The Moral Imagination: From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling [Paperback]

In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the moral imagination. Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflectionson politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sexsometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then.

The second edition includes a revised introduction and three new essays on Adam Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall.

Gertrude Himmelfarb was born in New York City and studied at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago. A distinguished historian, she has received numerous honorary degrees, fellowships, and awards, including the 2004 National Humanities Medal. She is a fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of American Historians. She has written extensively on Victorian England and more generally on intellectual and cultural history.

The Scrapbook is a big fan of the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb,(Really, who isn't?) So we were very pleased to learn that Rowman & Littlefield has just published a new, expanded edition of her superb collection of essays The Moral Imagination. The subtitle of the 2006 edition was From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling. The new subtitle is From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling, reflecting the fact that the new volume features three additional essays, on Smith, Lord Acton, and Alfred Marshall. So now you getlƒ$