The Age of American Unreason

by Susan Jacoby

A cultural history of the last forty years, The Age of American Unreason focuses on the convergence of social forces—usually treated as separate entities—that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism. These include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the triumph of video over print culture. Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of “junk thought” that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Philosophy, Sociology, Religion, Science

384 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2008

About the author

Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar and best-selling author. The most recent of her seven previous books is The Age of American Unreason. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This thoughtful exploration of anti-intellectualism in America was originally published in March of 2008, six months before John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. In it, Jacoby alerted us to an America already sick with "a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.” Now, a little more than ten years later, Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and--if the economy holds--may be elected for his second term. Jacoby's book was relevant then, and it is relevant now.

The first section of the book deals primarily with the nineteenth century and most specifically how the social Darwinists (with their early form of "junk thought") alienated the American public from intellectuals and the habit of critical thinking. (This section owes a debt to Richard Hofstadter, but there is much here that is original too.)

The later sections concentrate on the effect of our failing school systems, the way TV's 7 second soundbites reduce all argument to the simplest elements, the all-pervasiveness of the internet and other media in promoting a "culture of distraction" and discouraging "reading and conversation", and the effect of "junk thought," characterized by "anti-rationalism and a contempt for countervailing facts and expert opinion". Jacoby emphasizes that junk thought predominates on both sides of the political spectrum, fueled by the right's epistemological isolation and fostered by the left's preference for tolerance and advocacy over discernment.

Jacoby calls herself a "cultural conservationist" and readers both liberal and conservative should heed her warnings, for the very possibility of productive future dialogue depends upon the preservation of habits and attitudes that are no longer valued by society, habits that--week by week, year by year--are gradually wasting away.

[Skylar Burris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Because I am a product of the Age of American Unreason, I’m going to begin reviewing this book before I’ve finished reading it. Besides, I don’t have time to read the entire book. I have to watch all the re-runs I’ve DVRed of America’s Biggest Loser and Bachelor, and then I need to fantasize about the end times when everyone who disagrees with me gets theirs, and I’ve also got to spend a few minutes irrationally doubting whether macroevolutionary theory is a fully sufficient explanation for the origins of Handel’s Messiah.

At first, I thought I might like this book. Jacoby promised to lament the collapse of reason, critical thinking, and nuanced debate in modern American culture among both liberals and conservatives, and I thought I probably had a decent enough dose of intellectual snobbery to enjoy it. I knew she was going to lambaste Christian fundamentalists, but, being a traditionalist Christian with my own set of concerns about fundamentalism, I thought I could weather that assault pretty well.

As it turns out, she only paid lip service to the “both” liberals and conservatives part; she primarily talks about the unreason of the right. And her religious targets were considerably broader than fundamentalists; they seemed to encompass anyone who sincerely believes anything that cannot be empirically verified. For example, she can only shake her head to discover that in America, unlike in other more enlightened parts of the globe, four out of five people actually believe in miracles. If only the central government had more power and we didn't allow localities to govern themselves, we could enforce more conformity of thought in this country! Or so Jacoby opines in her quest to restore reason to America.

I agree with Jacoby that there seems to be a real dearth of critical thinking these days. I agree that modern technology is conditioning us, at least to some extent, to have shorter attention spans when it comes to processing and analyzing arguments. I agree that it is, all other things being equal (which they never are), preferable to have a president who is capable of stringing together a complete, grammatically correct sentence using formal rhetorical devices than one who is not. With all this I agree. Here’s where I disagree:

(1) Jacoby generalizes in her dismissal of modern media. She fails to acknowledge that movies and television shows, much like the novel, are art forms capable of containing either trash or greatness, and that this media can, like the novel, be processed, analyzed, considered, and discussed with intellectual rigor or consumed as mere entertainment. When the novel first broke on the scene, it was considered by many to be the domain of the intellectually slovenly as well, but it eventually earned the nod of intellectuals as an art form worthy of as much respect as the poem or the play. She dismisses the idea of “choice” in media entertainment as an illusion, but this to me seems…unreasonable. What possessor of Direct-TV or cable can really believe he has no real choice in what he consumes? From trash reality television, to historical documentary, to liberal-leaning news or conservative-leaning news, to period pieces based on classical English literature, to educational children’s programming, to…I won’t go on, but choice, and real choice – real differences – abound.

(2) Jacoby sees conservatives as having pulled the wool over the eyes of the public by convincing them that there exist “liberal intellectual elites” who are out of touch with reality, when conservative intellectual elites exits too, and when we shouldn’t be deriding intellectualism the first place. What she doesn’t adequately address is the reason why this has been possible for conservatives to pull off, despite their own prominent think tanks, and that is because, in the U.S., liberals absolutely dominate the academy. Conservatives don’t make up the bulk (or, in some departments, even a sizeable minority) of professors in elite universities. (Statistics show that in most universities, between 80-97% of liberal arts professors are registered Democrats, which is completely unrepresentative of the population at large.) And some of the things coming out of the mouths of professors at elite universities do, indeed, seem downright out-of-touch to the average American. Therefore this image of the reality-divorced, liberal intellectual surrounded in his ivory tower by other liberal intellectuals is not all that difficult to promulgate. If the conservatives controlled the academy (as they have in other eras), one would have considerably more difficulty associating the “out-of-touch elite intellectual” picture with liberals and excusing conservatives from the caricature.

(3) Despite her support of reason, she has a tendency to make sweeping and unsubstantiated generalizations. So, for example, if you’re a Christian who thinks Revelation will "come true," then you must perforce believe in “the massacre of everyone who has not accepted Jesus as the Messiah.” Never mind that nothing like the phrase “accepting Jesus as the Messiah” occurs in Revelation, and never mind that those in Revelation against whom the saints are crying out are those in the act of violently persecuting Christians. As another example of generalization, take this: “Part of” Don Imus’s radio audience, she tells us, “was undoubtedly composed of hard-core racists and misogynists.” Undoubtedly? Hard-core? Upon what rational foundation is she basing this blanket statement? Did she perform a demographic survey of his audience? I rather doubt not. I’m guessing the only “reason” she needed to muster for that statement is that Imus is considered to be a “conservative talk show host,” and, as, everyone JUST KNOWS, conservatives are racists and misogynists. At least, it’s difficult for me to imagine her having said, “Part of Jeanie Garafalo’s audience is undoubtedly composed of hard-core Anti-Semites,” even though she would have as much rational basis for making such a statement. These are but two examples in the opneing pages, but, in general, she does not seem to feel most of her statements require substantiation, which is an odd position for someone who is lamenting the collapse of reason to take. She's apparently of the school of debate that believes one should not dignify any counter-argument with a response. I'm right, and it's so OBVIOUS I'm right, that I can't be bothered responding to your objections. There's also no need to name my sources because, after all, I'm right.

(4) Unlike Jacoby, I don’t think conservatives are wrong to point out that intellectualism is potentially problematic and that intellectuals (whether conservative or liberal) can, in fact, be dangerously divorced from reality. While I consider myself to have an intellectual bent, I am well aware of how easy it is for intellectually minded people to become so consumed by ideas that they fail to consider the actual, real-life consequences of those ideas. Supporting and pursuing the idea becomes, for many intellectuals, worth any price that must be paid. It was not the masses hungering for vengeance that led to a mismanaged war in Iraq, but the neo-conservative think tanks churning out ideas about American hegemony and theories of domino democratization. It was not the generals who did not foresee the complications, but the intellectuals. Nazism was bred in the universities and mounted up on the wings of intellectual philosophies such as Nietzscheism. Communism was a product of the intellectual class. The terrorists of violent jihadism largely hail from the educated classes in their countries. The “irrational masses” give birth to the occasional riot and bad reality television show, but it is largely the educated, intellectual classes who give birth to the ideologies whose real-life consequences are widespread, long-term, large-scale suffering, ideologies eventually filtered down to the masses through an academy that lacks intellectual diversity. Does all this mean I believe we shouldn’t think? That we shouldn’t create and defend ideas? No, but it means I believe it is not unwise to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism about intellectuals and that it is not necessarily a terrible thing that Americans, unlike the other more enlightened peoples of the globe, have a habit of not accepting everything the educated authorities tell them.

