About the Author:
CURTIS WHITE is the author of the novels Memories of My Father Watching TV and Requiem. A widely acclaimed essayist, he has had work appear in Harper’s Magazine, Context, Lapham’s Quarterly, Orion, and Playboy. His book The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves was an international bestseller in 2003.
Review:
“A symptomatic tour of the real sense of anxiety about the disenchantment of all those qualities that make us feel most alive and unique in the world.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“[White's] brisk takedowns of Hitchens, Hawking, Krauss, Lehrer and others are sharp and necessary, wielding elementary logic against figures who should know better. [White shows] just how easily good science can shade into the self-aggrandizing ideology of scientism.”
—Mark Kingwell, GLOBE AND MAIL
“There’s certainly a very real need to march on that citadel, because the idea that there can be only one kind of truth has to be deeply damaging to the intellectual development of a culture.”
—Mark O’Connell, SLATE
“An important and necessary book.”
—PHILADELPHIA REVIEW OF BOOKS
“Thoroughly well researched and astutely put... An essential read.”
—POPMATTERS
“White’s prose is fluid and often enjoyable... White clearly knows his stuff when it comes to classic literature, and offers an interesting sidebar on the development of Romanticism.”
—Willamette Week
“A bracing and necessary critique by an able arguer.”
—TORONTO STAR, Books of Note
“A highly readable yet powerful defense of the importance of the humanities against those who believe science to be the last interpretative framework standing. It is destined to become a classic among artists, dreamers, revolutionaries, and anyone who, like Kierkegaard, believes asking questions to be as important a quest as finding answers.”
—TOTTENVILLE REVIEW
“An enjoyable and worthwhile read."
—CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL
“A witty critique of scientific overreach that celebrates the totality of human achievement.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
Praise for Curtis White and The Middle Mind
“Cogent, acute, beautiful, merciless, and true.” —David Foster Wallace
“Re-visioning the world takes brawling muscle and a sneer. Curtis White gots that.” —Andrei Codrescu
“The most inspiringly wicked social critic of the moment . . . White exalts the subversive pleasures of the imagination, not simply as a tactic for individual psychic survival, but also as a spark for collective engagement.” —Will Blythe
“Curtis White writes out of an admirable intellectual sophistication combined with viscerality, pain, and humor.” —John Barth
“A master of bewitchments, parodies, and dazzling tropes.” —Paul Auster
“Not the least pleasure in reading the book resides in the refreshing malevolent irony that transpires from every page. Absolutely indispensable.” —Slavoj i ek
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