The Age of American Unreason

Anti-intellectualism is destroying America, says author Susan Jacoby, a "cultural conservationist." From the vast number of people who believe in creationism, angels, and the paranormal to the growing contempt for the intelligent and thoughtful, a lack of reason--and knowledge--in our culture is affecting our political choices. But Jacoby spends too much time giving a litany of negatives, rather than offering suggestions as to how to make things better--other than to turn off the TV and read a book. Cassandra Campbell's slow, monotonous reading of detail after detail makes this book sound even more like a screed. While Jacoby may be right about most of what she says, her book is too long, and Campbell's narration does not enhance it. K.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

December 17, 2007
Inspired by Richard Hofstadter's trenchant 1963 cultural analysis Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
, Jacoby (Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
) has produced an engaging, updated and meticulously thought-out continuation of her academic idol's research. Dismayed by the average U.S. citizen's political and social apathy and the overall “crisis of memory and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think,” Jacoby passionately argues that the nation's current cult of unreason has deadly and destructive consequences (the war in Iraq, for one) and traces the seeds of current anti-intellectualism (and its partner in crime, antirationalism) back to post-WWII society. Unafraid of pointing fingers, she singles out mass media and the resurgence of fundamentalist religion as the primary “vectors” of anti-intellectualism, while also having harsh words for pseudoscientists. Through historical research, Jacoby breaks down popular beliefs that the 1950s were a cultural wasteland and the 1960s were solely a breeding ground for liberals. Though sometimes partial to inflated prose (“America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism”), Jacoby has assembled an erudite mix of personal anecdotes, cultural history and social commentary to decry America's retreat into “junk thought.”