The legend of Harold Sterns, the Last of the Bohemians, begins in 1912 when he runs naked through Harvard Yard, a twenty year-old man acting on impulse and looking like Shelley. At thirty-two he had left the United States, disgusted with the sordid red-baiting and prohibition snooping of the early twenties, disgusted also perhaps with himself, vowing never to return to a country so inhospitable to civilization.Harold Stearns symbolized the bitter emptiness, the bewildered desperati...

Civilization in the United States by Harold Stearns is a thought-provoking collection that presents the diverse views of thirty prominent American intellectuals, each providing their perspective on the state of American civilization in the early 20th century. The book is structured as an inquiry into various aspects of American life, including politics, culture, race, economy, and social values. Each contributor offers a critical analysis of different facets of American society, reflecting...

A prolific critic, author, essayist and journalist, "America and the Young Intellectual" is the book that launched Harold Stearns as a public figure. The message in this book could not have come at a better time, and even now, a century later, it is still timely.Frustrated by the state of the American society and what he saw as America's oppression of its free spirit, Stearns wrote this book as a motivation to young American intellectuals to break away from the status quo.I...