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The Closing of the American Mind
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- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
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"With clarity, gravity, and grace, Bloom makes a convincing case for the improbable proposition that reading old books about the permanent questions could help to reestablish reason and restore the soul." (Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard University)
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- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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James V. Schall is a treasure of the Catholic intellectual tradition. A prolific author and essayist, Schall readily connects with his readers on sundry topics from war to friendship, philosophy, politics, and to ordinary everyday living. In his newest work, The Mind That Is Catholic, he presents a retrospective collection of his academic and literary essays written in the past 50 years.
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Profound Insights
- By Considerable on 10-17-14
By: James V. Schall
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A Short History of Ethics
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A Short History of Ethics is a significant contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. It remains an important work, ideal for all students interested in ethics and morality.
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Great philosopher made ridiculous by accents
- By Olivia Walling on 10-04-17
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What's So Great About America
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America is under attack as never before - not only from terrorists, but from people who provide a rationale for terrorism. Best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza takes on all of America's critics and proves them wrong - as perhaps only a writer with an immigrant's understanding of this country can.
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Excellant!
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The Story of Philosophy
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Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
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Fantastic and insightful book
- By ESK on 01-25-13
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Culture and the Death of God
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How to live in a supposedly faithless world threatened by religious fundamentalism? Terry Eagleton, formidable thinker and renowned cultural critic, investigates in this thought-provoking audiobook the contradictions, difficulties, and significance of the modern search for a replacement for God. Lucid, stylish, and entertaining in his usual manner, Eagleton presents a brilliant survey of modern thought that also serves as a timely, urgently needed intervention into our perilous political present.
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Intelligently written and without Grace
- By Gary on 10-25-17
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A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
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A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
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Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
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The God Argument
- The Case Against Religion and for Humanism
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What are the arguments for and against religion and religious belief - all of them - right across the range of reasons and motives that people have for being religious, and do they stand up to scrutiny? Can there be a clear, full statement of these arguments that once and for all will show what is at stake in this debate? Equally important: what is the alternative to religion as a view of the world and a foundation for morality?
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Fascinating Topic Made Mind Numbingly Dull
- By m.emery on 06-17-15
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The Year of Our Lord 1943
- Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
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By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
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The Greek word sumposion means a drinking party (a fact shamefully ignored by the organizers of modern symposia), and the party described in Plato's Symposium is one supposedly given in the year 416 BC by the playwright Agathon to celebrate his victory in the dramatic festival of the Lenaea. He has already given one party, the previous evening; this second party is for a select group of friends, and host and guests alike are feeling a little frail.
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Greek Philosophy over a Good Wine
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Only Praise
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Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He has written more than 20 books of literary criticism. From a lifetime of writing and teaching about literature, this great scholar exhorts readers to consider the pleasures and benefits of reading well.
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Like a review of my graduate English degree
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Suicide of the West
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Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
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Put some gratitude in your attitude
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What listeners say about The Closing of the American Mind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Matt
- 12-15-03
Excellent...Must Listen
This was an excellent listen. Every American should listen to this a couple times. Great understanding of what happened before the "60's revolution" and what drove that cultural revolution.
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21 people found this helpful
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- Ryan S.
- 01-02-21
Worth the time
Excellent and spot on. This book some 30 years ago predicted the results we are seeing now in the universities.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sam Hart
- 03-25-23
Refreshing.
Fantastic book and amazingly prescient. Well written and argued. He was like an oracle to the present day.
Not a great narrator.
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- Walter
- 08-07-04
One of the greatest books ever written
I found this book to be highly educational.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Branson
- 11-08-20
2000 Years of Civilization is Not Good Trade for Moral Relativism
Professor Bloom’s thoroughly researched and deeply thought-provoking dive into the atomization and dilution of higher education as a result of trading the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful for the new and fashionable “moral relativism” is prescient, challenging, and sadly ahead of its time in wrestling with the problems obvious to him 30 years ago that have now gone completely out of control in the universities and beyond today. For anyone that wonders how we got here in regards to post-modernism’s take over of the universities, objective truth not taken seriously, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, 2+2=5, etc... this book is well worth the read. The writing deftly navigates between accessible and academic and the narrator is pitch perfect adding the needed gravitas to the ideas while also nailing the occasional biting satirical commentary on the current state of knowledge in society. There are surprisingly almost as many laughs out loud moments as there are “aha” epiphanies, which is a credit to the authors scholarship and skill. Excellent book. Will be reading again soon.
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- Danni Irene
- 07-08-13
Understanding the cause of our Failing Education
What did you love best about The Closing of the American Mind?
The Author put quit a bit of Philosophical elements into this book. He discusses many different philosophies and their ideas impact on our society in the 1980's and today. It opened my mind.
What did you like best about this story?
It's not a story, it's quite a bit of Philosophical history and ideas that helped me understand why our education system is lacking in so many ways.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
It is hard to listen to in one sitting. My husband has this book in print and he said it was difficult to read for him, but I got through this book in one week, which is astonishing for me. The narrator helped me a lot! I've enjoyed quite a few books read by Christopher Hurt and he did a wonderful reading of this book!
Any additional comments?
You really have to have your brain working on this one. It is a very mind opening book. Having some knowledge of philosophers and what each one has contributed is helpful.
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- Benny
- 08-25-23
Compelling essay on the importance of stewardship for all Americans who are defenders of democracy.
Bloom’s words during the 1970’s are so valuable and insightful for people today. The deteriorating condition of our nation’s moral compass has put our fragile democracy in peril.
The Social Contract required for perpetuating our democratic system and institutions has been attacked by so many groups that are only self-interested and blind to normal historical events that have bound us together through 2 World Wars, the Great Depression, and so many other natural disasters.
This is a great read for anyone who is based in Reason and Common Sense.
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- fair & balanced
- 10-16-20
Slightly dated book, that still works for now 2020 reading
Timeless with info on where were and hopefully where we are going, as a culture.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 03-23-22
Crisp thought, crisp delivery.
It's always a joy seeing the world through another's eyes. Our author takes us on a journey through a world I never experienced, and I thank him for it.
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- J. Reimer
- 06-27-22
MUST read!
Bloom absolutely knows his subject and his audience. This is not a windbag polemic, this is an erudite and precision analysis of higher education in the US in 1980. 40 years later (now) you will recognize the sources of the carnage in college and public discourse proving Bloom was exactly right.
This is particularly valuable because we think our current problems the worst. we forget about public violence in the 70's and in colleges. This completely proves Bloom's principle assumption: humans always face the same problems and we should "learn" to address these fundamental issues through liberal education which, at least since 1980, we no longer have access too.
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