Lehrman American Studies Center

It is truly unfortunate that, until now, the work of Canon Bernard Iddings Bell has been out of print for some time. For Bell's cultural criticism was an important impetus to the formation of the postwar traditionalist conservative synthesis, drawing the attention of Russell Kirk and others. In Crowd Culture, a remarkably prescient work originally published in 1952 (before the words "dumbing down" had ever been uttered), Bell excoriated the complacent and conformist egalitarian ethos that he believed was undermining American education, religion, and culture. In an age of stultifying homogenization, Bell's relevance has never seemed greater.