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| Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $15.48
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Avg. Customer Rating:  99 reviews
Sales Rank: 3658
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0375423745
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.91
EAN: 9780375423741
ASIN: 0375423745
Publication Date: February 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Full Blown, Grand Mal Seizure February 24, 2008
82 out of 131 found this review helpful
Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason is a deeply felt and deeply flawed treatise on how uncultured and unlearned Americans are. I started out enjoying this book, though I was somewhat bored at the over-long history lesson that comprises the first few chapters. That Jacoby herself is intelligent and well read is very clear throughout the pages of this uneven book. Unfortunately, as the reader progresses through the book, Ms. Jacoby starts to involuntarily twitch--just every so often. But by the time she gets to writing about how evil conservatives are and how horrible Bush is, she is foaming at the mouth and yanking her hair out at the roots with shrieks of anger.
She paints almost every Republican as a gap-toothed, NASCAR-lovin' hillbilly from the South. If she has to admit there are conservative intellectuals, then she writes that they buffalo the public, lying and deceiving as they go (and this is easily done because U.S. citizens aren't as smart as Ms. Jacoby is). With her retrospectoscope in full use, she lashes out at anyone who supported (or supports) the war in Iraq, Reagan, or either of the Presidents Bush. Not all conservatives belong to the "Religous Right" and subscribe to the foolishness of "intelligent" design. Ms. Jacoby is so predictable as to be embarrassing; but when it comes to President Clinton, she's blushing furiously at how "charming" he is. It's obvious she's in love.
Isn't it clear to rational people that there are wise and intellectual liberals AND conservatives? Not all liberals are crazy pinkos, and not all conservatives have a tattoo reading "I love Jesus" on their chests. Ms. Jacoby doesn't try nearly hard enough to seem fair-minded where politics is concerned, and her bias weakens her arguments.
It becomes clear by halfway through the book that this is a unevenly documented partisan rant by someone near retirement age. So many paragraphs and arguments smack of a warbly voiced "Back in my day..." The '60s were so wonderful, and ooh those Kennedy boys! In one chapter, Ms. Jacoby writes about how disturbed she is when a college student she meets doesn't seem to know about FDR's fireside chats. That's too bad, but there's so much knowledge available in this information age. No doubt this college student is perfectly bright and is preparing for her career by attending college. Going to the university cannot be, at least for most of us, one big humanities degree. The world's a competitive place; and if a young person wants a good job in business, law, or medicine, they have to focus their studies--at least to a certain degree.
I was also embarrassed for Ms. Jacoby when she relates her recent visit to a university where she stayed in a student dorm. There were no love-ins, peace rallies, or Bush-bashing parties going on! Ms. Jacoby states that in her day, a "real writer" gracing the dorm would have had at least a few people at her feet, begging to learn from her wisdom. She seemed miffed that no one at least asked for her autograph.
There are good points raised in The Age of American Unreason. She rightly shows that religion is a stumbling block to rational thinking and action. She excoriates the culture of those who read US magazine, watch "reality TV", and get excited about Paris Hilton's latest manicure. Ms. Jacoby is right on target when she laments how few people read books anymore. It seems that if an adult is reading a book these days, it's chick lit, diet/exercise, or the ironically titled "Good News" Bible.
Unfortunately, I can't wholeheartedly recommend this book because it's so fanatical in parts. She documents much of ignorance seen in U.S. society today, but she doesn't write nearly enough regarding what should be done to remedy the problem. Some editing and Valium would have really helped the author write this book, and then maybe it could be more strongly recommended.
 A painful, unflattering look in the mirror February 23, 2008
92 out of 99 found this review helpful
Jacoby is at her best when she reasons close to the facts, documents her claims, and builds logical sequences from those facts. She is at her worst when she engages in speculative, broad brush generalizations that seem to be presonalized impressions.
Her book has the texture of being written from two mindsets, one more objective and untimately far more informative, and the other, more subjective and tendentious without the assurance that those impressions are carefully grounded in evidence.
Because of this dual natured, dual flavored style some reviewers have accurately sensed the weak side of Jacoby's thought processes and taken umbrage. Which isn't entirely unfair, only incomplete and one sided criticism.
Where Jacoby shines, and when she shines she shines brightly, is the spot on deconstruction of the "belief path" that America has taken over the last three decades from the Reagan Revolution, some would say the seeds were planted in the Nixon administration (this with Nixon's calculation that the religion card could be played for maximum political advantage) until the NeoConservative debacle of the present.
Jacoby makes a strong case that Americans are not inherently stupid, anti-rational, or ahistorical clamoring rubes (although a superficial reading of her book could leave one with that emotive sense of her thrust), rather that the American media, American educational structure, and the introduction of disruptive technologies have colluded to produce an atmosphere so sterile and lacking of nutrition that Americans are growing up as stunted, incomplete, intellectually damaged citizens dangerously unprepared for the global tasks we will soon face.
This is a most terrible actuality to see as it truly is. The average, average mind you means that a good percentage are above this number, watch seven hours of television in a 24 hour period, what's worse is that the average American now watches indiscriminately, using television as an escapist drug, not as a source of information. Her evidence (which I badly wish she had closely documented and footnoted) is that today the viewer will watch 7 hours of television regardless of what is being broadcast. In other words, the viewer doens't care what is on, only that there is something marginally viewable. One must wonder, when does vegatation become outright addiction of the same power as opiate addictions ?
This stuporous, bovine, cud chewing, glazed over, hypnotic fog appears to be matched with a near contempt for science, rigorous logic, reasoned philosophy, or even the conversational reference to any of the above. When a high percentage of science teachers are unaware that large reptiles ceased to inhabit the Earth and mammals began their ascent at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, thus humans and dinosaurs could not possibly have lived at the same time, if you can imagine, and assuming her statistic is accurate, that 25% of high school biology teachers actually believe in Human-Dinosaur cohabitation.... the only thing one can conclude is that our educational system is so broken it would take another massive meteor impact to change anything, as the phase goes, "Houston, we have a problem"...
Yes, we do... a serious dysfunction that goes all the way to the core of our society...
Regardless of its imperfections, Jacoby has written an essential book for taking stock of this social-political-educational moment in American history, and we would be fools not to begin asking hard questions as to who and what we have allowed ourselves to become as a people.
 Borat's last laugh February 19, 2008
2 out of 46 found this review helpful
Reading this book one wonders whether Borat is making Americans laugh or is he actually laughing at Americans.......
 Taking the temperature of contemporary American culture February 19, 2008
118 out of 131 found this review helpful
Susan Jacoby's beautifully written and convincingly argued book should be sine qua non reading for ALL parents, as well anyone who has anything to do with education. She clears away any doubts one might entertain about the benefits of even the most "educational" videos for young children, backing up her points with evidence from reliable sources. According to a recent study carried out by the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital, overexposure to videos like "Brainy Baby" may actually be impeding language development in babies.
The book's acute analysis of political "communication" and media punditry should also be required reading for anyone who aspires to make an informed and wise choice in the crucial political battle currently being fought for the future of our nation. Her observations are all the more interesting in light of the current attack on "eloquence" in political speech--with its specious implication that one cannot be eloquent and effective simultaneously.
There are purely intellectual pleasures as well to be had from Jacoby's wonderfully ambitious reach into American history. I particularly enjoyed her investigation of the idea that, from the very beginning, our democratic culture rested on a contradiction: [Jacoby, 37] "The health of democracy, as so many of the founders had proclaimed, depended on an educated citizenry, but many Americans also believed that too much learning might set one citizen above another and violate the very democratic ideals that education was supposed to foster."
I particularly recommend the downloadable vodcast of Jacoby's interview with Bill Moyers [Feb. 15th] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html . Given the very substantial interest the book has already sparked, there may be some hope for us yet.
A silly book February 18, 2008
41 out of 107 found this review helpful
Cries of anti-intellectualism are usually exercises in self-validation, for the speaker and the audience, and this book is no different. And while most of Jacoby's readers will revel in their sense of intellectual worthiness, genuinely thoughtful people will see right away the problems inherent in making broad claims about what intelligence is and how it manifests itself in a dynamic complex world. But of course, even if we grant the premise--that average Americans are, on the whole, objectively dumb--Jacoby is still at a loss to explain how exactly this stupidity overwhelmingly determines the course of national policy--policy formulated and executed by quite un-average people. There seems to be a basic, liberal assumption at work here, that society is generically democratic and that the people's views are represented directly and unfiltered in the halls of government. If the policy is dumb then so must be the people. Unfortunately, in the real world the political power of individual citizens (and thus of their opinions) is badly circumscribed by any number of structural factors, such as the interests of business and other bodies, the inertia of governmental institutions and the oligarchical nature of the party system (to name just a few). As a result, and as polls suggest, the actual policies of the government have little in common with the views of average people (to the extent that such views get articulated).
I think one example will suffice: the war in Iraq. According to Jacoby (and some of the commenters around here) a smarter population would have forseen the difficulties and refused to invade. Suppose that's true (even though the invasion wasn't up for vote). And suppose the corollary, that it's a part of intelligence to oppose the war (as most Americans do) and want the troops home as soon as possible. Naturally then, the smarter among us will be voting in the '08 election for candidates who have pledged to, in fact, end the war. Except, they won't, as there are no mainstream candidates running (federally at least) who have so pledged. Some have proposed partial withdrawals but none propose ending the war in toto, deconstructing our bases and paying reparations. So vote away enlightened ones. Just know you'll be voting for war. As to whether that's proof of your stupidity or of the structural defects present within the system is a question I can't answer. But apparently Jacoby can.
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