The text of the book was published in the 1963, during the high times of the Kennedy administration. The short preface to the volume includes this evaluation of American social attitudes: :vii The author wrote that he used the idea of anti-intellectualism as "a device for looking at various aspects, hardly the most appealing, of American culture." :vii Nicholas Lemann, Pulitzer-Moore Professor of Journalism at Columbia, has written "When somebody mentions 'anti-intellectualism', Richard Hofstadter's book usually comes to mind as the place where the problem was defined." The complex of ideas, moods and attitudes designated as anti-intellectual is for Hofstadter, "a resentment and suspicion of life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life." He received his first Pulitzer for The Age of Reform in 1956. Hofstadter was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize for this work in the category of non-fiction in 1964. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that " my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."Īnti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) is a classic work on the subject of American intellectuals and their critics. “ ”There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.
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