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 Nothing original in it, yet nowhere near as good as Hofstadter's book, to which Jacoby obviously wants her book compared August 4, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Her introduction and chapter one simultaneously attempt to tie her book to historian Richard Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963) while making a case for the United States' supposedly "new anti-intellectualism." To her, anti-intellectualism is not new, but it has taken new forms. Her approach is a combination of history; commentary on popular culture; specifics of religion, education, politics, and the mass media; and critiques of social science. Thus, the book's topics mostly overlap with Hofstadter's book, which was strictly a history, divided into four sections on anti-intellectualism in U.S. religion, U.S. education, U.S. business, and U.S. politics, respectively. And if Jacoby never directly addresses anti-intellectualism among business executives or corporations, she offers enough about commercial influences on U.S. culture to say business and economics were included. The title of Jacoby's first chapter, "The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks," even reminds one of Hofststadter's first chapter, "Anti-intellectualism in Our Time."
But the similarities to Hofstadter's book are not extensive, and should not be overstated. Hofstadter's book was and is a masterful history (even if it has been significantly criticized), while much of Rigney's book is on more or less current events, or at least past recent enough to not yet be "history" with a capital H. Hofstadter's first chapter, and his other discussions of then-current events (such as paragraphs on President Kennedy late in Chapter 8) seems insincere, even forced, as if his publisher or his conscience or someone else told him that his book couldn't start with his largely theoretical second chapter and had to hold out some hope. One must give Jacoby credit for displaying no false optimism, as the facts and arguments in both her book and Hofstader's don't warrant any, false or otherwise, even if one finds her one-sidedly negative.
Knowledge sociologist Daniel Rigney (1991), among others, have pointed out that the major U.S. "institution" ripe for studying anti-intellectualism in, in both impacting and reflecting U.S. culture, and not addressed by Hofstadter, was the mass media, and Jacoby doesn't make this omission. Sooner or later, her book gets around to newspapers, magazines, television, radio, movies, the Internet, music, and videogames.
But Jacoby's book pales by comparison to Hofstadter's book. Her chapter on "junk thought," which she defines as "anti-rationalism and contempt for countervailing facts and expert opinion," is (as she almost dismissively says about scientific and social scientific studies showing differences between males and females) mostly just that. That's not to say she doesn't make some good points, only that she often doesn't do it very well. While another reviewer suggested that New Yorker Jacoby needs to exit her apartment and interact with bright students at an excellent university, she apparently also needs to get out of the city. Like The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987), by Russell Jacoby (no relation that I'm aware of), her book sometimes implies that what happens among New York City intelligentsia affects, or is at least known by, the rest of America. While New York City boasts a disproportionate amount of intellectuals, and intellectual products and services, clearly both Jacobys equally need to learn that, unless an intellectual has a ready audience of thousands or more, often what happens in New York City stays in New York City.
Granted, her book includes several solid chapters by fact, argument, and writing, the best of which probably are chapters four, five, and eight. And, overall, it is well written as books go these days, although one could pick a few nits with an author who professes to be a stickler about English, including obsessing about the word, "folks."
However, as much as it tries, Jacoby does not grab the reader the way that Hofstadter did and still can. He was the education historian who wrote that John Dewey "has been praised, paraphrased, repeated, discussed, apotheosized, even on occasions read" (p. 361). And "American education can be praised, not to say defended, on many counts; but I believe ours is the only educational system in the world vital segments of which have fallen into the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise" (p. 52). And "the schools of the country seem to be dominated by athletics, commercialism, and the standards of the mass media, and these extend upwards to a system of higher education whose worst failings were underlined by the bold president of the University of Oklahoma who hoped to develop a university of which the football team could be proud" (p. 301). Jacoby never equals Hofstadter's combination of knowledge and writing skill, let alone his wit, nor is she more than rarely original, in terms of subjects, sources, or analysis.
