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The Bishop's Apron is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. A scheming man's daughter is set on marrying a moneyless socialist with an embarrassing family, and this calls for some action "behind the scenes".
Canon Spratte is an important man and most of all in his own mind. He is the son of a Lord Chancellor of England, which alone should insure him the position to which he knows he is entitled. He deserves to be the next Bishop of Sheffield. "Spratte never concealed from the world that he rated himself highly. He esteemed bashfulness a sign of bad manners, and used to say that a man who pretended not to know his own value was a fool." He knows theoretically that others might not share his good opinion of himself, but he is amazed to find his own family among them.
The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.
