Review of 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
An interesting and carefully reasoned but possibly over exhaustive history of anti-intellectual tendencies in the U.S., starting with the religious evangelical movement in the 18th and 19th centuries up until the early 1960s, and including trends in education and politics. The book was published shortly after the McCarthy era and offers a theoretical basis for motives that drove Senator McCarthy and his allies to persecute intellectuals and artists of the time.
Hofstadter highlights how over history the American emphasis on practicality usually manages to one up ideas offered by intellectuals who have often been looked on as "elite" and "effeminate". Just substitute "woke" for intellectual and the book offers at least a partial explanation of why our country is so divided today. Sadly missing is a discussion of race in anti-intellectualism, although it's easy to extrapolate from its evangelical roots, since race features so prominently in American Evangelicism.
