Swinehart on Menand’s “The Marketplace of Ideas”

David PesciFebruary 18, 20101min
Kirk Swinehart calls Louis Menand's unvarnished look at American universities "deeply relevant."

The Chicago Tribune featured a review by Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, of Louis Menand’s latest book, The Marketplace of Ideas, which examines American universities. Menand, a faculty member at Harvard University as well as a staff writer at The New Yorker, examines the forces that have shaped these institutions, especially in the last few decades. Swinehart writes that “To anyone who has spent time on the inside, as they say, The Marketplace of Ideas is alternately bracing and chilling.” He says that Menand writes with the same “wry elan” that made his last book so good, and that The Marketplace of Ideas is “deeply relevant.”