Jacoby speaks of how people are inclined only to read what reinforces their view. She’s right about this, and I certainly fall into that trap too often myself. So, if you want to take up Jacoby’s call not to be a part of the Age of American Unreason, and therefore not just read what reinforces her view, you’ll want a counterbalance to this book. I recommend that anyone who reads this also read Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals.

Intellectuals is a book that explores the lives of ten famous intellectuals. But it also talks about the way intellectuals divorce themselves from reality with their ideas, not really caring how those ideas might actually affect the average, real-life person. It is a portrait, ten portraits really, of the out-of-touch intellectual. Jacoby will tell you that Americans are a pack of ignoramuses for approaching intellectuals and intellectualism with such extreme wariness. Paul Johnson, reaching into history, will give you some idea of why that may not be such a bad idea after all.

One more point. The problem with all of these books that pine for the loss of something is that the something, very often, never really existed. Were people really more reasonable in the past, or was it simply that fewer common people were allowed to participate in things and easily voice their opinions? For instance, she laments the dumbing down of political language, but the surest way to prevent that is to get rid of the idea that every Tom, Dick and Harry over the age of 18 should vote and once again make property ownership a condition for voting. Is that what she wants to see done? And when we stop educating primarily the elite and start educating absolutely everyone, including those who can barely speak the dominate language of the land, isn't it inevitable that the average student will perform at a lower level? When the percentage of the population that can read a book jumps from 15% of the population to 90% of the population, isn't inevitable that there will be a lot more lower quality literature in production? In other words, aren't there other explanations for why things are as they are than that more people, on average, are more irrational than in previous generations? Really, aren't the elites, by definition, a minority in any age? But that, I suppose, is not Jacoby's problem. Her problem is that today, the peons have more influence than ever before. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Democracy or meritocracy. One must choose. Most people are happy to choose the meritocracy until they discover that they are not considered to be a part of the elite.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was indeed, there was an America that proudly stood as the intellectual beacon of the world, the light on the hill which shone and illuminated even down into those darkest of places the light of reason and hope. Because reason and hope are sisters and hand-in-hand they can transform the world.

Then one day one of these sisters got lost in the woods, lost in the dark and impenetrable woods of ignorance and stupidity and aggressive ignorance. And hope called for her sister, but called in vain.

Perhaps I’m pitching this review at too low a level for my audience? Hard to say after reading this one. Christ, how depressing this book is. It is full of those sorts of statistics that it is best not to remember, you know, one in five biology teachers in the US believe people and dinosaurs co-habited the earth. Surely not! In my lighter moods I just assume all of these statistics are made up with the sole intent to frighten me. And so I would like to make up a statistic now that might even be true – 84% of Americans believe Charles Darwin was a Communist. Now, I’ve told you I’ve just made that up, but God, if it isn’t true, it really ought to be.

There were parts of this book that I didn’t agree with. Frankly, I’m very fond of email, it is one of my chief pleasures in the world, and so I won’t hear of anyone criticising it. Yes, it is different to letters, but that doesn’t make it worse than letters. A well composed email and a well composed letter have two words in common, and much else, and depend on the quantity and quality of thought that went into them. Bill Gates has enough to answer for, email is not one of those things.

As to the rest of the book, oh dear God. It makes me too depressed. Her fundamental premise is that there was a time in American history when there were effectively three cultures, high brow, low brow and middle brow. The middle brow was associated with the middle class, that great amorphous mass of humanity, and they would dutifully read their book of the month and buy reproductions of famous paintings and this was what sustained American intellectual life. But come the era of television with its inevitable obsession with the image and sound bite over analysis, the middle has been squeezed to the point where it now hardly exists.

I have weaned myself off most television, about the only things I watch now are Chaser’s War on Everything and Quite Interesting with my mate Stephen Fry. Chaser are handy to mention here as they do Vox Pops on the streets of America like these: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ3RrqB...

And this is one of the things Jacoby gets most upset about – rather than be humiliated by this, she claims most Americans are actually proud. In this, the last few chapters of her book are the most disturbing. A long time ago I watched a television show called Judge Judy, and then I saw she wrote a book called something like, Beauty fades, dumb is forever, and this from a woman who makes a living from the dumbest medium in history. I guess that is one of my main problems with this stuff, the wanton lack of shame these idiots possess.

A large part of this book talks about biology and god – two of my favourite topics. Naturally, these are related in the USA, although, the USA is about the only place in the world where these subjects are related. There is a price to pay for deciding to be thick when it comes to theories of biology. Lysenko proved that in the Soviet Union when he plunged Soviet science into a dark age for decades with his version of ideologically palatable genetics. Having recently read books like The Botany of Desire the US probably can’t afford to be too smug about these Soviet failings.

This is not a great book, but it is a good book and a necessary book. It offers little hope and even less reason to believe things will not get worse (and they can get much, much worse) – but perhaps pointing out repeatedly that the vast majority of Americans have no idea about such basic notions about how they are governed as the separation of powers or how many Senators there are or that the language is Spanish (Mr Bush) not Mexican (a language he even speaks, for Christ sake) someone, just maybe, will be shamed into finding out that your founding fathers actually made a conscious effort not to include references to God in any of your core documents for a very good reason.

Now, before I get flamed – here in Australia we also use, as a key idea of our mode of government, the separation of powers. We had a politician here when I was growing up who effectively gave himself a knighthood, back in the days when knighthoods were still available to Australians. He decided to give himself one for his contributions to the Westminster system of Government – so a journalist asked him to explain the separation of powers. It was one of the truly great moments in the history of television, if not in the history of our young nation. That there are three powers, the administrative, the legislative and the legal, in government and that these are held separate as a bulwark against corruption and the abuse of power is such a central feature of our parliamentary system that even a Premier (even one from Queensland) should be able to give a definition off the cuff - that he proved completely incapable of answering at all made remarkable television.

It is a fact that one could all too easily replicate the Chaser videos above on the streets of Melbourne. We need to be afraid of that fact. We can’t be content with a world increasingly populated and run by people who are pig ignorant.

p.s.

Sorry, I forgot to mention - one of the really interesting things about this book, and one of the main reasons I would recommend it, is what it says about slavery. Part of her contention is that the South is still paying the price for slavery. The idea, and I will need to think about this some more, is that any system that is not based on merit tends to reinforce itself by appeals to systems of ideas other than 'reason' - as reason would tend to reject such foolishness as racism, white superiority, sexism, genderism, ageism and other such nonsense for what it is. Marx says somewhere that the white man will never be free until he frees his black cousin, and of course Marx was wrong. It is actually much worse than this. It is not just freedom that is denied, but even the rationalism that would enable us to conceive a better life that is denied all of us.

Reason, intelligence, equality - they actually are that important.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Society is going to Hell in a handbasket. That seems to be the general consensus regardless of one's political leaning.

In Susan Jacoby's immensely fascinating book "The Age of American Unreason", Jacoby explains the history of how and why we arrived at this sad state of affairs. It is a fascinating history that starts with a group of extraordinary gentlemen who, in 1776, were able to put aside their differences and collaborate on the creation of an extraordinary document, one that still continues to amaze, confuse, anger, and console us in equal measures.

It is a history that demonstrates the steady rise of an anti-intellectual movement that has become so pervasive that even our previous president joked about only ever having read two books in his lifetime and admitted to not reading newspapers or news magazines for fear that they would give him "opinions".

It is a history in which religious fundamentalists have become so powerful that they are shaping public policy to ensure that our children are being inculcated with ridiculous pseudo-scientific garbage like Intelligent Design Theory in schools, while legitimate scientific theories such as evolution, the big bang theory, and global climate change are being forced out of the classroom.

