The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The prescient and now-classic analysis of the forces of anti-intellectualism in contemporary American life--updated for the era of Trump, Twitter, Breitbart and fake news controversies.

The searing cultural history of the last half-century, The Age of American Unreason In A Culture of Lies focuses on the convergence of social forces--usually treated as separate entities--that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism. These include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; the triumph of internet over print culture; and America's toxic addition to infotainment. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation and sparing neither the right nor the left, Susan Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced "junk thought" that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion.

At today's critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the crisis described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.

• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
• Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
• Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
• The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American
• The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
• Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
• The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It
• Puckoon
• Down and Out in Paris and London