I have been meaning to mention Neil Gross’s new book on Richard Rorty, which I read much of in manuscript quite some time ago.  (There is an interview with Professor Gross here).  The book is partly a contribution to the sociology of ideas and intellectuals (what is called "the new sociology of ideas"), and partly a straight biography of Rorty.  The biographical part will certainly be of interest to philosophers, even those not much enamored of Rorty’s work.  It sheds an interesting light on what the profession was like, what it was like to pursue a career in academic philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, and also has lots of interesting anecdotes about various departments, especially Princeton and Chicago.   Gross is a clear writer.  The sociological "explanation" (Gross’s theory of "intellectual self-concept") struck me as a bit thin qua explanation, but even that bit of the book is instructive for philosophers as to what it is the sociologists are debating when they try to understand intellectual figures and movements.