Welcome to Litsy!

This book was as depressing as it was interesting. Notably it was written before the pandemic so today‘s reader is left feeling like there‘s a lot missing from the discussion. However the points made still feel spot on as someone who works for a firm where thought leadership used to be a big part of our business.

This just didn't say anything new or have any real solutions.

#12BooksOf2021 My twelve favorite books of 2021.

May

I finally gave up on this and put it in the mail back to @Riveted_Reader_Melissa . I don‘t know if it was the move or what, but every time I sat down to read this I got very cranky, and not in a fun intellectual discourse way.

Thanks for a great nonfiction summer! Looking forward to next year :) @tjwill @BarbaraTheBibliophage

Nichols covers a lot of ground here, but is also clear and relatable. Okay, he‘s also an academic and a curmudgeon. But if you get frustrated at conversations with self-proclaimed and Google-based experts, this might be the book for you. Nichols discusses how this alarming trend happened and how it impacts our daily lives. It‘s a slow read, but worth the effort.

Full review http://www.TheBibliophage.com #nfornonfiction

Using my around-the-neck book lamp in a more comfortable way. It sits up on the pillows behind my head. Or maybe the aliens landed and took over my body … 👽 💡

This book discusses why people dislike listening to experts, examining the problem from different angles in society. Nichols explains the ideal role of the layperson & the expert as fellow citizens. He approaches the topic through his role as a U.S. foreign policy expert & professor. He gives plenty of examples, from current events & history, which he connects seamlessly, even if he does verge on ranting a couple times.

#NforNonfiction group

Just received this today—thanks @Riveted_Reader_Melissa ! I‘m finishing Nabokov‘s Favorite Word is Mauve this week, and then jumping right into this one! I love the condescending blurbs on the cover! 😁😬#NforNonfiction

This is a good look at a growing problem in Western Culture, and one we all need to be aware of. Nichols does a good job outlining how we got here, where some of the breakdown has occurred, and why it might have happened, as well as a few suggestions for both laypeople and experts about how we might dig our way back out. I‘ll admit though, by the end I wanted an update with his analysis of the COVID & insurrection years that have happened since.

Outstanding! This is such an important book!

(Continued)....White House," he said at the time.

Richard Dawkins

Although the internet could be making all of us smarter, it makes many of us stupider, because it's not just a magnet for the curious. It's a sinkhole for the gullible. It renders everyone an instant expert. You have a degree? Well, I did a Google search! --Frank Bruni

Tennesee law professor Glenn Reynolds.

(Continued)...capacity to understand, or even their own fault.

As the renowned physicist Werner Heisenberg once put it, an expert "is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them." His fellow physicist Niels Bohr had a different take: "An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."

In modern America, policy debates sound increasingly like fights between groups of ill-informed people who all manage to be wrong at the same time. Those political leaders who manage to be smarter than the public (and there seem to be fewer of those lately) wade into these donnybrooks and contradict their constituents at their own peril.

When I heard about this book, this Asimov quotation (which is one of my all-time favorites) immediately came to mind. As you can see, the author opened the Introduction with it.

This is the opposite of knowledge, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.