Part I: Civic Culture : THe Emergence of City Culture in new York ; Patricians and Artisans ; A University of the City -- Part II: Literary Culture : Toward a Metropolitan Sensibility ; The Metropolitan Gentry: Culture Against Politics ; The Modern Literary
Intellectual -- Part III: Academic Culture : A Metropolitan University ; Professors as Intellectuals -- Part IV: An International Capital of Culture : Refiguration.
A major social history of the intellectual life of New York City - the story of how, over three centuries, a minor colonial settlement became the capital of modern thought. From the eighteenth century on, New Yorkers have struggled to create new kinds of institutions, and new styles of thinking and writing, that would reflect the special character of their city, both its boundless energies and its deep divisions. Now Thomas Bender, Chairman of the Department of History at New York University, offers both an encompassing picture of the men and women who created the ideal of the New York intellectual."--Jacket.
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