I was eager to compare Jacoby's views with those of Steven Johnson in "Everything Bad is Good For You." Unfortunately, I found her work lacking in simple academic rigor. She commenced to ridicule Johnson's book for the audacity of its title (is she actually judging this book by its cover?)and misrepresent his main thesis- popular culture is not a replacement for traditional learning, but it is becoming more cognitively stimulating instead of less. Moreover, the elements of much modern entertainment are precisely those that are cognitively challenging rather than opiating.

After being subjected to self-righteous indignation over "The DaVinci Code's" fantasy (as if to conjure up a historically suspect murder mystery is somehow both anti intellectual and just plain stupid) and her moral vitriol spilled over admitted speculation, I finally threw in the towel. As a supporter of left-leaning intellectualism, and a teacher, I just couldn't stomach the hypocrisy and paucity of substance. The only value I found was a lesson many on the left could acknowledge regarding a knee-jerk urge to label everyone that doesn't agree as anti-intellectual by dint of their disagreeing with one's self-avowed and vaunted intellectualism.

Susan Jacoby's book has two basic parts. First Ms. Jacoby examines the historical roots of America's penchant for resisting intellectuals and intellectualism. Second, Ms. Jacoby fumes about the changes in our culture since the '60s.

The first portion of the book is without a doubt an excellent investigation and discussion of 75% of 'how we got to where we are now.' The second part of Ms. Jacoby's book is essentially 'The '60s and the o...more Susan Jacoby's book has two basic parts. First Ms. Jacoby examines the historical roots of America's penchant for resisting intellectuals and intellectualism. Second, Ms. Jacoby fumes about the changes in our culture since the '60s.

The first portion of the book is without a doubt an excellent investigation and discussion of 75% of 'how we got to where we are now.' The second part of Ms. Jacoby's book is essentially 'The '60s and the other 25% of how we got to where we are now' and is a bit more problematic for me.

Her basic premise for 'The '60s' is that the youth of the era, the baby boomers, divided themselves into two opposing camps. One was either a member of the counter-culture (a hippie) or of the counter-counter-culture (an anti-hippie) and the two sides haven't agreed on anything since then. To me, this seemed pretty logical. How many Republicans still see every liberal as a [...]

Her examination of how the Culture Wars, efforts to combat the Civil Rights movement and the rise of the Evangelical Movement promote unreason all rang true for me but, like most of the people reading The Age of American Unreason, Ms. Jacoby was preaching to the choir.

Where things bogged down for me was when Ms. Jacoby sounded a bit too much like every other geezer out there ranting about 'kids these days.' I'm less than half of Ms. Jacoby's age and at times she seemed too willing to condemn our culture simply because it is now very different from what it was when she was growing up.

Youth culture, technology and the studying of pop culture in college classes is not the end of the world Ms. Jacoby thinks it is. Yes, email has destroyed the letter. Yes, the vast majority of us are dependent on spell check. College classes studying 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' don't carry the gravitas of classes on Shakespeare or Chaucer or even Bram Stoker. I would argue that if a student can approach 'Buffy' with the same close reading and analysis she or he would have approached 'Cantubury Tales' that student has both learned to think about all the media they consume and has gained the skills to apply that mindset to 'the classics.' I digress...

Changes in how we transmit our thoughts and who sets our tastes in clothes do not, however, do anything to decrease our trust in experts or explain why Americans are peculiar in our celebration of being 'just folks' and our pride in our ignorance. This isn't to say that Ms. Jacoby doesn't address those things, but 'you kids stay off of my lawn!' attitude weakens her arguments.

In the end, The Age of American Unreason is a valuable and timely look at who we are as Americans. Sadly, it's scholarly style and mildly combative stance (and the fact that it's a book and not a TV show) ensures that those who need to hear Ms. Jacoby's message most will be completely unaware that it exists.

I wanted to agree with Jacoby's book when I first saw the title. It's something I've sensed in a culture where Britney Spears' court cases and the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby make mainstream news over stories that affect millions of lives far more directly. However, by the end of the book she becomes so blinded by hatred of things she sees as anti-intellectual that she stops backing up her points and becomes guilty of the very problem she's critiquing.

First, the beginning of the book, covering the history of anti-intellectualism was quite good. Sources were sparse, but a journey through the earlier ages of American unreason was very intriguing.

However, by the time she gets to the ills of the day, she begins to trip over herself. After spending several pages on the problems and ills of "Junk Thought" (one of the few chapters where she writes out somewhat specific criteria for anti-intellectual thought), she comes back the next chapter commenting on some statistics with "These statistics are probably underestimated, given the absence of consciousness inherent in the reflexive consumption of anything."

Why does she assume causality on the statistics she cited a sentence before? Why does this statement not have a footnote? Is she using "probably" simply to insert an opinion without justification? I personally had to put the book down after this sentence to recover from her lack of reasoning.

However, my mood only fell further as she went on to decry the evils of the Internet and video games as distraction based technologies. These are her opinions, and while I disagree with them, her lack of sourcing leaves me to simply leave her at her word rather than argue with it.

The conclusion of the book is equally depressing, with no real plan for action other than greater leadership from politicians and intellectuals to stand up publicly against unreason. How thoughtful.

In short, it's got some good history on anti-intellectualism in America, but don't look for actionable items or even working definitions of present day anti-intellectualism here.

Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, her previous book, was a masterpiece, made clearly evident given the pervasiveness in which other authors have cited that book. Freethinkers was a history of secular thought in America while Jacoby's new book, The Age of American Reason, provides a current day snapshot on the results that occur when much of America shuns rational thought in favor of either ideological dogma, both right and left, and/or sheer intellectual laziness. This snapshot is presented within the context of our past where Jacoby treats us to a journey from the past to the present in each chapter which covers different topics all related to non-rational thinking and its impact on society.

Jacoby as a historian and thinker is worthy of our attention so I recommend this book along with Freethinkers. Given that this book is more topical, I doubt it will be read much years from now though I believe it's still worthy of our attention during this era (I predict Freethinkers will continue to be a valuable treasure that will used for many years to come).

Jacoby is knowledgeable about the history of enlightenment thinking and our founding ideals, topics that run through most chapters as a common thread. She uses the approach to thinking of our founding framers and other great leaders of the past as a benchmark to current day approaches. For example, she compares current political speech to FDR's fireside chats broadcasted across America on the radio. FDR treated Americans with respect while also challenging them to study up on the geography and geopolitics in play during WWII. This compares favorably when Jacoby analyzes the type of communications we receive from modern-day presidents where obvious, non-shallow questions are always avoided and they assume we're idiots that are easily manipulated.

The topic of our leaders talking down to us comes from her first two chapters which covers communications from our political leaders to the public. My initial response was that was hardly a good topic to start this book if you were looking for a persuasive argument that would cause America to consider a change in our behavior, it seemed too petty to me. Seeing Jacoby interviewed by Bill Moyer on this topic did little to persuade me otherwise. However, soon after reading that chapter, I heard Romney's and Obama's speeches on religion.

