Rating: 
Summary: So intelligent and sharp that most people wouldn't get it!
Review: Finally, someone dare say it! Why nobody wants to discuss anything deep and meaningful - because they don't know how (plus 'what, where, when, how and why'). It is also why we have the 'anything goes' culture. I don't think I have ever read such a wonderful book about understanding the nuances of our western society and lifestyle. With just the right sort of biting humor, Prof. White did a great job taking us on a journey exploring many facets of our lifestyle from movies to books to art critics, from education to work, from science to the military to the government. What I admired most was his courage to dig deep into our psyche and collective thinking as a nation and he does not stop where most would have. He then invite each one of us to look deep inside to understand where we are heading as a society. It is a grim picture of a future that most American would not dare comprehend or articulate out of arrogance and fear. Thus, we all have the responsibility to reflect, speak out, dream and work toward a sustainable and peaceful earth with the best of human creation - our honesty, our critical thinking, our imagination and our human heart. It would be easy to dismiss this point if you just attack any of his examples throughout the book. That was ironically his exact point, don't just take in any familiar input or attack anything that is different without thinking carefully what exactly is it that someone is saying. Instead, you must use your brain cells to sort things out, to find the rough diamonds (the sublime) among the trash that we are deluged with everyday. And if we can't find any then we could create beauty and human utopia in our mind to start with. So start reading and stop watch TV all the time!
Rating: 
Summary: somewhat ambivalent
Review: First, if you read the review from the guy from Houston, and you felt it was filled with the easy knee jerk libertarian argument ("we have crappy culture and car-dominated landscapes because we want and chose them; it's all OUR fault since we CHOSE all this FREELY.") and you really believe he's right, then don't read White's book. That would be like a born again Christian reading the case for atheism. If you would like antidotes to this sort of DISNEYWORLD thinking, then White can be helpful. I'm a little ambivalent about the book myself, but when criticisms like # 14 fill the air, something needs to be done, however inadequately.
Rating:
Summary: If you can get past the ranting, it's a pretty good read.
Review: I have mixed feeling about Curtis White's The Middle Mind. The book asserts that our society has evolved a mechanism for thwarting creativity and ensuring our continued passivity and stupidity. He stresses the importance of the examining the narratives we use to construct reality, and the importance of being able to imagine alternate stories. Narratives define our perception of reality, and our ability to recognize them as stories offers the freedom to rewrite them. He further asserts that big business and big government are controlling our collective stories, with some assistance from academia. White calls this controlling entity "the middle mind".Curtis is clearly intelligent and well read. His writing, though pretentious, is clear and direct. These qualities, coupled with the fact that he presents a point of view that is different from my own, drew me to the book as I thumbed through it at [book retailer]. (Sorry, Amazon.) I particularly enjoyed the section on literary criticism. I know very little about the topic, but I was able to follow most of his explanations. On many occasions, Curtis is derisive to those who disagree with him. Of course, that adds nothing to his arguments. I am disappointed when someone of his ability uses such tactics. Curtis' arguments are weak in one important area: He fails to recognize his own liberal bias. I don't have a problem with bias; it's just another word for "point-of-view". But in logic, it's important to be aware of one's bias. Part of the liberal bias is that the world's problems are caused by social illnesses, and are corrected by improving social institutions. The corresponding conservative bias is that the world's problems are caused by individual human shortcomings, and are corrected when each of us strives to be a better person. Neither viewpoint is provable, nor are they mutually exclusive. Most of us predominantly accept one or the other axiomatically. Since Curtis argues that social institutions are corrupting our narratives, I think he should have at least addressed his liberal premises. It's not that I disagree with Curtis' assessment of our society! On the whole, our education, our entertainment, our political debate, and our life-choices are just plain stupid. But I don't see that as the fault of our social instructions. The fault is our own. TV is moronic, but only because we choose to watch the moronic shows. Politicians feed us BS, but only because we are willing to eat it. And our