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Books like Anti-intellectualism in American life
A sweeping, sobering diagnosis of America's historical distrust of the mind and the enduring tension between populism and expertise. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with Anti-intellectualism in American life.
- sobering
- reflective
- intellectually rigorous
- foreboding
- 01
The age of American unreason
Susan Jacoby
A fierce, erudite wake-up call for a culture drowning in infotainment and willful ignorance.
- 02
Black Rednecks And White Liberals
Thomas Sowell · 2005
A blunt, data-driven dismantling of modern orthodoxies surrounding race, culture, and history.
- 03
The Rise of the Creative Class
Richard Florida · 2002
An analytical exploration of how creativity became the defining economic and cultural force of modern American society.
- 04
Class
Paul Fussell
A wickedly funny, unsparing taxonomy of the invisible hierarchies that dictate American life.
- 05
The bell curve
Richard J. Herrnstein · 1994
A dense, highly controversial academic treatise that attempts to map the societal implications of cognitive stratification.
- 06
The Price of Inequality
Joseph E. Stiglitz
A rigorous, eye-opening autopsy of a rigged economic system that leaves you both frustrated and armed with understanding.
- 07
Scientists and public affairs
Albert H. Teich
A rigorous, scholarly exploration of how scientific expertise shapes and is shaped by the machinery of government.
- 08
From Dawn to Decadence
Jacques Barzun · 2001
A sweeping, graceful journey through five hundred years of Western intellectual and cultural history.
- 09
Why the West Rules - For Now
Ian Morris
A sweeping, God's-eye view of human history that turns millennia of data into a gripping puzzle about geography, power, and our collective future.
- 10
De la démocratie en Amérique
Alexis de Tocqueville · 2006
A sweeping, prescient journey into the heart of a young nation and the philosophical mechanics of equality.
- 11
Public opinion
Walter Lippmann
A sobering, razor-sharp dissection of how the pictures in our heads are shaped by the media we consume.
- 12
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Neil Postman · 1985
A chillingly prescient autopsy of how society traded critical thought for endless, comfortable distraction.
