Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture

. W. W. Norton & Company, $15.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-393-31723-7

The high-brows strike back. Cynthia Ozick, Sven Birkerts, Brad Leithauser and 20 others try to put the kibosh on an idiosyncratic variety of America's intellectual and social ills. (Nov.)

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