The Middle Mind - by Curtis White (Paperback)

From the Back Cover

Acclaimed social critic Curtis White describes an all-encompassing and little-noticed force taking over our culture and our lives that he calls the Middle Mind: the current failure of the American imagination in the media, politics, education, art, technology, and religion. Irreverent, provocative, and far-reaching, White presents a clear vision of this dangerous mindset that threatens America's intellectual and cultural freedoms, concluding with an imperative to reawaken and unleash the once powerful American imagination.

The Middle Mind is pragmatic, plainspoken, populist, contemptuous of the Right's narrowness, and incredulous before the Left's convolutions. It wants to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has bought an SUV with the intent of visiting it. It even understands in some indistinct way how that very SUV spells the Arctic's doom.

Review Quotes

"A splendidly cranky academic." - Molly Ivins

"The Middle Mind is a strong, knowledgeable, entertaining (and imaginative!) argument" - John Barth

"The most inspiringly wicked social critic of the moment. " - Elle

"A serious effort to understand a serious problem and should find a prominent place in every American library." - Library Journal

"Subtle and powerful." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Curt White gives name to an ugly soul-killer already in our midst." - Greg Palast, NYTimes bestselling author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

"A sharp, erudite and witty text that... could help set our country on a path to a saner future." - John de Graaf, co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

"The trouble with "Middle Mind" is that it neutralizes genuinely useful insights that don't look like anything instantly recognizable." - Andrei Codrescu, author of The Disappearance of the Outside

"Hot diatribe." - Rolling Stone

Selected as a Library Journal Best Book 2003 "White makes a passionate case for the importance of the imagination as he skewers our society's overwhelming lack of fresh thinking. The media, academia, and politics are briskly taken to task in this wake-up call." - Library Journal

"Cogent, acute, beautiful, merciless, and true." - David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest