Ranging widely across many disciplines, this collection of essays demonstrates a distaste for intellectuals who "run with the intellectual mob", and a deep respect for those who maintain their integrity under great pressure. The collection includes an affectionate treatment of Leo Szilard, the physicist whose involvement with the development of the atomic bomb led him to work towards addressing its social consequences; a discussion of the educational philosophy of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University of Chicago's fifth, and most controversial, president; an account of the Polish emigre Leopold Labedz's outspoken resistance to communism, and an essay on Indian writer Nirad Chaudhuri. Many of these essays have appeared in "The American Scholar", edited by Joseph Epstein, who introduces this volume with his own portrait of Edward Shils.

Ranging widely across many disciplines, this collection of essays demonstrates a distaste for intellectuals who "run with the intellectual mob", and a deep respect for those who maintain their integrity under great pressure. The collection includes an affectionate treatment of Leo Szilard, the physicist whose involvement with the development of the atomic bomb led him to work towards addressing its social consequences; a discussion of the educational philosophy of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University of Chicago's fifth, and most controversial, president; an account of the Polish emigre Leopold Labedz's outspoken resistance to communism, and an essay on Indian writer Nirad Chaudhuri. Many of these essays have appeared in "The American Scholar", edited by Joseph Epstein, who introduces this volume with his own portrait of Edward Shils.