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sondosia's review against another edition
4.0
I was SO close to giving this five stars. I learned a lot and laughed out loud at many points while reading it. However, Jacoby's knee-jerk and entirely unskeptical condemnation of everything from rock music to young-adult novels to short(er) magazine articles to cell phones to blogs to TV shows eventually started to bug me. She provided no evidence for why valuing things like classical music and fancy words over modern music and less-fancy words automatically makes you a more "reasonable" person. I thought this would be a book about the increasing mistrust of science, knowledge, and reality itself (and to some extent it was), but I definitely didn't sign up to get a jeremiad about today's youth and their musical/literary choices.
Further, Jacoby seems to believe that "experts" in very different fields, such as literary criticism and hard science, are equivalent and should all be respected. Scientists, yes, because you can't really just have your own "opinion" on whether or not global temperatures are rising or whether or not vaccines cause autism. But critics of music, art, and literature are honestly mostly full of crap, and I'm surprised that Jacoby equates the fact that people no longer trust these self-important "experts" with the fact that people don't trust climate scientists and doctors. While these may be different branches of the same tree, there's just no equivocating between these two things. One type of distrust is causing massive environmental degradation and needless illness and death; the other is causing people to, uh, form their own opinions on books and music. Big deal.
Anyway, none of that takes away from the quality of Jacoby's thinking and writing. It just bothered me.
Further, Jacoby seems to believe that "experts" in very different fields, such as literary criticism and hard science, are equivalent and should all be respected. Scientists, yes, because you can't really just have your own "opinion" on whether or not global temperatures are rising or whether or not vaccines cause autism. But critics of music, art, and literature are honestly mostly full of crap, and I'm surprised that Jacoby equates the fact that people no longer trust these self-important "experts" with the fact that people don't trust climate scientists and doctors. While these may be different branches of the same tree, there's just no equivocating between these two things. One type of distrust is causing massive environmental degradation and needless illness and death; the other is causing people to, uh, form their own opinions on books and music. Big deal.
Anyway, none of that takes away from the quality of Jacoby's thinking and writing. It just bothered me.
dorothys_out's review against another edition
5.0
A must read! Never have a read a book and felt personally attacked whilst also agreeing with everything the author has to say. Maybe this is what a revelation feels like?
nadinekc's review against another edition
Preaching to the choir. I only got as far as the first half of the second chapter, but I didn't feel as if I'd be learning anything new.
chan_fry's review against another edition
4.0
(3.8 of 5)
A well-written and logically constructed book, which sometimes suffers from needlessly complex prose, this book examines the history of anti-intellectualism in the United States and how it has come back into vogue once more. Since I read it just after finishing Al Gore’s similarly focused 2007 book The Assault On Reason, I couldn’t help but compare the two; this one is by far stronger and less-contradictory.
Like Gore, Jacoby asserts that modern technology (primarily the TV) bears much of the blame, though she builds a much stronger argument for it than Gore did. Personally, I think both are somewhat correct on this, yet also hesitant to blame us. There’s no question that TV, the internet, iPods, and so on were going to change the way we absorb information, enjoy pop culture, and communicate generally, but we (the collective “all of us” we) went into this knowingly, being made aware of the dangers and pitfalls, and we chose to be acquiescent. Maybe.
(I have published a longer review on my website.)
whimsicalmeerkat's review against another edition
4.0
This book managed to be at once hopeful and depressing to read. Hopeful because it is proof that someone recognized and is talking about the sorry state of the mind in our country, but depressing because it delineates just how far we've strayed from our origins as a nation founded by well-rounded, intellectual greats who hoped for a country populated and governed by equally wholly educated persons. While it has its place as a jeremiad and its element of "preaching to the choir," I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who understands why it is important that people read, and terrifying that so few people do now when compared to the number of those who are able.
piratequeen's review against another edition
3.0
I read this right after I finished "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life", which in retrospect was a poor decision. I did it because I've been trying to read more intelligently, and sticking to a theme in order to get a clearer picture seemed like a good idea at the time. All it did in this case, however, was overwhelm me with the depressing reality of how bad America is educationally, culturally, and politically. They say confirmation bias is an ever-growing problem, especially with the internet and our ability to find information that agrees with our view with the push of a button, because it feels good to read things that we agree with. Not so for me, not this time. I agreed with Jacoby's scathing indictment of America's irrational and uninformed government, schools, and people, but her confirmation of my views left me feeling depressed and hopeless, especially since her conclusions about our current situation was virtually identical to those of Richard Hofstadter 50 years earlier. When our country's climate of unreason hasn't changed, and has in many cases worsened, over the past half-century (the massive and vicious debate about creationism in science classes that we see today was virtually unheard of 50 years ago), what hope is there that we can correct our course, and become the educated, critical population that our country needs?
bobdudley's review against another edition
5.0
This book was written in 2008 and though almost all of the material is relevant to today's political situation. The only real change is in the political situation is that the bar is set far lower than it was in 2008. Today stupidity and ignorance have mot only become the norm and accepted, it has also received praise.
