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by: Susan Jacoby  List Price: $26.00 Amazon.com's Price: $17.16 You Save: $8.84 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 973.91 EAN: 9780375423741 ISBN: 0375423745 Label: Pantheon Manufacturer: Pantheon Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: February 12, 2008 Publisher: Pantheon Release Date: February 12, 2008 Studio: Pantheon Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product 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, she surveys an anti-rationalist 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 anti-rationalism. 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Ironically Anti-IntellectualConsidering that the basic premise of the book is that a large portion of the USA is actively anti-intellectual, I'm unsure whether it's an intentional irony or a subconscious hypocrisy that makes this the most anti-rational, anti-scientific piece of what I hesitate to call literature that I've ever had the displeasure of picking up. The only thing that kept me reading to the end was that it was _so_ poorly researched and documented that I was sure it was a joke of some kind, and that at some point ... Read More Rating:  - Maybe being a scientist and an intellectual is worthwhile after allI enjoyed this book tremendously. I liked best Jacoby's critique of today's newspapers for reporting at face value patently false statements by politicians, as if actual facts made no difference at all. I did disagree with a few of Jacoby's points. She is too cavalier about dismissing the idea that the U.S. is overpopulated. To provide some balance to this, I would encourage reading Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Overall, though, the book is great. Don't miss it. ... Read More Rating:  - Good basic premise, but stuck in past....too obviously biasedThe basic premise is correct, that we need to study more, read more, think more clearly. When hasn't that been true? I agree with her that people spend too much time on TV, video games and other liesurely activities that don't stimulate the intellect. Many seem to be addicted or perhaps too tired/lazy to do something that takes effort. I liked the book from that standpoint. But, she seemed stuck in the past, constantly telling the reader how wonderful it was when.... I kept getting the ... Read More Rating: - Good start, but doesn't go far enough into the reasons for our malaiseThis is a good start. But I was disappointed that Jacoby doesn't dig deeper. A lot of her "answers" just beg the question. I found she was good at diagnosing the problem--as are many pundits and observers these days--but short on understanding their true depth. She gives us the laundry list of ills inflicting us right now--failed political systems, endemic rudeness, the death of civic responsibility, our vile popular culture--and does not see the thread that links it all. That thread is the ... Read More Rating: - Brilliant; makes you wish you'd paid more attention in schoolJacoby uses her deep and nuanced knowledge of American history to lay out where we are falling well short of America's most cherished goals. Some reviews have complained the book is too long. But Jacoby's survey is so broad, and to do it justice strikes me as worth this level of detail. There's a lot of real gold in this book, and I did not find my mind wandering. One of my takeaways: it confirms for us that the vast sums of money we've chosen to pay for the education for our children (private school, ... Read More 
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