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List Price: $26.00Amazon.com's Price: $17.16 You Save: $8.84 (34%)Prices subject to change.
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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: 18236
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - An Embarrassing Diatribe
During her discussion of the history of religion in America, Ms. Jocoby writes,
"It seems more likely that poorly educated settlers on the frontier were drawn to religious creeds and preachers who provided emotional comfort without making the intellectual demands of older, more intellectually rigorous Protestant denominations--whether liberal Quakerism and Unitarianism or conservative Episcopalianism and Congregationalism."
What evidence does she present that those living ... Read More
Rating:  - Should be required reading.
I saw Susan Jacoby on PBS and knew I had to read this book. The first thing about this book that turned me off but didn't turn me away is the unnecessary use of fancy words. Before you think about reading this book, make sure you have a gargantuan vocabulary, and / or a dictionary and thesaurus (I had my dictionary in hand). I'll assume this use of fancy words is to fit the theme of intellect. It's funny that Susan uses this quote from Dwight Eisenhower, "An intellectual is a man who takes more words ... Read More
Rating:  - Appendix to Hofstadter
I don't think there's any doubt that Jacoby's general thesis--that American culture is steadily moving away from Enlightenment ideals of rational judgment and embracing with a Toquevillian vengeance religious fundamentalism, "junk science," infotainment, anti-"elitist" politicians, and shoddy public educational standards--is more true than not. To her great credit, she goes to great pains, especially in the final five chapters, to document cultural and intellectual decline. (Besides, any number of books ... Read More
Rating: - Contemplating Hofstadter and Jacoby
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 as an end ... Read More
Rating:  - The thesis is correct, of course, but skip the first 8 chapters.
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 struck by ... Read More
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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: 18236
Studio: Pantheon