Hide this

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Loading...

The Age of American Unreason (2008)

by Susan Jacoby

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
872419,297 (3.7)32
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

Showing 1-5 of 41 (next | show all)
She makes a lot of excellent points, but that almost doesn't overcome the dryness of the writing. ( )
  heike6 | May 2, 2013 |
A scathing and all too accurate look at the culture of anti-intellectualism that abounds in contemporary America. ( )
  Sullywriter | Apr 3, 2013 |
It's not that I, at any point, disagreed with Jacoby. She was even funny. But her writing seems to have just two gears: smug and shrill. ( )
  la.grisette | Apr 1, 2013 |
It's not that I, at any point, disagreed with Jacoby. She was even funny. But her writing seems to have just two gears: smug and shrill. ( )
  usernameLT | Mar 31, 2013 |
A friend recommended this book, and I both enjoyed it and also got upset by it. Comforting to know that anti-intellectualism is not a new trend, but something that has been going on in this country since the beginning. I just wish there were ideas for how we combat the problem, especially as related to politics and picking politicians we would "like to have a beer with" over people with great minds and ideas. How many people who talk about what the Constitution says or what the Bible says really know those documents? We seem to be a soundbite nation, in which uninformed opinions are ok, especially if based on some kernel of truth. A good read, and I learned some things I definitely missed in my hears of history classes. ( )
  Randall.Hansen | Oct 28, 2012 |
Showing 1-5 of 41 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Series (with order)
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
The word is everywhere, a plague spread by the President of the United States, television anchors, radio talk show hosts, preachers in megachurches, self-help gurus, and anyone else attempting to demonstrate his or her identification with ordinary, presumably wholesome American values.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Publisher series

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

Book description
Haiku summary

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375423745, Hardcover)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:35:16 -0500)

An indictment of modern American culture examines the current disdain for logic and evidence fostered by the mass media, religious fundamentalism, poor public education, a lack of fair-minded intellectuals, and a lazy, credulous public.

» see all 2 descriptions

Quick Links

Swap Ebooks Audio
2 avail.
260 wanted
2 pay7 pay

Popular covers

Rating

Average: (3.7)
0.5 1
1 5
1.5
2 8
2.5 5
3 35
3.5 25
4 63
4.5 7
5 32

Audible.com

Two editions of this book were published by Audible.com.

See editions

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

Help/FAQs | About | Privacy/Terms | Blog | Contact | LibraryThing.com | APIs | WikiThing | Common Knowledge | Legacy Libraries | 81,930,840 books!