The Assault on American Excellence
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Narrated by:
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Anthony Kronman
About this listen
“I want to call it a cry of the heart, but it’s more like a cry of the brain, a calm and erudite one.” (Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal)
The former dean of Yale Law School argues that the feverish egalitarianism gripping college campuses today is a threat to our democracy.
College education is under attack from all sides these days. Most of the handwringing - over free speech, safe zones, trigger warnings, and the babying of students - has focused on the excesses of political correctness. That may be true, but as Anthony Kronman shows, it’s not the real problem.
“Necessary, humane, and brave” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times), The Assault on American Excellence makes the case that the boundless impulse for democratic equality gripping college campuses today is a threat to institutions whose job is to prepare citizens to live in a vibrant democracy. Three centuries ago, the founders of our nation saw that for this country to have a robust government, it must have citizens trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. Without that, Americans would risk electing demagogues.
Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus clashes to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to argue that our modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and wise, that of an educator who has devoted his life to helping students be capable of living up to the demands of a free society - and to do so, they must first be tested in a system that isn’t focused on sympathy at the expense of rigor and that values excellence above all.
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Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
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Unpersuasive and a bit repetitive
- By Adam Shields on 03-07-18
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The Twilight of the American Enlightenment
- The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.
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Such a relevant book to our current world
- By Adam Shields on 09-14-16
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Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
- Thinkers of the New Left
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Rory Barnett
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the leading critics of leftist orientations comes a study of the thinkers who have most influenced the attitudes of the New Left. Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. Scruton delivers a critique of modern left-wing thinking.
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Deconstructing the New Left
- By Wayne on 01-17-20
By: Roger Scruton
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Between Past and Future
- Eight Exercises in Political Thought
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.
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Just stunning
- By Peter Stephens on 02-26-18
By: Hannah Arendt
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A Short History of Ethics
- By: Alasdair MacIntyre
- Narrated by: Tim Dalgleish
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The End of History and the Last Man
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
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An important discussion expertly narrated
- By Kevin Teeple on 06-27-19
By: Francis Fukuyama
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Identity
- The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.
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Robotic narrator
- By Shahin on 09-19-18
By: Francis Fukuyama
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On Liberty
- By: John Stuart Mill
- Narrated by: Alastair Cameron
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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On Liberty is a book by John Stuart Mill, one of the most celebrated philosophers on the subject of leadership and governing ideals. The book focuses on Mill's philosophy on utilitarianism which is one of his defining principles. The principles of the book are focused on developing a relationship between the ruling authority and liberty.
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Must read
- By Trevor M. on 08-04-21
By: John Stuart Mill
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Suicide of the West
- How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jonah Goldberg
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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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
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-18
By: Jonah Goldberg
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The Mis-Education of the Negro
- By: Carter Goodwin Woodson
- Narrated by: Carter Goodwin Woodson
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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"The Mis-Education of the Negro" is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that blacks of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims, causes blacks to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He challenges his readers to become autodidacts and to "do for themselves", regardless of what they were taught.
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Good Book- Horribly Narrated
- By FreeSpirit_37 on 02-13-18
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
What listeners say about The Assault on American Excellence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Craig
- 08-24-19
For Whom is He Writing?
This is a timely, cogent, and important book, warning us that the integrity and mission of our higher learning institutions are at risk of succumbing to the transitory ideologies of democratic mob-rule (sorry to the author if that explanation was inelegant). The Assault on American Excellence is a journey through the foundational underpinnings that fostered the mission(s) of our great American universities. I was deeply enthralled by the depth of research and breadth of the citations that carry Kronman's argument.
That said, I kept asking myself for whom is Kronman writing? This book is not for the timid, or the uninitiated. If I were one of the underclassmen about which he generalizes in this book, I might be hard-pressed to get through his work. It is not until the last two chapters that I felt really connected to his premise. That's because the language upon which Kronman makes his point is so loaded with elitist baggage (my bias here) that it is difficult to separate the message from the messenger. I wish he had not (but I understand why he did) describe to beneficiaries and participants in elite university learning as *aristocracy.* Sure, he explains the context for this descriptor, but in the current political climate the unenlightened may perceive this work as a treatise on anti-democratic consolidation of power amongst elites of wealth and privilege (speculation here). That's why I question for whom he wrote this book. Is it a finger in the eye of former colleagues at Yale? Or, is it a pat on the head for all the new young radicals on today's campuses to let them know that they are (after all) merely yet-to-be-enlightened children.
