Books: Assaults on the Mind

THE HOUSE OF INTELLECT (276 pp.)—Jacques Barzun—Harper ($5).

That the forces striving to make a great big fool of American man have struck a winning streak is the contention of Jacques Barzun, a Columbia University professor who would like very much to nag at the U.S. conscience if he knew where to look for it. It is not at the U.S. as such that Barzun fires his bullets; it is at the modern world at large—"egalitarian democracy, mass education and journalism, the cult of art and philanthropy, and the manners coincident with these ..."

Barzun takes a proud position as defender of a...