Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously-and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas …
The Adventures of Augie March is a picaresque novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1953 by Viking Press. It features the eponymous Augie March who grows up during the Great Depression and it is an example of bildungsroman, tracing the development of an individual through a series of encounters, occupations and …
The Bellarosa Connection is a 1989 novella by the American author Saul Bellow. The book takes the form of an ongoing dialogue between the Fonstein family about the impact of the Jewish Holocaust. This is an especially significant story as it represents, along with Mr. Sammler's Planet, Bellow's most significant …
The Closing of the American Mind is a 1987 book by Allan Bloom, who describes "how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students." He focuses especially upon the "openness" of relativism as leading paradoxically to the great "closing" referenced in the book's title. Bloom argues …