Romney offered a false history of America, assuming we'd be ignorant to his lies. His speech seemed to have the objective of plagiarizing the impact that Kennedy's speech had on the same topic while at the same time offering raw meat to social conservatives in order to gain political capital with them. Few were fooled while Tim Russert tore Romney apart on his Meet the Press appearance for lying in the speech. Obama's speech soared to heights not experienced by me in public life since Reagan and MLK last spoke to America and quickly showed this Republican what a special talent he was in this day and age. That experience had me rereading the first chapter with newfound respect for how important Ms. Jacoby's point was - that if America was going to regain our competitive advantage in the world after the Bush years, that we will require a more demanding voter who swiftly rejects those that pander and lie to us, while embracing those whose policies are based on sound assertions and are willing to give it to us in a nuanced, truthful manner rather than in soundbites meant to obfuscate - even if we don't agree with them, i.e., better to pick a smart person we disagree with than support an idiot who tells us what the lowest common denominator wants to hear.

Each chapter of American Unreason is presented as a discrete essay covering a different topic, in fact each of them could have been an excellent Atlantic magazine article, which leads me to hope that some good media outlet will snap Jacoby up and allow America more access to Jacoby's excellent analysis beyond her occasional books. A few of the topics covered are as follows:

Communications - how politicians never really answer to anyone while media outlets rely on ever-shorter sound-bites while also failing to correct false assertions made by the people they cover. E.g., those that claim they are a champion of individual rights while advocating for a constitutional amendment that discriminates against gay people and their children and other family members - follow ups are never asked by the media to portray this obvious contradiction (my example, not necessarily Jacoby's).

Social pseudoscience from the left and the right, mostly starting in the late 19th century and how it's affected today's culture, e.g., the right's embrace of social Darwinism was an especially interesting section of this chapter.

America mutates from glorifying its best and brightest to a more middlebrow culture, turning elitism into a bad word. This topic shows Jacoby's predictive powers given how this is currently a political issue after publication of this book. Jacoby reminds the reader that America's greatest were mostly elitists aspiring to ambitious ideals.

"Junk thought" - particularly her attack on liberal learning institutions providing equal time to matters Jacoby finds trivial to forming and bettering western thought (like classes on popular movies and pop music).

Cultural Distraction - which is also getting more notice in the popular press recently, especially this month's Atlantic magazine article on the Googlization of America. This is where I part ways with Ms. Jacoby; her understanding of the utilization of the Internet appears to be based more on her inexperience and lack of time and search skills on-line than any empirical evidence. Certainly her criticisms are valid on how its mis-used and the quality of some of its content, but because she herself has obviously not devoted the time to find the resources that make the Internet a much more productive forum for learning about specific topics relative to finding the right book, I would argue her critique is based on too narrow a context - i.e., her own experience as an obvious non-techie.

In summary - a great book to savor, the discreteness of its topics allows the reader to read a chapter and then set the book aside for future review or even to read the book in a haphazard manner, no matter how a reader approaches this book, it's worthy of everyone's library.

I really liked the author's previous book, "Freethinkers," and I'm naturally sympathetic to most of the positions she takes in this book. However, I almost wasn't able to finish this. Anticipation and enthusiasm fades as the book slogs along, and the reader realizes it's essentially another litany of the standard Loyal Opposition arguments about What's Wrong With America. I perked up at the history of Middlebrow Culture--never knew that was a real thing. But I wish I'd encountered it as, say, a long Harper's magazine article than as a gold nugget I had to pan for. By the end of the book she's devolved into doing a deft imitation of a cranky old man shouting at the television. I mean, not enough classical music reviews in newspapers?!? Come ON. Who CARES.

Plus, her sentences are often too long, her language just short of academic jargon. Here's a random example, plucked off a random page: "Those who take a dark view of the intellectual and political consequences of of the eclipse of print are obliged to establish their bona fides by disclaiming any resistance to the proposition that the computer had effected not only a technological but an intellectual breakthrough in the march of human progress." As I say, not QUITE opaque, just hooded with too many Latinate words and excess hypotaxis. It wears a guy out after a while. I sometimes felt vaguely like I was reading something I'd been assigned.

There's a fair amount of good stuff here--she's in her element in the section about "New Old Time Religion" (but then aren't Fundamentalists carp in a barrel for her audience?) and there's good stuff in "Junk Thought." But overall I found the book flawed and tiring in its relentlessness. Even the author seems to get tired of her own arguments by the end: by then her underlying thesis has become something suspiciously like "Americans are going to heck in a handbasket because they didn't study what I studied and they don't know what I know and they don't read the TIMES on paper over morning coffee like I like to do." I mean, I can't see the decline of civilization in the lack of classical music reviews in newspapers, and I LISTEN to classical music.

Books are long, life short, and all in all I don't think I can recommend this one.

Susan Jacoby's book is suffused with nostalgia for a time in America when the life of the mind was more valued than it seems to her to be today. Her evidence, however, is largely anecdotal. She refers, for example, to her experience, as a young woman in the 1960s, of writing long "snail mail" letters to a lover in South Africa, chronicling the zeitgeist of her place and time, and how he did the same. She praises this languid and sensuous form of communication, then contrasts it with the emotional flatness that she feels sending off electronic e-mails today, which she notes are rarely responded to with any degree of passion or detail.

Her thesis, in short, is that contemporary electronic communication, from TV and the Internet, to mass advertising, has drawn America away from nature, books, and the life of the mind. She perceives, correctly, that Steven Johnson's book of just a few years back, "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter," threatens her thesis, and she attempts, in her first chapter, to dispatch it quickly. But rather than address the substantive claims and supports that book offers, she maligns it with little more than innuendo, contempt, and derision. But Johnson's book is, whatever else you may think of it, suffused with a good deal of empirical data, and Jacoby chooses to simply ignore it and move on.

I share Jacoby's sadness that the life of the mind is not broadly valued, but I don't share her belief that it was ever valued all that much more than it is today. The nostalgic aspect of her book is thus the weakest part of it because she is doing something inherently unreasonable, accumulating anecdotes that do not add up (at least for me) to a compelling support for her claim. It was, afterall, William F. Buckley who said, long before the Internet and TV preachers presumably made us all stupid, that he preferred that the country be trusted to the first fifty names in the Boston phone book to the faculty of Harvard. Contempt and distrust of intellectuals and the elite, like the poor, have been with us always. Jacoby, who has written a book on Greek tragedy, surely knows Aristophanes' "The Clouds," a funny and disturbing send up of the atheist intellectuals of ancient Greece.

For all my complaints, however, the book is worth having and reading, if, for no other reason, to draw fresh intellectual air from someone who loves the life of the mind. But let's not kid ourselves. The average person in 1950 probably could no more locate Iran on a world map than a person can today.

