A review by chan_fry
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

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.)