Please read this important work. It will send you back to your bookshelves to reread many of the great 18th Century philosophers upon which the foundations of our democracy are fabricated.
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- Doichin Cholakov
- 08-27-19
Confusing premise, excellent book
I find the book confusing in its main premise. I am coming from an ex-communist country where universities are still breeding dissatisfaction with democracy as a result of the lost prestige that professors enjoyed in communist times. This is masked exactly as spiritual aristocratism, but is a poison administered cynically to students who are thought to distrust businessmen, politicians, basically anybody enjoying the prestige 'stolen' from the red philosopher kings. I have also seen in developed democracy academic figures administring the same poisonous pill. So deeply suspicious of universities as only passive receivers of un-aristocratic ideals from the political sphere.
Other than that - spectacularly honest and intellectually and morally rewarding book.
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- Reid Holkesvik
- 09-19-19
Finely reasoned, passionate, relevant to today’s divisive issues.
Professor Kronman’s book addresses problems facing colleges and universities today, reflecting issues in American culture more broadly, with uncommon clarity and historical perspective. The issues it addresses are three:
1. Restrictions of free speech on campuses in the name of inclusiveness and welcome.
2. Diversity as a value in itself, defined as it is today in terms of identity groups rather than individuals, approached from an interesting legal/historical perspective; in this his tenure as the Dean of Yale Law School is not irrelevant
3. The renaming of historical memorials, approached with special passion in view of Yale’s wavering course to renaming Calhoun College.
I liked this book, and his arguments for the most part resonate with me.
A central theme of this book, though, is hard for me to swallow; this involves his use of the term aristocracy. As defined by the author, aristocracy refers to the fact that not only are some people better at doing certain things than other people, but some people are just Better, better at being human beings, more highly developed in the areas that really matter in terms of living as a human being. This issue of aristocracy is made absolutely central to his critique of the three political/social trends mentioned above. Not surprisingly, given the book's focus on the academy, these areas that matter turn out to be coincident with the areas of interest in the Humanities. Although it is not stated explicitly in this book, the humanities historically involve the scholarly study of language, history, literature and moral philosophy. The study of these tends to lead to a larger, better way of living as a human, it is implied. I do not disagree with this, and yet there is something stuffy, narcissistic and claustrophobic about the implication that this type of study is the one true path to being a fully developed human. It seems obvious to me that there are many outside the academy who know something about how to live as a human, and that they learned it in other ways; farmers, sea captains, battlefield commanders, Buddhist monks, and wise grandmothers come to mind. I do not mean that "everyone is just as good as everyone else"; I just don't believe there is only one kind of Best, or that academic humanists are necessarily the top of the heap.
I think, though, that even readers who don’t agree with the general drift of his arguments will find it hard to take issue with any of the specific, finely reasoned points he makes. Any fair reader will I think will find it hard to dismiss his authoritative credentials or his sincerity and passion for the subjects at hand. He deserves to be listened to, he knows what he’s talking about and he wants so very much for us to understand.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JDF233
- 09-26-22
Balanced
An well thought, insightful, and balanced approach to a sensitive topic. I’d expect anyone approaching this subject from a rational perspective would appreciate the traditional and legal approach the author maps out in crafting his viewpoint. Hopefully those with opinions different from the author will read it and it will inspire them to craft stronger arguments to defend their position rather than defeating to emotional petitions or ad hominem attacks targeted at the author’s background.
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- James O’Neil
- 10-08-19
Good but Flawed
Let me start by saying the author is a good man (assuming that’s his preferred gender pronoun!). That being said this book appeals to the new liberal generation, highlights the hypocrisy of the left, and essentially attempts to keep the house of cards from falling down. Unfortunately it is this authors and colleagues teachings that have created the mess they are in right now. This book fails to make the obvious connections that are obvious to conservative readers. I hope it is successful in converting a few far left professors but I am afraid the damage as been done.
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- Kevin Barclay
- 01-06-20
Substandard, amateur voice
I was really looking forward to hearing this book read by the author but someone should have said to the man, "you can write but you definitely can't read for an audio book." He is far too close to the mike and pops most of his consonants. His cadence is grossly affected as he pauses ever time. He thinks. There should. Be a pause. For some. Unknown. Reason.
I couldn't finish it as it was too irritating for me. He may be decent in the classroom but not here.
It's unfortunate as I am very much interested in this topic and normally can struggle through something as bad as this but not this time.
A note to Audible, please make the tough call on authors and get a pro if they are not of the highest standard.
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1 person found this helpful