Don't be misled by the raised expectation of rationality in this book. I found it very self-righteous without any self-criticism of how we got were we are today. A lot of name dropping/calling and statistics, but no rational analysis from first principle I had hoped for. First public education is lauded as the cause in drop of illiteracy from 17% to 11% from 1878 to the eve of WWI. The number of schools in this period multiplied from 80 to 11000. But why use the euphemism: public education? The key difference compared to the education that came before is that it is coercively financed. So a lot more teachers got a job through coercively financed education than otherwise would have been the case. These teachers would no doubt have praised the state that pointed the gun that gave them their jobs. So why conveniently stop on the eve of WWI with the analysis? If the author would have continued, she might have stumbled upon the fact that these literate kids did not really get their education for free, they were now indebted to the state for their education and had to murder for their president's wars. `Walk up that hill and be killed or die right here' Does it matter if you die illiterate or literate?
The author does not discuss how to make the rational step from morality that states that theft and murder is wrong for common folks, but suddenly does wonders in the hands of `great' men. So no wonder she praises FDR's fireside chats and how he asked everyone to buy a map to see where there kids were killing and getting killed, to pay back their new deal `raw deal'. As long as a president can quote Epicures, it's ok if he starts a war that killed millions. So when she is criticizes GWB, it is not because of a war he started based on lies, which caused the death of over a million people, it's because he mispronounces the word `nuclear'. At no point the author seems to feel empathy for human beings. There is high brow, low brow and middle brow culture, pinkos and egg heads and it's all about which of them should control the machinery of coercion.
So maybe all the criticism on the youth of today and the superficial media, with their disdain for intellectuals is because the youngsters unconsciously realize, that you get nothing for free. Maybe they realize that somehow 50 trillion USD in unfunded liabilities got dumped on them by their parents and grandparents who were so high on `social reform', as long as it was paid for by selling their kids in future debt and tax slavery.
Maybe they realize that they have to spill blood and have their blood spilled over the financial fall out of this foolish idea that good can come from the barrel of a gun, if only pointed by the right people.
Maybe youngsters realize that intellectuals misused the trust common folks had in them, to sell them out to the coercive machine that employed them. State subsidized artists, state employed economists, state protected unionized teachers with coerced customers, they all failed to mention that the past 100 years the biggest chance of getting killed on this planet was by your own government and the 2nd biggest chance of being killed is by your neighbors government. You will have a tough time finding this not so unimportant piece of statistics in this book.
Maybe that is why youngsters put on their headphones and retreat in superficial media shows.

While the author criticizes the irrationality of religion, no link is made between the al powerful god and the al powerful government of the empire. Why is religion retreating in Europe and Canada but not in the hart of the empire? You have to obey God in the sky and the president in Washington. They both have a book with rules and can use their enormous powers for the good as long as you comply with their book

Even the author has noticed public education has become a mess. But she no doubt does not trace it back to the compulsion and coercion at its base, but to the statement that the wrong people controlled it. If they only knew how to quote from Epicures or pronounce the word `nuclear' ....
Well, this review from a non native speaker, so sorry if the English is a little crooked. I'm from Europe where the coercive educational system is especially praised by the author. It has produced intellectuals that invented communism and fascism.
For those youngsters who really want to learn rational thought: search for UPB by the other FDR.

I am an intellectual and so far this looks more like a blog of rants than a well thought out and organized book. Please tighten this up in the second edition, make better use of the examples and if needed print it on more pages as the text is too tightly spaced!

I was listening to the Sibelius Symphony N. 2 on my iPod today and thinking about this book. In the fourth movement, a lovely theme emerges from a swirl of background sound, rising to an inspiring climax. The instrumentation constantly changes: first the strings have the theme, then the woodwinds, then the brass. The background shifts, becoming more complicated, more agitated. The emotional effect on the listener can be shattering.
Why do I bring this up? It's because listening to this kind of music, and even more playing it, has become a dying art. Instead, we have mindless raps, white noise, offensive lyrics, horrible junk that has hijacked the term "music.' (for more on me and my book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel, go to www.alanelsner.com)
In this important book, Jacoby examines why Americans are becoming more and more ignorant, distrustful of science, of intellectuals, of knowledge itself. She reserves special scorn for religious fundamentalism with its easy reliance of unprovable and disproved notions -- but she does not argue exclusively from a liberal perspective. She also has plenty of criticism for outlandish educational theories and nutty university faculties.
Jacoby traces the history, which goes back to the earliest days of America, of distrust of science, fervent and unreasonable religious fundamentalism and hostility to learning in general and intellectuals. President George W. Bush stands at the apex of this horrible trend -- it produced him and he upholds it. "America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism," she argues.
The result: "A lazy and credulous public increasingly unwilling or unable to distinguish between fact and fiction."
Americans don't read much and are reading less and less. We devotees of Amazon.com are the minority. American kids more and more are addicted to the Internet. They grow up watching a flickering screen instead of reading books. This discourages them from thinking or fantasizing outside the box.
In no area has this been more damaging than in America's refusal to admit to the facts of global warming or to do anything about it. This week, the Senate finally began discussing legislation to begin tackling the problem. Naturally, the Bush White House said it would veto it.
As the New York Times said today, "The Bush administration has worked overtime to manipulate or conceal scientific evidence ... to justify its failure to address climate change."
It says an internal investigation by NASA's inspector general concluded that political appointees in the agency's public affairs office had tried to restrict reporters' access to its leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen. He has warned about climate change for 20 years and has openly criticized the administration's refusal to tackle the issue head-on.
Interestingly, the papers are also reporting today that General Motors wants to get rid of its Hummer division.
"I think G.M. is basically declaring the S.U.V. dead," said John Casesa, managing partner of the auto consulting firm Casesa Shapiro Group in New York. "The trend away from these vehicles is irreversible."
Thank God sanity is finally reasserting itself but it is so late. We have lost eight valuable years.
Americans like Bush overwhelmingly still believe in the "literal truth" of the Bible, which most have never read. They believe in the Genesis account of creation, doubt the 'Big Bang' theory to the extent they have heard about it and still do not accept the theory of evolution.
The very word "intellectual" has become a pejorative shorthand for "leftwing extremist."
We have opted for a culture of easy, immediate gratification. In politics, voters want their immediate needs met and don't care about the long term. They don't understand complicated arguments and concepts -- they don't want to and they can't because they lack the ability to read and think and discuss concepts that can't be summed up in one bumper sticker.
This is a deeply disturbing and pessimistic book. It's a must read - for those of us who still can.

I'm only a few pages in, and I am reading two other books right now, but I like it.

This lady Jacoby undoubtedly has a very solid education and erudition, and she can think rationally. I agree with 99% of what she says in the book. Some minor disagreements are, for me - she uses the word "amorphous spirituality" in a derogatory sense. I believe that spirituality not linked to any religion can contribute a lot to ethics, which the classical organized religions get so poorly. And this can happen with or without the belief in a supernatural realm.
She also dismisses the existence of "repressed memories" This was too hasty. There may have been wild exaggerations at some point, but repressed memories have existed, exist today and will exist under the right circumstances, i.e. emotional abuse, lack of parental support, cruelty, sexual abuse and autism, to name a few.
I also think some anecdotal evidence would have contributed a lot to bring her point home, but she carefully avoids this. Finally, she tries to mention some of the things that might help, but no politician will ever say "we have become a nation of morons. Let's do something about it." She finally admits in page 315 that "it is possible that nothing will help. The nation's memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America's best minds"
And last but not least, she does not give consideration to the idea that the failure to intervene to correct the problem for so long, could have been intentional. It has been known for ever that an ignorant people without the ability or desire to think straight is much easier to lead in whichever direction, and much less likely to rebel. All in all, it is an analysis of a sad situation clearly described and very worth reading.

