Culture

One of our most brilliant minds offers a sweeping intellectual history that argues for the reclamation of culture’s value

Culture is a defining aspect of what it means to be human. Defining culture and pinpointing its role in our lives is not, however, so straightforward. Terry Eagleton, one of our foremost literary and cultural critics, is uniquely poised to take on the challenge. In this keenly analytical and acerbically funny book, he explores how culture and our conceptualizations of it have evolved over the last two centuries—from rarified sphere to humble practices, and from a bulwark against industrialism’s encroaches to present-day capitalism’s most profitable export. Ranging over art and literature as well as philosophy and anthropology, and major but somewhat "unfashionable" thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder and Edmund Burke as well as T. S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, and Oscar Wilde, Eagleton provides a cogent overview of culture set firmly in its historical and theoretical contexts, illuminating its collusion with colonialism, nationalism, the decline of religion, and the rise of and rule over the "uncultured" masses. Eagleton also examines culture today, lambasting the commodification and co-option of a force that, properly understood, is a vital means for us to cultivate and enrich our social lives, and can even provide the impetus to transform civil society.

• All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
• Materialism
• The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age
• The Lost Soul of American Protestantism (American Intellectual Culture)
• How to Preach and Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth
• Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth
• An Introduction to the New Testament
• New Testament History
• Telling God's Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation
• Preaching like Paul