The Age of American Unreason | Susan Jacoby | Maybe being a scientist and an intellectual is...

The Age of American Unreason | Susan Jacoby | A Must Read

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	The Age of American Unreason Susan Jacoby Pantheon, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 98 reviews view larger image
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Maybe being a scientist and an intellectual is worthwhile after all

I enjoyed this book tremendously. I liked best Jacoby's critique of today's newspapers for reporting at face value patently false statements by politicians, as if actual facts made no difference at all.

I did disagree with a few of Jacoby's points. She is too cavalier about dismissing the idea that the U.S. is overpopulated. To provide some balance to this, I would encourage reading Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update.

Overall, though, the book is great. Don't miss it.

A Must Read

This is a fantastic book explaining the history and present state of Americans' fear of intelligence - both of acquiring it themselves or of those who cultivate it.
I cannot recommend this book enough.
Anyone who is closed minded about nearly any controversial subject in this country will surely be offended - but open your mind and you will see the truth - don't fear knowledge!

This book is especially interesting in this time of election activity!
Enjoy!

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Good basic premise, but stuck in past....too obviously biased

The basic premise is correct, that we need to study more, read more, think more clearly. When hasn't that been true? I agree with her that people spend too much time on TV, video games and other liesurely activities that don't stimulate the intellect. Many seem to be addicted or perhaps too tired/lazy to do something that takes effort. I liked the book from that standpoint.

But, she seemed stuck in the past, constantly telling the reader how wonderful it was when.... I kept getting the nagging feeling I was listening to a church sermon in which the pastor kept praising the "family values" of the past (many of which were/are good)....while ignoring some of the glaring negatives of those days like racism, sexism, discrimination against people because they held different religious beliefs?

Then, despite some effort to point the finger equally at conservatives and liberals, she fell into what seemed her natural tendancy to associate smart with liberal and dumb with conservative. That was frequent in the book, particularly toward the end.

She talked about poor academics in the South, but didn't analyze the school systems to see what was driving some of the poorly performing schools. I've lived in the South for several years and found some sectors of Southern society to be very well educated, while others were sorely neglected. Saying that Southern public schools are funded less than other states misses a key issue, namely strong tendancy of whites in the South to send their kids to private schools. The blacks are left in the underfunded, voluntarily segregated public schools. Not such a problem in towns where many whites stayed in the public schools, but the county schools were all black and had very poor performances. I don't pretend to understand or like the social/political dynamics of schools down there (my kids hated Southern schools because of the reverse discrimination and jumped for joy when we moved out), but I do know that white parents didn't want to send their kids to these underperforming county schools where their kids were treated to reverse discrimination.

My point is that a lot of the educational dollars are avoiding the public school system as whites avoid the underperforming schools. This caused a spiral effect where parents, both black and white, sent their kids elsewhere to avoid schools with poor academics. I believe the author could have addressed this issue better and might have found more intelligence in the South than she gave it credit for.

(As an aside, I worked with an African American woman who sent her kids to a county school where the percentage of blacks was about 98%. The daughter requested this because she wanted to "get back to her roots" after attending predominantly white schools elsewhere in the states. After one year, the daughter wanted out because in her words, "These blacks aren't my people. I don't think like they do. They don't care about education. All they care about is acting tough and insulting people who want to study.")

Back on topic, Jacoby couldn't get past her love of Al Gore and his climate change agenda either. She claims to be an intellectual, but when it comes to the issue of climate change she takes a one-sided approach that ignores legitimate, scientific evidence showing global warming trends are caused by various things, such as natural climate cycles, deforestation, and sun spots, not just humans. I see the issue as being something in between the alarmist and extreme skeptical views and I've read many articles by scientists/climatologists who hold a similar moderate view. While it's clear we need to move to renewable energy sources soon for various reasons, the hyperbole and scare tactics from Al Gore hurts his credibility. When someone claims the debate is over, while thousands of scientists are saying it's not, he appears to be more of a zealot than a truth seaker. It also makes one question his motives, particularly when he doesn't walk the talk. A more balanced approach on this would have been better for Jacoby to use.

