Jacoby makes some excellent points in her dissection of American anti-intellectualism. She ably covers the history of anti-intellectual movements throughout America’s history.

At the same time, though, parts of the book read like she’s bemoaning the changes in American culture as personal losses more than as serious threats to the American enterprise. Many of the “middlebrow” cultural activities and interests of the particular intellectual world in which she grew up have changed considerably over the years. Interest in attending and reading about “literature”, classical music, and other “traditional performing arts” have decreased, and new forms of art and music have taken an increasingly prominent role in our society. But at times Jacoby’s despair about these losses turn into a savage attack on newer forms of communication and information dispersal, in particular television and the Internet.

While I agree that television definitely feels like it has become increasingly degraded throughout my lifetime—with even PBS replacing serious documentaries about history and science filled with interviews with experts in their fields with reality shows meant to compete with the lowest-common denominator of network and cable television, I have to say that her near dismissal of any positive aspects to the Internet, and, especially, the World Wide Web, seem naive at best. Yes, much of the material available on the Web is, frankly, crap. Yes, many, maybe even most, blogs are merely places for people to talk about their own boring lives and deeds, as well as the latest television craze. But there are certainly many sites that feature exactly the sorts of community and conversation she sees as dying out, and there are also sites that do a better job than the mass media at analyzing current events and calling out the media for their sloppy or nonexistent reporting.

When reading Jacoby’s previous book, Freethinkers, I was struck by how much blogs and other Internet-based sites acted to resurrect the culture of letter writing that formed such a huge part of the early American intellectual world. The net allows people without presses to express their opinions—some more informed than others, but still often valuable for the insight into where the nation or the world stands on a particular issue.

The Age of American Unreason is worth reading for Jacoby’s recounting of historical trends and her passionate call for respect for and improvement of American intellectual rigor. Just be prepared to skim through some of the sections that might seem more like nostalgic longing for a former world than wholly useful criticisms of today’s culture.