Susan Jacoby’s newest book, The Age of American Unreason is a jeremiad, or so insist the reviewers who rave about it. An indictment, lamentation, mournful complaint, a careful prophecy and a regrettably necessary update of Richard Hofstadter’s landmark 1963 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, it’s a compendium of analysis pointing a finger at media and fundamentalist religion, with examples chockablock of the junk science, lousy education and pop politics she argues have turned our republic lazy and credulous. This is a book for people who read and the people who love them, but don’t --- read, that is. And if you haven’t yet, listen --- and listen up --- when Susan Jacoby herself explains The Age of American Unreason, Monday at noon on Bibliocracy.
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