In our continuing tour of the sub disciplines of historical study, today we reach intellectual history–or at least that part of intellectual history that focuses on America. Our guest is Tim Lacy, who among other things is the author of The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer Adler and the Great Books Idea and one of the group of people who in 2007 founded a blog devoted to intellectual history that grew up to be the Society for US Intellectual History.

Tim and Al Zambone talk about the basics: what is intellectual history? what makes it different? What's the history of intellectual history? What has American intellectual history traditionally focused upon? And what's the current "state of the art"? They talk about Tim's book a little, too, because that's just good manners. Enjoy.

For Further Reading

Daniel Burris at the University of Rochester has a splendid reading list available for those who want to dig deeply into the subject.

The preeminent collection of primary sources in American intellectual history is The American Intellectual Tradition, edited by David Hollinger and Charles Capper, and now in its sixth edition. If you are interested in American history, this needs to be on your shelf. It's not just one, but two volumes.