Beloved Community

“This book will play an important role in the emergence of a communitarian, democratic theory of politics grounded in the American past with an eye toward the American future.” — Telos

“[This] book is more than a history of an important movement in American cultural criticism; it is itself a work of cultural criticism.” — Thomas Bender, Dissent

“A major contribution to debates about public culture, participatory democracy, and the relevance of intellectuals.” — Journal of American History

“Bourne, Brooks, Frank, and Mumford were among the most penetrating of our social critics. Without minimizing their faults, Blake makes it clear why their work remains so important. His book is more than a contribution to historical scholarship; it is also a contribution to social criticism in its own right, one that will continue to be read long after most other studies of these authors are forgotten.” — Christopher Lasch, University of Rochester

“Until Casey Blake came along, the conventional wisdom was that the Young Americans had already been 'done.' How wrong that was! In illuminating, for the first time, the unity Bourne, Brooks, Frank, and Mumford sought between the personal and the political, Blake combines psychological sensitivity and trenchant critique, painstaking textual analysis and broad interpretive range. His exploration of the tensions in his protagonists' vision of democratic community affords a far richer understanding of this important chapter in American intellectual life than scholars have ever had before.” — Joan Shelley Rubin, State University of New York, College at Brockport