A bold, insightful book that rejects the myth of "America the Unphilosophical," arguing that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace for truth and debate that far surpasses ancient Greece or any other place one can name. With verve and keen intelligence, Carlin Romano--Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning book critic, and professor of philosophy--takes on the widely held belief that ours is an anti-intellectual society. Instead, while providing a richly reported overview of American thought, Romano argues that ordinary Americans see through phony philosophical justifications faster than anyone else, and that the best of our thinkers ditch artificial academic debates for fresh intellectual enterprises, such as cyberphilosophy. Along the way, Romano provocatively seeks to topple philosophy's most fiercely admired hero, Socrates, asserting that it is Isocrates, the nearly forgotten Greek philosopher who rejected certainty, whom Americans should honor as their intellectual ancestor. America the Philosophicalis a rebellious tour de force that both celebrates our country's unparalleled intellectual energy and promises to bury some of our most hidebound cultural clich s.