Politics

The Age of American Unreason: Nick Gillespie Q&A with Susan Jacoby

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On C-SPAN's Book TV, reason's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Susan Jacoby, author of the new book The Age of American Unreason, to talk about anti-intellectualism on the right and left, trends in popular culture, and what Jacoby sees as a dangerous decline in the level of academic and political discourse.

From C-SPAN's description of the book:

In "The Age of American Unreason," Susan Jacoby offers a critique on American society and says that the combination of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism in American culture is becoming a serious problem. In the book she focuses on issues including society's addiction to mass media, ineffective educational systems, and religious fundamentalism.

It's a spirited and intense conversation between a cultural pessimist and a cultural optimist that lasts for about an hour.