This book seems somewhat disjointed and its different parts unconnected, but it did make me think about problems in American culture and gave me the impetus to explore those problems in greater detail. Some of the topics include the "Dumbing Down" of American culture and the demise of Middlebrow culture.

My explorations led me to Popular Culture And High Culture: An Analysis And Evaluation Of Taste Revised And Updated, Second Edition by Herbert J. Gans. Gans counters the Dumbing Down critique with examples of "Smartening Up". He cites the use of "more complicated terminolgy and abstractions" in today's newspapers and magazines compared with those in the 1950's and before as just one example. Gans makes the general argument that the public deserves the culture it wants, whether it be high or low.

In short, Jacoby has written a stimulating book.

When Susan Jacoby was still in college forty years ago, she was moved and inspired by Richard Hofstadter's well-known 1963 work Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Jacoby's book attempts to pick up Hofstadter's theme and take it forward from the 60's into the millennium, and the attempt is laudable but a little weak.

On most points I agree 100%, such as with her assertions that the average U.S. citizen's intellectual base is sadly lacking and shrinking by the day. Somehow, a scarily large majority of Americans are more formally educated, yet less knowledgeable than ever before. All the reasons why that is, however, are not adequately explored here. While she does manage to isolate a few contributors, such as the explosion in television programs that barely appeal to the lowest common denominator, gaming, the dumbing-down of educational standards, and the decline in reading and other intellectual pursuits, I would have liked to see far more detailed research and statistics on these points and a lot less of her long, meandering, and often thinly connected reminisces about the past. Her treatise on `middlebrow' vs. `highbrow' culture is completely out of place here and really belongs in another kind of study altogether. She also takes the all-too-common tack of using her work as a personal political soapbox, something I truly loathe in any writer of any political persuasion.

Where she excels, though, is her exploration of the political landscape and how the gaping chasm between the two major parties has actually caused much of the problem, and how the far-right religious fundamentalists have made their own unique and devastating contribution. One of the best sequences in the book is the discussion regarding education, science and evolution, and the war being waged between "creationists" and scientists. For example, creationists have largely hijacked the word "theory" and somehow spread the completely false idea that the way we tend to use the word in the vernacular, which is more akin to "opinion", is the same way scientists use it - which of course could not be further from the truth since scientific theory is far more than an `opinion'. She also laments the fact that 25% of high-school biology teachers believe that human beings and dinosaurs shared the earth, and more than a third of Americans can't name a single First Amendment right. I also found myself nodding vigorously in agreement when she bewails the severe decline in general reading and the teaching of literature at all academic levels.

In the larger view, beyond individual issues, the spotlighting of what Jacoby calls "willful ignorance", coupled with what I call just plain ignorance born of mental apathy and poor education, is compelling. While in whole this book could have been better, it does have value and wouldn't be out of place in the library of anyone interested in material about intellectualism in America.

I was very excited when this book came out and was really looking forward to reading it. I can't think of a more timely or important topic for a book. However I found the book very disappointing. Far from a scholarly and insightful look at the issue, the book reads more like a stream of consciousness style rant. The author makes some valid points here and there but then goes off on inexplicable rants. For example, she comments, correctly, that digital communication and email don't evoke the same emotions or require the same level of intellectual effort of traditional letters. But instead of delving into this valid point more deeply, she merely waxes nostalgic about the letters she and her fiance exchanged in the 60s. In another example, she bemoans the erosion of political discourse but instead of thoughtfully discussing this interesting point, she provides us with little more than juvenile taunting of George Bush's inability to pronounce the word "nuclear". Now I am a flaming liberal and far from a Bush apologist and I enjoy a good dig at him as much as anyone, but it seemed out of place, neither funny nor thoughtful, in this context.

In summary, the book has a lot of good ideas and offers a basic, if superficial, overview of the problem of anti-intellectualism within a historic context. Maybe I had too high expectations and perhaps someone coming to this book for a lighter overview of the issue will find it enjoyable. However, on the whole, the book was disappointing to me. There's not really much "meat" to the discussion or any sort of meaningful synthesis. It's something of an irony that only in a dumbed down, lowbrow culture could this book be seen as a thoughtful or important contribution to the discussion.

Susan Jacoby takes us on an interesting and cutting rant on why we've become such a nation of imbeciles. Though not everyone might agree with everything she says I found most of it to be true. In an era in which we seem to be failing at everything or falling behind the rest of the world Jacoby offers a foundational reason for why we are so dumb and what it is costing us.

"The Age of American Unreason" tells us far more about its author, Susan Jacoby, than it says about our recent US history, which she describes in her own selected terms. Her put-down characterizations of our society are as largely being middlebrow, anti-intellectual, and fundamentalist. These are her own designations of the primary themes of our US society. Our society has succeeded in many, many ways in spite of her observations. Still from her New York based pseudo-intellectual society, we are largely social and cultural failures. Bah-humbug, to use a literary phrase, the failure in analysis is hers, as is very well documented in her book.

The book is not recommended for anyone under 40, who has not directly experienced the recent historic successes of our society for the most of its citizens. People over 70 may enjoy critiquing her basically ultra-liberal commentary on our society. The book study group which I lead has very much enjoyed doing so.

The premise of this book immediately grabbed my attention. The idea that the collective American public is not as educated or informed or able to adequately reason for themselves as they should be (and historically have been to some extent) could make an excellent book. Unfortunately, this isn't it.
The author makes some good points when talking about the "average" citizen's woeful lack of basic knowledge in fields such as mathematics, geography, culture, and history. Illustrating the poor way the media present news (in part due to reporters' inability to understand statistics or basic science), resulting in misleading - whether intentional or not - and plain wrong impressions being touted to the public was well-presented. And she verges on approaching the book's potential when exploring modern America's knowledge of and views on such topics as evolution and religion.
However, as the pages turn, it becomes increasingly obvious that the author's true complaint is NOT with modern America's unReason, but with its unLiberalness. She adopts the current Democrat philosophy that anyone who has voted Republican in the past forty years has done so strictly because they were too stupid to know any better. She bemoans the right-wing's attack on the "elite," then proceeds to demonstrate precisely what those conservatives resent about know-it-alls who have so much knowledge & breeding that their view (in their not-so-humble opinion) is the only conceivable correct one on every issue. Further, she ignores (when convenient)her own observation of the old saw that coincidence does not equal causality, even while criticizing those she disagrees with of doing the same thing.
One of the weakest sections is her attack on new media, rehashing the usual liberal philosophy that the plethora of choices before us these days cannot possibly be a good thing - we must be told (by her & her ilk) what is good for us and what is acceptable to read, view, listen to, or surf. Mostly read - she is completely intolerant of anyone who derives information or entertainment from any source other than books, And not just any books, but "the classics."
This book is very readable, and while many of her proposed solutions to real and imagined problems were quite unacceptable to a Libertarian like me, it was interesting to see just how the modern-day "liberal elite" truly feel about us commoners. Inasmuch as my breeding, education, and politics would leave much to be desired in the eyes of this author, it was nice to get a glimpse into that mindset which I call closed, and she would no doubt label "above my ability to comprehend."

