Professors, Politics and Pop

London: Verso Books, 1991. Black textured boards, silver stamped spine titles, fine. Pages fine. Dj fine. 366 pages. Bookstore mark. In this engaging collection of essays culled from The Nation , The New Republic , and other political journals, Wiener skewers such American icons as Ronald Reagan, Yale's Department of History, famed librarian Daniel Boorstin, and singer Frank Sinatra. Other targets include the short-lived Accuracy in Academia, the CIA and its role on college campuses, and the politics of footnotes. The book also features a couple of provocative and insightful pieces on literary theorist Paul de Man's fascist past. While Wiener's overall approach has been shaped by his experiences in the New Left, he avoids the preachiness of the politically correct and devotes several chapters to foibles and dogmatisms on his side of the political fence. In short, Wiener is a clever writer and serious thinker, and Professors, Poli tics, and Pop is a clever and serious book. - Library Journal. Frank Sinatra, a liberal-left activist in the 1940s, was a has-been at age 34, his entertainment career destroyed by the right-wing press. His little-known political shift from left to right which preceded his subsequent comeback and "coincided with a deepened contempt for women" is the subject of one of these gutsy, interesting, well-documented essays. In another, Wiener, contributing editor at the Nation , tells how Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons helped the State Department smuggle Nazi collaborators into the U.S. after WW II. Originally published in the Nation , Village Voice and elsewhere, these 42 pieces cover such topics as Watergate, Nixon's attempt to have John Lennon deported, Yale deconstructionist Paul de Man's war-time collaboration with Nazis, Harvard's commercial ties to bio-technology research, and the socially committed reggae singer Bob Marley. Those who mock so-called political correctness, Wiener opines, often underestimate the marked rise at U.S. campuses of slurs and actions that are anti-woman, anti-gay and racist. - Publisher's Weekly.. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Book.