New reformation

About this book

Emphasizing the importance of culture and the arts in society, this reprint of a 1960s classic?the author's last book of social criticism?includes a new introduction that situates the late Paul Goodman in his era and traces the development of his characteristic insights. The probing introduction speaks for a new generation of young scholars as it discusses the initial impact and continuing relevance of Goodman's problematic love affair with the radical youth of the 1960s. Timely and compelling, Goodman's narrative reassesses what he considered a moral and spiritual upheaval comparable to the Protestant Reformation?the breakdown of belief, and the emergence of new belief, in sciences and professions, education, and civil legitimacy. With new analysis of 1960s activism, this survey shows that Goodman's prescient voice is as relevant today as it was four decades ago.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Paul Goodman

9 September 1911 – 2 August 1972

Paul Goodman (September 9, 1911 – August 2, 1972) was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd (1960) and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement. He is less remembered as a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and '50s. [Wikipedia, October 2011]