It's not often that a book delivers more than expected, but that's what this book did for me. For a long time, I've shared the author's concerns about the struggle between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in the U.S., and her recent article in the Washington Post on the subject prompted me to pick up this book. I was surprised and pleased to find that the first half of the book traces the history of this intellectual struggle in America all the way back to revolutionary times. This provides an excellent background for the current events discussion that follows. As a result, I find myself in disagreement with reviewers who said the book was too long, and the history should have been left out. That outlook seems to demonstrate some of the very points the author is making.
It's no secret that conservatives and religious fundamentalists will not like the way they are portrayed in the book. But Jacoby can be equally scathing with liberals when she feels it's appropriate.
Not everyone will appreciate Jacoby's style, which mixes historical information, data from surveys and studies, and personal anecdotes - but I liked it. Sort of like a left-leaning version of George Will. The author is 10 years older than I am, so there's enough overlap in our growing-up experiences that I could relate to her stories about coming of age in the late 1950s through the early 1970s and her analyses of those times. (From her description of "middlebrow culture," I think I was probably lower-middlebrow.) On the other hand, Jacoby is uncomfortable with many aspects of the digital/video culture that are less bothersome, and in some cases eagerly embraced, among people my age and younger. Nevertheless, she makes important points about the proliferation of "junk thought" and the difficulty in balancing the benefits and hazards of "screen media," especially for young people who are still developing their powers of judgment and may inadvertently bypass other important avenues to American and world culture. Having taught university students for several years, I think she hits very close to the mark.
This is a good read on an important topic, valuable even if you don't agree with the author's position all the time. Jacoby doesn't offer a recipe to fix everything, but as she clearly points out at the end of the book, there are no simple remedies, and she does not presume to have all the answers.

This book would be quite funny if it weren't so frustrating. Author Susan Jacoby accurately depicts the sorry state of intellectualism in America and properly castigates the "videoization" of the culture. Baby Einstein videos are one particular, and particularly deserving, target of her wrath. But time and time again, Ms. Jacoby is guilty of the intellectual sloth she accuses "conservatives" of.

She (correctly) condemns conservatives for being close minded, but then shamelessly insists that the views of conservatives (i.e. Creationism) should be dismissed out of hand and given no hearing. She criticizes conservatives for name-calling and mischaracterization of their opponents, but she routinely does the same to religious conservatives and others with whom she disagrees.

But what ultimately annoyed and infuriated me to the extent that I had to give up on the book was Ms. Jacoby's bloodthirsty anti-intellectual statism and historical revisionism. She spends pages correctly evaluating the public schools as a mess, but then blames their sorry state on a lack of federal control. You see, the simple "folks" (a word she quite wittily assails) in the South and Midwest cannot be trusted to fund and operate their own centers of learning -- they need an Imperial government in Washington, D.C. to do it for them! And of course, a president like George W. Bush could never be elected again in this fantasy, I would suppose.

Tellingly, Ms. Jacoby evidences a horrible misunderstanding of American history, particularly the views of the Founders, which can only be achieved by a statist public education. You see, in Ms. Jacoby's perverse world of anti-truth, federally-funded public education was always part of the Founders' plans -- or at least the "good" ones. Sadly, those dastardly "conservatives" foiled the centralist plot. She laments that the uneducated and illiberal George Washington's attempt to posthumously establish a national(ist) university was foiled -- not by laissez-faire classical liberals in her contention, but by religionists who were wary of government supplanting their role in education. You see, to Ms. Jacoby, the Founders were all secularists with a 1965 view of the First Amendment -- despite the inconvenient truth that several states had official state religions at the time of the Constitution's ratification. She also firmly believes that the Founders were for "democracy," when in truth, the word was an epithet in the Founding Era. This shoddy scholarship abounds and firmly establishes Ms. Jacoby as an anti-intellectual herself.

The only thing this book succeeded in doing for me was demonstrating, once and for all, that the Secular Left is as statist and anti-intellectual as the Religious Right. Susan Jacoby's religious faith in the federal government and centralized political dictatorship is just as idiotic as fundamentalist Christianity. Maybe even more so.

All Americans should be required to read this book to learn why H.L. Mencken called us the "boobocracy". Non-Americans should read it too, to better understand why Americans are so confused and confusing.

I am glad that I read this book. It deals with critical topics and social issues. Central to the discussion is a distinction between "anti-intellectual" and "anti-rational." For example, there are highly intellectual people who are anti-rational in their social and/or political thinking. In sum, lots to chew on here, and very relevant to our country in this era.

Why only three stars? At times the author is over-confident and/or too outspoken. Her partisanship can undermine what might otherwise be a valuable discussion. For example, in dismissing the proponents of separate sex education she resorts to name-calling and innuendo, using "separate but equal" - terminology that is historically loaded and judicially rejected - to simply dismiss another point of view, rather than give the other side any benefit of scientific doubt. On this topic the author perhaps reveals a lack of understanding of science or at least the specific scientific topic involved.

I am glad that I read this book. It deals with critical topics and social issues. Central to the discussion is a distinction between "anti-intellectual" and "anti-rational." For example, there are highly intellectual people (thoughtful and using logic) who are anti-rational in their social and/or political thinking. In sum, lots to chew on here, and very relevant to our country in this era.

Why only three stars? At times the author is over-confident and/or too outspoken. Her partisanship can undermine what might otherwise be a valuable discussion. For example, in dismissing the proponents of separate sex education she resorts to name-calling and innuendo, using "separate but equal" - terminology that is historically loaded and judicially rejected - to simply dismiss another point of view, rather than give the other side any benefit of scientific doubt. On this topic the author perhaps reveals a lack of understanding of science or at least the specific scientific topic involved.

How long should a new nation retain its "frontier" status? The United States used the condition of "filling an empty continent" to disclaim any need for intellectual advancement for over a century. During the following decades, learning may have become more widely disseminated and an "American culture" may have arisen to overturn that imported from Europe. Still, there remained the attitude that the "intellectual" was a figure of elitism.) While that picture is necessarily false - what other single nation has garnered so many Nobel awards? - "intellectuals" have not been held in high regard in the US. As Susan Jacoby reminds us, Richard Hofstadter's 1963 "Anti-intellectualism In American Life" was a breakthrough effort in pointing up how and why his countrymen viewed higher learning as they did. Jacoby has done more than merely updated Hofstadter in this excellent overview. She exposes some of the root conditions leading to her country spawning a tide of "unreason".

