Rating: 
Summary: Complain of a culture?
Review: Robert Hughes managed to make clear what ails us as a culture and a people in this book, and it is simply ignorance, immaturity and mediocrity hiding behind the Constitution, in all its guises. There are times, when I didn't agree with him and his assessments, and times where I felt he knew little of what he was talking about in a given arena- he didn't "get it"; the real emotional/spiritual motivation behind the arguments and work of those he criticizes. That, laughingly, more than the "yes!", "exactly", and "that's what I've been trying to tell them"'s I cheered when I agreed with him, is what made me know, humbly, that he was essentially right on each and every point. Robert Hughes, tying it all into the end of the Cold War and the ennui and the emerging sociological addictive personality that is now a hallmark of American society under the surface of our achievements, cretaes a book that has lasting value as a prognosis as much as a polemic. As we all know, anyone can write a polemic- no talent needed there. Not everyone can chart the history and symptoms of a spiritual disease; a disease, like all others, that is not partial to any particular gender, race, ethnicity, social standing, or political leanings. Just look at his listing of those who suffer from it!Unfortunately it is currently out of print, but I advise anyone who likes this kind of insightful stuff to look at Stanton Peele's LOVE AND ADDICTION (see my review). The two books together make incredible cultural bookends, and can help us all reclaim what can actually be considered a culture we are giving away before (with the internet) actually reinventing.
Rating:
Summary: Complain of a culture?
Review: Robert Hughes managed to make clear what ails us as a culture and a people in this book, and it is simply ignorance, immaturity and mediocrity hiding behind the Constitution, in all its guises. There are times, when I didn't agree with him and his assessments, and times where I felt he knew little of what he was talking about in a given arena- he didn't "get it"; the real emotional/spiritual motivation behind the arguments and work of those he criticizes. That, laughingly, more than the "yes!", "exactly", and "that's what I've been trying to tell them"'s I cheered when I agreed with him, is what made me know, humbly, that he was essentially right on each and every point. Robert Hughes, tying it all into the end of the Cold War and the ennui and the emerging sociological addictive personality that is now a hallmark of American society under the surface of our achievements, cretaes a book that has lasting value as a prognosis as much as a polemic. As we all know, anyone can write a polemic- no talent needed there. Not everyone can chart the history and symptoms of a spiritual disease; a disease, like all others, that is not partial to any particular gender, race, ethnicity, social standing, or political leanings. Just look at his listing of those who suffer from it!
Rating: 
Summary: Rambling diatribe that picks up toward the end
Review: Robert Hughes takes aim at Americans' preoccupation with victimhood, the battleground of multiculturalism, and the mediocrity of modern art in this collection of three essays expanded from speeches that he had given. I basically agree with him, but the first two sections of this book read like the ramblings of a grouchy old man, albeit a very well-educated one. It comes alive in the final section, in which Hughes laments that Americans have come to see art as something therapeutic, that the intention to heal or offer solace has come to be of more value than the technical merits of the piece. This section also includes a very interesting and entertaining account of the furor over the work of Robert Mappelthorpe.
Rating:
Summary: Bold and provocative challenge to the art world.
Review: Robert Hughes tries to position himself somewhere in between Karen Finley and Jesse Helms in his essays about the politics of art in America. The result is that he comes out about where the Supreme Court has found itself in June 1998 -- linked to Jesse Helms anyway by critics, despite trying hard to distance himself. He apparently thinks Karen Finley is a fraud, and that's just not what the art crowd wants to hear. It was courageous of Hughes to write the book, which contains the seeds of "American Visions" (also worth reading).
