Louis Menand

Louis Menand (/ˈluːi məˈnɑːnd/;^[1] born January 21, 1952) is an American critic and essayist, best known for his book The Metaphysical Club (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America.

Life and career

Menand was born in Syracuse, New York, and raised around Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Catherine (Shults) Menand, was a historian, who wrote a biography of Samuel Adams. His father, Louis Menand III, taught political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His grandfather and great-grandfather owned the Louis Menand House, located in Menands, New York, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.^[2] The village of Menands is named after his great-grandfather, a 19th-century horticulturalist.

A graduate of Pomona College, Menand attended Harvard Law School for one year (1973–1974) before he left to earn M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) degrees in English from Columbia University.

He thereafter taught at Princeton University and held staff positions at The New Republic and The New Yorker. He served as Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York before accepting a post at Harvard in 2003.

He published his first book Discovering Modernism: T. S. Eliot and His Context, in 1987. His long-anticipated second book, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001), includes detailed biographical material on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, and documents their roles in the development of the philosophy of pragmatism. It received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2002 Francis Parkman Prize, and The Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction. In 2002 Menand published American Studies, a collection of essays on prominent figures in American culture.

He is the Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. His principal field of academic interest is 19th and 20th century American cultural history. He contributes to The New Yorker, for which he remains a staff writer, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications.

Bibliography

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Books

• Menand, Louis (1987). Discovering Modernism : T. S. Eliot and his context. Oxford University Press.
• —, ed. (1996). The Future of Academic Freedom. Chicago: U Chicago Press.
• —, ed. (1997). Pragmatism : a reader. New York: Vintage.
• The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, 2001, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-19963-9 (hardcover), ISBN 0-374-52849-7 (paperback)
• American Studies, 2002, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-10434-4 (hardcover)
• The Marketplace of Ideas, 2010, New York: W. W. Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-06275-5

Essays and reporting

• Menand, Louis (November 14, 2011). "Getting real". The Critics. A Critic at Large. The New Yorker 87 (36): 76–83. Retrieved 2014-04-24. Reviews Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan : an American life. Penguin.
• — (March 4, 2013). "How the Deal went down : saving democracy in the Depression". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker 89 (3): 69–74. Retrieved 2015-05-11. Reviews Katznelson, Ira. Fear itself : the New Deal and the origins of our time. Liveright.
• — (September 30, 2013). "Nukes of hazard". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker 89 (30): 76–80. Retrieved 2015-03-03. Reviews Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control. Penguin.
• — (March 24, 2014). "The de Man case : does a critic's past explain his criticism?". The Critics. A Critic at Large. The New Yorker 90 (5): 87–93. Retrieved 2015-02-26.
• — (October 20, 2014). "Crooner in rights spat : are copyright laws too strict?". The Critics. A Critic at Large. The New Yorker 90 (32): 84–89. Retrieved 2014-12-23.

References

1. Big Think Interview With Louis Menand
2. Staff (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.

External links

• The Essential Menand : books, articles, and everything Louis Menand
• Harvard University Department of English faculty listing for Menand
• CUNY profile of Menand (former faculty post)
• Menand's humorous exegesis of The Cat in the Hat on NPR's All Things Considered (link to Windows Media and RealMedia audio)
• Louis Menand on writing – (in the New Yorker)
• "Cat People: What Dr. Seuss really taught us" -(in the New Yorker)
• This Week in Media Rogues Article from The New York Observer about Louis Menand's review of "Wild Bill Donovan" in The New Yorker
• Letters to a Young Writer, Louis Menand to a letter, Narrative Magazine, (Fall 2010).

Interviews

• Louis Menand on Reforming U.S. Universities from NPR's All Things Considered (Air Date: 1/18/10)
• Menand interview on The Metaphysical Club on All Things Considered (link to WM and RM audio)
• "New New York Intellectual: An Interview with Louis Menand" at the Wayback Machine (archived March 9, 2005) in the Minnesota Review, (June 1, 2001).
• Roberts, Russ (May 31, 2010). "Menand on Psychiatry". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.