Distilling Jacoby's presentation to its basic element, we realise that the foundation for today's "Age of Unreason" lies in education. While that seems a paradox in a nation with so many noteworthy science, economic and other figures, the general picture confirms her analysis. It's not the education system itself that draws her ire - although she has some serious comments on that topic - but the diversionary elements either distracting the young from learning or failing to help preparing them for education. The former is something long commented on - the video screen. Whether it's games, "children's" programmes or simply "surfin' the 'Net", the video monitor leads children away from real mental challenges or sources of useful and meaningful information. Instead, children - and no few adults - are inundated with "infotainment". It boils down to "junk thought" being broadcast in one form or another and retained by those least able to resist it.

That manufactured term is almost self-explanatory in declaring why decline of the printed page is another of Jacoby's topics of concern. Reading, she argues, is falling by the wayside because images and sound-bites provide quick, simple explanations of what is deemed "reality". The brevity of presentation and the superficial forms used to convey it have led the young away from understanding the complexity of everyday issues. Jacoby lists the symptoms of the loss of reading, from shrunken book review sections in newspapers to her own experience as a journalist. Where once she was commissioned to produce lengthy, analytical pieces on a given topic, editors now put severe limits on word-count. Reading is being downplayed and readers are demanding and expecting to be less challenged and less informed about subjects. Brief, easily absorbed snippets - whether informative or not - have become the norm.

Nowhere, of course, is better placed to provide the "quick answer" than is religion. Jacoby's discussion of the role of fundamentalism [she eschews adding "Christianity" to the description] is extensive and thorough. Evangelical Christianity has experienced a rollercoaster ride through the years in the US. There have been, according to the author, three "Awakenings" of religious intensity in North America, the first prior to independence, the second in the early 19th Century and the third in the present day. Each has been typified by an aversion to a perceived dominance by an "intellectual elite". As Hofstadter had noted in his earlier book, the Awakenings have spilled over into a broader social arena than religion alone. Since religion is perceived as the very underpinnings of a stable society, any ideas or information challenging religion, established or evangelical, loss of religious intensity is viewed as tantamount to leading to social chaos. Stability, whether informed or not, is the aim. Only faith can provide consistency.

Although there are some missing elements in this book - why should religion gain such a foothold in one of the world's most literate and scientifically advanced nations, for example - this is a work deserving a wide readership. Jacoby doesn't make detailed comparisons between her native country and elsewhere, yet, she's concerned about what the decline in intellectual growth means for the future. Perhaps she considers that obvious, but the poorly informed readers she's concerned about might be better served by a nudge in that direction. Given the number of recent works on these questions, Jacoby is hardly alone in her analysis of the intellectual condition of the US. In terms of communicating the issues, her writing skills place her at a more accessible level than some of her colleagues. In any case, the issues are clear and her approach unequivocal. This book is, therefore, essential reading. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I am glad that I read this book. It deals with critical topics and social issues. Central to the discussion is a distinction between "anti-intellectual" and "anti-rational." For example, there are highly intellectual people (thoughtful and using logic) who are anti-rational in their political thinking and preferences/partisanship. In sum, lots to chew on here, and very relevant to our country in this era.

Why only three stars? At times the author is over-confident and/or too outspoken. Also, once in a while her partisanship destroys what might otherwise be a valuable discussion. For example, in dismissing the proponents of separate sex education she resorts to name-calling and innuendo, using "separate but equal" - terminology that is historically loaded and judicially rejected - rather than give the other side any benefit of scientific doubt. In doing so, however, the author perhaps reveals her own lack of scientific sophistication.

Other reviews offer more specific commentaries on this book. Perhaps it's a better borrowed from a library or purchased used rather than (as I did) purchased new.

Ms. Jacoby has some valid points to make, especially when it comes to the media, pop culture, and government-run schools. Unfortunately, her obnoxiously arrogant rants against religion made it very difficult to for me to get through her book. Her tone is what some like to call "snarky" but that usually comes across as mean-spirited hostility. Think Michael Moore on the left or Ann Coulter on the right. This type of arrogant insulting of those with whom the author disagrees often completely overshadow the legitimate merits of his or her argument. Incivility has the tendency to "turn off" anyone who does not already 100% agree with him or her.

Ms. Jacoby describes religious believers as "willfully ignorant", the Bible as "supernatural fantasy", a belief in anything other than atheistic Darwinian evolution as a "cockamamie idea", and calls faith a "toxic" force that is one of the chief "enemies of intellect, learning, and reason". She approvingly quotes PBS journalist and noted liberal Bill Moyers, who calls Christians "ideologues [who] hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality." And that's just in the first chapter of the book!

It's really too bad that Ms. Jacoby has let her personal grudge against religion (and Christianity in particular) bias her writing because portions of "The Age of American Unreason" are excellent.

There is probably no point in reading this book. I didn't, and if you're like me you already know what it says because you're astute enough to have seen the evidence all around you for some years now; and if you buy it for someone else to read they won't read it. And if they did read it they wouldn't believe it and would label it a product of liberal elitist thinking. So what's the point in the author even writing a book like this. I hate to be a party pooper, but there is no hope for us. I have three children who were raised in a culturally rich home but that wasn't enough to compete against the allure of consumerism and the ethic of the street. My kids don't watch the news, don't read newspapers, and I've never seen them read a book. They are 23, 20, and 17 years old. When they watch tv they watch Flavor Flave and that sort of nonsense. I take consolation only in the fact that they won't survive the hell of global warming and will die in the famine along with everyone else.

