Our Culture, What's Left of It The Mandarins and the Masses

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. The book includes "When Islam Breaks Down," named by David Brooks of The New York Times as the best journal article of 2004.

Informed by years of medical practice in a wide variety of settings, Dr. Dalrymple's experience allows him to discover the universal in the local and the particular, and makes him impatient with the humbug and obscurantism that have too long marred our social and political discourse.

As in Life at the Bottom, his essays are incisive yet undogmatic, beautifully composed and devoid of disfiguring jargon, Our Culture, What's Left of It is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization.

Theodore Dalrymple is a British doctor and writer who has worked on four continents and has most recently practiced in a British inner-city hospital and prison. He has written a column for the London Spectator for thirteen years and is a contributing editor for City Journal in the United States. His earlier collection of essays, Life at the Bottom, was widely praised.

ARTICLES

The Meaning of Beheading, By Theodore Dalrymple, National Review, 10-24-05

MENTIONS

THE WORLD OF BOOKS: Some of our favorite authors and New Yorkers pick their favorite books of 2005, By Andre Aciman, New York Sun, 12-30-05

Our Culture, What's Left of It: the mandarins and the masses, By Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New Statesman, 10-11-05

Our Culture, What's Left Of It, By Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 08-31-05

Oh, Cherie!, By Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review, 08-24-05

Equal time, Paddling to New Zealand, 08-08-05

The Life And Death Of England's Cities, By Ed Driscoll, EdDriscoll.com, 08-07-05

Role of restraint amid 'the fragility of civilization', By Edward J. Sozanski, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 08-07-05

Happy-slap politics, By John Lloyd, The Financial Times, 07-24-05

The challenge to be civilized, By Andrew Martin, The Courier-Journal, 07-17-05

Stiff Upper Lip, Townhall.com, 07-08-05

By-products of Modernity, By Paul Hollander, The New York Sun, 06-13-05

The Doctor Is In, By David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 06-06-05

Safer Knives, By Elizabeth Kantor, conservativebookservice.com, 05-31-05

Pinpointing civilization's shortcomings, By Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times, 05-27-05

Library Journal Review, By Ellen D. Gilbert, 05-15-05