Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture
4/5
()
About this ebook
Throughout the twentieth century, pop songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels in the United States represented intelligence alternately as empowering or threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, cultural historian Aaron Lecklider offers a sharp, entertaining narrative of these sources to reveal how Americans who were not part of the traditional intellectual class negotiated the complicated politics of intelligence within an accelerating mass culture.
Central to the book is the concept of brainpower—a term used by Lecklider to capture the ways in which journalists, writers, artists, and others invoked intelligence to embolden the majority of Americans who did not have access to institutions of higher learning. Expressions of brainpower, Lecklider argues, challenged the deeply embedded assumptions in society that intellectual capacity was the province of an educated elite, and that the working class was unreservedly anti-intellectual. Amid changes in work, leisure, and domestic life, brainpower became a means for social transformation in the modern United States. The concept thus provides an exciting vantage point from which to make fresh assessments of ongoing debates over intelligence and access to quality education.
Expressions of brainpower in the twentieth century engendered an uncomfortable paradox: they diminished the value of intellectuals (the hapless egghead, for example) while establishing claims to intellectual authority among ordinary women and men, including labor activists, women workers, and African Americans. Reading across historical, literary, and visual media, Lecklider mines popular culture as an arena where the brainpower of ordinary people was commonly invoked and frequently contested.
Aaron Lecklider
Aaron S. Lecklider is Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture.
Related to Inventing the Egghead
Related ebooks
Is America Breaking Apart? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hope & Scorn: Eggheads, Experts, & Elites in American Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ike in Love and War: How Dwight D. Eisenhower Sacrificed Himself to Keep the Peace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrthicon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary: Bushworld: Review and Analysis of Maureen Dowd's Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBush Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Irony of American History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America: A Historical Perspective Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/541: Inside the Presidency of George H. W. Bush Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"What Shall We Do with the Negro?": Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Lies We Trust: How Politicians and the Media Are Deceiving the American Public Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsState of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kennedy Icon A Retrospective of JFK's Cultural Impact Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary: The Right Nation: Review and Analysis of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIke and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower's Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cowboy Movies & American Culture,Understanding the Invasion of Iraq Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRugged Individualism: Dead or Alive? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhistleblower at the CIA: An Insiders Account of the Politics of Intelligence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Many Faces of John Kerry: Why this Massachusetts Liberal is Wrong for America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Birchers By Matthew Dallek: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside The American Cultural-Identity Conundrum Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnfit Commander: Texans for Truth Take on George W. Bush Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Popular Culture & Media Studies For You
The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dream Dictionary from A to Z [Revised edition]: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know: Secrets, Conspiracies, Cover Ups, and Absurdities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Devil's Notebook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pimpology: The 48 Laws of the Game Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Communion: The Female Search for Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gary Larson and The Far Side Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCapitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The NES Encyclopedia: Every Game Released for the Nintendo Entertainment System Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Esoteric Hollywood:: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychology of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encyclopedia Gothica Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thick: And Other Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gamer's Bucket List: The 50 Video Games to Play Before You Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Monsters: The Origins of the Creatures We Love to Fear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Inventing the Egghead
1 rating0 reviews