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The Haymarket Series
Professors, Politics and Pop
“It is frightening to think the [Jon Wiener] teaches history at a university ... ”—Jacques Derrida
“Wiener takes the modern university as his beat, and covers it like a police reporter ... Wiener’s mean streets are the think tank, the scholarly symposium, and the faculty lounge. And when he’s had enough of this academic low life, he listens to Elvis, Springsteen and the Beatles. He even listens to Frank Sinatra.”—John Leonard
“In this book, Jon Wiener demonstrates his great skill as guerrilla sharpshooter in the forty-year war that the National Security State has been conducting against the American people. These reports from the field—the resistance—illuminate Nixon and Watergate as never before, reveal in fascinating detail the turbulence within Academe, invoke pity if not awe for that unexpected victim of state, Frank Sinatra.”—Gore Vidal
“Wiener is good at spotting, and blasting, paranoid fantasy and incompetence in high (and low) places and his range of targets is impressively wide ... [his] surveys are lucid, trenchant and brief.”— Observer
“Wiener takes the modern university as his beat, and covers it like a police reporter ... Wiener’s mean streets are the think tank, the scholarly symposium, and the faculty lounge. And when he’s had enough of this academic low life, he listens to Elvis, Springsteen and the Beatles. He even listens to Frank Sinatra.”—John Leonard
“In this book, Jon Wiener demonstrates his great skill as guerrilla sharpshooter in the forty-year war that the National Security State has been conducting against the American people. These reports from the field—the resistance—illuminate Nixon and Watergate as never before, reveal in fascinating detail the turbulence within Academe, invoke pity if not awe for that unexpected victim of state, Frank Sinatra.”—Gore Vidal
“Wiener is good at spotting, and blasting, paranoid fantasy and incompetence in high (and low) places and his range of targets is impressively wide ... [his] surveys are lucid, trenchant and brief.”— Observer
- GenresPolitics
366 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 7, 2016
This is a collection of (mostly) previously published articles dating from the 70s to the early 90s. Most appeared originally in The Nation. Most notable to me was his "Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History 1950-1980", which appeared in The Journal of American History. This and a number of other pieces concern themselves with the transformation of the historical profession occurring as a result of the rise of the New Left in the sixties. Having then thought I might become an historian myself and being close to a number of others who actually pursued the field, these articles were of interest because I had had some glancing acquaintance with some of the figures discussed and some real involvement in some of their products. Beyond these more serious pieces having to do with historiography, the book concludes with a series of essays, some rather amusing, about popular culture.
Displaying 1 of 1 review