The American scene, once so full of richness, promise, vitality, and achievement, now strikes many critics as a dispiriting carnival of follies, a spectacle of decline. In every area of our lives - including, but not limited to, education, politics, journalism, literature, ethics, film, religion, popular culture, jurisprudence, psychiatry, and even cuisine - one can observe an ominous slippage, a shift towards the bizarre, the third-rate, the purely opportunistic.

How did such a vibrant legacy of knowledge, tradition, and competence come to be so rapidly squandered in so short a time? And can this pan-cultural "dumbing down" be halted or reversed?

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This volume collects twenty-three essays - most of them written for this book - that confront such developments with vigor, wit, learning, common sense, and urgency. Contributors include such superb critics and commentators as Philip Lopate, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Vincent Miller, Joseph Epstein, Sven Birkerts, George F. Kennan, Brad Leithauser, and John Simon. Various in their styles, concerns, and political allegiances, they are united in their dismay about a culture in the throes of dismantling itself.

The essays in Dumbing Down, whether well-modulated or cries from the heart, are a call to action and renewal.