Rating: 
Summary: An essay that you think you should read
Review: This is one of those books that you read and enjoy and then remember virtually nothing about the contents, at least for me. It looks at the multi-culturalism wars in the US, sprinkles in some ineresting examples, and then ends. I don't mean to be glib, as I respect the author and love his writing style and erudition, but that is all that it meant to me. I can not even remember clearly what his opinion was on multi-culturalism, and I just read it! The book just kind of rambles and I never understood why the author chose to write about the details that he did. That to me is a sign that the essay fails, though perhaps it didn't click for me alone, as others liked it better. Not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An essay that you think you should read
Review: This is one of those books that you read and enjoy and then remember virtually nothing about the contents, at least for me. It looks at the multi-culturalism wars in the US, sprinkles in some ineresting examples, and then ends. I don't mean to be glib, as I respect the author and love his writing style and erudition, but that is all that it meant to me. I can not even remember clearly what his opinion was on multi-culturalism, and I just read it! The book just kind of rambles and I never understood why the author chose to write about the details that he did. That to me is a sign that the essay fails, though perhaps it didn't click for me alone, as others liked it better. Not recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Six years old, still worth reading
Review: This is probably the best of the anti-PC books that came out in the early 1990s. Others like Arthur Scheslinger's "The Disuniting of America" are boring by comparison. Who knows how or when this debate about the "culture wars" will resolve itself, but I think later scholars will see this as a book that stands out from the scores of simplistic anti-PC rants that are published each year. (Oxford University Press hasn't really cornered that market.) And this is for one simple reason... Hughes attacks the "politically correct" Left and the "patriotically correct" Right equally in this manifesto. They are two sides of the same coin, he argues. Religious fundamentalists and PC revisionists are appealing to the same sense of anti-reason. This book is more than just another right-wing, anti-PC rant. He asks, what it is about Ronald Reagan's attack on the mythical Welfare Queen and the Left's charge that Christopher Columbus is a "murderer" that makes them both popular on their respective sides of the political spectrum? How are the two arguments, and by extension, the people who make them, similar? This is not a the-world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket book either. Hughes predicts that the high tide of PC will recede, leaving behind its scum of dead words on the beach, ready to wither away and die in the sunlight of reason. One last reason why the book gets five stars is that Hughes only takes 200 or so pages to get to this conclusion, but you still feel like you got hit by a wall of solid evidence. Sometimes I wish the book did have footnotes (the original hardback doesn't at least) so that I could track down some of the erudite Hughes' more obscure targets. But then again, this book is just a collection of addresses delievered at Yale, not an academic tome. It's the best of both worlds-- a cri de coeur that never gets fluffy or emotional.
Rating:
Summary: Six years old, still worth reading
Review: This is probably the best of the anti-PC books that came out in the early 1990s. Others like Arthur Scheslinger's "The Disuniting of America" are boring by comparison. Who knows how or when this debate about the "culture wars" will resolve itself, but I think later scholars will see this as a book that stands out from the scores of simplistic anti-PC rants that are published each year. (Oxford University Press hasn't really cornered that market.) And this is for one simple reason... Hughes attacks the "politically correct" Left and the "patriotically correct" Right equally in this manifesto. They are two sides of the same coin, he argues. Religious fundamentalists and PC revisionists are appealing to the same sense of anti-reason. This book is more than just another right-wing, anti-PC rant. He asks, what it is about Ronald Reagan's attack on the mythical Welfare Queen and the Left's charge that Christopher Columbus is a "murderer" that makes them both popular on their respective sides of the political spectrum? How are the two arguments, and by extension, the people who make them, similar? This is not a the-world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket book either. Hughes predicts that the high tide of PC will recede, leaving behind its scum of dead words on the beach, ready to wither away and die in the sunlight of reason. One last reason why the book gets five stars is that Hughes only takes 200 or so pages to get to this conclusion, but you still feel like you got hit by a wall of solid evidence. Sometimes I wish the book did have footnotes (the original hardback doesn't at least) so that I could track down some of the erudite Hughes' more obscure targets. But then again, this book is just a collection of addresses delievered at Yale, not an academic tome. It's the best of both worlds-- a cri de coeur that never gets fluffy or emotional.
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