is a brilliant reanimation of American pragmatism as it evolved from the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey and as it was shaped by the traumas of the Civil War and the immense social and economic changes that follow it... This is a richly populated, intellectually thrilling book in which America is shown to be discovered its future." --Richard Poirier

"The Metaphysical Club is a compellingly vital account of how the cluster of ideas that came to be called pragmatism was forged from the searing experiences of its progenitors' lives. Here are Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, all of them giants of American thought made colloquially accessible both as human beings and as intellects. Menand's book is an extraordinary collective biography, at once erudite and enthralling." --Daniel Kevles, Yale University

Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid--part history, part biography, part philosophy-- consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months. Yet its impact upon American intellectual life remains incalculable. Louis Menand masterfully weaves pivotal late 19th-and early 20th-century events, colorful biographical anecdotes, and abstract ideas into a narrative whole that both enthralls and enlightens.