Since its founding in 1982, The New Criterion has emerged as the foremost voice of critical dissent in the culture wars now raging throughout American society. This book brings together an abundant selection of the magazine's most incisive essays, sparkling examples of wit, clarity, and fierce independence that have made The New Criterion one of our most respected sources of critical opinion.

Challenging the radical orthodoxies that have disfigured contemporary intellectual debate, the essays in Against the Grain cover a wide range of controversial subjects, from the philosophy of Michel Foucault to the apocalyptic kitsch of Anselm Kiefer, from the scandals of political correctness and multiculturalism to the state of Latin American literature and politics. Samuel Lipman writes on the future of classical music; Hilton Kramer on the plight of the art museum today; Joseph Epstein on the poet C.

P. Cavafy; Roger Kimball on the treason of the intellectuals; and Harvey Mansfield on the continuing significance of the original debate over the Constitution.