[rkomar]

I'm not going to talk about any particular writers, but I got annoyed a long time ago at how little thinking material there is nowadays in "thought provoking" books. There's usually one main concept, two or three variations on it, and they get hammered in with example after example after example... Three hundred page books could have been published as ten page pamphlets and no ideas would be lost. Being a slow reader makes the puffed-out prose even more irritating to me.

It seems to me that this editorial policy of assuming low critical thinking skills in your readers is tied to the anti-intellectual flavour of the prose. I guess you're not going to ever get a mass market hit selling books to erudite critical thinkers.