Table of Contents

Introduction: Or, They Think We're Stupid
Chapter 1. "Aren't We Educational Here Too?": Brainpower and the Emergence of Mass Culture
Chapter 2. The Force of Complicated Mathematics: Einstein Enters American Culture
Chapter 3. Knowledge Is Power: Women, Workers' Education, and Brainpower in the 1920s
Chapter 4. "The Negro Genius": Black Intellectual Workers in the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter 5. "We Have Only Words Against": Brainworkers and Books in the 1930s
Chapter 6. Dangerous Minds: Spectacles of Science in the Postwar Atomic City
Chapter 7. Inventing the Egghead: Brainpower in Cold War American Culture
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Throughout the twentieth century, popular songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels alternated between representing intelligence as empowering and as threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, Aaron Lecklider cracks open this paradox by examining representations of intelligence to reveal brainpower's stalwart appeal and influence.

About the Author

Aaron Lecklider teaches American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Reviews

"In this groundbreaking book, Aaron Lecklider explains how ordinary Americans used mass culture to stake a claim to 'brainpower'-and then turned it into a tool for social transformation. Based on a brilliantly creative archive, and written with wit and clarity, Inventing the Egghead connects labor history and cultural studies to craft an exciting new interpretation of mid-century America."
*Christopher Capozzola, Massachusetts Institute of Technology*

"Ranging across popular culture from Coney Island and Tin Pan Alley to WPA posters and science fiction, Aaron Lecklider's lively and astute exploration of twentieth-century Americans' vexed relationship with 'brainpower' stands as an important complement and corrective to Richard Hofstadter's classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life."
*Steven Biel, Harvard University*

"From Einstein to the WPA to Oak Ridge, this investigation of popular understandings of 'brainpower' offers a fresh take on the culture and politics of twentieth-century America. Deeply researched and persuasively argued, Lecklider's book is a model of interdisciplinary American Studies scholarship."
*Anna Creadick, Hobart and William Smith Colleges*