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The Age of American Unreason
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey 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
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Editorial Review:
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The Age of American Faithlessness
As others, I picked up this book with great anticipation, hoping to find an objective text on the slow descent of intellectualism in America. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed by Ms. Jacoby's disdain for everyone other than herself and her near-clones. Anti-everything is not intellectualism.
I'm so thoroughly nauseated by the quantity of anti-Christianity being pumped into modern literature these days. At least I can count on books like "The God Delusion" and "God is Not Great" ... Read More
Rating:  - Tracing the Decline of American Culture and the American Intellect
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Jay-Z, J. Lo, O.J., Jon Benet, and Jolie. America's Got Talent, Baby Borrowers, Wife Swap, Wipeout, Greatest American Dog, American Gladiators, and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Creationism, Biblical literalism, open disdain for the "reality-based world," dying newspapers, aliteracy, innumeracy, and anti-intellectualism. Video game addiction, YouTube narcissism, withdrawal into personalized iPod worlds, sound bites, Baby Einstein, ten-second attention ... Read More
Rating:  - I thought the idea was to apply reason
This is a book I should have liked. I picked it up enthusiastically when I read the jacket flaps, as it seemed to make an argument that I often find myself making -- more and more people decide matters on the basis of their preconceived biases with little regard for the facts. People don't like being troubled by facts when guesses, hunches, gossip, and drivel are so much easier and more amusing to digest.
As a college professor, I guess I qualify as an intellectual, although that word seems ... Read More
Rating: - A Blow to the Use of Reason
I've not read a book where I agreed with the thesis as much, and then disagreed completely with the means to get there. Other reviews have touched on this, but to add a few comments on the research for this book:
1. The use of two convenient statistics to prove a point that can easily be countered by other data is rampant in this book, and detracts from the book's weight. Example: The author asserts that because Southerners tend to have worse educations, they are more likely to hold religious beliefs ... Read More
Rating:  - CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORS BEWARE
I read Richard Hofstadter's ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE when it came out so I looked forward to reading this book. I found it a pleasant read; a sort of 'short trot with a cultured mind'. But that all changed on page 224 with 3 paragraphs on child abuse. Like most non-survivors Ms Jacoby gets everything exactly backwards. She offers no discussion or analysis of the works she names only judgements which betray no acquaintance with either child abuse or the works mentioned. She seems not to know that ... Read More
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