Rating: 
Summary: Tells The History Which Others Igrnore
Review: Why is Marx still considered to be an "intellectual" in light of what his theories have brought about everywhere they've been applied? Johnson notes "there was nothing scientific about him; indeed in all that matters he was anti-scientific" (p. 54). The "great thinker" who knew what was best for the workers of he world never set foot in a mill, factory, mine, or any other industrial workplace as far as we know, Johnson tells us. "He was totally and incorrigibly deskbound" (p. 60). Perhaps that's why some academics will not divorce him regardless of the evidence. Seed reproduces after its own kind.
On a positive note, I found the reading habits of Ernest Hemingway interesting. In the chapter on him, Johnson tells us he read ferociously and was virtually never without a book. He shoved them into his pockets and when a free moment presented itself, out came the book. His working residence in Cuba is said to have contained 7,400 volumes. He sought to fill gaps in his education through his reading discipline. Johnson is to be commended for turning on the light in some of the hidden corners of the history of some of the personalities who seem accepted without much examination.
Rating: 
Summary: "I think we've all seen...Bonanza."
Review: Thanks Mrs. Farmer for the review title. And thank you Mr. Johnson for this gravel heaving display of school yard one-upsmanship. Seriously, could your dad beat up Rousseau's? I'll bet he could, huh?
It's books like this that make me wish I could give less than one star.
Rating: 
Summary: A very funny book.
Review: This book is funny because Paul Johnson is called a 'historian' and the book is no better than a tabloid collection.The book gets 2 stars from me, one for showing the Christian historian scholarship, the other for revealing what kind of 'decent' person the author is. Can any conservative be a real intellectual?
Rating: 
Summary: One of the strangest books ever written
Review: One day Paul Johnson, a conservative christian intellectual, woke up and decided it would be a good idea if he picked out a few thinkers of what he took to be the opposing camp and wrote a long, windy book about their sexual peccadilloes -- and so he did. The result is something like a bastard child of Plutarch and Kenneth Anger, and tells us much more about Johnson than about his chosen victims. An interesting read, and the definitive account of the bankruptcy of reactionary thought.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but biased thesis on Intellectuals
Review: Paul Johnson, author of 'Modern Times' and other works, changes tack and engages in a systematic critique of 'Intellectuals', who Johnson argues are a rather pathetic bunch of figures that have attempted to fill the shoes of the clergy in the Secular Age in which we now live. 'Intellectuals' contains a portrait of some twenty or so figures who are representative of this class, ranging from Rosseau to Sarte and Brecht. Johnson examines the life of each intellectual in great detail, exposing and bitterly criticising their often nasty habits and faults, whether it be Rosseau's odd sexuality, Marx's inability to manage money, Ibsen's cold manipulation of people around him, Bertrand Russell's inability to make a cup of tea, or Sartre's undistinguished record in the French resistance movement. At the end of this survey, Johnson comes to the conclusion that the authority of the intellectual, especially in regards to morality and politics, must come into question, and indeed, Johnson wonders if they have any authority to comment at all on matters of politics or social issues. Johnson extends this criticism to more recent leftist figures (including Chomsky) in more recent editions of the book. As is typical of Johnson, the book is brilliantly written and tightly argued. But Johnson still fails to convince the reader about the logic and validity of his argument. Indeed, the whole book smacks of the 'ad hominem' fallacy-attacking the person rather than debating the relative merits of their views. Being an adulterous and insensitive cur didn't stop Russell from being one of the finest logicians of the 20th century, and Schrodinger's penchant for young women didn't stop him from being a pioneer in quantum mechanics. Another critical weakness is the figures Johnson omits. Other key intellectuals of the 19th and 20th century-Einstein, Freud, Hiedigger, Nietzsche, Foucalt, Proust, Joyce, etc-had severe faults in their personal lives or character defects, and yet are not mentioned. Valid arguments against the moral authority of these figures (especially Freud, Hiedigger and Nietzsche) could have been made, and yet were not. The omissions (as well as the fact virtually all figures were Marxists or associated with 'left' thinking) seems to raise questions about whether Johnson is really pointing out a valid point, or is seeing these figures through the prism of his own ideaological conservatism. In closing, it can be said Johnson puts forward an interesting, but unconvincing, thesis.
