America: Are we losing our mind? / The knowledge requirement: what every American needs to know / States of mind: indicators of intellectual and cognitive decline. The troubling trend of cultural IQ / Biblical literacy matters / Why Johnny and Joanie can't write, revisited / College graduates: satisfies, but adrift / Anatomy of an epidemic / Personal and cognitive habits/interests. A wired nation tunes out the news / Catching our eye : the alluring fallacy of knowing at a glance / The rise of the self and the decline of intellectual and civic interest / Has internet-fueled conspiracy-mongering crested? / National consequences. Dependency in America: American exceptionalism and the entitlement state / Political ignorance in America / In defense of difficulty: how the decline of the ideal of seriousness has dulled democracy in the name of phony populism / We live in the age of feelings / How colleges create the "expectation of confirmation" / The new antinomian attitude