SUSAN JACOBY
Wednesday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Periods of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism are not new, writes Susan Jacoby, but the addition of "infotainment addiction" distinguishes this era from those past. In The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon), she examines the costs of pervasive "mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public. Susan Jacoby's previous books include Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. "Jacoby's is a moderate, sensible, well-founded position, shared by many Americans, yet it somehow rarely got voiced amid the raging hyperbole of the culture wars." - Salon.

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