological fashions of contemporary America. She analyzes the intellectual arrogance and spiritual impoverishment at the heart of such current academic movements in history, literature, and philosophy as structuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism - and shows how they have led to the belittling of one of the great tragedies of all time, the Holocaust.
And she demonstrates the intimate, pervasive relationship between what is taught in our universities and what happens in society.
She describes how the very idea of the "abyss" is made trivial and banal; how the role of the hero in history is being usurped by the writer of history; how with the end of the Cold War the greatest threat to liberalism is liberalism itself, how the link between nationalism and religion has been dangerously ignored; and how the relativization of history leads to its de-moralization and de-humanization.
Provocative and incisive, Gertrude Himmelfarb's writings force us to examine our ideas about the troubling issues that concern our society and culture today.
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Subjects
Intellectual life, Civilization, New York Times reviewedPlaces
United StatesTimes
1970-, 20th centuryShowing 2 featured editions. View all 2 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society
January 31, 1995, Vintage
Paperback
in English
0679759239 9780679759232
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2
On looking into the Abyss: untimely thoughts on culture and society
1994, Knopf
in English
- 1st ed.
0679428267 9780679428268
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WorldCat
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- Created April 29, 2008
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August 6, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
April 14, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the edition. |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |