The Age of American Unreason
The Age of American Unreason
by Susan Jacoby
Despite the prevalence of trashy TV, eye-glazing video games, dumbed-down political discourse, the “ersatz conversation” of email, and the ubiquitous statistics on how little we know about anything, Susan Jacoby knows that American anti-intellectualism is not a wholly new phenomenon. In her survey of modern anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, Jacoby starts with a thorough, densely researched history of their roots in early America and their flourishing in the last century, with the anti-communism of the 1950s and the triumphant youth culture of that most …
