The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
Building on his enormously successful first edition, Tom Nichols confirms his thesis that events, such as the COVID pandemic, prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified.

Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, follows up on how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, and importantly, the election of Donald Trump. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.
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The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
Building on his enormously successful first edition, Tom Nichols confirms his thesis that events, such as the COVID pandemic, prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified.

Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, follows up on how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, and importantly, the election of Donald Trump. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.
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The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

by Tom Nichols
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

by Tom Nichols

Paperback(2nd ed.)

$17.99 
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Overview

Building on his enormously successful first edition, Tom Nichols confirms his thesis that events, such as the COVID pandemic, prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified.

Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, follows up on how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, and importantly, the election of Donald Trump. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780197763834
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 04/03/2024
Edition description: 2nd ed.
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 48,959
Product dimensions: 8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Tom Nichols is Professor Emeritus at the US Naval War College, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of numerous books, including Our Own Worst Enemy (Oxford, 2021).

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction: The Death of Expertise (updated)
1. Experts and Citizens
2. How Conversation Became Exhausting
3. Higher Education: The Customer Is Always Right
4. Let Me Google That for You: How Unlimited Information Is Making Us Dumber
5. The "New" New Journalism, and Lots of It
6. When the Experts Are Wrong
7. Disaster Strikes: Experts and Citizens During The COVID Pandemic
Conclusion: Experts and Democracy
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