The Sealed Envelope

Name: The Sealed Envelope
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ISBN: 9780300282399

Toward an Intelligent Utopia

George Scialabba

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English

Yale University
16 February 2026

Literary essays; Philosophy; Social & political philosophy; Political structures: democracy

An award-winning author argues for the necessity of cultural critics and intellectuals to American democracy

This incisive collection of essays investigates the moral imagination of modernism and our intellectual and political inheritance. George Scialabba offers a series of portraits of, and arguments with, American and European thinkers of the past hundred years, ranging from conservatives such as John Gray, William Buckley, and Jonathan Haidt to radicals such as Dwight Macdonald, Christopher Hitchens, and Bill McKibben.

In our moment of democracy under siege, with intellectual work popularly derided as only for ""elites,"" Scialabba champions such thinkers as Richard Rorty, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Christopher Lasch, with their emphasis on democratic political culture and their faith in the capacities of ordinary people and the importance of intellectual work. This collection passes on these values ""in a sealed envelope,"" as Rilke says of love between selfish lovers, for future generations to use in crafting their own ""intelligent utopia.""

By: George Scialabba
Imprint: Yale University
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780300282399
ISBN 10: 0300282397
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 16 February 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

George Scialabba is an award-winning critic and essayist. He is the author of the memoir How To Be Depressed and the essay collection Only a Voice. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Reviews for The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia

“Scialabba is a premier observer of our intellectuals. While his criticism of many of them is rightly unsparing, Scialabba also gathers shards of utopia in the blasted landscape of the present.”— Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism against Itself ""George Scialabba's lucidity, incisiveness, and commitment to democratic values have made him one of our finest political essayists—and an essential guide to a period of intellectual reaction, timidity and outright cowardice.""—Adam Shatz, author of The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon