“In the end, disappointment was Hofstadter’s great overarching theme, which may partly explain why, as Brown points out, ‘there is no Hofstadter school’ today. His account of the American past was finally tragic, and tragedy lies outside the comfortable boundaries of American thought.” NYT Book Review editor (and bane of Ed Rants) Sam Tanenhaus takes a look at David Brown’s new biography of Richard Hofstadter.