Publisher Description
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon—one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of “junk thought.” Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.
Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment—from television to the Web—and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and antirationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.
At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the “overarching crisis of memory and knowledge” described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.
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“susan jacoby has impressed me in the past, and she doesn’t disappoint me with this book. jacoby has researched past intellectual trends in america and compared them to recent anti-illectual trends in america. a wonderful voice calling out to stop with the stereotype that being knowledgeable and using that knowledge in speech and decision-making somehow makes you unable to call yourself an ordinary person. my only problem is that jacoby points out the lack of real debate and experiencing of other viewpoints, but fails to note the complete degradation of debate that took place when conservatives decided to start calling liberal ideas traitorous, or unamerican, etc. in my opinion, ann coulter has done more to make debate unappealing and unrewarding than any ignorance-inducing pop culture icon.”
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Sharon (4 out of 5 stars)
