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Richard Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Uncollected Essays 1956-1965

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Here for the first time in a single authoritative annotated edition are two masterworks by one of America’s greatest historians, Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970). In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) and in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), Hofstadter offered groundbreaking and still urgent analyses of deep undercurrents in American life: a stubborn, irrepressible opposition to rationality, expertise, and higher learning, and the destabilizing pull exercised by conspiratorial movements on the right and left.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life is at once a sweeping history of hostile attitudes toward ideas in the United States and, by Hofstadter’s own account, a deeply personal work of analysis, prompted by the “atmosphere of fervent malice and humorless imbecility” stirred up by McCarthyism. Dissecting the political and social uses of ignorance by demagogues, crusaders, self-help gurus, and even reformers assured of their own good intentions, Anti-Intellectualism uncovers a persistent, multifaceted feature of our national culture. It remains an essential resource for our time, fulfilling, in the words of Susan Jacoby, “the dream of every historian to produce a work that endures and provides the foundation for insights that may lie decades or centuries in the future.”

“American political life,” Hofstadter writes at the beginning of The Paranoid Style, a book so powerful its title has entered the lexicon of modern political disorders, “has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.” Examining the rhetoric and mindset of figures outside the political mainstream who tapped into the fears and conspiratorial thinking of large constituencies, the book reveals how unruly political movements—from Freemasonry to Populism to the John Birch Society and the rise of Barry Goldwater—have played an outsized role in our nation’s history.

Intellectually omnivorous and an engaging and elegant stylist, Hofstadter wrote widely while working on these two books in the 1950s and 1960s. Included here are his most trenchant uncollected writings from the period: discussions of the Constitution’s framers, the personality and legacy of FDR, higher education and its discontents, the rise and fall of the antitrust movement, and the genius of Alexis de Tocqueville, among other subjects. Several essays reveal the profound shock of Goldwater’s nomination as the Republican nominee for president in 1964, which in Hofstadter’s view brought closer the troubling prospect that “the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”

1000 pages, Hardcover

Published April 21, 2020

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About the author

Richard Hofstadter

79 books294 followers
Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual, historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. In the course of his career, Hofstadter became the “iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus” whom twenty-first century scholars continue consulting, because his intellectually engaging books and essays continue to illuminate contemporary history.

His most important works are Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944); The American Political Tradition (1948); The Age of Reform (1955); Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), and the essays collected in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an unsentimental analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and in 1964 for the cultural history, Anti-intellectualism in American Life.

Richard Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a German American Lutheran mother and a Polish Jewish father, who died when he was ten. He attended the City Honors School, then studied philosophy and history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1933, under the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. As he matured, he culturally identified himself primarily as a Jew, rather than as a Protestant Christian, a stance that eventually may have cost him professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, because of the institutional antisemitism of the 1940s.

As a man of his time, Richard Hofstadter was a Communist, and a member of the Young Communist League at university, and later progressed to Communist Party membership. In 1936, he entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where Merle Curti was demonstrating how to synthesize intellectual, social, and political history based upon secondary sources rather than primary-source archival research. In 1938, he joined the Communist Party of the USA, yet realistically qualified his action: “I join without enthusiasm, but with a sense of obligation.... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking.... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now.” In late 1939, he ended the Communist stage of his life, because of the Soviet–Nazi alliance. He remained anti-capitalist: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.”

In 1942, he earned his doctorate in history and in 1944 published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, a pithy and commercially successful (200,000 copies) critique of late 19th century American capitalism and those who espoused its ruthless “dog-eat-dog” economic competition and justified themselves by invoking the doctrine of as Social Darwinism, identified with William Graham Sumner. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, however, disagree with this interpretation.

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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Greg.
809 reviews61 followers
June 4, 2020
Since Richard Hofstadter was one of the historians who most influenced me as a college and graduate student, I jumped at the chance to purchase this collection of some of his most notable works from the Library of America.

The first half of the collection (487 out of a total of 967 pages of text) contains his book, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," a review of which I published a few weeks ago.

The second half is a collection of shorter works and essays, including his fascinating "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a subject quite topical for our own tim, given the popularity of conspiracy theories and pervasive tribalism today.

Some of the essays retain a relatively timeless quality and interest -- such as, those dealing with "Cuba, the Philippines, and Manifest Destiny," the sputtering antitrust movement, the 19th century fascination with silver and monetary policy, changes in higher education, history and the social sciences, the phenomenon of "social Darwinism" (in which Darwin's findings were used by many to support racial prejudices and colonial adventures), Alexis de Tocqueville, and the political and intellectual thought informing the Founders and FDR. A few others, such as his essays on the "Right" of his time (an exemplified by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Senator Barry Goldwater) and several on Goldwater specifically, are understandably more time-bound and, to me, of less interest now.

