Berube examines the political matrix of intellectual and cultural America. In a wide-ranging series of essays from the rise of the postmodern intellectual to a modernist appreciation of the spiritual quality of the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Berube stakes out his claim that all areas of human endeavor are rooted in a politics of culture.

The essay collection is divided into three sections: The first two essays deal with the postmodern intellectual and the corporate university; the second section plumbs the depth of a conservative school reform movement and asks whether we have not reached an end to education reform. The last section contains essays pertaining to precarious state of arts education in the schools, reflections on a modernist literary canon, the contribution of Pollock and plumbing alternative views of Jesus as the penultimate revolutionary. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with cultural studies and education.