March 21, 2008
The Dumbing of America?
The late historian Richard Hofstadter is something of an American icon, so invoking him is sure to bring notice. In 1963, Hofstadter published Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Knopf), his classic study of America's distrust of pursuits of the mind. Susan Jacoby recalls in her new book, The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon), being moved when she first read Hofstadter as a college student, in particular by his optimistic conclusion that the "openness and generosity" of America's liberal
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