It is a history which displays a frightening increase in aliteracy (as opposed to illiteracy, the inability to read). Aliteracy is knowing how to read but refusing to do so, a disturbing trend among our nation's youth (and a good portion of the adult population) due to an ever-expanding source of "infotainment" sources such as TV, the Internet, video games, iPods, iPads, etc., in which reading has apparently become obsolete and irrelevant.

It is also a history in which the great idea of public education has become a horrible failure, thanks to a cultural mentality that de-values education, takes pride in ignorance, and angrily insults and demeans anyone who shows any attempt at intelligent discussion.

Jacoby gives a detailed and well-researched description of the events, movements, theories, and ideologies from the 18th-century to the present that have shaped our American culture.

Her book should be required reading for anyone who has seen, in their lifetime, a divisiveness between political parties, the socio-economic classes, the secular and the religious develop that is so strong and virulent that neither side of any argument is even willing to listen to the other side.

It should be required reading for anyone frightened by not only the lack of intellectual curiosity of our nation's political and religious leaders but the apparent pride these people have in their intellectual shortcomings and their seeming unwillingness to even want to learn.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know I vowed in my previous reviews not to read any more of these particular sorts of books, more liberals explaining the mind of those crazy conservatives, and how unsatisfied I inevitably am with their explanations. Yet surely Susan Jacoby will be different, considering how much I loved her Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Sadly, no. While the book starts out on the right track towards the end it veers wildly off course. Perhaps my two star rating is me taking my frustration with the whole genre out on this poor author.

Jacoby excels at providing the history and context of anti-intellectualism in America and the role fundamentalist religion has played over the years, and this should have been the focus of her book. Instead the second half focuses on the role of television and the internet and this is where the book heads downhill. Surely the fact The Learning Channel produces such highly educational television chronicling the lives of pageant moms and their soon to be exotically dancing daughters is a symptom not the cause of the decline in culture Jacoby sorely laments. And it is somewhat ironic that two of her many concerns, the use of language by politicians and the media to dumb down complex issues and the decline of middlebrow publications are arguments I’ve heard before and more convincingly made from a TV show (ok it was Toni Morrison on Book TV, but that still counts) and from an online article I’m too lazy to goolge now.

Perhaps I’m letting the last few chapters which I found off base, even naïve, overshadow the more numerous early chapters that were somewhat enlightening. Perhaps I would do her justice to skim back through those early chapter and mention the arguments I did find convincing, but instead I’m going to watch a repeat of Futurama (which in its newest incarnation is just god awful, but not awful enough that I’m not going to watch it) while I scour Goodreads for more books with funny and offensive titles.
Ah, touché Ms. Jacoby, touché.

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you agree with everything Jacoby says, you're not paying enough attention. She's out to diagnose all the reasons why Americans are falling behind the rest of the world intellectually. I think she's right about a lot of what she says, but she blames quite a bit on conservatives and on religion that I don't agree can be laid on those particular doorsteps. At the same time, it's fascinating to read her take on the 60's--particularly given that my in-laws were definitely part of the counter-counterculture (i.e.--they're conservative boomers who worked hard to make a lot of money, and still see liberals and intellectuals basically lazy--thus, their constant teasing of my long-haired husband for his "early retirement" to academia).

The main weakness of this book for me is that it's a 350 page rant directed toward liberal intellectuals who already agree with Jacoby. I think what she's saying about our culture is important, especially when she talks about the influence of the media and of celebrity culture on our intellectual life. After reading this book I am more convinced than ever that we as a nation need to have a conversation about intellectualism and education, and how to encourage true learning and critical thought in our children, and I had high hopes this book would serve as a starting place for that conversation. Unfortunately, I don't think it will, precisely because Jacoby, like the conservatives she pillories, isn't talking to anyone who doesn't already agree with her.

I wish the book were written in a way that it were more accessible to those who disagree politically with Jacoby. Her underlying message is definitely one all Americans should hear, not just those who are democrats, and I think it highly unfortunate this is written in such a way anyone of a different political stripe will likely dismiss the good points of her argument because of her politics. I would suggest this to everyone to read, but I will warn those of you who are LDS that she sees the Mormon church as a fundamentalist cult, and says so repeatedly.

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 4 out of 5]

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,

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.” ...

“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.

[Scot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is thoroughly researched, logically organized, eloquently written, and incredibly significant for the real problem it points out: the severe dumbing down of America that has occurred in the past forty years. With wit and wisdom, the author puts this troubling phenomenon in the larger historical context of the history of this country, and traces the strong and virulent forces that coalesced to set us on the path toward the bleak future sardonically portrayed in the 2006 film Idiocracy (that's my allusion, not hers--one gets the sense she would never watch such a lowbrow movie). These forces have led to the rise of anti-rationalism, which is sustained by disinterest in perspectives different from one's own, lack of basic critical thinking and statistical evaluation skills, inability to distinguish between facts and opinions, and a culture of distraction. The political power rise of the fundamentalists, a celebrity culture spread through infotainment, mediocre (at best) public education, and the general abandonment of both reading for pleasure and engaged conversations have thrown fuel on the fire.

I might quibble with a small point here and there (I would suggest we can and should learn useful things by analyzing the impact and meaning of pop culture artifacts, for instance), but I find her argument extremely persuasive: the very way we think and retain or remember knowledge--and what knowledge the masses of society choose never to acquire--is at the crux of most of our other problems. She provides some very scary statistics of just how ignorant most of us are about basic geography, math, history, science, etc. The irony is, those suffering from the problems delineated in this book will never take the time or trouble to read it, and will dismiss it as "egghead intellectualism"--that disregard being one of the American cultural traditions she traces in the book. But such disregard for critical thinking combined with not only lack of general knowledge but often an openly proud disavowal of the need to know such information has had dire consequences for our culture already, and it will likely get worse. This is a book American people who still read books should definitely read--and discuss!

[Justin Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, a left-wing version of Alan Bloom's 'Closing of the American Mind.' Just what we need.
There are good things about this book, specifically, the history of the early and mid-twentieth century. The opening chapters and the closing chapters, however, are mind-boggling. If one takes it upon oneself to defend 'reason', it is best to be rational in the task. Jacoby can't do it. I'm glad she pointed out that the worst instance of irrationality is our general inability to distinguish between causation and correlation. Just because x and y go together doesn't mean one caused the other, and it certainly doesn't mean you can decide which is the cause and which the effect. But instead of taking her own advice, Jacoby argues that stupidity is caused by 'screen media.'
Of course there can be no evidence for this causation, only a correlation. I'm not surprised that people who watch more television do worse on tests of intelligence. I am surprised that one would conclude from this that television causes low intelligence. Had Jacoby thought a little more before launching onto her Jeremiad, she might have considered the following:

* that the Emersonian individualism she preaches is itself a cause for irrationalism. It implies that each person should find their own way. The problem is that nobody can ever 'find their own way.' At best, they can get thrown onto a path, and much later learn to view it dispassionately. But if you assume that everyone can, by virtue of being a 'unit, one character,' a picker of peculiar fruit, you block off this possibility. And you assume that the path you're on was freely chosen, unlike 'the gross, the hundred or the thousand.' Unlike everyone else.

* that this individualism fits nicely with the doctrines of 'responsible journalism,' which mandate that both sides of a story be told even when there is only one side. 'Responsible journalism' has left American blissfully free of truth in reporting. Jacoby and her ilk believe that long form reporting is what we're missing. Not so. What's missing is a belief that journalism involves more than facts; it involves opinions.

* Jacoby argues against all social theory, most of the social sciences, philosophy, theology... in short, anything which isn't based on physical scientific facts. This fits in nicely with the about 'responsible journalism.' The question arises, then, what Jacoby's own work is? It's certainly social science in some guise or another, with a hefty dose of philosophy (Enlightenment humanism, more or less). So the book is self-refuting. More importantly, if all knowledge is scientific fact, then the 'rational' among us have nothing to say to those we think of as 'irrational'. Facts are neither reasonable nor unreasonable. Only their interpretations are reasonable or unreasonable. And unfortunately, Jacoby's interpretation is unreasonable: there is a correlation between screen media use and intellectual ability, not a direct causal relationship.

* Her belief that this is a causal relationship means Jacoby doesn't look a little deeper to find the reason so many people spend all their time watching TV, despite knowing that a game/a concert/a dinner with friends is more fulfilling: most of us are simply too frigging tired to make the effort. And we're too tired because our work-hours have increased, the intellectual requirements of our work have increased, and our holiday time has decreased. Had Jacoby done a bit more reading of the classics, and a bit less time reading I. F. Stone's idiotic conversations about those classics, she would know that 'negotiation' means, more or less, 'not leisure.' And that it was precisely leisure that made all the deep thinking of the classic authors possible - the free time that was more available in the 'fifties and 'sixties, and which has now disappeared.

You can't just tell people to read more if they're too tired to read. Better to spend your time fighting for reasonable labor laws. But I think we know how unlikely that is. It wouldn't sell at all.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you already think civilization is going to hell in a handbasket, this book will not change your mind. Anti-intellectualism in the United States is not a new phenomenon, as the author shows. However, it used to be held in check by economic and social forces, so that prideful dumbassery stayed on the fringes of society. Not anymore. The crazies are front and center and are running the show.

There are multiple explanations for what happened, but in essence the previous culture of deliberative, objective thought gave way to the instant gratification of soundbites, social media, and pre-packaged opinions. Life, after all, is so much easier when you let others do your thinking for you. They will be happy to tell you who to admire and emulate, and who to mock, who to hate, and who deserves to die. And all you have to give them in return is – everything.

The most intriguing part of this book is the discussion of high, middle, and low brow culture. The highbrows always existed, but they were, for the most part, remote from everyday people. Their ideas and opinions might have had a major impact on the artistic and political spheres, but they were not understood, much less discussed, in the average workplace or social gathering. It was there that the middlebrows, consciously or not, were able to influence the people who otherwise might have gone off the rails. They were educated enough, and well read enough, to show the different side of issues, and advocate for tolerance and inclusiveness. The John Bircher types always existed, but they were perceived as loonies and mostly kept their opinions to themselves in order to avoid ostracism.

And then, this bulwark against the craziness started to slip. TV was easier than reading, and social media is easier than TV, since you can cocoon yourself into a self-referential bubble where you never have to hear any opinions except the ones you already agree with. With parents less engaged in the life of the mind, students began entering schools less well prepared and less inclined to do hard work, so schools made classes easier and started showing more concern for the little darlings’ self esteem than their academic success. At the same time the conditions that had maintained middlebrow culture were starting to unravel, and the middle class began to hollow out. Jobs were lost, and those that remained were less secure and saw their wages stagnate. The middle class had formerly been aspirational, and middlebrow culture was seen as part of upward mobility. Now life began to seem like a cruel zero-sum game, where any benefits given to minorities, or the poor, or immigrants were perceived as threats to people who felt their formerly safe middle class lives were eroding and they were spiraling down into the lower classes.

Along came right wing politicians and media, eager to stoke the fires of ignorance and prejudice. Not that they gave a rat’s ass about the people they inflamed, but they did find their votes useful. And now, for many millions of people, all truth is contingent and any appeals to objective reality are seen as cynical ploys. The Bible says to take in the immigrant and feed the poor, but in a zero-sum world that is inconvenient, and it’s easier to throw out the foreigners and let the hungry starve, all with the church’s approval, since that it is of course what Jesus would have done.

I don’t think there is going to be a happy ending here. The forces of entropy have grown too strong, schools are too weak, and, after all, it’s just easier to forget about it all and spend your time on Facebook and Youtube. Ignore that handbasket we are in, and the direction it is headed.

[Steven Walle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very well written book. It was very well thought out and researched. I recommend it to all. It explains how the American culture is going down the tubes.
Enjoy and Be Blessed

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Age of American Unreason is another road-trip audio CD adventure so I couldn't take notes, I got distracted on occasion, and I can't review the text as I write this. Consequently, this review will be brief (perhaps blessedly so) and lacking in much detail but, for what it's worth, here it is:

Jacoby traces three streams of American culture: A low-brow, ignorant-and-proud-of-it tradition that's wary of education and distrustful of the educated; a high-brow tradition of educated elites, who have striven against feelings of inadequacy vis-a-vis their European counterparts; and a middle-brow tradition that values education and rationality but doesn't invest so much effort in acquiring arcane knowledge as, say, a professor of philology. According to Jacoby, examples of this latter group include the Lyceum movement of the 19th century and the post-WW2, newly middle-class families subscribing to The Book of the Month club and buying the Encyclopedia Britannica on the installment plan of the mid-20th. I suppose a group like GoodReads might qualify as a 21st century manifestation of this middle-brow phenomenon: A community of like-minded people discussing literature, politics, movies, current events, etc. but not weighed down by experts or esoteric debates about deconstruction or "contextual discourses" (usually).

Jacoby argues that in the last 30 years or so, the lowest-brow, most ignorant (and ugliest) aspects of the American tradition have been winning the "culture wars" to the detriment of politics, science and education, and civil society.

I think Jacoby makes a good case for the dangers of anti-intellectualism and how modern culture exploits it to dumb down everything - politics, education, popular culture, civil society, personal relationships, etc. I'd like to think that we're just at the nadir of a cycle she tracks throughout American history, and that the generations growing up wholly immersed in an Internet-enabled world will revolt against the unrelenting "stupidifying" (?) of our lives. That, perhaps after the dust settles, we can re-establish a public arena where positions are based on facts not faith and poseurs like Palin and Beck are, once again, relegated to public-access cable stations in rural Montana, viewed by sleepy-eyed dairy farmers who need some background noise over their morning coffees.

I don't know if I can maintain that hope.

In an odd coincidence I just came into possession of a Modern Library Book edition of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment with the original dust jacket (95 cents per copy). The Modern Library series is a perfect example of the middle-brow culture Jacoby celebrates in her book - nicely bound, hardcover books of "outstanding contributions to literature...at a price within everyone's reach" (from the dust jacket).

Just consider some of the authors in the series: Aristotle, Chaucer, Dinesen, Dumas, Forster, Hardy, Melville, Moliere, Proust, Steinbeck, Tolstoy and Voltaire. What mass-market publisher would even consider such a series today? And how many families would consider acquiring them?

Stephanie Meyer's Twilight may be a more prophetic title than we realize.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished: In my review of Empire of Illusion I suggested reading this book instead of that rambling, pointless diatribe. In rereading Jacoby, although still better than Empire, there are parts where this sounds more like an old white lady lamenting the decline of society and comparing it to the good old days of her childhood than the reasoned historical narrative I remember. I'm particularly disappointed at how little was updated to include and reflect the last ten years, as 2008 seems like a lifetime ago when talking about a culture of infotainment, distraction, or junk thought. Although what she does include of the last ten years is some of the least supported, most judgmental writing in the book, where her knowledge, study, understanding, and appreciation for the monumental shifts in society and culture are so weak as to be non-existent.

Half-way point: I read this about ten years ago, when the first edition was released. I remember liking it at the time but reading it now I'm surprised at how little of it I actually remembered. Also, I'm a bit more skeptical of it -- I remember thinking that I didn't know many of the historical/cultural references she was making when I first read it but chalked that up to my own inadequate knowledge of mid-century American history. Now it seems rather tone deaf, I honestly don't know who her intended audience is except, perhaps, people exactly like her, which fundamentally only adds to the fractured and polarized discourse she's lamenting. Also, I'm disappointed at how little has been updated to include the last ten years. Hopefully there will be more added content in later chapters.

[Paul Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and timely book on the decline of intellectualism in the USA, which is also relevant to the rest of the developed world. While I personally believe that Jacoby overplays her hand in the latter chapters on the malign influence of screen culture (the ubiquity of TV and now computers), the thrust of her argument is well written and undeniable. If we do not respect intellectualism and aspire to it for ourselves and our children, if we do not educate ourselves by reading broadly rather than accepting TV soundbites and unfounded weblog and editorial opinions and if we do not insist that our schools, colleges and universities teach rigorous thinking which we back up ourselves with the examples we give our children, we risk being manipulated by advertising, pseudo-science and self-serving politicians and, in the very worst case, risk the very values and achievements of our society.

[Kristina Coop-a-Loop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies is an updated edition of her book The Age of American Unreason. This newer book includes the arrival of Trump as further evidence of the decline of reason and intellectualism. This is not a terribly long book (under 350 pages) and written in accessible, but not dumbed down, prose (although she overuses the word that so much I became distracted). It’s an interesting read and gave me a different perspective on some ideas, but for the most part I fully sympathized and agreed with her arguments.

In this book, Jacoby traces the history of American unreason as beginning even before we officially became the United States of America and follows the paths of anti-intellectualism through to the Era of Trump, with a longer stop to examine the social upheaval of the 1960s/70s. She examines the effects of pseudosciences, celebrity culture, religion, junk thought and technology on Americans and how we are dumber because of all of them. The (new to this book) introduction, “Anti-Intellectualism on Steroids” explains how Americans could overwhelmingly vote for a man who had no experience in governing, displayed no interest in governing, was susceptible to conspiracy theories and junk thinking, clearly could barely read and poorly comprehended what he did read, knew little of the world, had no intellectual curiosity whatsoever, spoke crudely and cruelly, and displayed the mannerisms of a particularly ill-behaved and spoiled toddler. The author delves into how anti-intellectualism contributes to a lack of curiosity or concern about the rest of the world and even a disregard towards truthfulness and honesty. When Trump commented that he loved the poorly educated (because those voters are the most staunchly Republican), Jacoby writes:

Providing the poorly educated with the opportunity for a better education—not loving them—has always been the basis of the American dream. Paradoxically, the difficulty of paying for college may be one of the most significant factors in the resurgence of anti-intellectualism among many blue-collar workers today. On the surface, that seems like a contradiction, but the American expectation—experienced almost as a birthright—that children will do better than their parents has always coexisted with ambivalence about how much education is too much. Parents do not want their children to be so highly educated that they move completely away from the world of their mothers and fathers. Thus, it is possible for a working-class parent to simultaneously loathe intellectuals (or what they presume intellectuals to be) as a cultural stereotype of privilege and want their children to have a chance of joining that more privileged class (even if they would prefer to have a college-educated child to become a doctor or an executive rather than a professor or a member of the media). Trump, with his unerring instinct for targeting other people’s sore spots, was recognizing that ambivalence when he talked about his love of the poorly educated (xiv).

One of the more interesting concepts I liked was Jacoby’s exploration of speech and how the words a speaker chooses can convey a lot of information and affect how listeners react: “Casual language, in addition to reassuring people that their [political] representatives are not snobs, also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated” (4). The word “folks” is an example of a word used by politicians when it shouldn’t because it conveys a lack of concern—even if the topic is very serious. “Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will not find one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain…and that the government of the folks, by the folks, shall not perish from the earth. By the middle of the twentieth century…voters still expected their leaders to employ dignified, if not necessarily erudite, speech” (4). Jacoby continues to say that substituting the word folks for more formal/precise language (people or citizens) clarifies the relationship between the abandonment of dignified public speech and the degradation of the political process: “To call for resolution and a spirit of patriotism and sacrifice is to call upon people to rise above their everyday selves and to behave as true citizens. To keep telling Americans that they are just folks is to expect nothing special—a ratification and exaltation of the quotidian that is one of the distinguishing marks of anti-intellectualism in any era” (6). This strikes me as particularly true. There is a reason why the speeches of Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill or (insert the name of another great historical speaker) are so passionately stirring and impressive even today. Not only is the message deadly serious, but the language used, the words chosen, are formal. These speakers want listeners to pay attention because they are calling on them to do something extraordinary, to rise above their everyday selves (as Jacoby writes). If MLK or Churchill had said something like, “hey, peeps, there’s some shit (Churchill may have said shite) going down (racist governors, Nazis with bombs) and y’all need to be stand up and kick some (white supremacist/Nazi) ass” would listeners have responded as they did? Would those speeches still have the same emotional and intellectual impact years later? I think not.

I agreed with a lot of Jacoby’s book. The rise of “trigger warnings” drives her crazy, particularly in the classroom. She disagrees with the idea of allowing a student to reject a lesson or text because the subject material may offense or upset her. I agree. Life is offensive and hurtful. For students who may be asked to read/view material that will exacerbate a past trauma, perhaps that should be dealt with on an individual basis. Although Jacoby doesn’t call it this, the “cancel culture” is also addressed. If you don’t like something or it offends you, you shouldn’t censor/avoid it. Especially if you know little about the topic. I think it’s better to be informed, even about a perspective I don’t agree with, than to keep myself closed off.

One of her chapters, “Middlebrow Culture from Noon to Twilight” confused and irritated me. I wasn’t sure what she meant by middlebrow and highbrow. She never clearly defines the terms. I think she meant popular culture (books, magazines, music, and any movies or television shows) as middlebrow (MB) and highbrow (HB) as more cultured (performing arts, orchestras, opera, literature classics and paintings/sculptures). This chapter discusses the difference between the two (one is more intellectual than the other—take a wild guess) and how HB culture informed and influenced MB culture, which in turn exposed consumers to more HB culture. I do accept and agree that there are objective standards for what is “good.” My problem with Jacoby’s thinking in these chapters is that she has very rigid categories of what is HB and what is MB and MB can never be intellectually demanding. Certain forms of music (classical, jazz) are HB. Nothing else. It’s okay if you like pop music (she does) but you should never, ever confuse it with HB culture. This is the same for everything—the more accessible something is, the lower brow it is. I disagree. I’ve read a lot of the literature classics, and I felt that some were very good and others were silly, boring, stuffy and not intellectually stimulating at all. I’ve read modern, more accessible books and found some of them as good as (it not better) than some of the classics. Just because a writer’s prose is less formal doesn’t make it necessarily less intelligent.

The topic of intelligent conversation is covered in a later chapter about the culture of distraction. Jacoby bemoans the state of conversation in America. Apparently not only do we talk about nothing of intellectual importance, but we also talk stupid. The only decent conversations to be found these days are in books (intellectual books of course, not the latest James Patterson thriller) and this is the example she cites of a lively, intellectual discussion from a book by the journalist I. F. Stone (she includes only one side of the conversation):

I’ve often said that nobody has ever gotten away with so much egregious nonsense out of sheer charm as Plato. It’s nonsense—absolute nonsense. And the devout Platonists—it’s like a cult, they’re like Moonies. I mean, Plato is a fascinating thinker, and a marvelous writer, and a man of comic genius. Olympiodorus says that he wanted to be a writer of comedy, of plays and comedy—he’s supposed to have had a copy of Aristophanes on his bed when he died—but when he met Socrates he gave that up…(279).

She calls this conversation an example of what a “passionate intellectual conversation sounds like—the genuine learnedness, the intensity, the sense of communion with people who lived and died thousands of years ago…One need look no further for a perfect example of the connection between the decline of reading and the decline of intellectual conversation” (because it’s been a long time since she’s heard a conversation that thrilling) (279-280). Um, okay. Frankly, I think the same attributes (genuine learnedness, intensity) can describe a discussion about Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books. Why do the characters have to be dead (or even real) to have an intelligent conversation about them? An intelligent conversation about books doesn’t necessarily depend on the quality of the book. Books with more complexity and depth that address universal themes will have one kind of conversation, but I’ve read terrible fluff books and discussed them with friends. The conversation centered on the lack of quality in the prose, the construction of the novel itself, etc. The more technical aspects of the book, but certainly the conversations were intelligent.

Jacoby not only dislikes how we converse, but the fact that we don’t at all: “The isolating effect of technology, however, reinforces all of the other anti-conversation elements in our culture” (276). Because we are plugged into our own little worlds, we cannot converse with people around us. She supports this overgeneralization by sharing an anecdote of having to spend the night in a dorm after giving a lecture at a university. Remembering the good ole days of her student days, she prepared herself for a noisy, late night full of boisterous and learned conversation. To her dismay, the dorm was deadly quiet and the two students she encountered had iPods plugged into their heads and didn’t talk to her at all: “…[when I was a student at Michigan State in the early 60s] I have no doubt that the presence of a professional writer—albeit a noncelebrity—would have attracted a small group of students for some intense discussion” (276). Her supporting evidence is weak. It’s possible the dorm was quiet for other reasons than iPod isolation, and it seems she’s irritated because the students didn’t talk to her specifically, a professional (if non-famous) writer.

There is a lot of good stuff in this book (I’m guessing my prose would be judged not intellectual enough) but sometimes Jacoby (who is in her 70s) come across as a cranky old lady bitching about kids today. Her chapters about the decline of rational thought and why are much better and more relevant than her general complaints about how to be (or not) an intellectual. She discusses the lack of basic science and civic literacy in adults and how the public education system is (for the most part) fails to educate students and why (uneven funding is a major concern) but I think she should have also spent more time of the lack of critical thinking skills. Clearly there’s a vast drought of critical thinking in America today. Along with the decline in critical thinking is the lack of empathy or concern for your fellow citizen. Many Americans put importance on doing what’s right for them, but not what’s right for their community. Case in point: the pandemic. Too many Americans are ignoring health experts and the desperate calls from overwhelmed nurses and doctors to not travel, not gather in large social groups, and wear masks. Why? Because it’s “their right” to do/not do those things. A man being interviewed on the local news about traveling for the holidays despite Dr. Fauci’s warnings said to the interviewer: “I don’t care what they say.” He was clearly contemptuous of a) anyone telling HIM what to do and b) experts themselves. This is where we are in America—too many people distrust experts and facts and that allows them to be fully and openly selfish. So I’m not so concerned if the public isn’t discussing ancient Greek philosophers; I’d rather they know how to recognize and accept basic scientific and civic facts. I recommend Jacoby’s book and these titles as companion reads: The End of Faith by Sam Harris; The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan; and Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen.

[Sue Dix · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those of us who are in despair about the current state of affairs in the United States, this book encourages, demands, that we not give in to that despair, that we remember that this too shall pass, that it’s what we do to re-educate ourselves that will make the difference. And re-educate ourselves, we must. This is an important, though tough, read, but the trouble is that it will not be universally read. It is up to us to speak up for intellectualism. Ignorance should not be a point of pride. The more we know, the better off we are. That should go without saying. Read this book!

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eye opening book in this era of "fake news" and distrust of intellectuals and "elites." She examines all aspects of how we as a nation arrived at this precarious place in our history. She offers few concrete solutions, as there aren't any easy fixes, but some thoughts on how those of us who care, even a little, about the future of this grand experiment can change things, one person/family at a time and hopefully stem the tide of "dummying down" that has gripped this country.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How did you people ever lose the Cold War?"---The American imprisoned heroin dealer "Vee" addressing her more intelligent and cunning Russian counterpart "Red" Reznikov, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, and no one ever failed to make money from dissecting it, from Morris Berman (DARK AGES AMERICA) to the late Steve Allen (DUMBTH). Susan Jacoby adds her own ingredients to this recipe by examining the decline of reason in America before and after the election of Trump in 2016. She concluded growing imbecility was both cause and effect of the MAGA phenomenon. One important cause/effect of dumbness is tribalism and even cultism; you speak only to your kind of American in a language only you can understand. Jacoby: "While promoting my book on the secularism of the Founding Fathers I found myself preaching to the choir. Of those few who showed up, all agreed with my thesis and no one showed curiosity about any other viewpoint." There are many culprits here, from social media to a failing education system, the political soundbite and the malicious influence of organized religion from the school boards to the Supreme Court, but no obvious way out except, perhaps, to keep talking. (Well, that, and bring back Obama, of whom Jacoby is inordinately fond.) Since Jacoby published her book this state of affairs has only grown worse. A few days ago an economist wrote in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "The average American college graduate knows as much about the world as the average high school graduate, and the average high school graduate as much as the average high school drop out." As Mr. Dylan once sang, "Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift."

[Lunnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been hyped with a lot of articles in newspapers, esp. a big one in the New York Times and sounded interesting. I found that the sections of the book where she laid out the historical foundations of American anti-intellectualism were not as interesting as the sections towards the end where she starts cataloging all the junk science, junk thought, obsession with celebrities,technological distractions, and 'us folks' relativism that have taken over society today. Some of it approaches the level of a screed, but the screed was what I found most entertaining and amusing-at times her points were really trenchant and interesting and at other times she seems like an old lady who just hates these newfangled computers. I also think (heresy coming up!) that she puts too much faith in the power of the printed word as the one thing that can counter all the junk that we are presented with every day. I guess I dont have as much faith in that as she does.
It's a surprisingly quick read, not tedious and makes you think-I felt guilty having the TV on as background noise as I read and her words made me shut it off and think about how much TV I watch.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacoby is best, I think, when she looks back at American history. Her biases regarding current issues often mar what she is saying. For me, the most disappointing thing about the book is that Jacoby doesn’t get deeply enough into what makes so many Americans so literal in their religion (less anti-intellectual than incredibly narrow in their interpretation of literature) or so willing to accept as real modern myths such as UFOs and conspiracy theories (is there a difference?). Jacoby is angry with Americans’ losing interest in reading books, but is any other culture so devoted to mythical literary characters (especially if you include comic-book super heroes, who are as complex as Homer’s heroes)? A big plus is that this book is very skimmable. A 3.5.

[Charles Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the best book I've ever read.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately, this book did its job, or a job, because I feel strongly enough about it to write a review. Jacoby's broad intention is, I think, heartfelt and needed. And many of her subarguments are coherent and compelling. It is her own emphasis on high intellectual standards that invites criticism of otherwise minor points. She demands rigor in American thought, so I shall apply rigor to my evaluation of her book.
Her willingness to express not just amusement but alarm at the inability of President Bush and others to speak properly makes legitimate criticism of the imperfect grammar displayed in the book. Overall, her grammatical accuracy is undoubtedly higher than the average writer's, but the (not undue) emphasis she places on the written word leads one to expect perfection in form as well as content.
The content of some of her arguments, though, also leaves something to be desired. Toward the end of her book, on page 297, she says, "The general decline in American civic, cultural, and scientific literacy has encouraged political polarization because the field of debate is often left to those who care most intensely - with an out-of-the-mainstream passion - about a specific political and cultural agenda." The rest of the paragraph does nothing to elucidate or support her statement. The meaning of the statement remains uncertain - is the passion directed toward an out-of-the-mainstream agenda, or is the degree to which the agenda is cared-about merely out-of-the-mainstream in its intensity? If she meant the latter, is there evidence that caring most intensely about a specific agenda leads to polarization of the field of the debate? A good case could certainly be made - but the case should be presented to the reader rather than the conclusion offered as forgone fact. If she meant the latter, where is the evidence that those who care most intensely tend to possess out-of-the-mainstream agendas - and if it is so, where is the speculation on the causes of this phenomenon? Whichever interpretation is correct, her proposition is intriguing, but unsupported. The argument deserves at least a journal article's worth of words, but she refers us to none.
As counter-intuitive (and perhaps anti-intellectual) as it seems, Jacocy makes her best points through anecdotes, as in her story of a stalled subway ride with a brilliant old British man who lectures were enthusiastically about the ideal relationship for one to have with the Greek classics. When the train finally pulls into the station, a "scruffy" (read: plebian) young dude comments to them on how cool it was to listen to his diatribe, and Jacoby rightly notes that, if the incident had occured a decade later, after "the proliferation of headphones and personal listening devices... Philip's young admirer would probably have been walled off in a private world of noise." Even though she fails to acknowledge the very real value of creating a private world , especially of music, from time to time, she did provide me with the first resonating argument I've heard for turning off my iPod once in a while.
The book is divided into chapters, at first roughly chronological and tracing America's history in relation to intellectualism, and later noting a number of overlapping themes in recent and contemporary American unreason. Certain chapters were markedly more engaging to me than others (The way we lived then: intellect and ignorance in a young nation; Middlebrow culture from noon to twilight; Junk thought; The culture of distraction; and Public life: defining dumbness downward were the good ones), although I learned even from the chapters that were harder to get through (notably, the chapter called "Reds, pinkos, fellow travelers" was a less spell-binding read but taught me a lot I should have known about intellectualism's (and America's) relationship to Communism in the 1930s-1950s).
The other way I know that this book has gotten under my skin, other than that I'm writing such a long review of it, is by the near-anger I felt this afternoon when I postulated to my coworkers that perhaps we will need to improve the quality of the American education before we can pass good climate change legislation, because the public needs to be willing and able to read and comprehend multiple sentences - paragraphs even - of summary and analysis in order to understand the impetus and effects of putting a price on carbon, and my coworkers - both of whom have more political and campaign experience than I do - countered that, rather, we needed to make the laws simpler. Not even the message, but the actual laws. One explained to me that it's a common misperception that more-educated people gravitate toward complexity because it is inherently better, when in fact simplicity and "common sense" are often the better metrics by which to judge laws and other important bodies of thought. I'm all for a unified theory of the universe, but legislation is complicated for good reasons, not least among them is the fact that it almost inevitably creates real winners and losers. Rather than ignoring that reality and hoping the opposition doesn't pick up on it, we should be eager to explain the complexities of policy to the public - and they should be eager to understand (Jacoby uses the excellent example of Roosevelt's urging Americans to follow along on a map during his weekly address soon after Pearl Harbor - an address to which 80% of American adults tuned in). We should expect the average American to engage in thought rather than passively accept the 8-second soundbite messages he's offered by mainstream politicians and media - and we should give him the education he needs to engage in that thought. It was heartening to hear a smart, sane, pragmatic voice affirm this instinct.
In short, this is probably a book worth reading. It might make you angry, it might make you guilty, it might make you indignant. It probably won't bore you, at least not usually, and you will probably learn something.
Lastly, thanks to Andrew Baird who let me borrow this book and keep it for an inordinate amount of time (probably related to the fact that the beginning is the slow part!)

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS TIME THE SKY REALLY HAS FALLEN.

“Public opinion polls conducted during the past four years have consistently found that more than one third of Americans believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, while nearly six in ten believe that the bloody predictions in the Book of Revelation—which involve the massacre of everyone who has not accepted Jesus as the Messiah—will come true.”—page 30

Irrationality is always deeply disturbing; but willful anti-rationalism really scares the bejeezus out of me.

Susan Jacoby’s outstanding book, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, treats extensively with the history (rise?) of, and the current state of, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism in America, in a far more pessimistic manner than I could have hoped. I tend to shy away from alarmism, but when someone I respect as much as I do Susan Jacoby sounds the alarm—scared witless though I am—I’m inclined to want to listen and pay due heed.

Although I might not always be able to agree with what she has to say [e.g. “Anyone who values self-reliance will be changed for the better by limiting screen time…”—page 315] (weren’t similar suggestions made about keeping one’s nose always glued to the pages of books, once upon a time?)—I always come away after reading Ms. Jacoby’s words feeling very much smarter than before I started. This time I was especially amazed and delighted to learn just how deeply steeped in ‘Middlebrow Culture’ my own life has been. From listening to Clifton Fadiman’s radio show, ‘Information Please,’ in the 1940s, to Book of the Month Club memberships in the ’50s, through reading Will Durant in the ’60s, to the self-help crazes of the ’70s—my life might well define ‘Middlebrow.’ Something else, for which to be genuinely grateful.

Recommendation: Wherever your brow might be set, this book has much of value to offer its readers. My flippant response to alarmism is usually some perversion of the Persian proverb, “Dogs may bark but the caravan moves on.” And so it is, too, with the ascendancy of superstition. In the case of Susan Jacoby’s contributions to alarmism, however, maybe, just maybe, the caravan moves on a bit, perhaps a heap, less adeptly than before. Maybe it retreats.

See you at Armageddon?

“Middlebrow’s salient features—an affinity for books; the desire to understand science; a strong dose of rationalism; above all, a regard for facts—had been taken for granted since the beginning of the twentieth century by large numbers of Americans who wanted a better life for themselves and their children.”—page 136

“What can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that anti-rational junk thought has gained social respectability in the United States during the past half century, that it interacts toxically with the most credulous elements in both secular and religious ideologies, and that it has proved resistant to the vast expansion of scientific knowledge that has taken place during the same period.”—page 218

Adobe Digital Editions [ePub], 343 pages, on loan from http://overdrive.colapublib.org/

[Rod Hilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book that laments the decline of reason in American culture, this book sure does manage to avoid it's use when making arguments.

Essentially the book's real premise is this: Americans are increasingly anti-rational, largely due to the fact that they are reading fewer books. Considering this is coming from a book author, it's hard not to face this argument with some skepticism. Indeed, Jacoby never really provides much in the way of evidence, assuming her claims to be self-evident to the reader.

Much of what she states as unquestionably true are things that, frankly, are questionable, so the fact that she makes no attempt to truly justify her beliefs is troubling.

In the end, Jacoby comes off as an anti-technology luddite, hating technology, television, the internet, and other forms of modernity because they decrease the amount of precious time people spend reading books. She even goes so far as to whine about the decline of reading poetry and fiction, though she makes no evidence whatsoever that these styles of writing contribute in any way to intellectualism.

This book is infuriating to read because there's nothing I hate more than an extremely poor argument in favor of a position with which I agree. Much of what Jacoby says is agreeable, and some of it even intuitive. But she often shifts from the intuitive to the extremist in her belief set, never providing powerful rationale for opinions being espoused from either area.

My 'favorite' part of the book was when Jacoby rambled on about the Harvard president that supposedly claimed that the reason for few female professors could be genetic. Jacoby is infuriated by this claim, and the feminist in her takes over the chapter that discusses this matter. I found this entertaining primarily because it was also discussed in the last book I read, 'Super Crunchers', which explains that the vast majority of people didn't understand the president's real claim because people don't understand the difference between average and standard deviation. Super Crunchers discusses this issue at length, explaining what the president ACTUALLY meant and providing citations of studies which back it up. It turns out there's nothing sexist or demeaning about the statement that the president actually made, but the public's grasp of statistics (Super Cruncher's main focus) is so weak that it has been misunderstood by many.

Having just read that, reading Jacoby rant on about how offended she was by his claim, revealing that she belongs in the "bad at math" category, was nothing short of hilarious.

This book is downright embarassing, I've lost nearly all respect I gained for Jacoby while reading Freethinkers.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dismayed by the rapid decrease of reading, writing and intelligent discourse in America, Susan Jacoby has crafted an engaging, at times humorous, often depressing and always thought provoking book on the present, past and future of intellectualism in America.

I came into this book thinking that the author would be "preaching to the choir" and was surprised to come away looking hard at my own life for ways to change. Although I am an avid reader and consider myself, probably quite pompously, to be an intellectual, when I really started looking at how I spend my time, I found that there is room for improvement. Like most Americans, I still spend far too much time watching television, playing video games and surfing the web and nowhere near as much time as I'd like reading, thinking, creating or engaged in thought provoking conversation.

I have begun to make some changes in how I spend my free time but, as I read this book I kept thinking, "How can we change this trend?" The answer isn't so simple but, like fighting global warming, doing something is better than doing nothing. So, I hope anyone reading this will consider cutting by one third the time they spend each day watching television, reading more books, experiencing more life and, most important of all, doing all you can to encourage and help the children in your life to do the same. If you have children of your own, read to them every day and when they are old enough to read themselves, take them to the library every week. Make reading and talking and thinking the central aspects of your family life.

No, I haven't completely forsaken television or video games and this blog is proof that I still see the Internet as part of my entertainment/information mix. However I am trying to recommit myself to not only being an intellectual but to celebrating intellect and reason. I hope you will do the same and reading Susan Jacoby's book is as good a place to start as any.