If there is a major "institution" that Jacoby failed to address, like Hofstadter and mass media, it is sports, what Hofstadter 45 years ago(!) referred to on college campuses as "the cult of athleticism." Today, every U.S. mass medium is clogged with sports, including the average daily newspaper devoting nearly a quarter of its news space to sports (double or more than of any other content area), while advertisers avoid it like the plague and the Newspaper Management Center finds sports only the ninth most popular newspaper part among subscribers. Yet Jacoby, who manages a swipe at every other nonintellectual and anti-intellectual aspect of American life, totally missed it.
Finally, her literature review was surprisingly limited and sometimes a bit odd. Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987) gets a passing comment and is not listed in bibliography. Major authors on intellectual history or education and culture, such as Jacques Barzun, Oscar Cargill, Henry Steele Commager, the other Jacoby, and Neil Postman are overlooked, not to mention a long list of lesser ones (such as mine, for full disclosure).
 The Age of American Faithlessness July 18, 2008
5 out of 25 found this review helpful
As others, I picked up this book with great anticipation, hoping to find an objective text on the slow descent of intellectualism in America. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed by Ms. Jacoby's disdain for everyone other than herself and her near-clones. Anti-everything is not intellectualism.
I'm so thoroughly nauseated by the quantity of anti-Christianity being pumped into modern literature these days. At least I can count on books like "The God Delusion" and "God is Not Great" to disclose their intentions outright, before I waste my time. This book masquerades as a piece of researched modern philosophy, and quickly spirals downward into a remarkably under-researched, ostensibly biased rant against 'anti-rational religion.'
"What is most disturbing, apart from the fact that millions of Americans already believe in the imminent end of days, is that the mainstream media confer respectability on such bizarre fantasies by taking them seriously... [a Time magazine article] gave no space to those who dismiss the end-times scenario as a collective delusion based on pure superstition...ideas that ought to be dismissed as the province of a lunatic fringe."
Ms. Jacoby gives this rhetoric the heading of "Modern American fundamentalism," all the while denigrating what is actually age-old, global, mainstream Christianity. Not the same thing, and how ignorant on her part to make no distinction between the two.
She goes on to say that anti-evolutionism is anti-intellectualism, and that "this level of scientific ignorance cannot be blamed solely on religious fundamentalism," but must also be blamed on the "poor quality of public science education." Clearly no one with a proper science education could believe in intelligent design.
If you believe in anything at all that defies logic or has yet to be proven by a self-declared intellectual such as Ms. Jacoby, don't waste your time on this poor application of fantastically correct grammar.
 Tracing the Decline of American Culture and the American Intellect July 18, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Jay-Z, J. Lo, O.J., Jon Benet, and Jolie. America's Got Talent, Baby Borrowers, Wife Swap, Wipeout, Greatest American Dog, American Gladiators, and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Creationism, Biblical literalism, open disdain for the "reality-based world," dying newspapers, aliteracy, innumeracy, and anti-intellectualism. Video game addiction, YouTube narcissism, withdrawal into personalized iPod worlds, sound bites, Baby Einstein, ten-second attention spans, and high school graduates who can't read, spell, write, do math, or understand history. An incurious, marginally aphasic President disturbingly detached from the real world. How did it come to this (and so much more)?
In THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, author Susan Jacoby sets out on an arduous and depressing, yet ultimately rewarding, journey through the history of American (anti-) intellectualism. Her objectives is to shed light on the most paradoxical of questions about America: How did a society founded on the secular Enlightenment principles of science and reason devolve into one that disparages and at times even proudly rejects those very concepts?
In her opening chapter, Ms. Jaboby surveys the current state of American anti-intellectualism, placing particular emphasis on Biblical literalism and the creationist/intelligent design movement. She then moves chapter by chapter through a chronological retracing of American history, beginning with Emerson and the "Second Great Awakening" in the early years of the 19th Century. This is followed by the pseudoscientific social Darwinist and Communist movements of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The "Red Scare" between the World Wars set the stage for a further surge of anti-intellectualism that culminated in the McCarthy hearings in Washington. The McCarthy hearings were complemented by the rise in the 1950's of a new, middlebrow culture characterized by Encyclopedia Brittanicas, the Book of the Month Club, Great Books, and television dramas and knowledge-based quiz shows.
Despite this historical review, by far the bulk of Ms. Jacoby's work focuses on the period since the counterculture revolution of the 1960's. It is at this point that her critical sweep broadens enormously to capture university ethnic and gender studies, mass marketing of youth culture, the semi-legitimizing of junk science into junk thought, renewed religious fundamentalism, new technologies that have shortened attention spans and diminshed serious reading and thought, and the dumbing down of political rhetoric and public life generally. Each of these trends has, in Ms. Jacoby's view, contributed to Americans' declining cultural literacy and their increased tendency to reject scientific or logical reasoning in favor of irrational, simplistic, religious, and/or emotional appeals.
Ms. Jacoby's presentation is demanding but quite approachable, erudite in its approach and scope without crossing into the realm of academic jargon. While she draws heavily on historical fact and the statements of her intellectual predecessors, she also occasionally personalizes her discussion with anecdotes from her own experience. Reading THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON feels a bit like reading Gibbon's classic analysis of the death of the Roman Empire, although here the death is more one of reason and the intellect rather than that of a government or its commerce. Nevertheless, one comes away with a sense of inevitability, a recognition that the forces of technology, marketing, religion, and a lowest-common-denominator-seeking media constitute an irresistible tsunami of anti-reason.
Ms. Jacoby's conclusions are rather pessimistic, and her recommendations are limited. Nevertheless, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON is an enlightening look at the path America has taken to bring us to a point where late night comedians can celebrate "stupid human tricks," a crushingly dim President, and the factually clueless "man (and woman) on the street." In her final pages, the author notes, "It is possible that nothing will help." In that, she is sadly but probably correct.
I thought the idea was to apply reason July 18, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is a book I should have liked. I picked it up enthusiastically when I read the jacket flaps, as it seemed to make an argument that I often find myself making -- more and more people decide matters on the basis of their preconceived biases with little regard for the facts. People don't like being troubled by facts when guesses, hunches, gossip, and drivel are so much easier and more amusing to digest.
As a college professor, I guess I qualify as an intellectual, although that word seems to have multiple surplus meanings, only some of which I consider an accurate reflection of who I am. But without question, I'm an advocate of evidence as a basis of reaching conclusions. I teach research methods to doctoral level students and write papers for scientific journals. I serve on editorial boards and have been a peer reviewer for public and private (nonprofit) research agencies. I take matters of evidence seriously.
So, why did I end up being disappointed in a book that seemingly advocates for the values I hold in such high esteem? Before answering that directly, let me say that there were parts of this book I did find informative and engaging. For example the discussion of how reason guided many of America's founders' view of the world, was handled skillfully (although I might not catch minor glitches because this isn't an area in which I have anything beyond a general level of knowledge). What disappointed me, however, was an apparent disregard for the role of evidence as the basis for other conclusions the author seems more than willing to treat as factual.