If you are considering buying this book, you probably already believe what Ms. Jacoby has to say -- the intellectual flabbiness of America is a cultural malady. For a mere $15.00 on the used side, the book is worth your money. For a popularistic look at "Dumb and Dumberness" in the USA, the book does quite well. It does not have the rigor of a scholarly treatise, but that is not its intent. It has sufficient documentation for its purpose and much better than many books. Ms. Jacoby is at times refreshingly insightful, at times long-winded, and sometimes hostile in her criticisms. The last is actually a refreshing touch in today's politically correct climate. You may find yourself saying "Is she really saying that? That's good for some hate mail." While I liked the book and enjoyed the vocabulary (sometimes overly "conflated"), it was hard to get a rhythym to the prose. The book covers a broad spectrum of contributors to intellectual diminuation, but offers little in the way of solutions. Aside from turning off the television and reading the classics of literature to your kids (or for yourself), you won't find a lot of cures for the malady. The analysis, however, is interesting. The author relates a bit of her life story that will help you understand her point of view. With a liberal education and an innate love of literature from an early age, Ms. Jacoby has moved along a path in life where her work enables her to indulge her passion. For those of us who do more mundane things where spending time researching in the library is not part of our jobs, it is tougher to be the erudite person Susan is. She doesn't credit sufficiently the change in general knowledge and technology that makes being totally educated and fully informed more difficult than ever before (never mind the disinformation spread through commercials, etc.). There is more technology in one square foot of the dashboard of my car than there was in my entire home when I was boy. Available knowledge doubles every seven years. More things than Plato and Frost compete for our attention. We must all pick and choose what we can stay abreast of. Ms. Jacoby would probably be challenged to as scientifically knowledgeable as she is literate. At times, she comes across as the person in the poem "I stood on the beach and railed at each wave that broke upon my toes, Until the tide came in and covered up my nose." The digitial/electronic/media age is upon us. There is no retreating and Ms. Jacoby doesn't like it. However, despite these shortcomings in the book, you can still enjoy it and benefit from it. As Ms. Jaocby would likely wish it, you can think for yourself about what she says. It is just a sad fact, that our information like our food, is being prepared by someone else and they don't always do a good job. Investigative reporting has been replaced (in part) by reporting points of view. We will all need to be picky about whom we believe and what we believe. There really are dumb ideas and more courage is needed by individuals to stand up to non sense when they see and hear it. Don't be afraid to be smart, gracefully. Now, go buy the book. P.S. Read a half dozen more reviews and you will get a good sense of the book. The people reading and reviewing are a thoughtful bunch. (Want an idea of how this book would be reviewed by someone following the author's bent. Try this -- The book is a delight of strongly researched material conflated with cleverly sytacted oratory that provides a refreshing indulgence in extended contemplation of the causes and effects of multiple dynamics upon the face of discourse and the heart of reason. Words as vehicles to another universe of persepctive lead to wondered awe at the machinery of cultural change and a sense of loss and powerlessness at righting the listed vessel of collective public intellectual prowess tossed perilously low on a sea of rising ignorance and falling rigor. Oh, woe to the modern sailor wishing a true and honest course to steer. Enough, you get the drift.)

The subject is an excellent one, unfortunately the author makes a mess of it with poor reasoning, questionable facts, little documantation with the grand finale turning into a political rant. My advice, don't waste your time.

I recently purchased a book called "The Black Swan" off of Amazon. I am a long-time customer who has purchased many items, but I have never before been so wonderfully surprised about an item I purchased from the site. When the book arrived, I opened the packaging and saw the cover of "The Black Swan". I was keen to begin reading it so I started thumbing through the book. Something seemed amiss so I closed the book and took off the book cover to check the hardback binding. It too read "The Black Swan". So I continued to thumb through the pages. To my amazement, inside the book were the pages of "THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON" by Susan Jacoby!!

I have yet to begin reading either book (I ordered another "The Black Swan" which did arrive in proper condition) but imagine the linkage between the randomness proposition of "The Black Swan" and society's devaluation of knowledge and rationalization precept of "The Age of American Unreason" will be intriguing. Do we seek to rationalize otherwise random events because we no longer value knowledge in our society, or does our arrogance preclude us from prioritizing the accumulation of knowledge, thus leading to poor rationalization of events we experience? Hopefully I will get through both books soon to find out.

Nevertheless, the order was most fulfilling to me because now I have the definitive proof that you can't judge a book by its cover :)

Unlike other reviewers, I couldn't give a hoot if Jacoby is on the left or on the right of the political spectrum. Her book, in spite of the references to politics, transcends it and speaks to something much deeper in our culture. I love Jacoby's expressions "junk thought" and "the culture of distraction" because these expressions hit many nails on their heads. As an English professor, I can testify from my experience (although I don't have the exact data) that many students (except perhaps for English majors) don't read and no longer care to read. If they are asked to read in class, they feel as if they are asked to walk on hot coals: they can't figure out words that are more than a syllable long, they have difficulty managing complex or compound sentences, and they read mostly without intonation and emphasis. A book, in the English language, even a relatively easy one is Chinese to them. And that's where Jacoby's discussion on the culture of distraction is most relevant. Why can't college students read? Because they are constantly distracted by toys and blazing lights: video games, instant messaging, iPods, cell phones, iPhones, blogs, myspace, and of course tv. This is why, as Jacoby eloquently explains, "...the cognitive reward for the master of the game amounts to little more than an improved ability to navigate other, more complex video games." By contrast, after reading Anna Karenina, "the reader is left with an endless series of questions about the nature of betrayal, the sexual double standard, the compromises of marriage..."(252) etc., questions that help us understand ourselves and other human beings. So instead of engaging with others, the new young "distracted" generation is engaging with various screens, in isolation and ignorance of human feelings. What we are losing is what Einstein described as the most important emotion, "the emotion of the mysterious," which, he says, is at the cradle of all great art and science. Walk down the halls of any college or university nowadays (except for Ivy League schools) and look through the windows at students' expressios during class. Do you see interest? Do you see deep thought? Do you see wonder? Not generally so. Sometimes, yes. But in most students you see boredom and the expression that often transmits the message, "how do I get out of here fast enough with a good enough grade?" And if this is not a crisis, I don't know what is. We may be advancing toward the time when even college graduates won't be able to read a simple document, never mind a book.
Who is to blame? Many. But the important thing is how to solve this problem. Technology is here to stay, of course, but how can we persuade the young that it must be balanced with discipline, hard work, wonder, and most importantly, learning? And how do we persuade them that learning is hard but as important as the oxygen we breathe? Perhaps Jacoby is right. We need a crusade. And I will be the first to join her if she starts one.
S. Spilka

Susan Jacoby in FREETHINKERS demonstrated that all the great advances in human thought have come about from people not bound to any religious views. Most were atheists or agnostics. In THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, she asks a simple question, "Why Now?" That is, why did America unilaterally reverse the course of history with such things as Creationism and Intelligent Design to offset and counter the science of Evolution. Why did we revert to "faith" while the rest of the world for 300 years has relied on REASON. Presidential candidates have to "prove" they are churchgoers and believers. Look what we've got as President right now, a man whose most influential "philosopher" is Jesus Christ, probably the only name he could think of. Now surely Jesus believes in war, waterboarding, torture, famine, Katrina's destruction, poverty, all of which this believer's not only allowed and but caused. Jacoby is alert to such irrational hypocrisy and exposes it for what it is. Her two books mentioned here should be read by any President before America falls face first into oblivion and disgrace.

Brilliant and how history repeats itself. Now democratic candidates sling mud at each other: Clinton says Obama is "Elite." She means the intellectual elite (meant as perjorative). Great book and worth the read.

You are an intelligent being. I know I may be speaking to anyone, yet I make that claim without hesitation. You are unconditionally capable. You may be male or female... conservative or liberal... religious or secularist... young or old. Regardless, I am quite certain of your thinking abilities. You don't need to change who you are. Anyone can free a precious mind to grow in positive ways.

Susan Jacoby also thinks that there is a brilliant person inside you, and waiting to be set free. So why not? Why not choose to seek the better life of a person who actually knows instead of passively walking through life hoping for an answer in the next television commercial?

Understanding the works of classical music and literature of high-brow culture does not make up the entire treasure. Nor does it require reading Time magazine and growing gladiolas to understand middle-brow culture. These are bits. Pursue your valuable passions. Value your best thoughts and share them. Listen to the best thoughts of your friends.

