Regular marked price: $16.00Discount Price: $10.88
Cost Savings: $5.12 (32%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
EAN num: 9780143113621
ISBN number: 0143113623
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: April 29, 2008
Publishing house: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sale Popularity Level: 8764
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A #1 New York Times bestseller: A visionary analysis of the degradation of our public sphere and its consequences for our democracy
Nobel Peace Prize winner, bestselling author, activist, and political icon, Al Gore has become one of the most respected and influential public intellectuals in America today. The Assault on Reason takes an unprecedented look at how faith in the power of reason—the idea that citizens can govern themselves through rational debate—is now under assault. The marketplace of ideas, once open to everyone through the printed word, has been corrupted by the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith. By leading us to an understanding of what we can do to restore the rule of reason, Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.
Amazon.com:
The very first question many people ask when hearing of a new book from Al Gore is, 'Is it about the environment?' The answer is yes, but it's not (or, rather, not only) the kind of environment he wrote about in Earth in the Balance and of course painted such a vivid picture of in his Oscar-winning documentary (and companion book), An Inconvenient Truth. It's the political environment he's concerned about in The Assault on Reason: the way we debate and decide on the critical issues of the day. In an account that balances theoretical discusion of the foundations of democracy with a lacerating critique of the Bush administration, Gore argues that the marketplace of reasoned debate our country was founded on is being endangered by a variety of allied forces: the use of fear and the misuse of faith, the distractions of our entertainment culture, and the concentrations of power in the national media and the executive branch. In his essay and answers to our questions below, he introduces the crisis he sees, as well as the opportunity for its solution he envisions in the open forums of the Internet. A Message from Al Gore to Amazon.com Readers
I've dedicated my book, The Assault on Reason, to my father, Senator Albert Gore Sr., the bravest politician I've ever known. In the 1970 mid-term elections, President Richard Nixon relied on a campaign of fear to consolidate his power. I was in the military at the time, on my way to Vietnam as an army journalist, and I watched as my father was accused of being unpatriotic because he was steadfast in his opposition to the War--and as he was labeled an atheist because he dared to oppose a constitutional amendment to foster government-sponsored prayer in the public schools. The 1970 campaign is now regarded by political historians as a watershed, marking a sharp decline in the tone of our national discourse--a decline that has only worsened in recent years as fear has become a more powerful political tool than trust, public consumption of entertainment has dramatically surpassed that of serious news, and blind faith has proven more potent than truth.
We are at a pivotal moment in American democracy. The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, has reached levels that were previously unimaginable. It's too easy and too partisan to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes.
Reasoned, focused discourse is vital to our democracy to ensure a well-informed citizenry. But this is difficult in an environment in which we are experiencing a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time--from the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials to Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith.
Never has it been more vital for us to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from the climate crisis to the war in Iraq to the deficits and health and social welfare. Today, reason is under assault by forces using sophisticated techniques such as propaganda, psychology, and electronic mass media. Yet, democracy's advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the Internet, online organizing, blogs, and wikis. Although the challenges we face are great, I am more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government. It is my great hope that those who read my book will choose to become part of a new movement to rekindle the true spirit of America.
Questions for Al Gore
Amazon.com:Of all I've read and seen on climate change, I don't think anything has had quite the impact on me that those vivid maps of shrinking coastlines did in An Inconvenient Truth. You've spent years trying to communicate the threat of climate change and you've learned how to use compelling images to tell that story, but in this book you're very wary of the power of visual images to overwhelm reason with fear. How do you spur people to action in a crisis like this without using fear?
Gore: I often open the slideshow by talking about the 'climate crisis.' The English meaning of the word 'crisis' conveys alarm, but the Chinese and Japanese expressions use two characters together: the very first means danger, but the second means opportunity. The animations do help to convey some of that sense of danger--but the opportunities are enormous. We are beginning to see companies taking advantage of the new markets that are emerging as they innovate and put to market the technologies that we need to solve this crisis. Some have become ubiquitous, like the hybrid electric engine and compact fluorescent light bulb. There are thousands of opportunities like this all around us if governments will show the type of bold leadership that we need--and work with industry to exploit these opportunities.
Amazon.com: You describe two problems with television culture: it's a top-down system in which, as you say, 'Individuals receive, but they cannot send,' and its physiological vividness allows it to bypass our reason. The user-created communities that seem so promising on the Internet would seem to solve the very first problem, but what about the second?
Gore: There are a number of barriers for individuals who want to communicate over TV. The major networks won't give average Americans a voice, and it is virtually impossible to start a channel. One solution, that I have worked on with my partner, Joel Hyatt, is the creation of Current TV, where viewers can submit content over the Internet to air on the channel.
With regards to the Internet, anyone with acess to a computer and broadband can create a website or blog and post content. They can send information into the public forum. Of course, we need to continue to work to bridge the digital divide, to ensure that we expand the acess of people to the Internet, but the threshold for entry is much lower than that of television.
Amazon.com: You're the chairman of Current TV, the interactive cable channel aimed at young people. Can you talk about the challenges of constructing a platform where the kind of substantive dialogue you are looking for can take place?
Gore: One of the things I talk about in the book is infotainment--the 'well-amused' audience that is bombarded with the latest programming about O.J. Simpson, or JonBenet Ramsey, or Anna Nicole Smith. What we are trying to do, in part, is to provide a public forum for viewers to submit content about issues of concern to them. And they have, by the thousands, on issues from the war in Iraq to the environment to education and others. I am continually amazed by both the quality of the submissions and the breadth and depth of the subject matter.
