Description
Book SynopsisThe concept of the public intellectual has a rich and colorful history. It began in the early twentieth century, when the new mass media catapulted intellectuals who were able to write for the general public to semi-stardom. The first wave included figures like Walter Lippmann--who coined the term stereotype and is widely considered the founder of media studies--and by the 1950s, public intellectuals as a species had become a powerful and influential force in the American cultural landscape. By the 1970s, the standard definition of the public intellectual had solidified: a person (often university-affiliated, but not always) able to discuss and dispute any serious issue, typically in venues like The New York Review of Books, and occasionally influence politics. The traditional definition of the public intellectual remains with us, but as Daniel W. Drezner shows in The Ideas Industry, it has been gradually supplanted by a new model in recent years: the thought leader. In contrast to pub
Trade ReviewDrezner is a lively and engaging writer...Throughout the book he is balanced and measured, recognizing that the new era comes with benefits as well as drawbacks. * Nikita Lalwani and Sam Winter-Levy, Times Literary Supplement *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Transmogrification Chapter 1: Do Ideas Even Matter? Chapter 2: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Changing the Marketplace of Ideas Chapter 3: Academia and the War on College Chapter 4: The Disciplines, or, Why Economics Thrives while Political Science Survives in the Ideas Industry Chapter 5: The Think Tank Revolution Chapter 6: The Booming Private Market for Public Ideas
