Hollander is one of the few critics who seriously address how celebrity culture has deeply altered the role and function of intellectuals. He reexamines his ideas about America's adversary culture, born of the 1960s, and provides ample illustrations of its continued vitality in new forms and voices.

Jonathan Imber, Wellesley College

In this fine collection of essays Paul Hollander continues his lifework of documenting the misperceptions and misrepresenations of ideologues and those under their influence. He shows time and again how peddlers of anti-Americanism are bent on undermining the political system whose advantages they enjoy and abuse. By juxtaposing their claims and plain facts he exposes their indifference to truth and reason.

John Kekes, author of The Art of Politics

The distinguished Hungarian-born sociologist Paul Hollander has a uniquely Central European perspective on the foibles of American life and especially its intellectual milieu. These fast-paced essays are smart, provocative, and sometimes amusing snapshots of our wonderfully imperfect universe.

Norman Naimark, Stanford University

Paul Hollander, one of our most distinguished political sociologists, has written a wide-ranging, personal, and trenchant set of essays about America and its adversaries, at home and abroad. With reflections on his own fascinating journey from Hungary to America, Hollander provides unique and thought-provoking perspectives.

Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

I have been reading Paul Hollander for many years-often agreeing with him, sometimes disagreeing, and always profiting from his knowledge and acuity.

Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and Power and the Idealists

In this beautifully written, understated, and powerful collection Paul Hollander brings his acute powers of observation and analysis to bear on a variety of important themes in American culture and society including the discontents of modernity, the cult of celebrities, the pervasive entertainment orientation of mass culture and the responses to global anti-Americanism and the manifestations of Islamic fanaticism. His observations illuminate recent trends and contain wise and sobering insights for the present and future of our country.

Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland, College Park