I received this book as a gift, from someone who said "I thought you'd like this". Having never heard of a magazine called Lingua Franca, I was skeptical. Huzza! This book is wonderful! Some articles aren't my flavour, but I'd have to say the far majority were. We've got science, philosophy, arts (that section wasn't very good, but it's the shortest), politics, university life, oh boy! And we're not talking watered down stuff either. I mean, a whole article on Richard Rorty? Yes please! ( )

Selected articles from Lingua Franca, the brilliant magazine which covered the academy in the 90s and early aughties. This was very much journalism about ideas rather than personalities. It begins with a bang: the Sokal Hoax, one of the biggest stories in the American academy in years, the tale of how po-mo science studies turned out to be the emperor with no clothes. It includes fascinating stories and some serious analysis of culture, science, literature, and philosophy. This is the kind of thing that both summarises a time and introduces a subject (the culture of the academy). ( )

This book is a collection of essays from a defunct magazine for academics and is roughly 1/3rd very interesting because the topics are interesting, 1/3 dull, and 1/3 interesting because of the insight it gives into the mind of the academic when they let their public guards down. My own personal observations are here confirmed, the petty, overprivileged folks in the ivory tower (this coming from someone with two masters degrees) really need to get out more. I mean really, the pedantry involved in debating whether T.S. Eliot meant a lobster or a crab in one line of poetry is mind-boggling. Please, please, people, I understand that deconstructing literature is interesting, but for Christ's sake, sometimes it really doesn't matter all that much. ( )