She also talk about the Internet as such a terrible thing. Yet, thanks to the Internet I can instantaneously get various intellectual viewpoints and studies on both sides of most issues, whereas before the nasty technology came along....I had to spend hours searching for books in the library and they probably didn't have anything relevant to my topic of interest. Worse, I might not even be aware of many issues in pre-Internet days.

Then, how about book reviews she went on and on about? I can now read solid book reviews on the Internet by many, many smart readers, whereas under her preferred method I would have been stuck reading the one book review in the New York Times or whatever newspaper I was limited to in my hometown.

I'm with her on the need for more of us to study, but the condescending attitude against conservatives showed a lack of intellectual integrity. Really, despite political differences, there are about as many smart/ignorant Democrats as there are smart/ignorant Republicans.

She also seemed confused about whether she liked communism or not. I think she's prefers capitalism, but she praised a number of intellectuals of the hippie era who were involved in the Communist party and I never understood whethere she thought that was a good or bad thing.

And Bush is just a moron to her. Granted, he has issues and has made some blunders, but that doesn't make him stupid. To equate dumb with country as she seemed to be doing is just evidence of elitism. But on Bush, yep Suan, he's so stupid he just stumbled into the White House. And during the debate with those intellectual giants, Al Gore and Mr Swift Boat Kerry, he won only because they were, what, smarter than he? Uh, right. Her theme of conservatives being morons was just so intellectually vacuous that I had to force myself to finish the book.

Finally, the idea that Europeans are brighter than Americans is pretty funny, if only it were true. The French, for example, were so bright before WWII that they focused on a marginot line and failed to see war strategy had evolved. The Brits were so bright that they handed over much of Europe to Hitler in appeasement efforts. I spent years in Europe and found them to be no more intelligent or common sensical than Americans. The Italians seemed to be mostly focused on fashion and food, both examples of intellectualism...not. They've now moved to the mode of being almost anti-family, anti-child, not realizing they will eventually lose their own continent to peoples who like children. In the end, the "ignorant" will win against the "intellectuals" of Europe. That's a brilliant strategy.

Bottom line: Good premise that people should read more. She should do just that without the prejudice against conservatives. She's stuck in the past, unable to see the good in many modern things. Blinded by her liberal bias. OK book overall. Made me want to read more, but that idea without the bias would have been a pamphlet.

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Good start, but doesn't go far enough into the reasons for our malaise

This is a good start. But I was disappointed that Jacoby doesn't dig deeper. A lot of her "answers" just beg the question. I found she was good at diagnosing the problem--as are many pundits and observers these days--but short on understanding their true depth.

She gives us the laundry list of ills inflicting us right now--failed political systems, endemic rudeness, the death of civic responsibility, our vile popular culture--and does not see the thread that links it all. That thread is the complete dominance of unfettered capitalism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our sole purpose in America has been to make money, at a faster and faster rate. "Values," such that they are, are only taught when they're seen to further expedite the chase of the buck.

No, there's nothing wrong with capitalism, but there is something wrong when capitalism is our only national goal, and it is now, no matter what some apologists may claim. People who think about nothing except how to acquire more material things are not going to be civil-minded, learned, courteous, moral or ethical. There's no reason to be. In fact, those things are just impediments to the pursuit of happine$$.

This is happening everywhere, of course, but nowhere as much as the U.S. Europe is struggling to keep a lid on rampant, unchecked capitalism--their blend of "soft socialism" with regulated capitalism seems to be working better than any other model, so far at least. Countries that most eagerly follow the U.S. down the road to free market mania--Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and now China and India--are starting to have the same social ills of the United States.

Rather than chapter after chapter reciting ills we already know about and citing his columnist peers and their skin-deep "analyses," I would have like to have been a deeper social-economic analysis, as well as discussions from historians and yes, philosophers. For a deeper look at our nation's ills I guess we have to turn to the likes of Thomas Frank, whose unblinking look at our national soul can be depressing, but accurate.

It's hard not to give five stars to a book when I am in such sympathy and empathy with the author. And Ms. Jacoby is a very engaging writer, and clearly intelligent and dedicated to the pursuit of intellectual activities. So why she couldn't have taken the next step and seen more into the reasons for the problems inherent in our system (hint: read de Tocqueville) surprises me. This book is worth your time, but with a little more depth it could have been so much more.

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