At the beginning of this year, I made the decision to write about the books I read on this blog. My reasons at the time were to create a record, for me as much as anyone else, of the books that I read and what I thought of them. I also hoped it would cause me to read more books than I ordinarily would. I don't know if that's happened or not but, after reading "The Age of American Unreason," I feel like I have a new reason for writing about books in this space. As much as anything else, blogging is about the exchange of ideas, which gives us a unique opportunity to further the dialogue in this country. Here's hoping my little corner of the blogosphere can achieve that goal in some small way.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Broader in scope than Al Gore's The Assault on Reason (2007), the Age of American Unreason (2008) attempts to trace the history of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow culture and thinking in America, comparing past ages to the present age, digging particularly into the influence various factors -- religion, popular culture, consumerism, the press and electronic media -- have on the quality of public discourse and what passes for reason in America.

But after the first chapter, I began to feel I was locked in a room with an embittered Kennedy liberal going on and on about how everything's gone to hell since the days of Camelot. I wanted to argue with Susan Jacoby, and sometimes I did, even to the point of talking out loud to the book in my hands. And perhaps that was her intention, to engage the reader. If so, consider that praise. But otherwise? Beethoven is superior to the Beatles? Pulp fiction doesn't compare to the classics? TV is junk? Do tell!

Jacoby has done her research. Her chapters on the history of popular culture, literature and magazines, and music were, to me, the most entertaining. Since I know something of the thinkers, writers, and musicians she wrote about, I can appreciate her scholarship, and I'll assume she applied just as much discipline and rigor to subjects I know less about.

Still, I think she's flat out wrong on certain things: e-books and e-reading, for example, which she characterizes as a cultural and commercial failure. This contradicts what we can observe with our own eyes: e-books and e-reading are enormously popular, not just for entertainment reading but serious study as well -- has she seen how many college students buy e-texts for their courses? Has she tracked how many people are reading her own book on a Kindle or Nook?

Her biggest feat of wrongness, IMO, is in thinking there was ever a more enlightened era in American history. My own study of history leads me to believe the ratio of stupid to intelligent people, of those who put faith before science, of the ignorant to the educated, has always been about the same. Whatever that ratio is -- my guess would be 9 to 1 in favor of brute stupidity and ignorance -- it's historically stable. The kids aren't any worse than they ever were. Joe Sixpack has always been with us. The country's always been going to hell in a hand basket.

[Andrew]

Susan Jacoby, hmm. On the one hand, she says a lot of really witty, bitchy things about the various advocates of various unreasons, on the other hand... well, it's a tirade, and often a tiresome one, pointed at the lowest-hanging of fruit and the easiest of targets. Instead of what could be a good book -- an analysis of the subtle ways in which unreason is nurtured, a task that commentators like Christopher Lasch, their myriad flaws aside, would have been up for -- we get, if I'm feeling charitable, about one-third of a great book. The rest is little better than the flim-flam that passes for ideas in airport-bookstore social commentaries.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're like me, you might sit around picking your nose and pondering the great mysteries of life. Aside from where is that gritty A.L.F. reboot Hollywood keeps promising, I can break these mysteries down into a few juvenile, if not puerile, categories:
Why are Americans so fucking stupid? Why do Americans act against their own best interests? How can a democracy have so little of a sense of common good?
This is a schizophrenic book that tries to answer the above questions: as an attempt at laying out the foundations of American idiocy and anti-knowing shit, not to mention our complete lack of common sense, Jacoby does a nice job and if you don't know much on the subject it's a good place to start. There are especially good bits on education and the perseverance of extremist religious thought. However, as a place to find solutions, you'll need to look elsewhere. Other reviews by people probably less sillier than me mention that Jacoby can often come across as a crusty curmudgeon bitching about television and video games and religion and society in general and offering up little-to-no constructive solutions. This is true. In an initial chapter, Jacoby ups the revolutionary ante in a peculiar way by a weird, forced discussion of the use of the word "folks". Folks, some folks just use the word, but I guess if you're hyperrational, your weird Bizarro-universe lawyer mentality means every bit of minutiae must be focused on. Whatever. I don't find it very useful to complain about religion. It isn't going to go away. It's more constructive, I think, to look at the history she deftly lays out here and start wondering how to get people back into a sense of common good and better our education. It's no secret that we are living in an age when there is no lack of crazy apocalyptic shit going on that might bring us together. But it hasn't. Instead 1/5 of Americans thinks COVID vaccines put a microchip in your head and people know more about NASCAR statistics than they do about climatology. Where to begin? Decency for one, which would include not hounding down what others might believe. Talking down to someone is just as bad as dumbing them down.
Anyway, read this one for the history and let it give you food for thought!

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irritating, and not even that good a screed. Jacoby's history of why people believe dumb things, or don't believe in reason, is pretty solid, but after the 60s chapter, which has a nice balance, it starts to feel more and more like a scattershot attempt to rewrite The Closing of the American Mind, except this time by someone who has actually stepped outside the classroom in the last 30 years.

It's not entirely successful. Parts of it feel like journalistic pieces plopped in where they fit (Baby Einstein is bad! video games are bad! blogs don't really foster discussion!), and others are simply massive dismissals of entire fields: 60s scholarship, she says, absent a single citation, has recently been score-settling, not history: "most 'histories' of the sixties being written today are really memoirs by authors intent on justifying or repudiating their youthful selves and taking one more whack at their old adversaries." (This from someone whose quotation from WEB Du Bois is footnoted to an online source.) That is just flat-out wrong. Twenty years ago, sure, you could make that claim about Todd Gitlin and Norman Podhoretz and Elaine Brown. But now? It's laughably out-of-date, since all the good 60s scholarship now focuses precisely on just the stuff she is discussing: the rise of conservatism, the sense that there was "another 60s" that was just as powerful, if not more so, than the radical one. Kind of makes me doubt her blanket assertions in other areas about stuff about which I am not as well-read.

And, worse, that assertion is followed by discussions of how the old middlebrow Saturday Review market--for which she used to write massive, 5000-word thinkpieces--is now dead, as are serious articles in women's magazines, both of which are signals of the serious downturn of our culture. All modern music is "vulgar," TV is terrible, IPods are distractions and distancers, and nothing is really as good as it was in her comfortable middlebrow upbringing in Okemos, MI in the 1950s. Good thing HER book is not "taking one more whack at old adversaries." Because that would be wrong.

[Daniel Solera · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took a while to get through. Not only does each of Jacoby's sentences sound like it deserves its own dissertation, but a lot of ground is covered in its 300+ pages. As a seasoned journalist, Jacoby tackles the prevailing anti-intellectual sentiment that has infiltrated every aspect of daily life, from the media, to pop-culture to civic and political figures.

Jacoby devotes a lot of time to the history of this sentiment, dating back to the pre-Civil War ideological split in the nation. She notes that in "the older urban centers of the Northeast, there were visible signs not only of a diffusion of knowledge but of the unmistakable emergence of an intellectual aristocracy. in the South, what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in an effort to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order" (Jacoby, 57). This split, combined with the South's greater adoption of faith, led to a rise in skepticism towards intellectualism, a sentiment currently manifested by anti-evolutionists and groups that oppose compulsory vaccination.

Jacoby talks about the rise of pop-culture as an added threat to the spirit of intellectual conversation and pursuits, naming the countercultures of the sixties as a primary culprit. She discusses our current age of distraction, how little young people are reading, and the easy way through which pseudoscience and superstition make their way into the public collective. After a while, the book starts reading like a highbrow version of Mark Bauerlein's "The Dumbest Generation".

There were times where her book did sound a lot like Bauerlein, and, in what I can only call poetic justice, I felt that she sounded very snobbish, thus proving her point that there's a pervading movement to put down intellectualism. But that's probably because I too participate in mass culture and enjoy it, so a scathing critique of it will sound like a slight personal affront. That aside, it's a very well-researched and articulate look at today's decline in the American intellectual standard.