Description
Book SynopsisPublishing tycoon Henry Luce famously championed many conservative causes, and his views as a capitalist and cold warrior were reflected in his glossy publications. Republican Luce aimed squarely for the Middle American masses, yet his magazines attracted intellectually and politically ambitious minds who were moved by the democratic aspirations of the New Deal and the left. Much of the best work of intellectuals such as James Agee, Archibald MacLeish, Daniel Bell, John Hersey, and Walker Evans owes a great debt to their experiences writing for Luce and his publications.
Intellectuals Incorporated tells the story of the serious writers and artists who worked for Henry Luce and his magazines Time, Fortune, and Life between 1923 and 1960, the period when the relationship between intellectuals, the culture industry, and corporate capitalism assumed its modern form. Countering the notions that working for corporations means selling out and that the true
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"For a while [Henry Luce's] stable at Fortune included Dwight MacDonald, Archibald MacLeish, James Agee, and Walker Evans. . . . Their struggles with Luce and with one another are deftly evoked by Robert Vanderlan in Intellectuals Incorporated." * Jackson Lears, New Republic *
"Intellectuals Incorporated is a bracing contribution to American intellectual history. It is full of well-drawn biographical portraits, and through them Vanderlan analyzes a dynamic whereby intellectuals transform and are transformed by the world around them. The book reveals the complexity of this process, and Vanderlan writes about multiple paradoxes with originality and insight." * Michael Kimmage, New Republic *
Table of Contents
Introduction: Intellectuals in Mass Culture America
Chapter One: On the Road to Time Inc.
Chapter Two: Giving the People the Truth the Time Inc. Way
Chapter Three: The Search for a "Radical Capitalism" at Fortune Magazine
Chapter Four: Intellectuals Visible and Invisible
Chapter Five: The Intellectual as Insider at Time Inc.
Chapter Six: Journalism and Politics at Time Magazine
Chapter Seven: Interstitial Intellectuals and the Liberal Consensus
Epilogue: Intellectuals in Their American Century and in Ours
Archival Sources and Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
