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Louis Menand

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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

Books

  • Menand, Louis (1987). Discovering Modernism : T. S. Eliot and his context. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |authormask= (help)
  • Menand, Louis, ed. (1996). The Future of Academic Freedom. Chicago: U Chicago Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editormask= ignored (|editor-mask= suggested) (help)
  • Menand, Louis, ed. (1997). Pragmatism : a reader. New York: Vintage. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editormask= ignored (|editor-mask= suggested) (help)
  • 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

References

  1. ^ Big Think Interview With Louis Menand
  2. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.

Interviews

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