Rick Shenkman's "Just How Stupid Are We?"

Rick Shenkman is the editor and founder of George Mason University's History News Network, and author of the recently released Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to the new book and reported the following:

My book flunks the p. 99 test. All readers will get by dipping into the book on that page is a discussion of the shallowness of TV. This is not breaking news. What is, then? My book argues that we are ignoring a 10 alarm fire: the gross of ignorance of millions of Americans about politics, best summed up by the fact that a majority believed on the eve of the Iraq War that Saddam was behind 9-11. (50 % continued to believe this even after the 9-11 Commission definitively reported that he was not.) How can you have a healthy democracy when a majority are so ill-informed about the central issue of our time?

Watch a video and read more about the book and author at the Just How Stupid Are We? blog.

--Marshal Zeringue