SOURCE: “The Men Who Knew Too Much,” in Washington Post Book World, February 26, 1989, pp. 4–5.

In the following review, Judis offers an unfavorable assessment of Intellectuals, questioning the book's “intellectual value.”

The noun “intellectual” appeared in the early 19th century and was used in the same pejorative sense as the more recent term “egg-head,” but, in the intervening years, it has come to refer more neutrally to someone who dwells upon the larger questions of life and society. In this book [Intellectuals] profiling major liberal intellectuals from Rousseau through Mailer, however, British conservative Paul Johnson wants to restore the original, negative sense of the term. Johnson's intellectuals are egotistical, male chauvinist, avaricious, deceitful and sexually perverse. They are responsible for everything Johnson detests, from Stalin's Russia to the “childish” decade of the '60s.

Johnson argues that the ideas of these “secular intellectuals” are “rooted in” their depraved personalities...