Author of the New York Times best seller,
“The Age of American Unreason”

Susan Jacoby

speaking on

“Reason, Unreason and Religion:
Say It Ain't So,
Where Did America's Rationality Go?”

Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 11 a.m.
Launer Auditorium • Columbia College • 1001 Rogers St.
Columbia, MO

Doors open at 10 a.m.  •  Tickets not required.
 

Susan Jacoby

About Susan Jacoby

Susan Jacoby focuses on the convergence of social forces, which are usually treated as separate entities, that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism. These social forces include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the future of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the triumph of video over print culture. Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of “junk thought” that makes no effort to separate fact from opinion.

Susan Jacoby book cover: The Age of American Unreason“The Age of American Unreason” is Jacoby's eighth book. She is the author of seven previous books, most recently “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,” named a Notable Book of 2004 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

Other books include “Moscow Conversations,” based on her experiences in Moscow from 1969 to 1971; “Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1984; and “Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past.”

Jacoby has been a contributor for more than 25 years to various periodicals and newspapers, on topics including law, religion, medicine, aging, women's rights, Russian literature and political dissent in the Soviet Union. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, Harper's, The Nation, Vogue, The American Prospect, Mother Jones and the AARP Magazine.

She also is program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think-tank, and is a regular panelist for On Faith, a blog published by Newsweek and The Washington Post. She has her own political blog, “The Secularist's Corner,” on the Web site of The Washington Post.

Previous lectures in Religious Studies

2007 Dr. Stephen J. Patterson, professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis. “The Jesus Seminar Mutiny: How Scholarship, Beads and a Little Pluck Sparked a Revolution in the Search for the Historical Jesus”
2006 Martin Marty, pastor, author and Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “Religion: the Healer That Kills and the Killer that Heals”
2005 Ellen O’Grady, artist and social activist. “Outside the Ark: An Artist’s Journey in Occupied Palestine”
2004 Rev. John Yonker of First Christian Church and Rabbi Yossi Feintuch of Congregation Beth Shalom of Columbia, Mo. “The History and Current Use of Religion in Politics”
2003 Dr. Shakir Hoomodi, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Central Missouri. “Reflections on the Mideast: War, Politics and Religion”
2002 Dr. Linda Lindsey, professor of sociology and coordinator of women’s studies, Maryville University of St. Louis. “Women under Islam”

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