Katherine Elise Chaddock. The Multi-Talented Mr. Erskine: Shaping Mass Culture through Great Books and Fine Music. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. 270 pp. Cloth $95.00.

Abstract

The professoriate often questions its relation to the public weal and wonders about its public image. In particular, most professors strive to reconcile the tension between what historian Mary O. Furner identified as advocacy and objectivity. New technologies have added an additional layer of complexity for professors in their attempts to communicate to other citizens and policy makers. As professors continue to grapple with their role in a democratic society, they would do well to read Katherine Elise Chaddock's new book, The Multi-Talented Mr. Erskine. This biography focuses on academic John Erskine (1879-1951), who would, over the course of his career, "evolve into a fully formed 'celebrity professor'-the first to deserve that title in the age of mass communication and mass culture" (p. 3). Though die book is organized as a traditional biography, less attention is paid to Erskine's forma tive years, and greater emphasis is placed on "his aim in bringing fine taste to the masses and the intersection of 'celebrity' with his many other defining roles-professor, administrator, husband, father, com munity leader, conceit pianist, essayist, poet, novelist, friend, and lover" (p. 13). The book also charts his struggles with the tensions of gentility and progress, popular work and academic work, elitism and egalitarianism, specialization and essentialism, and advocacy and objectivity (p. 13).