Hofstadter is a graceful writer with always interesting and insightful views.

This volume would be a welcome addition to the library of anyone who loves American history.

Profile Image for Ed Kazyanskaya.
112 reviews
September 30, 2020
I had previously heard much of Richard Hofstadter but never got around to reading any of his work until #LibraryOfAmerica published this volume of some of his most vital works, which I obtained through #Netgalley. Just a handful of pages into Anti-Intellectualism In American Life and I was both stunned and disheartened as to how little has changed in this nation in the centuries since our founding down through contemporary times. His message there and in many of the other essays collected in this volume, especially The Paranoid Style in American Politics and any of the numerous essays on Goldwater is unfortunately even more relevant now than at the time of writing. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in understanding how the Republican party has come so dangerously close to flirting with fascism and authoritarianism.

The only flaws are mild in nature. A long discourse on the Free Silver movement failed to hold my interest for its entire length. There were also multiple essays on Goldwater and higher education, such that many passages and information ended up being repeated between these.
Profile Image for Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett.
628 reviews35 followers
April 27, 2021
Though I can’t remember how I came to know of this Pulitzer Prize winning book, I’m not surprised I did. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was published by Richard Hofstadter in 1963 partially in response to McCarthyism.

But, wow! Hofstadter’s argument could have been written last year about the previous 50 years of American history. That’s why I say I’m not surprised—I’m sure, somewhere in my reading travels, someone mentioned Hofstadter’s book as prophetic.

This isn’t an easy or quick read though—as is appropriate from the title I suppose. Though dense, the argumentation and support is keen and levelheaded. It isn’t complex for complexity’s sake—I don’t think I had to use the dictionary once while reading; it’s that Hofstadter has such a deep knowledge of sociology, philosophy, and history that it would be incomplete if he didn’t bring all of it to bear on his topic.

Though I probably copied about 15% of the book into my journal, I’m not going to summarize its arguments for fear of both verbosity and oversimplifying.

It didn’t hurt that I read Hofstadter at a PERFECT place in my reading life. Having just finished Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve and Walter Isaacson’s biography of da Vinci, I was ready for this book, desperate for Hofstadter’s wisdom.

For ME, this was a must read given our toxic sociopolitical climate and the rise of Manichean fundamentalism in all of its forms. We’ve heard: “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not their own facts.” Taking it one step further, along with Hofstadter, I’d argue that not every opinion is “equal” in value. I intentionally expose myself to ideas I don’t agree with, and I spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money on educating myself. All of that doesn’t make me “right,” all the time—quite the contrary, as Hofstadter points out, this deep study mainly nurtures an appreciation of complexity, nuance, and negative capability. When I discuss/debate things with people who are CERTAIN of something, especially because they FEEL it to be so, I remain unimpressed. Now more than ever.
Profile Image for Gregg.
22 reviews3 followers
November 9, 2021
Nothing ever changes.....it just gets louder and stupider....

Swap out the old names with current ones and this could have been written today. Excellent insight into the psyche of America.
Profile Image for Ben.
427 reviews45 followers
July 30, 2022
One reason why the political intelligence of our time is so incredulous and uncomprehending in the presence of the right-wing mind is that it does not reckon fully with the essentially theological concern that underlies right-wing views of the world. Characteristically, the political intelligence, if it is to operate at all as a kind of civic force rather than as a mere set of maneuvers to advance this or that special interest, must have its own way of handling the facts of life and of forming strategies. It accepts conflicts as a central and enduring reality and understands human society as a form of equipoise based upon the continuing process of compromise. It shuns ultimate showdowns and looks upon the ideal of total partisan victory as unattainable, as merely another variety of threat to the kind of balance with which it is familiar. It is sensitive to nuances and sees things in degrees. It is essentially relativist and skeptical, but at the same time circumspect and humane.

The fundamentalist mind will have nothing to do with all this: it is essentially Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan?) and can tolerate no ambiguities. It cannot find serious importance in what it believes to be trifling degrees of difference: liberals support measures that are for all practical purposes socialistic, and socialism is nothing more than a variant of Communism, which, as everyone knows, is atheism. Whereas the distinctively political intelligence begins with the political world, and attempts to make an assessment of how far a given set of goals can in fact be realized in the face of a certain balance of opposing forces, the secularized fundamentalist mind begins with a definition of that which is absolutely right, and looks upon politics as an arena in which that right must be realized. It cannot think, for example, of the cold war as a question of mundane politics -- that is to say, as a conflict between two systems of power that are compelled in some degree to accommodate each other in order to survive -- but only as a clash of faiths. It is not concerned with the realities of power -- with the fact, say, that the Soviets have the bomb -- but with the spiritual battle with the Communist, preferably the domestic Communist, whose reality does not consist in what he does, or even in the fact that he exists, but who represents, rather, an archetypal opponent in a spiritual wrestling match. He has not one whit less reality because the fundamentalists have never met him in the flesh.

