The Age of American Unreason

✍ Scribed by Susan Jacoby

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 387
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of ''junk thought.'' Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public. Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion. At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the ''overarching crisis of memory and knowledge'' described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title page......Page 9
Copyright page......Page 10
Contents......Page 15
Introduction......Page 17
1 The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks [3]......Page 29
2 The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation [31]......Page 57
3 Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars [61]......Page 87
4 Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers [82]......Page 108
5 Middlebrow Culture from Noon to Twilight [103]......Page 129
6 Blaming It on the Sixties [131]......Page 157
7 Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture [163]......Page 189
8 The New Old-Time Religion [183]......Page 209
9 Junk Thought [210]......Page 236
10 The Culture of Distraction [242]......Page 268
11 Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward [279]......Page 305
Conclusion: Cultural Conservation [307]......Page 333
1 The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks......Page 345
2 The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation......Page 346
4 Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers......Page 347
5 Middlebrow Culture from Noon to Twilight......Page 348
7 Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture......Page 349
8 The New Old-Time Religion......Page 350
9 Junk Thought......Page 351
10 The Culture of Distraction......Page 352
11 Public Life: Defining Dumbness Downward......Page 353
Conclusion: Cultural Conservation......Page 354
Selected Bibliography [329]......Page 355
Acknowledgments [333]......Page 359
A......Page 361
B......Page 362
C......Page 364
E......Page 366
F......Page 368
H......Page 369
I......Page 370
J......Page 371
L......Page 372
M......Page 373
N......Page 374
P......Page 375
R......Page 377
S......Page 378
T......Page 380
V......Page 381
Z......Page 382
A Note About the Author......Page 385
A Note on the Type......Page 387