THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION by...

THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION by Bill McKibben (Plume: $10; 261 pp.). McKibben reviewed every program broadcast on all 93 cable television stations in Fairfax, Va., during a 24-hour period, and contrasts the hyperactive excesses of televangelists, game shows, newscasts, nature documentaries, infomercials and vintage sitcoms with the serenity of a day spent in the Adirondacks. His bucolic reflections lead him to challenge the belief that Americans have entered the much-ballyhooed Age of Information: “While in a certain narrow sense this is the case, in many important ways just the opposite is true. We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach. An Unenlightenment.”