This may be best illustrated by a quote from p. 250, which closes a section discussing the impact of video media on young children: "Is more research required to tell us what is already known from medical studies of drugs and from millennia of educational effort -- that the impact of any substance or exposure, good or bad, is magnified by the length of exposure and that the effect is strongest on immature and therefore more malleable organisms?" So, here we have a book decrying unreason arguing that we shouldn't do research into a topic because received knowledge has taught us all we need to know about the matter. I consider the nature of inquiry to be ongoing, with further refinements in our understanding of various phenomena arising from continued scrutiny and questioning of prevailing beliefs. Jacoby's stance reflected in the quote is as fundamentally anti-intellectual as some of the ideas the author criticizes. First of all, video (of which I'm no particular fan, especially for the very young) is not a drug. Nor is medical research the most relevant, as we are considering behavioral and educational outcomes rather than health status per se in the discussion preceding the quoted statement. Millennia of educational effort, to use her term, have not helped us to perfect the process of education. Why should it be treated as having a higher yield in this particular instance? Her statement is an argument, not evidence. Also, it is factually incorrect to state that the impact of any substance or exposure is amplified by duration (although that will sometimes be the case). (Someone with a true respect for reason and the role of evidence as a basis for conclusions would shy away from the word "any" in a context such as this.) Furthermore, there are well documented (as well as intuitively obvious) counterexamples involving processes of habituation and adaptation, in which sensitivity to a stimulus is dialed down, not up, as a result of prolonged exposure. Our attention is channeled away from stimuli that are prolonged and relatively invariant. One summer, I worked next to an amusement park shooting gallery. I cringed and blinked with every shot fired for the first day or so. Then, I blinked but didn't cringe. Then I didn't blink. I'd habituated to the sound of a rifle being fired. The specifics aren't as important as the tone of the quoted statement. Nor is this particular dismissal of fact as a basis for conclusions the only instance in the book. (Nor, in fairness, is every conclusion unsupported.) But how can a claim such as this lodge itself in a treatise that targets unreason and denounces claims that lack a factual basis?
My sense was (and this is opinion on my part) that Jacoby is less comfortable with notions of evidence than with reason. Stated differently, her intellectual approach strikes me as more attuned to the humanities than the sciences or mathematics. Both reason and evidence are imperfect tools, of course. But there are differences. When the two clash, a scientist is inclined to be swayed by evidence, at least until better evidence comes along. In scholarly fields that have relied more heavily on reason than empirical evidence, this may be less true and I say that not as a criticism but merely an observation. When there is no definitive evidence, reason is likely to be an attractive and powerful alternative. While Jacoby praises the sciences as a means to establishing facts, she seems not to take a scientific approach to truth-seeking in some cases (like the one discussed above). Jacoby seems most comfortable in the intellectual milieu of the humanities, to oversimplify, perhaps.
Reason is good and we don't see enough of it. There, she and I would agree. But I hold evidence -- despite its sometimes transient nature -- as a higher approximation to truth. Of course, the two together are better than either alone. But Jacoby's casual attitude toward evidence really undermined her arguments for me. Had she taken the same stance and presented her ideas as opinion, with the benefit of supporting evidence where appropriate, I would have found little with which to quibble. But, in the context of asserting the intellectual laxity of Americans, her assertions, when not supported -- and occasionally contradicted -- by facts, really put me off.
To end on a positive note, one implicit goal of this book is to stimulate thought and discussion. It has succeeded. I'd rather read a book with which I disagree in part than one that fails to stimulate my thinking at all. This book did make me think, even if those thoughts were critical at times.
A Blow to the Use of Reason July 15, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've not read a book where I agreed with the thesis as much, and then disagreed completely with the means to get there. Other reviews have touched on this, but to add a few comments on the research for this book:
1. The use of two convenient statistics to prove a point that can easily be countered by other data is rampant in this book, and detracts from the book's weight. Example: The author asserts that because Southerners tend to have worse educations, they are more likely to hold religious beliefs that are in the Christian fundamentalist camp, and believe in Creationism. There is no evidence presented that education and religious affiliation have a strong correlation. I would be just as accurate to claim that hush puppies force a choice in religious branch. (There is ample evidence that education is poorly related to fundamentalism in ALL religions btw.)
2. The search for demons to blame for why we are frequently irrational is laced with folly. Humans are irrational by nature, and we fight tooth and nail with our baser instincts daily to rise above it. The book seems to want to rationalize unreason more than define its true roots.
3. I'm not that uncomfortable with the pedestal that the author puts intellectuals on. I thought I was in the ballpark of an intellectual, but if Ms. Jacoby's definition is my watermark, can I be something else please? We can be intellectuals and irrational at the same time.
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