Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman

[maribou]

This is a book about what television does to shape national discourse. And it's really really really good. Yeh. It's the sort of book that stirs my brain all up with "Oh, exactly"s and "But what about"s and "Hmm, I wonder how his theories about this would be affected by the passage of time, seeing as this book was written in 1985"s.
The analysis is brilliant; the prognostications fall about 50/50 'my god, how eerie' vs 'enh, not so much'.
I really want to read more of his books, but not for a while.
And randomdreams was absolutely right to recommend this author to me.
(53/200)

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I argued a lot with him but I loved what he said and what he led me to think about. His book of essays, Consciencious Objections, was also quite good, and How To Watch The TV News wasn't as groundbreaking but was on safer ground so I enjoyed it a LOT.

[maribou]

I argued with him a lot too. But someone had argued in the margins of this book *before* me and they were missing the point a lot, which I suspect made me more innately sympathetic to his side of several arguments. Nothing worse than a marginalia-er who just doesn't get it.