Loose Canons: Notes of the Culture Wars

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Book Overview

Multiculturalism. It has been the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines around America. It has sparked heated jeremiads by George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in America today--and justly so. For whether one speaks of tensions between...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195075196
• ISBN13: 9780195075199
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

An Unpretentious Look at Race

Gates' commentary in this work is insightful without coming across as pretentious or apologetic. Surprisingly, Gates has written a book about race without injecting any invective or peppering it with position papers for how things ought to be, as many political figures would and as Gates himself has done on talk and panel shows. Gates does illuminate the history of black figures in literature and their achievements and accomplishments which may tend to steer this work toward a literary criticism and away from a criticism more appropriate for ethnic studies or black studies. All in all, Gates is a proper steward of black culture: he offers it to the world without any strings.

Good enough!

This is Gates, a Harvard black scholar, opining about multiculturalism debates in the early 90s. It said some useful stuff which may seem a little dated now. For example, he asks why can't all campuses be like Berkeley where there is no racial majority? Well, that question is totally moot post-Proposition 209. As all Harvard black scholars have become recently controversial, this book will be a good intro book for lay readers to see what the controversy is all about. This book is written in a simple fashion that any person should be able to understand. Do not sleep, however! Gates has written many articles and books that only elite readers could understand. Do not believe the lies of the new Harvard president.