The Higher Learning in America (Dodo Press) - Softcover

Veblen, Thorstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1409965600 ISBN 13: 9781409965602

Publisher: Dodo Press, 2009

Synopsis

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929) was a Norwegian- American sociologist and economist and a founder of the Institutional economics movement. He was an impassioned critic of the performance of the American economy, and is most famous for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He obtained his B. A. in Economics at Carleton College in 1880. In 1892, he became a professor at the newly opened University of Chicago, simultaneously serving as managing editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Veblen developed a 20th century evolutionary economics based upon the new ideas emerging from anthropology, sociology, and psychology. He described economic behaviour as socially rather than individually determined and saw economic organisation as a process of ongoing evolution. He wanted economists to grasp the effects of social and cultural change on economic changes. Amongst his other works are The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), The Instinct of Workmanship (1914) and The Higher Learning in America (1918).

About this title

Review

"Almost a century ago Thorstein Veblen analyzed how Big Business got down to the business of higher education in America. We are fortunate today to have Richard Teichgraeber’s rediscovery of this classic work, enhanced by his keen annotations that help explain the wicked satire of this trenchant social critic."

(John Thelin, University of Kentucky, author of A History of American Higher Education)

"The republication of Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America in this new annotated edition―which sorts out the allusions and citations in Veblen's highly allusive writing―will be a tremendous help to scholars, students, and general readers alike."

(Chad Wellmon, University of Virginia)

"Reading The Higher Learning in America is an exercise in going back to the future. The dreary past of higher education described by Veblen in 1918 seems distressingly similar to its increasingly bleak future under the command of a new generation of leaders once mocked by Veblen as 'captains of erudition.' This splendid annotated edition will introduce a new generation of readers to Veblen's insightful work."

(Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters)

"Richard Teichgraeber’s new edition of Veblen’s classic tract on the early twentieth-century American research university is a remarkable achievement. His extended Introduction not only explores the book’s complex genesis and various levels of meaning, but it raises a host of important issues that confirm Veblen’s continued timeliness as a critic and analyst of higher education. Teichgraeber fully restores Veblen’s work to the academic culture and social values of the era in which it was written, but he also uses The Higher Learning to provide an erudite commentary on the state of the universities a hundred years later."

(John W. Boyer, University of Chicago)

"Thorstein Veblen's odd, energetic, and idiosyncratic classic The Higher Learning in America, is more pertinent today than it was when it was published over a century ago. This new edition, with Teichgraeber's splendid introduction and deeply informative notes, reintroduce this book into debates it anticipated and still illuminates."

(Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Director, National Humanities Center)

"Richard F. Teichgraeber III (a professor of history at Tulane University), has prepared what’s bound to remain the standard edition of the text for a long time to come. His extensive yet unobtrusive notes 'identify―when identification proved possible―events, institutions, persons and publications alluded to or mentioned,' and he glosses the literary quotations and biblical references embedded in Veblen’s wild and sometimes woolly prose. The timeline of Veblen’s life and the recommended-readings list benefit from the past three decades of Veblen scholarship."

(Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed)

"A coherent and bracing critique of higher education at the dawn of the twentieth century."

(Siva Vaidhyanathan The Baffler)

"A must read for any student of higher education... The book is 100 years old, but the arguments made are regularly heard on 21st century college campuses. Teichgraeber and Johns Hopkins are to be congratulated for bringing this book back to people's attention, and every academic library should have a copy."

(Choice)

"The introduction and annotations by Teichgraeber (Tulane Univ.)are likely to ensure that this will be the standard edition of Veblen going forward; given the degree to which it presages modern criticisms of academic institutions, it is a must read for any student of higher education.  In addition, it is affordable enough to sit on the bookshelf of anyone with administrative responsibility on a college campus.  The book is 100 years old, but the arguments made are regularly heard on 21st-century college campuses.  Teichgraeber and Johns Hopkins are to be congratulated for bringing this book back to people's attention, and every academic library should have a copy. "

(American Library Association)

About the Author

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was perhaps the most famous American economist and social critic of his time. He taught at the universities of Chicago and Missouri, Stanford University, and the New School for Social Research. His many books include The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, and The Theory of the Leisure Class, all available from Transaction.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dodo Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1409965600
• ISBN 13: 9781409965602
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204