“Burger King” Books

Author David Rieff laments the rise of “fast thought” in books and decrease of works written in the spirit of scholarly investigation, not just to illustrate a thesis. “In this age of the sound bite, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, multitasking and new media, the books that commercial publishers seem to want to publish, and that ambitious policy intellectuals aspire to write…are for the most part the intellectual equivalent of a meal at Burger King or Taco Bell. At first bite, tasty, appealing and seemingly complete; in the end, bloating, cloying and empty of genuine intellectual fortification.”