insane love affair with the automobile and technology is of our own choosing. Our democratic and free enterprise social structures work very well. They give us what we want - good or bad. It's up to us to want the right things. The book would be served if Curtis explained precisely how insidious social forces prevent me from living my life with free choice, creativity, and intelligence. Curtis also examines war and politics as a function of the stories we use to construct reality. His literary model is particularly effective when it cautions us against sanctifying our own motivations for war, or vilifying those of our enemies. Those are dangerous and unhelpful social scripts. But even on this topic, Curtis' unreflected liberal bias leaves a gap in his reasoning. The liberal bias views war as the result of people becoming angry at one another. Avoiding war involves talking things through and generally treating each other better. The conservative bias views war as a power struggle between human societies. Avoiding war involves establishing a dominant power. (Though I think most of us acknowledge that both dynamics are at work.) Obviously, the liberal solution is preferable if it worked. The problem is that it never does. The desire for peace is not new to our age. People have being trying to live together peacefully since the dawn of civilization. We have enjoyed extended periods of relative peace only when a dominant power enforced the peace - and always, sadly and paradoxically, through military might. Even our most enlightened and peace-loving leaders must contend with the fact that there are people out there willing to kill them to gain their power. As much as we would like it to be otherwise, violence exists because violence works. "The Middle Mind" offers nothing to address that conundrum. (Check out Nigel Ferguson's "Empire".) I recommend "The Middle Mind" despite its logical flaws from a conservative perspective. Curtis writes very well, and has a playful intellect. I had to put on my thinking cap for this one.
Rating:
Summary: Blown away - what a book!
Review: I just finished Middle Mind and it is now riddled with my own notes, underlined passages and margin thoughts. It has been quite a while since a book arrested my attention quite like this. It is a rare find - a relevant topic brilliantly explored. I enjoyed White's arguments - loved his wit, his references(some brought me back to college...), and am delighted that so far, it has elicited such long responses from other readers. I can confidently recommend this to a broad audience of readers. Get it - it is great.
Rating:
Summary: Some real Fresh Air
Review: I read both essays Curtis White wrote for Harper's and quickly went out and bought this book. "The Middle Mind" is provocative and inspiring. I highly recommend it to anyone who is tired of being forced fed by the entertainment and political industries. This is not just another rant but a call to arms of the heart and mind. Curtis White writes in a manner that is compelling and humorous and yet the ideas he discusses are far reaching and powerful. I applaud Curtis White and urge serious book lovers everywhere to read this innovative and empowering work.
Rating: 
Summary: It sounded better on CSpan 2.
Review: I saw White talking about the book on Book TV on CSpan and found the supposed premise , that Americans let their real imaginations languish, to be interesting. Unfortunately, the book is nothing more than old-style leftist diatribe and a simplistic analysis of today's complex problems. And the author's attitude is superior and mean-spirited. Think of your most annoying college English teacher, the one whose memory keeps you from donating to the alumni fund. That's the author. Worse, all the good jokes are on the flyleaf. A real disppointment. Two left thumbs down.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless Drivel
Review: I should have taken the plug by Molly Ivins on the book jacket as a warning that this book would be as incoherent as one of her columns. There were other clues that I ignored much to my own regret. Mr. White teaches at Illinois State University which will never be mistaken as the Harvard of the Midwest. I should have quit when the author waxed poetically about drug induced poster art from the 60's as a 20th century cultural high water mark. I should have quit but I continued on, hoping he would somehow top this idiocy. I was not disapointed, page after page revealed the inner workings of a 60's radical turned academic
who hates America, hates the military, hates technology, hates capitalism and hates anyone who doesn't share his insights and most importantly his "imagination".
Mr. White should put aside his Adorno and Derrida texts and do a little research. He may be surprised to find out that the only places that Marxism is considered a viable economic system are certain American college campuses. I will revise my rating to 5 stars and call it brilliant if I find out this was all a clever satire by those folks at the "Onion".
