Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse

Mr. Kimball, one of the best of our cultural critics, offers a lively and penetrating study of genius-and pseudo-genius-at work, and investigates the use and abuse of intelligence. Drawing on figures as various as Plutarch and Hegel, Kierkegaard and P.G. Wodehouse, Elias Canetti and Anthony Trollope, he provides a sharply observed tour of Western intellectual and artistic aspiration. ＂A master of the genre, as collections of his pieces attest, none more impressively than this set.＂-Booklist Starred Review.

Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion and an art critic for the London Spectator. His other books include Art’s Prospect, Experiments Against Reality, The Long March, and Tenured Radicals. He lives in South Norwalk, Connecticut.