Anti-Rationalism in American Life

"The confluence of disparate forces, she argues, is 'at odds not only with the nation's heritage of eighteenth-century Enlightenment reason but with modern scientific knowledge,' propelling 'a surge of anti-intellectualism capable of inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics.' Aware that much of what she has to say could leave her labeled a cultural conservative, a term 'hijacked by the religious right and propagated by the media,' Jacoby identifies herself as a 'cultural conservationist' instead."

Art Winslow in the Los Angeles Times reviews Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason.

And Jacoby explains her concerns in The Washington Post.