Susan Jacoby
Author of The Age of American Unreason
About the Author
Susan Jacoby began her writing career as a reporter for The Washington Post. Her first book, Moscow Conversations, was based on the articles she contributed to the Post from Moscow between 1969 and 1971. Her other books include Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, The Possible She, Half-Jew: A show more Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, The Age of American Unreason, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, and Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Susan Jacoby
Associated Works
The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American (2019) — Foreword, some editions — 305 copies, 6 reviews
America's Working Women: A Documentary History 1600 to the Present (1976) — Contributor, some editions — 156 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1946
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Michigan State University
- Occupations
- journalist
- Organizations
- The Washington Post
Center for Inquiry - Agent
- Anne Borchardt
Georges Borchardt - Short biography
- She writes The Spirited Atheist blog for On Faith, a website sponsored by The Washington Post.Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age is Susan Jacoby's tenth nonfiction book. Her most recent books include the New York Times bestseller, The Age of American Unreason (2008) and Alger Hiss and The Battle for History (2009). An independent scholar whose work now focuses on American intellectual history, the author began her writing career as a reporter for The Washington Post.
Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004), was hailed in The New York Times as an "ardent and insightful work" that "seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity." Named a notable nonfiction book of 2004 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, Freethinkers was cited in England as one of the outstanding international books of the year by the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. Freethinkers was featured in an interview on NOW with Bill Moyers.
http://www.susanjacoby.com/about.html...
The author’s previous books, include Moscow Conversations (1972), based on her experiences in Moscow from 1969 to 1971. Among her other books are Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (Harper & Row), a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1984, and Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past (Scribner, 2000).
Jacoby has been a contributor for more than 25 years, on topics including law, religion, medicine, aging, women's rights, political dissent in the Soviet Union, and Russian literature, to a wide range of periodicals and newspapers. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, Harper's, The Nation, Vogue, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the AARP Magazine, among other publications. They have been reprinted in numerous anthologies of columns and magazine articles.
She is also the author of the weekly column, "The Spirited Atheist," at the On Faith website published by The Washington Post.
Susan Jacoby has been the recipient of many grants and awards, from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2001-2002, she was named a fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Susan Jacoby lives in New York City. - Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
Okay, to be fully honest, I picked up this book not for its subject but for its author. I have been somewhat familiar with the Alger Hiss controversy, but have never been able to work up that much interest. It seemed likely he was guilty, and still seemed likely that McCarthyism was a violation of any sane democratic system. Still, I have loved the other books the author wrote, so I picked this one up, and discovered that, while I was still not that much more interested in Hiss, the story of show more the roiling, frothing division between his defenders and his detractors is indeed a very interesting story, and has quite a bit to say about our current political situation and how we got where we are today. In the hands of a skillful writer, the various strands of the case twine together nicely, though the book is a bit brief (which is apparently unusual in books about Hiss). A decent tracking of latter 20th century and early 21st century political history in America, this book has a lot to offer, but will probably manage to offend true believers on both sides (that is not meant as a criticism, by the way. Sometimes true believers need to be offended). show less
This book changed the way we were all thinking about aging. A walk through the American history of aging, perspectives, and marketing to the end. Jacoby cuts through the romantic notions of aging, that it will eventually be cured, that we can be ourselves up to the very old end of a healthy dynamic life. Her writing style of mixing personal anecdotes with statistics, facts and straight-shooting reporting makes this a very readable tome on a very sobering topic; one we try to avoid.
How did America get to this point, a point of hubristic anti-intellectualism, of a mocking dismissal of science, a point at which Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s main advisor, could say — in all seriousness — to author Ron Suskind, as he did in 2004,
Author Susan Jacoby provides the answer of how the death of middlebrow culture and the rise of television, politically motivated think tanks, the new fundamentalism, pseudoscientists of the Left and Right, and the Internet created the perfect storm that brought about The Age of American Unreason. This excellent, fact-laced — imagine that! — and fair appraisal of the American intellectual condition in history, particularly since the turn of the 20th century, should be required reading for anyone appalled by what Jacoby calls “junk thought” and the abandonment of critical thinking and intellectual rigor. show less
that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ...show more
“That's not the way the world really
works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Author Susan Jacoby provides the answer of how the death of middlebrow culture and the rise of television, politically motivated think tanks, the new fundamentalism, pseudoscientists of the Left and Right, and the Internet created the perfect storm that brought about The Age of American Unreason. This excellent, fact-laced — imagine that! — and fair appraisal of the American intellectual condition in history, particularly since the turn of the 20th century, should be required reading for anyone appalled by what Jacoby calls “junk thought” and the abandonment of critical thinking and intellectual rigor. show less
What a fantastic get-a-hold-of-yourselves-people book. Centered and rational, mature and eloquent, Jacoby gives the best honest assessment of aging that I have not seen anywhere else. "Anywhere else" being mass media, who continues to hawk old age as utopia, less free of infirmities than actual reality. Very impressive in this book as well is that any time research or findings are cited, she puts it in proper context by revealing what salient questions were not asked, what missing data show more implies, etc. An excellent read that never becomes treacly despite her mention of sad personal experiences. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 16
- Also by
- 2
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- 3,622
- Popularity
- #6,990
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 98
- ISBNs
- 59
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- Favorited
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