The issues of the actual world are hence transformed into a spiritual Armageddon, an ultimate reality, in which any reference to day-by-day actualities has the character of an allegorical illustration, and not of the empirical evidence that ordinary men offer for ordinary conclusions. Thus, when a right-wing leader accuses Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a conscious, dedicated agent of the international Communist conspiracy, he may seem demented, by the usual criteria of the political intelligence; but, more accurately, I believe, he is quite literally out of this world. What he is trying to account for is not Eisenhower's actual political behavior, as men commonly understand it, but Eisenhower's place, as a kind of fallen angel, in the realm of ultimate moral and spiritual values, which to him has infinitely greater reality than mundane politics. Seen in this light, the accusation is no longer quite so willfully perverse, but appears in its proper character as a kind of sublime nonsense. Credo quia absurdum est.
214 reviews17 followers
October 31, 2020
Hofstadter's writing was what originally captivated my attention for good writing in history. While I don't necessarily agree with every argument he makes, I think it's pretty clear that he's an example of a very readable historian. Much can be said about "Anti-Intellectualism" and "Paranoid Style"- they're bedrocks of consensus history; and although they were written in a different context, I think they speak to us today.

This collection also contains some lesser known and unpublished works by Hofstadter that are good reads as well. I particularly liked his essay on the nature of historical writing, questioning whether historians should focus on analytical monographs or narrative histories that tell a larger story. His answer is that great history blends both (a feat much easier stated than produced).

If you are looking for a collection to do deep dive into a famous historian, look no further. Wilentz, an eminent historian himself, has produced a great volume that certainly will let us see Hofstadter's changes, in what he writes about and how. The only drawback is that I wish there would have been something from the Age of Reform, Hofstadter's first major work that brought him recognition. I feel that a lot of that work finds its way into his subsequent writing. However, this is a great collection from a historian that continues to be the focus of historiographical exploration.
Profile Image for Jose Angelo.
29 reviews
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January 9, 2023
I finally finished this fuckin text! Don't recall how long it took me, but it is a compendium of essays and it lends itself to taking your sweet ass time. Nonetheless, much respect for Mr. Hofstadter. Anybody who gives a shit about Amerikin history, particularly contemporary Amerikin history, will enjoy this collection. Hofstadter is an intellect of the grandest order, and that's not saying much considering how unintellectual Amerikin intellectuals actually are. Hence, the irony of the title of his major essay. I would say this collection was a premonition and a correct historical analysis of the extreme right-wing to come in contemporary Amerikin life. If you don't understand why the United States of Amerika is so fuckin fascist right wing and racist white supremacist, then perhaps the digging divulgence of many of these essays will shed light on your stupid Amerikin ass! None of this was shocking or a surprise to me. But then again I'm brown... and I read.. and know how to think. What a miracle! Libtards Beware!!!
Profile Image for Richard.
267 reviews
February 21, 2021
Very depressing reading though certainly no news about the state of intellectualism in US life. The truly galling aspect of it is the educationists, of all people, who have doubled down on the avoidance of anything recognizable as standards of excellence. It is easy to believe the stories of the warehousing of students, especially on racial grounds, because, after all. . . .

Hofstadter's work reflects his meticulous scholarship, careful development of argument, and the kind of standards he would have liked to see imposed on the budding learners. The US has seen recently the effects of demonizing teachers unions, avoiding US history for "civics" or social sciences generally, and rejecting the importance of critical analysis/"critical thinking" as a curricular staple.

I didn't go on at this time to read "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," but, after having read the major newspapers over the last few years, who except the over-developed masochist would have need?
8 reviews
April 8, 2025
It is fascinating and terrifying reading Anti-Intellectualism in American Life now. Everything that he talks about, from the demonization of universities to the ridiculous rhetoric around masculinity—I'm looking at you Jesse Waters—speaks to this instant moment in American history.
2 reviews
February 4, 2022
a collection that addresses human nature as much as the movements in the title.
Profile Image for Deborah.
105 reviews
April 18, 2023
Many of the issues these essays deal with are still incredibly relevant today.
Profile Image for Susan Leigh Connors.
118 reviews4 followers
August 3, 2023
I've wanted to read this essay for a while. Very interesting....brief. worth the read. I guess there's always a good 5% of the population that's certifiably crazy....
Profile Image for Matthew.
43 reviews1 follower
June 4, 2024
Interesting read, great insights. A bit dense but a complete look at a concept still very much relevant today.
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