Of Herds and Hermits: America's Lone Wolves and Submissive Sheep - The American Intellectual as Loner and Outcast

As a nation often celebrated for its commitment to independence and fearless individualism, America has at the same time learned to despise, discredit and dismiss the solitary and reclusive mentality. To the contrary, this inquiry is a paean vigorously endorsing America's lone wolves, cultural hermits, and all such solitary, marginalized figures who are the cultural bedrock of the nation that detests them. While we look up to literary loners like Poe and Melville and Dickinson, the man in the street is a compulsive joiner of clubs, and herds from university frats to the Order of the Pink Goat. Contrasting independent thinkers, nonconformists, and individualists with the team player, the company man, and the go-along-to-get along mentality, the book examines America's heroes real and imaginary, and asks where our values really belong.