Kimball begins this essay by comparing the start of the "golden age" of liberal arts education as the period between about 1950 and 1975 when American higher education's revenue and enrollments of colleges and universities grew enormously. During the subsequent silver age of academe, ending in the Great Recession of 2008-2009, liberal arts education, particularly in the humanities, rapidly lost favor, according to many observers. Kimball highlights four important books: "The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities" (Frank Donoghue); "Liberal Arts at the Brink" (Victor E. Ferrall, Jr.); "The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University" (Louis Menand); and "The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University" (Ellen Schrecker), that share the purpose of analyzing and reversing the decline of liberal arts education by shoring up its supporting pillars. Those include the academic profession, academic freedom, academic tenure, faculty governance, general education, and liberal arts colleges. Situated in different kinds of colleges and universities, the above authors naturally emphasize the central pillars in their respective institutions.