Rating:
Summary: The Middle Mind in Action
Review: I was amused at his criticism of Terry Gross, Ken Burns and other PBS/NPR intellectual posers and am sympathetic to many of his issues with American materialist culture. His notion of the Middle Mind and its effects on how Americans thinks about and understand themselves could be a powerful and useful idea. However this book is so poorly written that it hardly makes any sense. What starts out as an argument soon turns into wild ranting and raving on anything that happens to pop into his mind, which sadly is too much TV, pop music and trendy literary theory and "cultural studies." Curtis White does in the end finally offer us an answer to the question "Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves." The answer is that English professors at Illinois State University cannot formulate a clear and thoughtful argument or sustain and develop an idea for more than a few paragraphs and yet they continue to train dozens of students each semester and publish nonsense for an even larger market. Editor Gideon Weil deserves at least some of the blame for this, although perhaps what the book really needed was a writer and not an editor.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I'd hoped Curtis White might provide some lucid and usable insights regarding our society's descent into McCulture. Instead, he serves as a detached critic of just about everyone and everything with no solutions in sight. He provides some witicisms that are prosaic hor d'oeuvres ("Promise him culture but give him TV."), yet his book is largely a hash of ideological left-overs (media, academia and politics are beset by mediocrity). White best gives the flavor of his own work, when he reviews David Lynch's "Blue Velvet": "Lynch is sublime in part because he is inarticulate. He really has no idea what he's trying to say. He's at his best when he keeps speaking anyway, trusting to his always shocking intuitions." White's writing comes across as the not-ready-for-primetime musings most aptly recorded in a personal journal, not a full-fledged book that people are expected to pay money to read. Readers interested in this genre are better served by works such as Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" and David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There."
Rating:
Summary: A rare understanding of art and imagination
Review: I, too, read the Harper's article that inspired this book, and though I was just as perplexed as Patrick O'Kelley by White's vilification of Terry Gross and "Fresh Air," White takes the time in this longer work to make his antipathy very clear. It is the dumbing-down and leveling of our boldest art with pap entertainment that infuriates him, and Gross, broadcasting on NPR, which should be insulated from the pressure for public pandering that so afflicts commercial radio and television, seems to do this on a regular basis. Other examples White advances to illustrate his points are idiocyncratic more often than not, but that doesn't detract a whit from one singular accomplishment of this book of particular interest to me. White is a novelist of a particularly creative and original stripe (the fact that I've read all his work must mean that I'm a fan), and this qualifies him to speak of something that few intellectuals have discussed with much accuracy, in my opinion: the identity and function, not only of imagination, but of the arts in society. As an artist and sometime intellectual myself, I have despaired at how many writers on the subject have got it wrong. Happily, White takes Wallace Stevens as his mentor, and Stevens's pronouncements apply as well to visual and musical as to literary arts. But to be able to articulate with authority what art is, and does, one must have experienced it, fully and from the inside. Thus the greater part of White's discussion, I'm sure, comes from his own reflective experience as a novelist, and not only from reliance on the work of other authors and poets. The middle section of the book, discussing in detail the military-industrial technocracy and where it is leading us, I read only dutifully; I have a hunch this subject has been discussed better elsewhere, and by insiders. And White's style, a mix of elegant, articulate discussion with conversational asides and profane expletives--something that energizes his novels--is a needless distraction here. But the Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 5 (of 5, all totaled) are brilliant, completely on-target, and worth the highest praise. My only wish is that I could afford to send a copy of White's book to every critic, curator, gallery dealer and endowment administrator alive. For the "Middle Mind" lurks in palaces of power in the art world--where you might expect to find those who know better--as well as in government, corporate America, Big Media, and the general populace itself. Whether it always will is another question; but Step One is always to define the Problem, and it is done here with great insight.
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