Louis Menand's 2021 Book about the Cold War, and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 6,500-word review essay "Louis Menand's 2021 Book about the Cold War, and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I highlight Menand's 850-page book The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) in connection with highlights about the life and work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). For example, I use Menand's discussion of Hannah Arendt's 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism to show how key points she makes can be connected with Ong's sweeping account of Western cultural history.