Ms Jacoby lays the blame squarely on our education system. Instead of a rigorous and broad range of subject matter with high expectations we have copped out to a very low bar and a fairly narrow education that inadequately prepares the student to make wise decisions in their life. Ms. Jacoby takes a 'liberal' position; however, education should be apolitical and broad examining all sides of an issue.
She also aims her arrows at a target rich environment of things, people and organizations that have destroyed the intellectual capacity of our nation. It is not a book to be read all at one, it is best to read small sections and look up the references in the footnotes. One will receive and unexpected education while doing so. My reading list has dramatically increased because of this book.
Ms Jacoby lays the blame squarely on our education system. Instead of a rigorous and broad range of subject matter with high expectations we have copped out to a very low bar and a fairly narrow education that inadequately prepares the student to make wise decisions in their life. Ms. Jacoby takes a 'liberal' position; however, education should be apolitical and broad examining all sides of an issue.
She also aims her arrows at a target rich environment of things, people and organizations that have destroyed the intellectual capacity of our nation. It is not a book to be read all at one, it is best to read small sections and look up the references in the footnotes. One will receive and unexpected education while doing so. My reading list has dramatically increased because of this book.
kbc's review against another edition
1.0
1. Read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life instead of this. Yes, it ends in the early '60s, but provides a much better overview of the history of anti-intellectualism in America.
2. This, at its heart, is a nostalgia book. Jacoby longs for the days of her middlebrow upbringing in her white, middle-class family in the '50s. And with all nostalgia, it glosses over how this upbringing with good schools and plenty of books was denied to those segregated either by law or red-lines. She even glosses over the damaged caused by HUAC and McCarthyism.
3. This book is incredibly white, for lack of a better term. Jacoby seems to believe that if children are just brought up with the western canon + a few exceptions, they will obviously be smart and educated citizens. The book never grapples with the vast inequalities of education within the United States. The government can put standards on education but if funding is not available to allow students to even attempt to achieve those standards, how on earth can schools produce educated citizens? Aside from a few throwaway sentences, Jacoby refuses to grapple with affects of racism that has set up a system in which minority students are actively denied a decent education throughout the United States, not just in the South.
4. I was also disappointed in her unwillingness to wonder why anti-intellectualism is popular in America. Why does a vast proportion of America find comfort in fundamentalist religion? Why are American not curious about the rest of the world?
5. PUBLIC LIBRARIES. For someone so concerned with literacy and access to books, it's amazing how little she is concerned with access to libraries. The only time she mentioned them was in conjunction with her childhood, as if they ceased to exist in the present time.
I'm actually kind of cranky that I read this through to the end. And in response, I've decided to read a Patricia Cornwell book in protest, despite not having a trans-atlantic flight scheduled (because I can't afford one.)
2. This, at its heart, is a nostalgia book. Jacoby longs for the days of her middlebrow upbringing in her white, middle-class family in the '50s. And with all nostalgia, it glosses over how this upbringing with good schools and plenty of books was denied to those segregated either by law or red-lines. She even glosses over the damaged caused by HUAC and McCarthyism.
3. This book is incredibly white, for lack of a better term. Jacoby seems to believe that if children are just brought up with the western canon + a few exceptions, they will obviously be smart and educated citizens. The book never grapples with the vast inequalities of education within the United States. The government can put standards on education but if funding is not available to allow students to even attempt to achieve those standards, how on earth can schools produce educated citizens? Aside from a few throwaway sentences, Jacoby refuses to grapple with affects of racism that has set up a system in which minority students are actively denied a decent education throughout the United States, not just in the South.
4. I was also disappointed in her unwillingness to wonder why anti-intellectualism is popular in America. Why does a vast proportion of America find comfort in fundamentalist religion? Why are American not curious about the rest of the world?
5. PUBLIC LIBRARIES. For someone so concerned with literacy and access to books, it's amazing how little she is concerned with access to libraries. The only time she mentioned them was in conjunction with her childhood, as if they ceased to exist in the present time.
I'm actually kind of cranky that I read this through to the end. And in response, I've decided to read a Patricia Cornwell book in protest, despite not having a trans-atlantic flight scheduled (because I can't afford one.)
northeastbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
Good book. Could have been a great book. Unfortunately Jacoby, like most extreme fundamentalists, (religious or atheist- it really doesn't matter) has an ax to grind that gets in the way of her writing. Pity.