Human Nature and the Human Condition

The author of the influential The Modern Temper over thirty years ago, and the recent winner of the NBA award with The Measure of Man, Dr. Krutch has maintained and extended his consistently distinguished position as an American man of letters- and opinion. His new book, intended as a companion volume to The Measure of Man, further sustains his brilliant exposition of the humanist point of view. Dr. Krutch examines the subversion, corruption and dehumanization of Man under the pressures of conformism, overpopulation, materialism, and every sort of hidden persuasion to be less than his best. Science and technology and psychology have replaced the truly proper studies of Man - which is, of course, Man himself. We need a return to the humanities, and unless this occurs, man will continue to be pliable and frustrated. Right now we buy what we don't need to impress people who don't care in a world dangerously full of hungry, politically discontented people. We have been sold- and oversold- until we don't know what we want, how to get it, or who we are at all to begin with. Along the way Dr. Krutch has his say on status symbols, organization men, the Johnnies who can't read, management - - and he recapitulates effort-lessly, succinctly, the field mined by Jacques Barzun, Vance Packard and W.L. White-with a little of David Riesman. His contemplative study is a little of all of these, but it is distinctly his own- pervaded with his abiding faith in the survival and triumph of Man. For those who bought The House of Intellect and probably some of those who liked The Status Seekers, it should be an important book and widely reviewed. (Kirkus Reviews)