Books, Arts & Manners: Missing Persons

The Last Intellectuals, by Russell Jacoby (Basic 290 pp., $18.95)

Russell Jacoby is an engaging complainer: it’s not absolutely clear what he’s complaining about, but line by line he’s lucid, energetic, and witty. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe tries to come to grips with “a vacancy in culture, the absence of younger voices, perhaps the absence of a generation.”