Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture by John F. Thornton
With vigor, wit, learning, common sense, and urgency, twenty-three essayist-including John Simon, Cynthia Ozick, Phillip Lopate, George F. Kennan, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Epstein, and Brad Leithauser-examine aspects of our pan-cultural dumbing down and offer both diagnoses of and possible cures for this wasting disease.