An Open Letter to Allan Bloom

Dear Professor Bloom:

Who would have guessed that the single most important figure in my own college education would become one of the leaders in the battle to remake American education as a whole? And yet that is what you have become, as the author of the decade’s most surprising bestseller (and, along with Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, one of the two most important conservative works of the decade). This unlikely turn of events began with the publication of an article in this magazine five years ago and culminated in the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, the only book in this country’s history to sell over 250,000 copies in hardcover with chapter titles like “From Socrates’ Apology to Heidegger’s Rektoratsrede” and “Rousseau’s Radicalization and the German University.”

About the Author

John Podhoretz

John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary.

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Dear Professor Bloom:

Who would have guessed that the single most important figure in my own college education would become one of the leaders in the battle to remake American education as a whole? And yet that is what you have become, as the author of the decade’s most surprising bestseller (and, along with Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, one of the two most important conservative works of the decade). This unlikely turn of events began with the publication of an article in this magazine five years ago and culminated in the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, the only book in this country’s history to sell over 250,000 copies in hardcover with chapter titles like “From Socrates’ Apology to Heidegger’s Rektoratsrede” and “Rousseau’s Radicalization and the German University.”