The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
|
List Price: Our Price: $12.93 You Save: $13.07 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $12.00 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Age of American Unreason
Book Review: CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORS BEWARE
Summary: 3 Stars
I read Richard Hofstadter's ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE when it came out so I looked forward to reading this book. I found it a pleasant read; a sort of 'short trot with a cultured mind'. But that all changed on page 224 with 3 paragraphs on child abuse. Like most non-survivors Ms Jacoby gets everything exactly backwards. She offers no discussion or analysis of the works she names only judgements which betray no acquaintance with either child abuse or the works mentioned. She seems not to know that the one work she praises was publicly discredited. These 3 paragraphs make everything else in the book suspect & to my mind omitting them from future editions would be an improvement. A disappointing book & as a child abuse survivor a disheartening one.Book Review: History of the United States, Volume II
Summary: 5 Stars
Susan Jacoby has written a masterpiece in interpretation of modern U.S. history. I lived through many of the decades she has so eloquently and succinctly unravelled and had no idea what was actually going on until reading this piece. It is the best, most lucid, most rational explanation of the current intellectual and cultural crisis in the U.S that I have yet seen, and I have seen many. It makes a wonderful companion to her earlier work 'Freethinkers: A history of American Secularism', which I like to think of as History of the United States, Volume I.Book Review: The Contemporary Decline of American Culture As Noted by Susan Jacoby
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Age of American Unreason" combines author Susan Jacoby's elegant historical analysis with ample references to modern American culture in making an excellent, often persuasive, case in explaining how and why American culture is literally at its nadir now. And yet, her fine book doesn't have the polemical logic and focus found in two other books published this year, Kenneth R. Miller's "Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul", and Robert S. McElvaine's "Grand Theft Jesus". I strongly suspect that this may be due to the vast scope of Jacoby's book, which covers everything from the rise of scientific illiteracy and the advent of pseudoscientific nonsense like Intelligent Design and other flavors of creationism, to the political alliance between Fundamentalist Protestant Christian zealots and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. It may also be due, alas, to Jacoby's penchant for relying upon anecdotal memories of her youthful past in the 1960s, which, when compared and contrasted with her elegant historical analyses of American culture in the mid and late 19th Century, doesn't seem as persuasive.
Jacoby mourns the passing of a "middlebrow" culture which manifested itself in the forms of popular lectures on science attended by hundreds in the late 19th Century, to the publication of Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization", and the airing of classical music broadcasts by major radio and television networks. Instead, it has been replaced by a "lowbrow" culture noted for its corrosive effects on American culture. This includes not only the advent of rap music, but perhaps, more importantly, the de facto "segregation" of American studies into ethnic and gender studies which promote, not discourage, exclusion in American college and university classrooms. A "lowbrow" culture that has also embraced junk thought, ranging from, of course, the popularity of so-called "scientific" creationism, especially Intelligent Design, to those who have been advocating against mandatory immunization of children for measles. A "lowbrow" culture that is more widely disseminated than before, due to the rapid rise of the Internet, which Jacoby, not surprisingly, is quite critical of.
So, the reader may ask, what should be done to stem the rising tide of ignorance? In an all too brief closing chapter, Jacoby argues on behalf of "cultural conservation". Cultural conservation will succeed only if Americans turn away from a "culture of distraction" and embrace instead, concepts and facts that are firmly rooted in reality (For Jacoby one recent notable example of this is Judge John Jones' ruling at the conclusion of the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District Trial, in which he noted explicitly how and why his decision critical of both the school district and Intelligent Design creationism was based upon expert testimony from scientists like Brown University cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller and University of California, Berkeley paleobiologist Kevin Padian, among others.). And yet, Jacoby notes, her plea for "cultural conservation" may be too late, simply because the United States has become so firmly entrenched in a "culture of distraction" that is noted more for its obsessive worship of celebrities than for trying to adhere at all to any semblance of rational thought. Jacoby's massive tome is bound to provoke liberals, as well as conservatives, for its dire analysis of the present state of American culture; whether it will be as persuasive as other, earlier works like Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life", remains to be seen.
Book Review: Almost a complete waste of time
Summary: 1 Stars
I was eager to compare Jacoby's views with those of Steven Johnson in "Everything Bad is Good For You." Unfortunately, I found her work lacking in simple academic rigor. She commenced to ridicule Johnson's book for the audacity of its title (is she actually judging this book by its cover?)and misrepresent his main thesis- popular culture is not a replacement for traditional learning, but it is becoming more cognitively stimulating instead of less. Moreover, the elements of much modern entertainment are precisely those that are cognitively challenging rather than opiating.
After being subjected to self-righteous indignation over "The DaVinci Code's" fantasy (as if to conjure up a historically suspect murder mystery is somehow both anti intellectual and just plain stupid) and her moral vitriol spilled over admitted speculation, I finally threw in the towel. As a supporter of left-leaning intellectualism, and a teacher, I just couldn't stomach the hypocrisy and paucity of substance. The only value I found was a lesson many on the left could acknowledge regarding a knee-jerk urge to label everyone that doesn't agree as anti-intellectual by dint of their disagreeing with one's self-avowed and vaunted intellectualism.
Book Review: Too angry to be an intellectual approach to anti-intellectualism
Summary: 2 Stars
I wanted to agree with Jacoby's book when I first saw the title. It's something I've sensed in a culture where Britney Spears' court cases and the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby make mainstream news over stories that affect millions of lives far more directly. However, by the end of the book she becomes so blinded by hatred of things she sees as anti-intellectual that she stops backing up her points and becomes guilty of the very problem she's critiquing.
First, the beginning of the book, covering the history of anti-intellectualism was quite good. Sources were sparse, but a journey through the earlier ages of American unreason was very intriguing.
However, by the time she gets to the ills of the day, she begins to trip over herself. After spending several pages on the problems and ills of "Junk Thought" (one of the few chapters where she writes out somewhat specific criteria for anti-intellectual thought), she comes back the next chapter commenting on some statistics with "These statistics are probably underestimated, given the absence of consciousness inherent in the reflexive consumption of anything."
Why does she assume causality on the statistics she cited a sentence before? Why does this statement not have a footnote? Is she using "probably" simply to insert an opinion without justification? I personally had to put the book down after this sentence to recover from her lack of reasoning.
However, my mood only fell further as she went on to decry the evils of the Internet and video games as distraction based technologies. These are her opinions, and while I disagree with them, her lack of sourcing leaves me to simply leave her at her word rather than argue with it.
The conclusion of the book is equally depressing, with no real plan for action other than greater leadership from politicians and intellectuals to stand up publicly against unreason. How thoughtful.
In short, it's got some good history on anti-intellectualism in America, but don't look for actionable items or even working definitions of present day anti-intellectualism here.