Allen deserves credit for addressing a very real and growing national problem.
Booklist (featured review)
Readers will find entertaining anecdotes - and something to think about.
Library Journal
Polymath Allen brings his considerable talents to bear on a phenomenon that is increasingly a concern of critics of contemporary Americans - the "unprecedented amount of mental incapacitation" in our society.... Instructive in a pleasing, popular way ... tempering missionary zeal with humor and humanesness, Allen addresses a sorry condition and, better yet, suggests solutions.
Publishers Weekly
Critics raved about the first edition of "Dumbth" - a work that one described as "the ultimate how-to book." Now updated and expanded with twenty new ways to think better, this is Steve Allen's humorous and provocative examination of the increasing American tendency toward muddle-headedness and ineptitude, which Allen uniquely defines as "Dumbth". After cataloguing a host of hilarious and sometimes alarming personal encounters with shoddy workmanship, bad service, failures to communicate and the general breakdown in the capacity to reason, Allen offers 101 solutions to this widespread problem. He recommends we add a fourth"R" - reasoning - to the traditional reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic. Always witty and thought-provoking, "Dumbth" makes a compelling case that thinking well, like any skill, requires study, practice and application.
Steve Allen is the creator of the Tonight show and the award-winning PBS series Meeting of Minds. He has authored more than fifty books.