On culture, canons, and college curriculum.

Two new books stake out competing positions in the "culture wars": The Great Canon Controversy advances a traditionalist "reform" posture that examines historic and contemporary claims for the canon, while The Opening of the American Mind is a counterattack that uses history to advance the claim that contemporary multicultural shifts in the canon reflect the historic openness of our colleges and universities to multiple cultural heritages. A third, Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum, addresses the "culture wars" and, more broadly, undergraduate curriculum design, evaluation, and change.