I really should have read Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America a long time ago. It’s probably the most talked about work in U.S. intellectual history in decades. But it was published while I was in grad school, none of my professors assigned it, and then I moved onto a dissertation, which turned into my first book, and then after that a second book project. Both my published book and my book-in-progress are on different eras than that covered by Menand. (The Metaphysical Club covers the Civil War through WWI—my books cover the early cold Read more