The Age of American Unreason

By: Susan Jacoby

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

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, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist 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 antirationalism.

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.

©2008 Susan Jacoby (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Smart, well researched, and frequently cogent." ( The New York Times)
"Electric with fearless interpretation and fueled by passionate concern...brilliant, incendiary, and, one hopes, corrective." ( Booklist)

No stars given

Pseudointellect masquerading as the moral authority and gatekeeper for what does and does not hold intellectual value. Standard boomer luddite moral elitism that devolves into political hackery. Ironically lectures the unfortunate plebeians on the correct usage of soldier while failing to understand the differences between a soldier, marine, airman, and seaman, and correct usage of the word troop.

A bigot

Jacoby laments that she finds herself preaching to the choir; on her speaking tours. It is easy to see why. Her scholarship is shoddy, her conclusions shallow and her dialogue demeaning and snide.

The book is full of her prejudices. In one memorable passage she makes an invidious comparison between Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, she states, is a greater genius for while Franklin matured in a reading environment Lincoln did not. BAD equals the bigoted, slave owner Southerner; Christians, all of whom are, at heart, fundamental irrationalists; people who do not read the same books she reads, anyone who questions scientific conclusions (even if they don't know what they are) or follows pseudo science and most importantly, anyone who does not adhere to atheism, progressivism, liberalism and Communism. On the other hand GOOD is anyone who reads, preferably the books she enumerates ad nauseum, and whoever happens to live in the North, preferably Massachusetts, particularly Boston and specifically has attended Harvard.

After excoriating Christians as narrow minded and mean spirited, she launches into her own invective and leftist moral judgments. Her morality, however, is not based on experience but rather on what she has read. It appears her entire existance is defined by the books she has read.
This book lacks any originality; rather it regurgitates second and third hand sources. She often refers to Evolution (with a capital E) as the dividing line between the elite and low-brow troglodytes. I never got the sense she ever read Darwin's Origin of Species and if she had whether she understood it. It is apparent she reached her conclusions before embarking on research; every author and statistic she cites, mainly the obscure, agree with her.
I have to infer that even her own personal experiences are meaningless unless validated by someone else.

KNOWING LESS ABOUT MORE

“The Age of American Unreason” interests baby boomers because it capsules events of the pig-in-a-python‘ era (babies born between 1946 and 1964). Susan Jacoby’s characterization of this era as “The Age of American Unreason” is a failed argument because of over generalization.

Literary education is unquestionably different today than when Ms. Jacoby graduated from college but different is neither good nor bad; i.e. literary education from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Charlotte Bronte, Pearl Buck and other literary giants is still being consumed by the public. New authors like Katherine Stockett, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, or Aravind Adiga, are among many newer intellectual writers. The medium may be different but the message is the same (after all, Jacoby’s book is available through audio books and e books). To suggest that the classics are not being read, understood, or appreciated today is a distortion of reality. How many literary themes have been replayed on the stage and screen? Where did the playwright or filmmaker get his or her idea?

Who would argue that science is not advancing? The intellectual advance of quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the science of man is astounding. Philosophy is grounded on advances in Science; with continued research there will be future philosophical intellectuals like Plato, Spinoza, and William James; in fact, they are probably here now but not with history’s perspective. The frightful truth of 21st century is that there is so much knowledge available that the biggest threat to intellectualism is knowing less and less about more and more.

Susan Jacoby is a highly sought after writer and speaker. One admires her reputation as a liberal but liberality is not a license to write junk thought.