Today's edition of the New York Times features a piece on Susan Jacoby’s new book , The Age of American Unreason, which the author’s website describes as a “tough-minded work of contemporary history [that] paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy.”

According to the New York Times, Jacoby was first inspired to write the book on September 11, 2001: “Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment..., overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II... ‘This is just like Pearl Harbor,’ one of the men said. The other asked, ‘What is Pearl Harbor?’ ‘That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,’ the first man replied. At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, ‘I decided to write this book.’”

Ms. Jacoby will be appearing at the Central Library's Montgomery Auditorium on Tuesday, March 4, at 7:00 p.m. (This event is free; no tickets required.)