Robert Nisbet what Samuel Francis didrnfor James Biirnham. In Nisbet’s case, thernneed for such an act of retrieval mayrnseem all the more remarkable, given thernacademic fame and publishing successesrnhe enjoxed during his life. The author ofrndistinguished books that sold well (includingrnThe Quest for Community (1952),rnThe Sociological TracUtion (1967), andrn’I’he Twihght of Authorit’ (1975)), AlbertrnSchweitzer Professor of hlumanities atrnColumbia Uniersitv, and a recipientrnof—among man’ honors —the NEH’srnJefferson Lectureship and tlic higersoUrnI’^oundation’s Richard M. Weaver Award,rnNisbet was among the most respected ofrnall American social thinkers at the hme ofrnhis death in 1996. What he did not reccirnc was the vokuninous gusiiing praisernbestowed on that ponderous nostalgicrnand Trotsk) ist lamenter of totalitarianism,rnHannah Arendt; the dissipated boywonderrnof Marxist-Leninist po.sturing, C.rnWright Mills; or Daniel Bell and TalcottrnParsons, neither of w honi has managedrnto construct a lucid paragraph or even arnsingle passage unbcsmirched by unsightlyrnjargon. (Robert Nisbet, bv contrast,rnwas an elegant stvlist.)rnMaking Nisbet appear relevant to toda’rns readers is a task made more difficultrnb the fact that he rallied to all the wrongrncauses. A ‘I’aft Republican who hearhh’rndespised the New Deal and its later reincarnations,rna skcpHe in religions mattersrnwho expressed revulsion for die ReligiousrnRight, and a personal friend of RichardrnNixon, Nisbet toda would be as unlikeh’rnto be invited to speak at CPAC as at a plenaryrngathering of American academic sociologists.rnOne of his signal scholarlyrncontributions was to popularize (if that isrnthe term) the social commentan’ of 19thcentur’rnconservative critics of the FrenchrnRevolution. Nisbet emphasized the closernlinks between tradihonalist defenders ofrncommunitv faced widi revoluhonar’ upheavalrnand the birth of soeiolog as arnbody of knowledge and field of inquir)’.rnLie argued persuasivelv that die fathers ofrnhis discipline were not social radicalsrnsuch as Marx, but Louis de Bonald, FredericrnLe Play, Albrecht von Haller, andrnother apologists for disintegrating aristocraticrnsocieties, tr’iiig to make sense ofrntheir hme. Feii Durkheim and Tonniesrnvere drawn to the insights of conservativesrnwhen examining and describing tradihonalrnsocieties. Nisbet, himself a conservative,rnsought to restore to his field itsrnoriginal identit, which had been pushedrnaside in favor of the ideologiealK morerncongenial one fashioned by his colleagues.rnStone sees as a main bridge betweenrnNisbet’s work and the present age thernstress on intermediate institutions as thernfoundahon of a free socict)’. Nisbet neverrndeluded himself into believing that individualsrnbent on self-gratification providedrna bulwark against state power. I’o therncontrary, he thought that die pleasuresrnand “rights” claimed b them fortifiedrnthe central state in its role as champion ofrnalleged victims of unenlightened communihesrnand kin groups. Wliile Nisbetrneertainh’ never believed that all commnnihesrnare free from repression, he did perceirne the ineitable tie between adniini,strativerncontrol exercised by intrusiverngovernment and the war against inheritedrnsocial authorities. Lie also cjuestioned,rnas Stone reminds us in his perceptivernconcluding cha]3ter, whether hiissez-fairernLIBERAL ARTSrnTHE REAL ABSENCE AND THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTIONrn”Pediaps the ver bigness of megachiirchcs makes them amplifying devices for culturalrntrends. This is true not oiiK of ob ions themes (the video monitor appearing inrnei lurch at about the same time it began to appear at ballparks) but also of deeper culturalrnpatterns.rn”For example, one of the most striking features of Southeast Christian Church is thernslieer scale and effieiencv of the enterprise, from the nurser to the Greenlee CommunionrnDi,spensing Svstcm (invented b’ a member at Southeast, this ingenious device ‘dispensesrnan entire communion tray in just hvo seconds!’, sending grape juice from a compact,rnstainless steel reservoir tlirougli plastic tubing to the individual communion cups).rn”One is not surprised, then, to learn that among the paid staff and especially the eldersrnand other volunteers are indi idnals who hae had ears of experience w itii the niilitarv.rnFederal Express, and similar organizations. A church like Southeast could notrnlia”c existed 100 cars ago, because the managerial science it embodies was then justrnbeing bom.”rn—from John Wilson, “Not ]unt Anotlier Megaclnircli”rn(ChristianihTodaw Decemh>er4, 2000}rneconomics was of an’ great value in reiningrnin social engineers. Nisbet assumedrnthat economic progress brought socialrndislocation and led ulhmately to the expansionrnof public administrahon.rnStone is also correct to distinguish Nisbet’srnnotion of “social capital” from diernone pushed by such leftdiberal sociologistsrnas Robert Bellah and Robert Putnam.rnWhile their ilk associate social resourcesrnwith “economic or politicalrn.structures” and with die strengthening ofrn”public institutions,” Nisbet valued Hierncognitive and social deelopment of individualsrnin families and self-sustainingrncommnnihcs. He rejected both what hernthought to be “cancerous individualism”rnand the depersonalizing effects of thernmanagerial state. And Nisbet did not hesitaternto break even further with the progressirnc mindset by turning for his modelsrnof social integrahon to the conimunal,rnrural Euro-American past. Stone observesrndiat any serious examinahon of arnciil socieh’ not fashioned or recreated b-rnthe central state must begin widi Nisbet’srnunderstanding of die human personalih’,rnwdiich was demonstrably — and by nornmeans coincidentally—die one favoredrnby Aristode.rnPaul Gottfried is a professor ofrnhumanities at Elizabethtown College inrnElizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and thernauthor, most recently, of After Liberalism:rnMass Democracy in the ManagerialrnState (Princeton).rnPrince of Paintersrnby Jeffrey MeyersrnTitianrnby FHippo Pedrocco,rntranslated by Corrado FedericirnNew York: Rizzoli Press;rn336 pp., $100.00rnTitian, the greatest painter of thernVenetian Renaissance, was bornrnabout 1488 in Pieve di Cadoro, in thernfoothills of the Dolomites. He camerndown to Venice at the age of nine andrnwas apprenticed to the workshops ofrnGentile and Giovanni Bellini. He wroternletters to his noble patrons, some of themrnexplaining the dela’ in delivering hisrn26/CHKONiCLESrnrnrn