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The Age of American Unreason

By Susan Jacoby

(3)

| Hardcover | 9780375423741

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Book 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 fContinue

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.

Critics

  • The Age of American Unreason By Susan Jacoby

    Susan Jacoby is deeply concerned about the dumbing-down of our country and does a splendid job of explicating that worry in The Age of American Unreason, ably read by Cassandra Campbell. Witty, spirited Jacoby analyzes the state of our cultural state ... (read full critics)

    bookpage published on Wed, 15 Sep 2010

  • The Age of American Unreason

    The decline of American civilization has been a favorite subject for writers throughout the last half century. Their screeds usually follow one of two models: the conservative (of which Allan Bloom?s The Closing of the American Mind is the most notab ... (read full critics)

    barnesandnoble published on Wed, 1 Sep 2010

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Book Details

  • Rating:
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  • English Books
  • Hardcover 384 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0375423745
  • ISBN-13: 9780375423741
  • Publisher: Pantheon
  • Pub date: Feb 12, 2008
  • Dimensions: 1548 mm x 1032 mm x 258 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Audio CD and Others
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ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780375423741 Hardcover $26.00 $22.93 bn.com
-- $11.99 ebooks.com
$26.00 $20.82 The Book Depository
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