Stupidity is surprising: this is the main idea in “A Short History of Stupidity,” by the accomplished British critic Stuart Jeffries. It’s easy to be stupid about stupidity, Jeffries argues—to assume that we know what counts as stupid and who is acting stupidly. Stupidity is, more than anything else, familiar. (Jeffries quotes Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote that “the wise in all ages have always said the same thing, and the fools, who at all times form the immense majority, have in their way, too, acted alike, and done just the opposite; and so it will continue.”) But it’s also the case, in Jeffries’s view, that “stupidity evolves, that it mutates and thereby eludes extinction.” It’s possible to write a history of stupidity only because new kinds are always being invented.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter