Some years ago, in October 1991, we published C. John Sommerville’s “How the News Makes Us Dumb,” and I still think it one of the most winsomely wise pieces we have run. Sommerville, professor of history at the University of Florida, has now expanded that essay into a book by the same title, with the subtitle The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society (InterVarsity, 168 pages,, $10.99).
A problem with newspapers and the TV news, says Sommerville, is “periodicity,” the need to package the “news product” in order to fit the schedule of a news industry whose purpose is to attract a crowd for its advertisers. Another problem is our laziness. “We take in only what we can get in periodical form—in small, predigested, daily bites. There are plenty of books out there that would enlighten us, but we are satisfied to read only the reviews by journalists who may be more interested in seeing the ideas dismissed. Can you imagine what a review of this book would look like?”
