The twilight of the intellectuals

the long version

In The Twilight of the Intellectuals, Mr. Kramer explores, in effect, the intellectual history of the cold war and its divisive impact on our politics and culture. His book is also necessarily about the consequences of the 1930s and the 1960s, two decades when the political left achieved its greatest influence. The Twilight of the Intellectuals is part memoir, part reflection, part critical analysis. It is filled with incisive portraits of people and their ideas, and with the often peculiar details of the urgent intellectual debates that tore apart friendships, sundered movements and institutions, and made the life of the mind so important in a way we can scarcely appreciate today.