A relation between how people view their love-making and what they experience on the street may seem farfetched.
—Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man

Anyone wishing to understand the smarmy side of American academic life would do well to reflect upon the phenomenon of Richard Sennett. Born in 1943, educated at the University of Chicago and at Harvard, where he took his Ph.D., Mr. Sennett has made a striking career of exploring the interstices existing between academic sociology, modish intellectual history, and pop social criticism of a vaguely leftist stripe. No one will accuse him of idleness. In 1969 and 1970 alone, he published four books, of which he wrote two, co-wrote one, and edited still another. He is now, after this precocious beginning, the author of a short shelf of books, including several novels, and is (as he often contrives to remind his readers) an accomplished cellist as well.

Indeed, it may be said that Mr. Sennett has never quite grown out of the post-adolescent precociousness that marked his early career, though what it might mean to describe as precocious a man nearing fifty is itself a troubling question. In any event, his later works continue to exhibit the enthusiastic blend of social psychology, misty reflection on urban planning, and countercultural angst that characterized his first efforts. His knack for coming up with arresting titles—The Uses of Disorder (1970), The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), The Fall of Public Man(1977)—has served him well