SOURCE: Ryan, Alan. “The Two Himmelfarbs.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4766 (5 August 1994): 7.

In the following review of On Looking into the Abyss, Ryan asserts that, while Himmelfarb is an admirable historian, she is less skilled as a philosopher of history.

On Looking into the Abyss reprints half a dozen of Gertrude Himmelfarb's recent essays and lectures. The collection is in essence Professor Himmelfarb's contribution to the “culture wars” that enlivened the American academy during the late 1980s, and the prevailing tone is the outraged and alarmed tone of New Criterion cultural conservatism. The lectures were delivered over the past decade to a variety of audiences, and range from attacks on recent fashions in historical writing and literary criticism to reflections on the recent triumph of the long-dead Hegel over the even more dead Marx and some thoughts on the inferiority of John Stuart Mill's liberalism to that of Tocqueville...