Books: Endurance of the Egghead

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE (434 pp.)—Richard Hofstadter—Knopf ($6.95).

To hear some tell it, U.S. intellectuals have been under siege in the modern world as never before. They should relax, says Richard Hofstadter, a practicing intellectual himself and a Columbia University historian (The American Political Tradition, The Age of Reform). "Men do not rise in the morning, grin at themselves in their mirrors, and say: 'Ah, today I shall torment an intellectual and strangle an idea!' " Anti-intellectualism, argues Hofstadter, is part and parcel of any popular democracy.

Pushed from Politics. American anti-intellectualism began...