false 1822711 0375423745 9780375423741 556 200 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1188838347m/1822711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1822711.The_Age_of_American_Unreason 259719 Susan Jacoby 874 264 5 3 false Thu Mar 27 13:14:32 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 06 13:47:43 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 27 13:10:12 -0700 2008 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!]]>