Rating: 
Summary: Rogues and Charlatans
Review: Paul Johnson is one of the most acute observers of the 20th century, and Intellectuals examines some of the left's most idolized men by means of their personal lives and behavior. It appears,unsurprisingly, that some revolutionary artists and writers are selfish, egotistical monsters. This book is very witty, and Johnson has the brains to understand the work of these people quite well enough to subject them to this kind of scrutiny. This is not merely gossip. Thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating-- a real rogues gallery of
left wing heroes.
Rating:
Summary: the sound of one ax, grinding
Review: Unfortunately, this is not a good book. I confess to be unaware of Mr. Johnson's political perspective when I picked up this book inexpensively somewhere, but it didn't take long for me to discover where he is coming from. The chapters are presented in chronological order. The conceptual center of the book is the essay on Karl Marx. Johnson hates his guts. The intellectuals that precede Marx in the book are blamed for paving the way for him and the subsequent intellectuals are blamed for lying about the obvious falsehoods perpetrated by Stalin in the name of communism and therefore perpetuating the influence of Marx in the West. Johnson also manages to blame these fellow-travelling intellectuals for the permissive society. The most frustrating thing about this book is that some of Johnson's arguments might hold water if he actually bothered to make them more soundly. Left-wing Westerners *are* a bit leery of received tradition and so they *are* more likely to reject the child-rearing practices of their parents and cast aspersions on and generally flout societal institutions, which arguably leads to a permissive society. But Johnson makes no real effort to construct a coherent or sustained case for his point of view. Most of the essays are just a series of biographical anecdotes about what a cad, liar, hypocrite etc. a particular left-wing intellectual happened to be, followed by with some wholly undefended connecting of the dots and an ending with a condemnation. It get old in chapter after chapter. The state socialist systems that were based on Marxism were pretty obviously built on a misinterpretation of the workings of a society. Johnson published this book a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I'm sure he was quite gratified by the subsequent collapse of the Soviet system. But what of the social democratic systems that have provided the high standard of living for so many Western Europeans over the past 50 years? There is a kernel of Marxist theory buried in those social systems; they found away to integrate it into a capitalist economy. Johnson is too interested in setting up straw men and then knocking them down with blast after blast of hot air to be bothered with a real critique of socialism.
Rating:
Summary: Did Johnson actually read Marx or Chomsky?
Review: I can't imagine that he did, or that many of the readers/reviewers here have either. In fact, I really wonder if anyone reviewing here has read many of the books that are being decried as vain, hypocritical trash. For example, if Johnson had actually read any of Noam Chomsky's writing, he would discover that Chomsky has been a decrier of vain intellectualism for 50 years. The phrase "high priesthood of ideas" that refers to an anemic and snobbish academic culture is nothing original to Johnson. It has been a standing arguement of Chomsky's for 50 years. In his writings and his lectures, Chomsky makes this point over and over again. Johnson has written one book about it, while Chomsky has writen at least ten. So, isn't it strange that Johnson actually shares an opinion with this leftist, radical, "truth-twisting", "snobbish", "out of touch" intellectual about "intellectuals"? And about a number of other subjects as well, including Marx for that matter. The only way I could see anyone overlooking this fact is that Johnson read about Chomsky, without actually reading Chomsky. So, I put the question to my fellow reviewers: what can you make of a critic who doesn't even give a close reading to his subjects? I'd say, not much. Not only is he himself a vain, self-serving intellectual, but not even a very good one at that. Furthermore, I don't understand how the notion that an "intellectual" is effete, snobbish, hypocritical, part of a "high-priesthood" could ever be considered something new or revelatory. If you agree with someone, you describe them as "far-seeing", " truly thoughful", "full of insights and fesh ideas", "telling the truth." If you disgree, you not only decry the other person's ideas, but you attack the person themselves. Putting this marker on an opponent has been a common method for one group of thinkers to deride the ideas and opinions of others for centuries. Turn on your TV and watch a session of Congress, you'll see it there for sure. When politicians disagree, they don't simply "debate" they use "smear tactics" and "negative campaigning." Thoughtful people consider this to be a particularly weak form of debate (who really thinks an arguement battled out in the press, full of sound bites and quotes out of context, is useful or meaningful?) , but, like showing bloody and shocking photographs to a jury, it somehow usually works. In fact why limit the pool to Congress or even the 20th century? Why not go back 2,500 years and read a Socratic dialogue? Socrates, founder of western thought, is great at undermining someone's ideas effectively and in the process put forth his ideas as being superior, or more correct. Except for his weak skills, I'd say Johnson is as good a phony intellectual as any of them.
