Amusing Ourselves to Death Audiobook By Neil Postman cover art

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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Amusing Ourselves to Death

By: Neil Postman
Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
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In this eloquent and persuasive book, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs, and how "entertainment values" have corrupted the very way we think.

As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given less and less expression in the form of the printed word, they are rapidly being reshaped to suit the requirements of television. And because television is a visual medium, whose images are most pleasurably apprehended when they are fast-moving and dynamic, discourse on television has little tolerance for argument, hypothesis, or explanation. Postman argues that public discourse, the advancing of arguments in logical order for the public good, once a hallmark of American culture, is being converted from exposition and explanation to entertainment.

©1985 Neil Postman (P)1994 Blackstone Audio Inc. Social Sciences Media Studies Politics & Government Thought-Provoking History & Criticism Entertainment Film & TV Entertainment & Performing Arts Funny Inspiring

Critic reviews

"A brilliant, powerful and important book.... This is a brutal indictment Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one." ( Washington Post Book World)
"[Postman] starts where Marshall McLuhan left off, constructing his arguments with the resources of a scholar and the wit of a raconteur." ( Christian Science Monitor)
"A sustained, withering and thought-provoking attack on television and what it is doing to us.... Postman goes further than other critics in demonstrating that television represents a hostile attack on literate culture." ( Publishers Weekly)
Prophetic Insights • Thought-provoking Analysis • Clear Pronunciation • Relevant Cultural Critique • Philosophical Depth

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An amazing read! This book just becomes more and more prescient as time passes and technology advances shaping our culture and society. Minor ding on the performance for reading it too fast. I had to slow it down to 0.9 speed, and then I settled into the reader’s cadence much better.

This continues to gain relevance, listen up!

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incredible and thought provoking. is able to be correlated to the internet now a days

why isnt this required reading just to let people

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With Donald Trumps ascension to the highest office in the land, the prophecy has been fulfilled.

We are all screwed.

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Great performance of a text as relevant and prophetic as Huxley's Brave New World ever was.

Then As It Is Now

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Amazing how spot on this analysis is of TV & culture and how many completely accurate his predictions were in 1984 about what the future culture would look like. Must read if you are at all interested in understanding media bias and decline of the culture particularly in the US.

This guy is a true oracle...

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