It's kind of freaking me out how on-the-nose this book is about today's literary academia and culture wars. It was published in 1994, and yet the introductory chapters sound like they were written yesterday- even down to the mention of emerging out of a recession. I know it's just the fact that the arguments this book is addressing are long-game arguments; they are not things that will change overnight, or even necessarily in a generation. Still, it's a little eerie.

This edition was published over 20 years ago, but the arguments presented in the introduction are the same we are having now. I wonder if the rest of the content will hold up in the same way. And I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm fascinated by the idea that conservatives are still hung up on the idea that students are "radicalized" from the top down- by charismatic radical teachers- when Tumblr and Twitter have now proven otherwise.