In what Camille Paglia called "the first shot in the culture wars," Allan Bloom's 1987 book offers a searing take against the movement toward "moral relativism" in academia.
The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)–now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition.
In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites.
