History Askew

Professor Berman’s earlier A Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Plays may have been helpful. I wouldn’t know. His present guide to the intellectual life of the sixties, however, is not of much use.

Both title and subtitle are misleading. This is not an intellectual history of the sixties—it does not even mention major works in the humanities or the social sciences and history that have been of marked influence in the last few years. It is, rather, a collection of literally hundreds of quotes, mainly from the periodical literature of the last few years, with particular attention to publications of the Old and New Left. The author quotes liberally from a wide gamut of journals ranging all the way from Commentary and Dissent to Studies on the Left and Fuck You, a magazine of the Arts. Though politically conservative, Professor Berman is guided by very liberal principles of selection.

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