Anti-intellectualism in American Life.

Probably the single best book of its type.

Lots of information, lots of examples. Gives me a lot to think about, and I'm still processing what I have learned.

This will give me a good foundation in understanding similar books, written for a lay audience, and the underpinnings of some of the primary conflicts in our culture.

American politics is a struggle between people who believe that an 8th grade education should be sufficient to understand the issues facing us, and people who understand that it is not so.

American religion is a dichotomy between people who believe that understanding not only the Bible, but historical writings in religion and philosophy are important to understanding the word of God. And people who believe that faith and spirit are all you need to understand God's will, and in fact, that any study intended to instruct one in historical context will actually detract from faith and spirit.

American education has been, and continues to be, plagued by a misunderstanding of “democracy” - having high-achievers and low-achievers does not make a school undemocratic - as well as a very practical “preparation for life” curriculum which considers theory irrelevant in comparison to practice. Learning physiology, for example, has at times been considered less useful than learning how to exercise, although the latter is an extension of the former. It's not even so much that schools at varying points in the last 100 years have failed to teach students to think for themselves, it's that schools have at varying points assumed that the average student cannot think for him or herself.