Berube Writes A Dangerously Great Book

by tristero

I’m on vacation, and net access is bad around here but I got an email from Professor Michael Berube, DP* and he informs me that his new book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? is now available through Amazon. I’ve read it and it’s flat-out wonderful.

Like all of Berube’s writing, the book is crystal-clear, often very funny, and eloquent. His ostensible subject is the modern liberal arts education as seen from inside the belly of the beast, the English Department, ground zero of the extreme right assault on American academia. But as interesting as that is, and it’s very interesting, that’s just the maguffin (google it). It’s like saying Gravity’s Rainbow’s about WW II rocketry. Well, yeah, but…

To be brief about it, if you have any interest in what liberalism really is, what it can accomplish in the US today, and why it is crucial to vehemently resist the far right’s relentless obsession to eliminate it, you should read this book.

Full disclosure: Yes, Michael’s a friend of mine. If you read the book, you’ll understand why. He asked me to read What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? in galleys and, if I liked it, to blurb it. I did so, happily. In fact, I’m quite honored he asked me, of all the people he could have asked.

*DP = “Dangerous Professor.” Dr. Berube has been designated by David Horowitz one of the most Dangerous Professors in America and I am so totally jealousl I could spit.