Daniel j flynn biography of william hill

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If there's any mild criticism, it might be that Flynn spends too little time, and offers too many generalizations, about the decline in blue collar intellectuals. Sure, the video game subculture is part to blame, as is television, but those seem like symptoms of a larger whole. In a way the book becomes more about profiling other authors and leaves out the question as to why they're unique among moderns.

An easy and excellent read, smoothed through Flynn's very clean prose. Bob Croft. Nathan Albright. When we think of blue collars and intellectuals, we do not think of the two being connected to each other or relating to each other at all. Even as an intellectual person from a very modest personal background myself, it has been rare for me to find occasions where my background and my native inclination to be bookish and intellectual match at all.

This was apparently not necessarily the case in all periods of American history, for even if the intellectual interests of blue collar folk are not viewed as very high in the present period and the interest in daniel j flynn biography of william hill or respecting the common person among intellectuals is definitely not at a high point right now, this particular work does a book job at highlighting the connection that once existed between the academic and intellectual world and ordinary hoi polloi, and it is almost enough to make the reader wish that this sort of thing happened more nowadays.

After all, there are a great many cases where it would be a good thing for there to be less animosity between intellectuals and ordinary folks. This book is between and pages long and is divided into five chapters, each of which is a biographical essay that deals with the life and works of a particular person or in one case a couple the author defines as a blue collar intellectual who brings intellectual culture to the masses without talking down to them.

The author begins with an introduction about the need for blue collar intellectuals and the seeming lack of interest many people have in cultural and intellectual elevation. After that the author talks about Will and Ariel Durant, their interesting relationship given that Will was a cradle robber and Ariel was only about fourteen or so when they got togetherand the way that they brought history to the masses and were early critics of the evils of Soviet Russia 1.

This leads to a discussion of Mortimer Adler 2a high school dropout who eventually launched the Great Books movement [1]. After that the author discusses the life and writings of the everyman libertarian economist Milton Friedman and the help of his wife in his work. After that the author discusses the hobo longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer 4and closes with a look at Ray Bradbury's success as the poet and short story writer despite his down-and-out outcast background 5after which the book ends with notes, acknowledgements, and an index.

What this book demonstrates is that it has never been particularly easy for intellectuals to seek to appeal to the common person. And in some cases--as was the case for the Harvard Classics--intellectuals may seek to provide classic material of worth to ordinary readers while simultaneously wishing to de-emphasize the classics in their own institutions.

Those who have sought to appeal to ordinary folks as academics have often been viewed as traitors, even where perhaps especially where there has been a high demand for intellectual elevation among ordinary people. Those of us who come from ordinary backgrounds may feel a tie to where we came from no matter how much learning and erudition we have acquired, but it has seldom been easy to travel between the worlds of the intellect and those of the blue collar places where some of us at least came from.

This book presents several ways where people have in the past been able to straddle those worlds and perhaps offers a chance for some readers to do the same if circumstances permit and the interest exists both for intellectual achievement for ordinary people as well as the desire to communicate and relate to ordinary people on the part of at least some intellectuals.

Jeff Zell. At the recent Friends of the Library sale I happened upon a clean copy, with dust jacket, of all 11 volumes of Durant's The Story of Civilization.

Daniel j flynn biography of william hill: Daniel Flynn. President - DRF Consulting

Who is Durant. All of these people came from immigrant or families of modest means. Durant, Adler, and Friedman worked their way through school. Hoffer and Bradbury did not have the means to secure a formal college or graduate level education. All of these people were people who gained much of their education through reading on their own.

Flynn not only provides a basic biography but also explains why each of these figures are important. They went on to write or edit books and articles that brought education to others, shaped national economic and public policy, and provided a new way of perceiving and interacting with the world. Flynn gives a great spring board into further study of these figures from our recent past.

Daniel j flynn biography of william hill: In this groundbreaking and compelling new

Hear it for the Autodidact Excellent ad for the self educated. Real learning only takes place through self directed inquiry. Even for those with formal degrees. Christopher Blosser. Blue Collar Intellectuals offering chapter-length biographical profiles of public 'intellectuals' from the early 20th century: Will and Ariel Durant popular historiansMortimer J Adler founder of the 'Great Books' programsMilton Friedman economistEric Hoffer philosopher and Ray Bradbury.

Intended for a popular audience, I found it easily readable and engaging. True to the title of the book, these "intellectuals" resided outside of the "ivory towers" of academia, came from humble socio-economic roots and were by and large were either autodidacts by and large responsible for their own learning or, enjoying the fruits of a formal university education, sought to share the knowledge and benefits of that experience with the common man and to daniel j flynn biography of william hill him up -- and more importantly, of a time where the 'common man' actually reciprocated as a welcoming audience that sought to better themselves.

Theirs was very different age and time -- it was both fascinating as well as disturbing in terms of how far we've fallen to consider a period in U. Where PBS television could run a highly acclaimed multi-part series on economic theory by Milton Friedman together with his critics intended for mass-viewing, and where a homeless and hobo longshoreman like Eric Hoffer could write a book "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" that would enthrall a nation and become the favorite of two U.

It was a time, scarcely imaginable today, where the written word and the value of ideas was held in high regard: where great thoughts and serious debate were cultivated not just as narrow academic pursuits confined to a college campus, but a national pastime for people of ALL walks of life. A time whose impending demise would be chronicled by Ray Bradbury in his short stories and fiction, anticipating the continuing encroachment of technology and social media, tools of destruction that would whittle away at our mind and culture television was an "insidious beast, freezing a billion people to stone every night"; the internet "a big distraction"; videogames "a waste of time for men who have nothing else to do".

As a reader, I found the notion that such a period actually existed in the United States as interesting as the biographies of these "intellectuals" themselves. From the forward by author Daniel J. Flynn: There was a massive demand for blue-collar intellectuals throughout much of the twentieth century because there was a massive demand for intellectual betterment.

There isn't a massive supply of blue-collar intellectuals today because the enlightened do not feel a vocational pull to reach out to the everyman and the everyman expresses little demand for intellectual betterment. There is not even a consensus that reading means intellectual betterment, let alone what we should be reading. The cultural common denominators of the past aren't so common anymore.

Once can reference The Simpsons or Anchorman or an Eminem lyric with the understanding that an educated audience will know what one is talking about. What it means to be an educated person has changed for the worse. The intellectual and the everyman suffer when the life of the mind is deemed the exclusive domain of intellectuals. Segregated from society by academic jargon, minute specialization, and outright snobbery, intellectuals descend into a ghetto of unintelligible babble remote from mass society.

Similarly, today's middlebrow becomes yesterday's lowbrow when Tool Academy, Grand Theft Auto IV cage fighting and Internet pornography crowd out the pursuit of higher things within mass culture. Comfortable in the sensate cesspool demanding of neither the intellect nor the soul, the everyman makes no effort to ascend from the muck.

Grateful for the status separation, the intellectual does nothing to raise the mass and everything to extenuate his privileged apartness. Pannapacker, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The rejection of The Great Books signifies a declining belief in the value of anything without a direct practical application, combined with the triumph of a passive entertainment.

William Kulbicki. Saw the author on book tv on c-span. Love bookTV. Found these short biographies of public intellectuals interesting and revealing. They all had low middle class backgrounds but rose to being respected and influential. Causes me to think where are their kind today? The author even brings into the biographies short synopsis of their work, not enough to say you know it but enough to prick your interest.

Well done. Excellent introduction to three giants of the self-taught variety. Join the discussion. Can't find what you're looking for? Help center. References [ edit ]. Flynn, Author at the American Spectator". The American Spectator. Retrieved Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Daniel j flynn biography of william hill: In this groundbreaking and compelling new

Regnery Publishing. Flynn: ". Penguin Random House. External links [ edit ]. Categories : Living people American political writers American male writers American political commentators American male bloggers American bloggers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American non-fiction writer stubs. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation.

Blue Collar Intellectuals vividly captures a time in the twentieth century when the everyman aspired to high culture and when intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman. Author Daniel J. Flynn profiles thinkers from working-class backgrounds who played a prominent role in American life by addressing their intellectual work to a mass audience.

Blue Collar Intellectuals tells the fascinating story of the unschooled hobo who migrated from skid row anonymity to White House chats with the president and prime-time TV specials.