In these impassioned and inspiring essays, based on his 1993 Reith
Lectures, Edward Said explores what it means to be an intellectual
today.
Are intellectuals merely the servants of special interests or do they
have a larger responsibility? In these wide-ranging essays, one of our
most brilliant and fiercely independent public thinkers addresses this
question with extraordinary eloquence. Said sees the the intellectual as
an exile and amateur whose role it is "to speak the truth to power" even
at the risk of ostracism or imprisonment. Drawing on the examples of
Jonathan Swift and Theodor Adorno, Robert Oppenheimer and Henry
Kissinger, Vietnam and the Gulf War, Said explores the implications of
this idea and shows what happens when intellectuals succumb to the lures
of money, power, or specialization.