Rating: 
Summary: Great (but that depends on how you look at 'great')
Review: A fairly fast-paced history that follows the trail of Pragmatism from its origin onward via biographical sketches of the men involved in forming it. As has already been noted in other reviews, this is a book that you could probably spend months and months sifting through due to the density of the subject matter. The author does an excellent job of shedding light on other subjects during the era, like slavery and the racial theories of prominent scientists. Let me assure you, if you look at the past through the views that most of us hold today, there were few men in any part of the country that didn't hold views on race to make you cringe. For example, as silly as it might seem now, the most serious scientists of their time were divided as to whether or not the white and black races evolved from one common ancestor or evolved entirely independent of one another...i.e., we were created differently from day one. It's this very thing that shows reveals the beauty of science as something that builds on itself via verifiable data and, once your ideas fail the test, they go directly and swiftly into the dustbin of history. Philosophical systems not being something that spring into someone's head fully formed, Menand does a great job tracing all of the twists and turns that ultimately lead to what we refer to as the philosophy of Pragmatism. This book was much broader in scope than I thought it would be and intensely interesting in many ways. You'll likely add bios of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James & John Dewey to your wish-list after reading this.
Rating: 
Summary: One star is too many
Review: This book is terrible. The author gets hung up on details of minor characters lives and never really make his point. Save your money and avoid it.
Rating:
Summary: Metaphysical Liars
Review: Anyone who praises this book has never read it. Those who say they read it and liked it are lying through their teeth. Menand tries to explain science, and mathematics, about which he knows very little and the results are a mess. Over-written, poorly edited and not surprisingly it is available for $10 because no one in his right mind would pay full price for this junk.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting intellectual history
Review: The Metaphysical Club is a Pulitzer Prize winning intellectual history of American thought. This book follows the development of the intellectual thinkers: Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey. According to Menand, these men were at the forefront of the intellectual movement in America following the Civil War right up to the Cold War era. Menand writes "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world." The movement of intellectual thought these four men developed is called "pragmatism". The Metaphysical Club itself was an informal gathering of some of the leading intellectuals, but it was a fairly short lived club. It serves, rather, as an identification for these shapers of Intellectual thought. Holmes, James, and Peirce were contemporaries who knew each other and at times worked together. Dewey was much younger and seems to be the heir to the Club that helped move their ideas forward into the 20th Century. As such, it felt as if Dewey had the greatest importance, at least as it was presented in the book. Holmes may have been the most prominent member, being a Supreme Court Justice. Even though this book purports to be an examination of these four men, it also weaves in the stories of other leading intellectual figures of the age, including Emerson and Darwin. This is a much bigger book than being just about four men. It is about an era of American Thought. This was an excellent book, very well written. It was also challenging. While I understood the concepts presented as I was reading them, I found it difficult to retain my grasp of the information when I had moved on to the next section and the next chapter. This is a different sort of American history, being an intellectual history, but I'm sure that anyone who has any interest in that sort of thing will find this book fascinating. It isn't a dry academic tome, by any means.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Biographical Tale Of Intellectual Giants & Ideas
Review: The Metaphysical Club is a fascinating and fun book. While it deals with the lives and ideas of some of the 19th century's greatest intellects, it is exceptionally well written and completely accessible to all readers. If you enjoy American history, you will probably enjoy this book. If you are a history buff who also enjoys philosophy or law, you will absolutely love this. The author, Louis Menand, is a first rate journalist. His style is smooth and clear. He is skilled at presenting complex people and ideas in an easy-to-understand manner. The book reads like a novel. Academics may like this book because it is a history of ideas. But it is also a highly entertaining biography of such great thinkers as Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, John Dewey and Charles S. Pierce (pronounced "purse"). Because this book is so well written, it will probably appeal to anyone who enjoys reading. Those who like history, law or philosophy will consider it an absolute joy.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, come on
Review: Didn't anyone find this book overwritten and pedantic, not to mention highly unfocused and rambling? A good editor would have lopped 200 pages off, including the completely irrelevant long opening descriptions of Holmes' Civial War escapades. A better title: Name Dropping Through History.
