{"product_id":"2026200010071-secondhand-the-closing-of-the-american-mind-how-higher-education-has-failed-democracy-and-impoverished-the-souls-of-todays-students","title":"The Closing Of The American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy And Impoverished The Souls Of Today's Students","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.   \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA landmark in American intellectual life, The Closing of the American Mind presents a searing critique of the modern university and the cultural relativism it has come to champion. Allan Bloom, a distinguished political philosopher and professor at the University of Chicago, argues that the abandonment of a classical liberal arts education — grounded in the great books of Western civilisation — has left a generation of students intellectually adrift, morally unmoored, and incapable of genuine self-reflection or civic virtue. With sharp wit and unflinching conviction, Bloom chronicles the erosion of rigorous academic standards and the rise of a campus culture that prizes openness above all, yet paradoxically closes itself off to the very ideas that once animated Western thought.\n\nWritten with the authority of a scholar who spent decades in the American classroom, the work draws on Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche to illuminate what Bloom sees as a civilisational crisis hiding in plain sight. With a foreword by Nobel laureate Saul Bellow lending further literary gravitas, this book ignited a fierce national debate upon its publication in 1987 and remains as provocative today as ever — a challenge to every reader who believes education should be more than mere credentialing, and a question that still demands an answer: what, exactly, are we trying to teach?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130624450779,"sku":"2026200010071-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/c5635b9f-773e-4d65-989a-2e85ba520e11.png?v=1786587773","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200010071-secondhand-the-closing-of-the-american-mind-how-higher-education-has-failed-democracy-and-impoverished-the-souls-of-todays-students","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}