Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age

With humor, lucidity, and unflinching rigor, the acclaimed authors of Who Killed Homer? and Plagues of the Mind unsparingly document the degeneration of a central if beleagured discipline -- classics -- and reveal the root causes of its decline. Hanson, Heath, and Thornton point to academics themselves -- their careerist ambitions, incessant self-promotion, and overspecialized scholarship, among other things -- as the progenitors of the crisis. They call for a return to "academic populism, " an approach characterized by accessible, unspecialized writing, selfless commitment to students and teaching, and respect for the legacy of freedom and democracy that the ancients bequeathed to the West.