Rating:
Summary: Weak and gossip-driven attack on leftist thinkers
Review: This is a pretty sad excuse for a book. It's all vitriol and rhetoric launched against all kinds of thinkers on the left, based on the highly dubious (and offensive) premise that improprieties in their personal lives wholly invalidate their intellectual arguments. Not only is this approach indefensible (who could possibly be free of criticism from Johnson, given the jaundiced eye he takes to his subjects?), but it's at times inaccurate: the attack on Shelley, for example, is based in part on speculative material from Richard Holmes's biography of Shelley that Holmes himself later disavowed.
Rating:
Summary: Man Is Born Free But Everywhere He is In Chains!
Review: Especialy if you were one of Rousseau's friends or disposable children. An infinitely happier prospect would have been to have had him as an enemy, as Voltaire, who referred to The Great Humanitarian as a monster of vileness and vanity. After reading this book you might conclude Voltaire was being too kind. Does it matter that an intellectual, whose professed goal is to save benighted humanity by his sagacious advice, is a complete hypocrite who practises the opposite of what he preaches? One could argue that from a purely logical standpoint, it does not. His advice may be correct. Then again, from the same logical standpoint, you should not object to betting everything you own on a tip from a compulsive gambler, taking driving lessons from someone who has caused a dozen wrecks, or letting your barber perform surgery on you. Logically, they could be right. It just tends to add a certain credibility if individuals 'walk the walk' rather than just 'talk the talk', don't you think? ... Not quite. Johnson points out that Sartre proclaimed the existential credo of action while spending the war in occupied Paris doing absolutely nothing against the Nazis, he was too busy mastering the art of shameless self promotion to dirty his hands in the resistance and risk his neck. Afterwards, when he became the voice of French youth and the supposed champion of individualism and freedom, he endorsed collectivism, sundry petty tyrants and wrote apologetics praising the necessity for murder. Manifestoes which have subsequently become textbooks for terrorists and lent credence to the worst political atrocities. This, as Marx found out between sponging money off Engels, tends to play well to an audience of snobbish elites who fancy themselves egalitarians, particularly if they've never done a hard day's work in their lives. When Sartre was politely called to account for the disparity between his supposed idealism and his penchant for violence by his friend, Camus. he savagely vilified him the world press. As usual, with these types of intellectuals, one was better off being an enemy. That Sartre was a literary genius is unquestionable, so was Tolstoy 'God's Elder Brother' as well as Hemingway who is also covered in this book in all his drunken splendor. The image of Hem flying into a rage at the Paris Ritz when he found a photograph of his girlfriend's husband, tearing it to shreds, flushing it down the toilet and , for good measure, shooting at it with a sub-machine gun he happened to have on him (doesn't everybody?) destroying the bathroom and flooding the hotel is well, picturesque... Rousseau, Tolstoy, Shelley, Marx, Hemingway, Sartre, Brecht So are they all, all honorable men . . .
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