Amazon.com's Best of 2001
If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."
Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.
A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
The Metaphysical Club was an informal intellectual gathering of philosophers and academics that met in Cambridge, Mass., for only nine months in 1872. Menand, known for his contributions to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, follows the evolution of pragmatism as it emerged from the minds of four of the club's "members": Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. The Metaphysical Club describes how the lives of these great thinkers interconnect in an enjoyable, though sometimes complex, narrative. Leyva's reading is fluid and clean. His delivery, that of an enthusiastic yet slightly removed academic, transports the listener to a classroom seat, alert and ready to take notes. Unlike those audiobooks in which the enthralled listener cannot wait to listen to each subsequent tape in order to see what happens next, listeners may find themselves rewinding the tape to repeat bits here and there, or just turning it off from time to time to digest the thoughts introduced. This audiobook is stimulating for our nation today, as Menand stresses the important role of intellectuals in times of chaos (in this case, after the Civil War), when people's beliefs are put to the test. Based on the Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 12, 2001). (Sept.)nCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Menand (English, CUNY) acknowledges at the outset the ephemeral nature of the informal discussion group known as "the metaphysical club," stating that it "was probably in existence for only nine months, and no records were kept." Yet he sees in the work of its principals Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce a momentous change in the conditions of modern life, brought about in large part because of their thought and work. The three men met informally in Cambridge, MA, in 1872, and out of these meetings a new philosophy was born a uniquely American way of looking at the world, known as pragmatism. To tell this fascinating story, Menand produces a seamless narrative line that moves from the Civil War to the Supreme Court case in 1919 that became the basis for the constitutional doctrine of free speech. Along the way, the reader is introduced to myriad pertinent players and events that bring the era and the thinking vividly to life. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
The subject of this work is American intellectual history from 1880 through the early 1900s, viewed through the works and relationships of William James; John Dewey; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; and Charles Sanders Peirce. This abridgment gives a worthwhile perspective of American history and the development of legal and philosophical ideas that would shape America's future. Much of the content of this book is dense and intellectual--not a good choice for casual listening. The themes of the book are not well focused, and this quality accentuates the impression that narrator Henry Leyva is reading lines without understanding what he's saying. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
In a serious but accessible book, Menand, a CUNY professor and New Yorker staff writer, provides a panorama of American post-Civil War thought, encompassing the period from 1865 to 1919 and focusing on the lives and thinking of "four giants": William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and John Dewey. Menand contends that the Civil War swept away old ideas, and, in its wake, the nation spent the next half-century putting into place a new set of principles--nurtured by the four giants--that served the nation into its new modern age. The "club" of the title, with the four giants as its core, actually only existed for about nine months in 1872, but its members influenced the culture for decades to come--James, as the founder of modern American psychology; Peirce, as the founder of semiotics; Dewey, for bringing professionalism to the university as president of the AAUP; and Holmes, through his expansions of the concept of free speech. Menand's scope is massive, and he is clearly up to the task. Allen Weakland
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