The Ideas Industry. How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas

The concept of the "public intellectual" has a rich and colorful history. It began in the early twentieth century, when the new mass media catapulted intellectuals who were able to write for the general public to semi-stardom. The first wave included figures like Walter Lippmann—who coined the term "stereotype" and is widely considered the founder of media studies—and by the 1950s, public intellectuals as a species had become a powerful and influential force in the American cultural...