Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking

Dumbth (pron. dum-th) adj: a tendency toward muddle-headedness, or wilful stupidity appearing in all segments of American life. Updated, expanded with 20 new ways to think better, and highlighted with a new introduction, this is Steve Allen’s humorous and provocative examination of contemporary thought or lack of it in our society. When it first appeared nearly a decade ago, Dumbth : and 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter was hailed by critics across the country as the book that would wake up Americans to their tendency toward poor thinking. Labelling the ineptitude phenomenon as ‘dumbth’, Allen has probed the depths of mass ignorance in thinking, speech, and actions for more than thirty years as he observed increased inefficiency, shoddy workmanship, bad service, and an overall breakdown in the capacity to reason. Today, while politicians and school boards play into the popular foolishness by proposing use of ‘dumbed down’ texts and a street language called ‘ebonics’ to reach students, Allen urges another kind of education. Allen explains the problem of fuzzy thinking in detail, and optimistically proposes many simple yet necessary remedies to ‘dumbth’ in the 101 rules for good thinking, reading, writing, speaking, and, most importantly, reasoning.