DISCUSSION WITH

SUSAN JACOBY, AUTHOR OF

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

7 PM, THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 20 T H

NY Times bestselling author Susan Jacoby will join the SHSNY

Book Club to discuss her most recent book, The Age of American

Unreason. Ms. Jacoby has published other fascinating books, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, named a Notable Book of 2004 by the Washington Post and the

Times Literary Supplement. A frequent contributor to many national publications, including The New York Times and The Los

Angeles Times, Jocoby is also a panelist for On Faith, a blog published by Newsweek and The Washington Post.

The fifteen years following WWII saw a great expansion of what the author calls middlebrow culture. Reading books expanded, as did symphony orchestras, and other institutions of popular culture, a phenomenon that made American society more secular. People across the current political spectrum today see “the Sixties” (actually late 60’s, early 70’s) as the period when the counterculture reigned supreme, either opening society to personal freedom and creativity, or tragically damaging our intellectual standards and our civic pride. Ms. Jacoby was a journalist for the Washington Post at the time, and she shows clearly how the media went for the visuals of demonstrating young people but grossly under-reported the real political and cultural changes. The fact that Richard Nixon became president and important conservative institutions of today were being established then might remind us that the Religious Right didn’t pop up recently. “During the sixties,” she points out, “Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right in the 1980’s”.

Describing the conflict within religions, educational institutions, and political parties, as well as the inter-generational conflict within families, Jacoby shows us the critical anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism which has sunk deep roots into our everyday lives. Americans’ willingness to live on “infotainment” and avoid activity which involves critical thinking and serious reflection has created an environment in which people are succored – or suckered – by pseudoscience. We have “dumbed down” our schools at every level, and our standards for how we get our news and how we participate in running our own polities, the latter which we do in a democracy whether we think about it consciously or not.

Hear Susan Jacoby in person and talk with her at this special meeting of the Secular Humanist Society of New York.

327 Seventh Avenue (at 30th St) – 16th Floor