An elitists attitude may be a problem for your friends if you do not reflect back their intelligent moments as well as your own. Perhaps it takes more than just realizing your personal need. Perhaps wisdom can be shared among people... any two people.

Likewise elitists charges make it impossible share and find intelligence. Stupidity abounds in times and places where wisdom and reason shall be hidden in shame. One cannot attempt to fix a situation hidden from reality. Perhaps we can stop dumbing down for others. Perhaps we can encourage others... and not love others only when they dumb down. Wisdom and reason must be shared in order for it to be partaken.

Ultimately, God loves wisdom. He loves it when you choose wisdom. God loves reason, rationalism, logic, science and those kind of things. You won't find God by living in stupid obedience. You won't find God by hiding from truth. Free yourself from those negative influences. Choose to intellectualism. I know you can.

Ms Jacoby clears up many of my suspicions on why the southern population is such a barrier to advances this country should have made in the last 100+ years. Again it's the religious thing. This country could be magnificent instead of a declining second rater, due to the biblical literalists.

I wasn't aware of how drastically religions have mentally hobbled this country. I used to think most of our citizens had some smarts. No longer.

Last week's Bob Edwards Weekend and this week's To the Best of Our Knowledge have aired interviews with Ms. Jacoby. In both cases, she gives the following example of how illiterate our young people are:

She quotes a National Geographic survey that says that less than 25% of young people (including those in college) could correctly identify the locations of Iraq, Iran and Israel on a map in which all the countries are labeled. She infers from this that they don't even know where in the world to look for these countries. While I agree that our education system can be improved and that our young people (and older people) could learn some more, I think this example actually better illustrates that we are asking our young people the wrong question. There are at least 2 things wrong with this question.

First, to understand the conflict, do you have to know where it takes place? No. I agree that knowing that Iran and Iraq share a common border and that the distance from Baghdad to Jerusalem is shorter than Detroit to New York City helps understand part of the conflict. But much, much more important than where the countries are on a map is a historical perspective of why these different countries' governments have not gotten along over the years and I suspect that our young people of a better grasp of that than most US politicians.

Second, I'm not sure that flat map reading skills are important skills for the next few decades, just as knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin, in the decades from 1900 to 1930, went from a key component of education to an optional component. I'll bet that almost all of those students could have used Google Earth and/or MapQuest to not only locate each of those countries, but also used other Internet resources to actually find out key information about each country. Indeed, I bet they could even "meet" citizens of each of those countries and begin a small dialogue on the problems.

Too many people bemoan the lack of facts that people answer correctly on exams. But real life and real conversation can quickly fill in these facts; it is how to find information and critically use it that is far more important. And we have to get off our high horse that old technology and old ways of providing information (2D non-interactive maps) are necessary skills in a digital age.

I think this youtube video, Gullible is not in the Dictionary, by AngryLittleGirl is far more valuable than the book is likely to be:
[...]

...

So a large part of the book is a highly valuable, readable, and thoroughly fascinating intellectual (and anti-intellectual) history lesson. The 19th century history lesson proceeds into the 20th. In the 1960s, Jacoby's focus turns from the Bible Belt to the emerging dominance of video media over the consciousnesses of so many--the "culture of distraction." In our time, we have the "benefits" of both: antireason fundamentalism and antireason media; it's a difficult combination to overcome. And she admits it may be too late to rescue the conceptual mind from oblivion: "It is possible nothing will help. The nation's memory and attention span may have already sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America's best minds."

...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

This is the best book of its kind since "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by the late Neil Postman. It levels a strong critique on infotainment and the culture of distraction and offers a stern warning about the threat to democratic values as we drift from carefully edited print as a source of knowledge. Citing Aldous Huxley's prophetic vision, Postman pointed out that there's no need to ban or burn books in a culture where no one wants to read. Jacoby shares that concern and documents the decline from the '50s & '60s when the Book of the Month Club held sway and young people still passionately read and exchanged books with their peers.

Other reviewers have covered the well-researched and well-documented areas of the book. Jacoby understandably and justifiably touched some nerves.

I read about a third of the book and then jumped to the last two chapters.

The first part of the book, I found myself nodding a lot especially around the decline of public schools, teacher capability, and how media quite often unintentionally and sometimes intentionally does not portray events accurately due to inherent limitations.

She raises concerns about how all electronic media is impacting our children's' reasoning and understanding of culture. Mostly unsubstantiated, but truthfully, I share her concern.

Further, her commentary about the need to feed the news beast (my words) with 24/7 news content is doing us all a disservice is a conclusion I have reached myself.

It all adds up to at least a percentage of the population whose long term understanding of culture, history, and critical thinking are underdeveloped.

I then skipped to the back of the book because it was overdue from my local library. Susan's hatred and vitriol of George Bush, religious conservatives, conservatives (those that favor less government interference) became clear and caused me to lose trust because I started to doubt she was any better than the groups she disagreed with.

Is it unreason the author is concerned about or people who haven't bought into the tenets of secular orthodoxy? That have reached the same conclusions?

Like other reviews some of her suppositions about the impact of media on children ring true to me BUT there was little supporting data.

Some other interesting books about the current state of American and European culture (which the author is in love with): While Europe Slept by Bruce Bauer and The Reason for God (belief in an Age of Skepticisim) by Timothy Keller. Both are additive to the discussion about society today and understanding U.S. culture.

While Europe Slept started out being about how radical and conservative Muslims are succeeding in taking advantage of generous immigration, welfare, and "multiculturalism" to immigrate in large numbers. The book ends up being as much about the contrast between U.S. and European culture. Bauer - a gay male in a committed relationship - moved to Europe to live in a more open, supportive society. He moved back to the U.S. after 3-5 years...I leave you to read the book and reflect upon he and his partner's reasons. It is an eye-opening read both about what is happening in Europe and the European culture Jacoby so loves. Read it Susan!

The other book, The Reason for God, is written by the pastor Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. He agrees with Jacoby that the conversation in America has become to polarized and shrill. He encourages skeptics and Christians alike to examine their own beliefs first. "Only then is it safe and fair to disagree ...that is [what] achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing."

Me? An economic conservative (I'll take care of myself thank you) and all over the place on individual social issues.) I find myself not fitting into either of the current political parties. Does anyone else feel this way?

As with her previous book, Freethinkers, Ms. Jacoby writes clearly and states her casely firmly. And she does this while walking us through history and current events to make her case. A most informative reporting of the 'dumbing down' of the country and the ever, to me, worrisome slide towards theocracy in this country.

In yet another American Decline work by a liberal "intellectual", Susan Jacoby wastes a lot of space on points that could of been distilled down to fewer than 100 pages. She appears cult-like in her numerous references to Richard Hofstadter - in that she "belongs" to this group of intellectuals who continually bash modern American culture.

To be fair, Jacoby reminds us all that the basic knowledge of adult Americans is at a sub-third grade le