Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was born in New York and educated at Columbia University, to which he returned as an instructor in 1932, and where he continued to teach in the English department throughout his long and highly distinguished career. Among his many works are critical studies of Matthew Arnold and E. M. Forster; two essay collections, The Liberal Imaginationand The Opposing Self; a novel, The Middle of the Journey; and the Norton lectures at Harvard, entitled Sincerity and Authenticity. Trilling was married to the writer and critic Diana Trilling.Geraldine Murphy is an associate professor of English and Deputy Dean of Humanities and Arts at the City College of New York, CUNY. She… has published essays on Lionel Trilling and the New York Intellectuals and is working on a book-length study, "Anti-Stalinist Poetics."
Michael Parenti (Ph.D., Yale University) is an internationally known, award-winning author, scholar, and lecturer who addresses a wide variety of political and cultural subjects. Among his recent books are Waiting for Yesterday (2013), The Face of Imperialism (2011), God and His Demons (2010), and Democracy for the Few, 9th edition (2010).Harold Bloom was born on July 11, 1930 in New York City. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell in 1951 and his Doctorate from Yale in 1955. After graduating from Yale, Bloom remained there as a teacher, and was made Sterling Professor of Humanities in 1983. Bloom's theories have changed the way that critics think of literary tradition and has also… focused his attentions on history and the Bible. He has written over twenty books and edited countless others. He is one of the most famous critics in the world and considered an expert in many fields. In 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new institution in Savannah, Georgia, that focuses on primary texts. His works include Fallen Angels, Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems, Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life and The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of The King James Bible.