The Ideas Industry, Daniel W. Drezner
The Ideas Industry, Daniel W. Drezner
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The Ideas Industry
How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas

Author: Daniel W. Drezner

Narrator: Adam Grupper

Unabridged: 10 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/31/2017

Synopsis

The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied history. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Commentary, such intellectuals were always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals.

How did this shift happen? In The Ideas Industry, Daniel W. Drezner points to the roles of political polarization, heightened inequality, and eroding trust in authority as ushering in the change. In contrast to public intellectuals, thought leaders gain fame as single-idea merchants. Their ideas are often laudable and highly ambitious: ending global poverty by 2025, for example. But instead of a class composed of university professors and freelance intellectuals debating in highbrow magazines, thought leaders often work through institutions that are closed to the public. They are more immune to criticism—and in this century, the criticism of public intellectuals also counts for less.

About Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a regular contributor to the Washington Post. In addition to having one of the most heavily trafficked blogs in the world of academia, he is the author of The System Worked, Theories of International Relations and Zombies, All Politics Is Global, and The Sanctions Paradox.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew on June 19, 2017

In 2003 essays from Europe’s leading intellectual lights such as Jurgen Habermas and Jacques, Derrida appeared in magazines across the continent. The pieces examined Europe’s future in light of America’s invasion of Iraq. What was most unprecedented about them was not their subject or array of stars......more

Goodreads review by Todd on April 28, 2021

If you work in the ideas industry you should read this book. If not, then sure read it but I'm in too deep to have any sense on whether you'll like it. Drezner creates a useful framework by dividing ideas professionals into two categories: Public Intellectuals and Thought Leaders. (He provides approp......more

Goodreads review by Jay on October 05, 2021

Easy to read book on the state of idea expression. It doesn’t focus on the conferences, as I initial believed. Instead, it focuses on the people behind the distribution of the ideas – the intellectuals and the thought leaders. The author distinguishes these two types, with the first being the kind t......more

Goodreads review by Marks54 on April 30, 2019

This is a book by a political scientist specializing in international relations. It was suggested in a recent book on new trends in socially oriented management (Winners Take All). The point is to chronicle the changes in the “Marketplace of Ideas” relating to political science that has made it more......more

Goodreads review by Sean on November 12, 2017

Drezner offers a fascinating survey into how public policy ideas are created, nurtured, and spread in U.S. intellectual circles. It's a clash between "thought leaders" and "public intellectuals. In the current environment thought leaders with big ideas try to become brands, while public intellectual......more

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