Passionate observers across the political/intellectual spectrum confront the downward spiral of American life, art, and thought. With vigor, wit, learning, common sense, and urgency, twenty-three essayists--including John Simon, Cynthia Ozick, Phillip Lopate, George F. Kennan, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Epstein, and Brad Leithauser--examine aspects of our pan-cultural "dumbing down" and offer both diagnoses of and possible cures for this wasting disease.