Books in Brief

Reaffirming Higher Education, by Jacob Neusner and Noam M. M. Neusner (Transaction, 209 pp, $29.95)

IT was Dr. Johnson, I think, who once said that mankind needs more often to be reminded than informed. This is an observation taken to heart especially bv the erudite Jacob Neusner, a professor of religious studies, and his son and coauthor Noam in their latest book on higher education. This is, in fact, their second such book. Throughout the first, entitled The Price of Excellence (which I reviewed in these pages in 1996), the Neusners explained how higher education had fared in America in the aftermath of World War II and been transformed by national policy during the Cold War, a transformation that seemed a diffusion, if not dissipation, of purpose. Now they step back to reflect more sagely upon what essentially should be going on within those ivied— or cinder blocked—walls.

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Reaffirming Higher Education, by Jacob Neusner and Noam M. M. Neusner (Transaction, 209 pp, $29.95)

IT was Dr. Johnson, I think, who once said that mankind needs more often to be reminded than informed. This is an observation taken to heart especially bv the erudite Jacob Neusner, a professor of religious studies, and his son and coauthor Noam in their latest book on higher education. This is, in fact, their second such book. Throughout the first, entitled The Price of Excellence (which I reviewed in these pages in 1996), the Neusners explained how higher education had fared in America in the aftermath of World War II and been transformed by national policy during the Cold War, a transformation that seemed a diffusion, if not dissipation, of purpose. Now they step back to reflect more sagely upon what essentially should be going on within those ivied— or cinder blocked—walls.