Age of American Unreason: Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy - Hardcover

Every sentence is well formed and well informed, literate and learned but also friendly and entertaining, never obscure or pretentious after the manner we have come to dread from earnest literary 'intellectuals'. It is a luminously clear style that reaches out to welcome all who would share in her elevated vision of the way our culture could be and is not. --Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

Combining historical analysis with far-reaching contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a modern America at odds with its heritage of Enlightenment reason and with 21st century knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness and junk thought have permeated throughout American society both on the political right and the left. Much of Jacoby s diagnosis of the ills of contemporary American culture is acutely relevant in the UK, but she also presents a fascinating and persuasive account of many aspects of American society that baffle British observers. Why, for instance, uniquely among western democracies, are Darwin's theories still controversial in the United States? What is driving the current resurgence of American Christian fundamentalism? Jacoby's witty, impassioned book is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the most powerful country in the world.