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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
Sales Rank: 2080
Studio: Pantheon
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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:  -
What is intelligence?
This is a question that stumped Richard Hofstadter in his 1963 Pulitzer Prize winning book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. And I think it stumps Jacoby as well.
There are, most likely, many different kinds of intelligence. And even though Hofstadter never really arrives at a convincing definition in his book nor Jacoby in hers, they know that a higher value has been placed on earning than on learning in American life.
Education ... Read More
Rating:  -
With apologies to other reviewers, a 5-star or 4-star review of Jacoby's `Unreason' would require a winking unreason, although she has some very strong moments (chapters 9, 10, and 11 contain some rather interesting essays with which I generally agree). Apart from the stark inconsistencies, departures from reason, certain Hollywood-driven fictionalizations of historical events, sporadic bursts of emotionalism, and us-versus-them dogmatism (I'll touch on some of these below), I was most immediately ... Read More
Rating: -
Title The Age of American Unreason
Author: Susan Jacoby
Rating ****1/2
Tags intellectuals, anti-intellectualism, education, critical thinking
I had watched Susan Jacoby on a couple of shows promoting this book and have been anxious to read it since, though it wasn't what I was expecting - it was something better. I had expected to be a collection of stories about the decline of knowledge in the country and a plea for change, and it is. By saying that it is something ... Read More
Rating: -
The book is provocative and well-written. However, its premise is thin on two counts.
First, no group of any size is "reasoned." Societies and nations, as well as churches, corporations, and armies, among others, run on emotional fuel, devoted to one cause or another. That these institutions establish laws, usually for the good, does not mean that the constituents, individually or in groups, use sound, logical thinking, especially in social areas such as mating, child-rearing, vocational ... Read More
Rating:  -
Jacoby explains our cultural decline as thinking citizens. She is a left winger and spends a lot of time critiquing right wingers, although she criticizes the politically correct national history standards of 1994 and our unwillingness to have national teaching standards that all schools would have to fulfill.
Americans are particularly weak at understanding science and the scientific method, which is why evolution is questioned so much, she claims. The scientific method involves attempting ... Read More
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