{"product_id":"inventing-the-egghead-aaron-lecklider-9780812244861","title":"Inventing the Egghead: The Battle Over Brainpower in American Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003eThroughout the twentieth century, pop songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels in the United States represented intelligence alternately as empowering or threatening. In \u003ci\u003eInventing the Egghead\u003c\/i\u003e, cultural historian Aaron Lecklider offers a sharp, entertaining narrative of these sources to reveal how Americans who were not part of the traditional intellectual class negotiated the complicated politics of intelligence within an accelerating mass culture. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCentral to the book is the concept of \u003ci\u003ebrainpower\u003c\/i\u003e--a term used by Lecklider to capture the ways in which journalists, writers, artists, and others invoked intelligence to embolden the majority of Americans who did not have access to institutions of higher learning. Expressions of brainpower, Lecklider argues, challenged the deeply embedded assumptions in society that intellectual capacity was the province of an educated elite, and that the working class was unreservedly anti-intellectual. Amid changes in work, leisure, and domestic life, brainpower became a means for social transformation in the modern United States. The concept thus provides an exciting vantage point from which to make fresh assessments of ongoing debates over intelligence and access to quality education. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eExpressions of brainpower in the twentieth century engendered an uncomfortable paradox: they diminished the value of intellectuals (the hapless egghead, for example) while establishing claims to intellectual authority among ordinary women and men, including labor activists, women workers, and African Americans. Reading across historical, literary, and visual media, Lecklider mines popular culture as an arena where the brainpower of ordinary people was commonly invoked and frequently contested.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Aaron Lecklider\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0812244869\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780812244861\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Pennsylvania Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/09\/2013\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.40lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.10d","brand":"Aaron Lecklider","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44059808071935,"sku":"9780812244861","price":49.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_d620b02f-099c-425b-a8cf-4303e475ce63.jpg?v=1685060459","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/inventing-the-egghead-aaron-lecklider-9780812244861","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}