The Hookie Awards By DAVID BROOKS
Some people say that the age of the public intellectuals is over, that there are no longer many grand thinkers like Lionel Trilling or Reinhold Niebuhr, writing ambitious essays for the educated reader. It's true that there are fewer philosophes writing about the nature and destiny of man, but there are still hundreds of amazing essays written every year.
In celebration of that fact, and in case you're looking for some mind-expanding holiday reading, I've decided to create the Hookie Awards. Named after the great public intellectual Sidney Hook, they go to the authors of some of the most important essays written in 2004.
I should mention that essays for The New York Times and other newspapers are not eligible for these prizes.
Here is the first batch of Hookie Laureates: <...> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/opinion/25brooks.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Hookie Awards, Part 2 By DAVID BROOKS On Saturday I handed out the first batch of Hookie Awards. These prizes, determined by a rigorously subjective scientific formula, go to some of the important political essays of 2004, and celebrate the legacy of great public intellectuals like Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell and Irving Howe.
So here's the second batch. A warning: if you read these pieces you will be so intimidatingly well informed it may cramp your social life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/opinion/28brooks.html?ei=5090&en=3ac6880a96d33ea9&ex=1261976400&pagewanted=print&position= <...> That's the curriculum for the holiday break. To everyone who is now angry with me for not listing their essays, all I can say is: go suck eggs - and have a happy new year.
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling