Superb.Charles Lane, Washington Post Book World
An impassioned defense of the humanities.Robert Messenger, Wall Street Journal
Educations End is less sensational than most volumes on higher education, but no less important. Anthony Kronman . . . hasnt merely produced another despairing account of academic shortcomings; instead, Educations End explains why colleges have ended up in such bad shape. Kronman argues that universities, especially their humanities departments, have actively made themselves irrelevantand he documents just how theyve done it. Theyve done it by wittingly giving up on the meaning of life.Liam Julian, Weekly Standard
Highly useful and provocative.James Piereson, New Criterion
Kronman unfolds here a sustained argument marked by subtlety, force, nuance, and considerable appeal.Francis Oakley, president emeritus, Williams College
Just when we need them most, the humanities have relinquished their role at the heart of liberal educationhelping students reflect on what makes life worth living. In this bold and provocative book, Anthony Kronman explains why the humanities have lost their way. With eloquence and passion, he argues that departments of literature, classics, and philosophy can recover their authority and prestige only by reviving their traditional focus on fundamental questions about the meaning of life.Michael J. Sandel, author of The Case against Perfection
In a brilliant, sustained argument that is as forthright, bold, and passionately felt as it is ideologically unclassifiable and original, Anthony Kronman leaps in a bound into the center of Americas cultural disputes, not to say cultural wars. Although Kronmans specific area of concern is higher education, his argument will reach far beyond campus walls.Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
No question that the humanities are in a bad way in education at the present, and this book offers not just an argument that they should be more highly prized, but a carefully reasoned position of what happened, why it did, and what needs and can be done about it.Alvin Kernan, author of In Platos Cave
