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. A cultural phenomenon with more than 750,000 copies in print, The Closing of the American Mind is as penetrating a criticism of our culture today as it was twenty-five years ago. In this acclaimed number one national bestseller, Allan Bloom, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers, argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are really an intellectual crisisa dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. In his new afterword, author Andrew Ferguson recounts why the book caused such a furor at publication and why its argument continues to provoke and endure.