Rating:
Summary: A Philosophy For Our Times
Review: The Metaphysical Club is "a story of ideas in America". However, it traces these ideas back to England in the early 19th century and shows how America contributed to the international development of philosophy and natural science. Its theme is the importance of free exchange of ideas within a society, thereby supporting "indiviual rights" as a social necessity. The origin of this story occurred in the 16th century in Uraniborgin, a Danish city on the island of Hven. Founded by the astrologer, and later astronomer, Tycho Brache, this city was dedicated to the free exchange of ideas in the advancement of natural philosophy. Tycho was plagued with inaccuracies in astronomical observations made by his assistants. Others had suffered the same problem, but Tycho analyzed the errors, performed experiments, and determined that each assistant, and he himself, had an individual reaction pattern, each of which centered around a norm. This was the first physiological psychology study in recorded history and it became the first of many statistical analyses within the field of astronomy. This experiment eventually led to the concept of individual differences in every attribute of humans (and animals). Later, it was the basis for the doctrine of the average man, but it first *proved* that differences prevail in nature. It became the foundation of evolutionary theory. The Origin of the Species is an argument that diffentiation contributes to survival of each species. This book shows the influence of such thinking on four men: Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. Three of these men were briefly members on the Metaphysical Club in 1872, but the Metaphysical Club has become a metaphor for the extended network of various American, and foreign, thinkers who interacted as a social organism (so to speak) to produce a new way of thinking about nature and mankind. This new approach -- named Pragmatism by James -- discarded the Platonic Ideal and adopted uncertainty as the basis of nature itself. Obviously, this notion underlies the later development of quantum theory in Physics, but also contributed greatly to the behaviorial and social sciences. It tremendously expanded the role of statistics in science and other areas, while at the same time it undermined the philosophic basis of determinism. This book also points out that Pragmatism was intended as a way to reconcile differences without violence. It was born in the violence of the American Civil War and faded during the violence of the twentieth century. However, it has become more popular as the world faces the task of uniting thousands of social groups with contradictory mores, customs, folkways and traditions. Once again the world is interested in reconciliation. Highly recommended for all students of ideas and the history of science.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply Moving, Sophisticated
Review: I first "stumbled" upon this book while browsing the nonfiction area of a local bookstore. At the same time, Prof.Louis Menand was visiting my college and I attended his lecture out of pure chance. He was a very inspirational and highly sophisticated speaker, and so I read his book as soon as I could get a hold of it. The Metaphysical Club, which received the Pulitzer Prize in history, brims with Louis Menand's unparalleled sophistication and remarkable capacity for story-telling and conveying rich ideas. He describes the lives and works of the founders of the American idea of pragmatism: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The book itself is no light reading, and often requires careful analysis and introspection. In addition to the fact that the hardcover copy of the book is over 400 pages,I sometimes have to keep up with not getting confused by the names of the characters because he mostly refers to their last names, even when speaking of either the father and his son. Nevertheless, Menand's book was a delightful read because not only does he manage to bring intricate ideas with much lucidity, he also paints a colorful cast of real characters - replete with their own unique personalities, habits, and emotions.
Rating:
Summary: William James, Oliver Holmes, Racism, and Old Glory
Review: This is a must read for anyone interested in American history. City University of New York's English professor Louis Menand has crafted an excruciatingly erudite yet accessible tale of America's past superimposed on the pretext of The Metaphysical Club: a group of turn of the century American intellectuals. William James, Oliver Holmes, and John Dewey are well known but with them we also glimpse the intellectual sparkle of Charles Pierce and Chauncy Wright, among others. While these individuals are fascinating in their own right, Menand developes credible biopics of these men (and briefly Jane Addams) as a backdrop to explore America, her Civil War, and its aftermath; with an intense focus on the nightmare of racism that loomed so very large in these events. To this very day one hears the argument that "the civil war wasn't really about slavery." Oh by the way, coffee's not really about caffiene. Author Menand's perspective starkly contrasts the pride laden Protestant iconography of classical liberalism. Also central to this tale is the founding of the prominent American university, primarily Harvard. Through the history of Harvard we see the face of American racism, which remains our unwelcome relation of today, woven into a fabric of science and society. Founding Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz ushers us on a journey into the logics of the ivy league that fostered the eugenics societies which sprung up like dandelions at the county fairs and university faculty rooms of America prior to world war II (at the behest of the father of statistics, Francis Galston). American racism, science, religion, and economics pours forth from these pages like a stew seasoned with Kant, Hegel, Marx, and dare I say, the obscure American school of philosophy known as Pragmatism (a sort of Puritan's watered-down esixtentialism). Menand does a remarkable job of recalibrating history while piously honoring its authors, whose most worthy members seldom glow as hot as their dark and destructive affiliates. This is a critical yet admiring chronicle of post-civil war America, the turn of the century, and just beyond, written with insight, comprehension, and a jaundiced eye.
Rating:
Summary: A History of the Great American Thinkers
Review: What a great book! Should be required reading. How many Americans know who Jane Addams was? Find out here. It reads like a thriller. I couldn't put it down.
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