When one has Robert Penn Warren, Katherine Anne Poster, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Crowley, Sydney Hook and John Dewey as companions, one is bound to come up with something spectacular. Burke's life as a public intellectual and his involvement in a wide range of intellectual communities led to his producing no less than four major works (Auscultation, Creation and Revision, Permanence and Change, Attitudes toward History and The Philosophy of Literary Form) in less than ten years. George (rhetorical theory, Texas Christian U.) and Selzer (English, Pennsylvania State U.) argue these early works are as compelling as his later, better-known efforts and are the direct result of his contact with other leading thinkers of his time. They continue their analysis of Burke in this second volume in the series, closely reading his private papers and defining the intellectual atmosphere of the 1930s that fed him. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)