Obituaries, 2011 to June 2012

Abstract

BELL, DANIEL, intellectual and author, d. 1-25-11. One of the leading American thinkers of the twentieth century, a member of the vaunted and largely Jewish “New York Intellectuals,” and the coiner of such phrases as “post-industrial society,” died at 91. Jacob Weisberg of Slate called Bell “one of the genuinely important American thinkers of the 20th century” and, on a personal basis, “at once a stunningly original mind, an ironic observer of the scene around him, and a genial gossip,” whose wide-ranging talks were “all spiced with Yiddishkeit wisecracking.” Bell’s influential books included: “The End of Ideology” in 1962, a collection of essays that “portrayed a non-capitalist or post-capitalist order in which the classic conditions of the market no longer existed, and in which widespread political dissatisfaction was no longer based in economics,” and was chosen by the London Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books since World War Two; and “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society” in 1973, in which Bell predicted the emergence of the information economy, social stratification driven by expertise and “something like the Internet.”

For full obituaries, see the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s website at: www.jta.org from which the information below was derived. The editors wish to thank Ami Eden, Ben Harris, and the JTA staff for their assistance.