Amazon.com: You have a chapter on the importance of checks and balances in government (in a sense, that's what the whole book is about), and we're seeing the effect that active oversight from Congress is having right now. For most of your eight years in office, you and Bill Clinton had to work with a Republican Congress. I'm sure that at times (say, 1998) that had its frustrations, but do you think it was valuable to have that balance, or did it prevent you from doing what you came into office to do?
Gore: Checks and balances are vital to the functioning of our system of government. Of course it can have its frustrations, but the Founders intended that we have a system whereby no one branch has too much control over the others. Ultimately, it is up to voters to decide the control of Congress and the White House and then for elected officials to work to serve the public interest and to try to implement policies that serve the country. These are core values that are at the heart of who we are as a nation.
Amazon.com: I wanted to ask about the Office of the Vice President. I think it's safe to say that the last two vice presidents, you and Dick Cheney, have been the most powerful and influential in our history. Why do you think that is?
Gore: I think the answer is very different in the two administrations, but in a world that is truly globalized, with a broader information ecology, with challenges ranging from a more complex system of international issues ranging from the climate crisis to asymmetric attacks, it is not a surprise that a President might choose to draw upon more advice from the office of the vice president than in the past. This is a trend that I would expect to continue under future presidents, as the range of the demands on the presidency will not diminish over time.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Don Stacy
Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
August 13, 2008
Al Gore
Nashville, TN, USA
Dear Mr Gore,
Ocassionally I will be prompted to write to an author whose work I
found interesting or informative or of exceptional literary value. I
have been deeply moved by what you have said so far in The Assault on
Reason. Obviously you are the only person who could have written this
very unusual critique of the present weakened state of public
discourse.
Not only have you produced an unassailable indictment of the
fault-filled Bush years in the White House, and of his appalling
disregard for authortative reports from various people to whom he
should have paid careful attention, but you have also easily
vindicated yourself for America's failure to elect you as President in
2000.
Before I moved to China to teach English at a "software college" in
Yunnan Province, I had been studying computer science at a small
university in Idaho. I was particularly interested in your metaphore
of a massively parallel system in comparison to the public workings of
Democracy and Capitalism. I thought it rather illuminating--but then
your entire book is exceedingly illuminating and I must thank you for
having written it.
I hope that not a few Conservatives will have the simple courage and
good sense to read your book, thus innoculating themselves against the
further tendency to immerse their heads in the moist warm sand of
willful neglect of the truth. But of course there are those, some whom
you refer to, the radio hosts and so forth, who will deride you as
before hoping to seek a laugh from their gullible audience, who smugly
retain their shallow views and unwittingly mock Truth itself in doing
so.
When you pointed out that Capitalism has proven to be a far more
efficiently workable economic system than Communism, you illustrated
this with the emaciation that is North Korea, and the lumbering
corruption-ridden former Soviet Union. You might have also mentioned
Cuba. The one country you did not mention--which would have interfered
with your argument--is China, a timely topic right now, considering the
Olympic Games.
I've only read a few books about the modern political history of
China, most recently a biography of one of their Presidents, Zhang
Zhemin. Now, we are all perfectly aware thanks to TV coverage of the
Olympics just what China has become in so astonishingly short a time.
The Chinese are accustomed to change like no other people on the
planet, I believe. And thanks to Deng Xiao Ping and his hand-picked
successor, Zhang Zhemin, the country is now on its way to surpassing
the United States as an economic power, a thought which would have
been inconceivable twenty years ago.
I'd be curious to know your views on China. Perhaps someday you will
publish a book which touches upon the relations between the United
States and this protean nation so crowded with people, so determined
toward prosperity, so different from anything we have seen before.
Respectfully yours,
Don Stacy
Rated by buyers -
Regardless of your political disposition, everyone should read this book. It is NOT about global warming, it is about the current state of our democracy, and what we can do to improve it. Highly recommended!
Rated by buyers 
-
Who would have thought Al Gore could be so eloquent, persuasive, and passionate? Well, he is. And he has no qualms with monopolizing the market of inconvenient truths. "The Assault on Reason" reveals a truth that, if we aren't already well-aware of, almost certainly intuit: reason, logic, and truth are in alarming short-supply in this country and if we, as a people, don't open our eyes, turn off our televisions, and engage in the national political discourse, the sovereignty of our country may slip away. One such reason for this lack of reason, as it were, is America's obsession with television and the four hours and thirty-five minutes we spend, on average, watching it *every* day. The bumper-sticker advice, "Kill your television", is now more important and timely than ever. Nevertheless, Gore brackets his points re: television with a discusion of the internet at the end of the book and how, if allowed to develop largely free of government intervention, could revive the national discourse, stave off further anti-intellectualism, and steer this country back toward a country of the people, by the people, for the people. In sum, Gore's treatise is well-written, artfully presented, and capable of inspiring rage, disgust, and...the motivation to return our government to one of laws -- not incompetent, power-obsessed, religiously crazed men.
Rated by buyers -
Oh Al, if only you had spoken like this when you were running for president the country might not be in the mess it is in today. I have no desire to get lost in what if, but with the Assault on Reason, Gore gives us a glimpse into what life could have been like with a president that got A's in school instead of C's. (Which turned out to be more important that we thought it would, especially since in school all one ever hears is "if you at least make the average you to can do well in whatever you choose." Man was that wrong.) Gore's guiding principal is that with the advent of the television and the decline in reading, a culture that holds no emphasis on such things as facts and logic has emerged. Gore's book is eloquent in a manner one would not assume he possessed, what with his performance on the campaign trail. Like all books of this type Gore makes his point in the very first two thirds and spends the last third dragging it out until forever, but its still good.
Rated by buyers -
Excellent book. Gore will eventually be respected for what he is, a visionary American politician. He has brought global warming to the conscience of America and with this book he will bring the lack of conscience that the American right wing is inflicted with.
Find other books like this one:
