Defining the Age - by Paul Starr & Julian E Zelizer (Paperback)

About the Book

In Defining the Age, Paul Starr and Julian E. Zelizer bring together a group of distinguished contributors to consider how Daniel Bell's ideas captured their historical moment and continue to provide profound insights into today's world.

Book Synopsis

The sociologist Daniel Bell was an uncommonly acute observer of the structural forces transforming the United States and other advanced societies in the twentieth century. The titles of Bell's major books--The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)--became hotly debated frameworks for understanding the era when they were published.

In Defining the Age, Paul Starr and Julian E. Zelizer bring together a group of distinguished contributors to consider how well Bell's ideas captured their historical moment and continue to provide profound insights into today's world. Wide-ranging essays demonstrate how Bell's writing has informed thinking about subjects such as the history of socialism, the roots of the radical right, the emerging postindustrial society, and the role of the university. The book also examines Bell's intellectual trajectory and distinctive political stance. Calling himself "a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture," he resisted being pigeon-holed, especially as a neoconservative.

Defining the Age features essays from historians Jenny Andersson, David A. Bell, Michael Kazin, and Margaret O'Mara; sociologist Steven Brint; media scholar Fred Turner; and political theorists Jan-Werner Müller and Stefan Eich. While differing in their judgments, they agree on one premise: Bell's ideas deserve the kind of nuanced and serious attention that they finally receive in this book.

Review Quotes

Defining the Age captures like no other book on Daniel Bell the range of his interests, the reach of his learning, and the drama of the historical moment in which he lived. Anyone interested in him will have to read this book.--Mark Lilla, author of The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics

About the Author

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, founding coeditor of The American Prospect, and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American history. His most recent book is Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies (2019).

Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His most recent book is Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party (2020), and he is a frequent commentator in the media, including a weekly column on CNN.com.