Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals starts with a clearly stated premise: public intellectuals have declined with suburbanization of the U.S. and the academicization of writing. With such a clear thesis, one could expect a book to have a clear and rigorous argument, but here Jacoby, much like the public intellectuals he is discussing, is much looser. That is not to say that the book is not enjoyable—it is. There are insightful discussions of suburbanization’s effects on writing as an industry, the “long march through the academies” as well as capsule criticism on Mumford, Velben, Mills, Jacobs, and a few other key early 20th century public intellectuals as well as more incisive commentary on William Buckley, David Harvey, and Marshall Berman.
The book suffers from two key problems: the first is that amount of material covered limits Jacoby’s rigor in any given area, and often Jacoby proffers opinions as explanations, and the second is that the book is quite dated now as many areas of discussion are even more sharply divided. The long march through the academy that Jacoby bemoaned in the likes of Harvey and Wallerstein that happened with the professionalization of the New Left is long over. Their ideological children will be unlikely to find stable employment in the Academe as there just isn’t as much of it left. This has forced some leftist intellectuals back out into the open world, but not nearly enough and in panoply of current voices, they are but drops in the sea. While the first concern is a limitation of Jacoby’s choice of topic and presentation, the second is a function of time.
Still the simple premise and the complicated conclusions drawn from it are worth the time of this book. Indeed, one would be so lucky if Jacoby or someone who listened to him were to pick this back up and complete what has happened since the mid-80s and how much more accelerated what Jacoby was discussing has become.
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