's Best of 2001
If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."

Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.

A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller


From Publishers Weekly
The Metaphysical Club was an informal intellectual gathering of philosophers and academics that met in Cambridge, Mass., for only nine months in 1872. Menand, known for his contributions to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, follows the evolution of pragmatism as it emerged from the minds of four of the club's "members": Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. The Metaphysical Club describes how the lives of these great thinkers interconnect in an enjoyable, though sometimes complex, narrative. Leyva's reading is fluid and clean. His delivery, that of an enthusiastic yet slightly removed academic, transports the listener to a classroom seat, alert and ready to take notes. Unlike those audiobooks in which the enthralled listener cannot wait to listen to each subsequent tape in order to see what happens next, listeners may find themselves rewinding the tape to repeat bits here and there, or just turning it off from time to time to digest the thoughts introduced. This audiobook is stimulating for our nation today, as Menand stresses the important role of intellectuals in times of chaos (in this case, after the Civil War), when people's beliefs are put to the test. Based on the Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 12, 2001). (Sept.)nCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Menand (English, CUNY) acknowledges at the outset the ephemeral nature of the informal discussion group known as "the metaphysical club," stating that it "was probably in existence for only nine months, and no records were kept." Yet he sees in the work of its principals Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce a momentous change in the conditions of modern life, brought about in large part because of their thought and work. The three men met informally in Cambridge, MA, in 1872, and out of these meetings a new philosophy was born a uniquely American way of looking at the world, known as pragmatism. To tell this fascinating story, Menand produces a seamless narrative line that moves from the Civil War to the Supreme Court case in 1919 that became the basis for the constitutional doctrine of free speech. Along the way, the reader is introduced to myriad pertinent players and events that bring the era and the thinking vividly to life. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
The subject of this work is American intellectual history from 1880 through the early 1900s, viewed through the works and relationships of William James; John Dewey; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; and Charles Sanders Peirce. This abridgment gives a worthwhile perspective of American history and the development of legal and philosophical ideas that would shape America's future. Much of the content of this book is dense and intellectual--not a good choice for casual listening. The themes of the book are not well focused, and this quality accentuates the impression that narrator Henry Leyva is reading lines without understanding what he's saying. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
In a serious but accessible book, Menand, a CUNY professor and New Yorker staff writer, provides a panorama of American post-Civil War thought, encompassing the period from 1865 to 1919 and focusing on the lives and thinking of "four giants": William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and John Dewey. Menand contends that the Civil War swept away old ideas, and, in its wake, the nation spent the next half-century putting into place a new set of principles--nurtured by the four giants--that served the nation into its new modern age. The "club" of the title, with the four giants as its core, actually only existed for about nine months in 1872, but its members influenced the culture for decades to come--James, as the founder of modern American psychology; Peirce, as the founder of semiotics; Dewey, for bringing professionalism to the university as president of the AAUP; and Holmes, through his expansions of the concept of free speech. Menand's scope is massive, and he is clearly up to the task. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In a compellingly told tale of American history, Louis Menand recounts the brief but significant heritage of the "Metaphysical Club," a group of men who met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872 to discuss their collective ideas and the ideal way of thinking in the American society. The Club consisted of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the greatest legal mind of his time; William James, father of modern American psychology; Charles Sanders Peirce; scientist and pioneer semiotician. Their ideas and writings would have a profound influence on another great thinker: John Dewey, the legendary philosopher and educator who was then developing his theories on the importance of pragmatism in the learning process.(Nicholas Sinisi)

ANNOTATION

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Civil War made America a modern nation, unleashing forces of industrialism and expansion that had been kept in check for decades by the quarrel over slavery. But the war also discredited the ideas and beliefs of the era that preceded it. The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but almost the whole intellectual culture of the North went with it. It took nearly half a century for Americans to develop a set of ideas, a way of thinking, that would help them cope with the conditions of modern life. That struggle is the subject of this book.

The story told in The Metaphysical Club runs through the lives of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Civil War hero who became the dominant legal thinker of his time; his best friend as a young man, William James, son of an eccentric moral philosopher, brother of a great novelist, and the father of modern psychology in America; and the brilliant and troubled logician, scientist, and founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce. Together they belonged to an informal discussion group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872 and called itself the Metaphysical Club. The club was probably in existence for only nine months, and no records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas, about the role beliefs play in people's lives. This idea informs the writings of these three thinkers, and the work of the fourth figure in the book, John Dewey - student of Peirce, friend and ally of James, admirer of Holmes.

The Metaphysical Club begins with the Civil War and ends in 1919 with the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Abrams, the basis for the modern law of free speech. Ittells the story of the creation of ideas and values that changed the way Americans think and the way they live.

SYNOPSIS

The Metaphysical Club tells the story of the creation of ideas and values that changed the way Americans think and the way they live.

FROM THE CRITICS

Economist

[A] detailed and fascinating essay on the history of American intellectual life . . . It enlivens virtually everything it touches. . .

David A. Hollinger - American Scientist

If you can read only one book about pragmatism and American culture, this is the book to read.

New York Times - New York Times

Hugely ambitious, unmistakably brilliant.

Alan Ryan - New York Review of Books

....something very like a history of the American mind at work.

Jean Strouse - New York Times Book Review