© Columbia University Press
The Intellectuals and the Flag
Paper, 192 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12493-5
$22.95
/ £13.50
January, 2006
Cloth, 192 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12492-8
$70.00
/ £41.00
"Gitlin's liberal patriotism is an affirmation of membership in our society and of
participation in the American experiment." — Elbert Ventura,
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Dokoupil, New York Press
get to work." — Stewart Nusbaumer, Intervention
Magazine
"A blunt, frank analysis of the
current state of the left." — Jim Agnew,
Jagnew.com
"Todd
Gitlin's The Intellectuals and the Flag is illuminating."
— Gerald Russello, New York Sun
"His insights and perceptions strike me as succinct, on target,
clear-eyed and revelatory." — Sam Coale, Providence
Journal
"Gitlin is certainly a
thoughtful, intelligent, and important critic... Recommended." —
Choice
criticism of a high caliber has not completely disappeared from American public life."
— Alan Wolfe, Commonweal
"[A] valuable book, well worth reading and pondering."
— Wilfred M. McClay, Claremont Review of
Books
"A particularly eloquent rendering
of the inevitable and proper post-9/11 patriotism that affected the left no less than the right
or center." — Chronicle of Higher
Education
"Of all the voices to be heard
since 9/11, Todd Gitlin's is among the most welcome. While others—on left and right—have lost
their heads, Gitlin has used the occasion to rethink and reassert where he stands on questions of
power, political authority, civic engagement, patriotism, and much else. This is a bracing and
admirable book. " — Mark Lilla, University of Chicago, author of
The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics
"How might one reconcile patriotism with dissent? Love of country
with the critical spirit? Grounded commitment with the Great Refusal? Have the events of
September 11 changed the nature of our response? These are just some of the topical themes that
Todd Gitlin addresses in his luminous new study, The Intellectuals and the
Flag. Here is Gitlin at his best: lucid, insightful, thought-provoking, and
broad-minded. A latter-day Tom Paine, Gitlin is quite simply the most informed voice writing in
America today about the volatile interface between politics and culture." — Richard
Wolin, City University of New York, author of The Seduction of Unreason: The
Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism
"Todd Gitlin has joined Irving Howe, Michael Walzer, Michael
Harrington, and Christopher Lasch in the ranks of our nation’s most brilliant, important, and
perceptive social critics. The Intellectuals and the Flag will
confirm that reputation. Gitlin is fearless: he challenges the status quo and his own side. He
insists that the Left has a moral obligation to stop marginalizing itself and to change the
country by appealing to our traditions of democracy, equality and community. We need critics who
are patriots—and patriots who are critics. Gitlin shows that patriotism need not be, and should
not be, the last refuge of scoundrels." — E. J. Dionne Jr., author of
Why Americans Hate Politics and Stand Up
Fight Back