Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business - Softcover

Postman, Neil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014303653X ISBN 13: 9780143036531

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

"It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of  entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

“A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Neil Postman (1931–2003) was chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University and founder of its Media Ecology program. He wrote more than twenty books.

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Table of Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Foreword

Part I.

Chapter 1. - The Medium Is the Metaphor

Chapter 2. - Media as Epistemology

Chapter 3. - Typographic America

Chapter 4. - The Typographic Mind

Chapter 5. - The Peek-a-Boo World

Part II.

Chapter 6. - The Age of Show Business

Chapter 7. - "Now ... This"

Chapter 8. - Shuffle Off to Bethlehem

Chapter 9. - Reach Out and Elect Someone

Chapter 10. - Teaching as an Amusing Activity

Chapter 11. - The Huxleyan Warning

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acclaim for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death

"As a fervent evangelist of the age of Hollywood, I publicly opposed Neil Postman's dark picture of our media-saturated future. But time has proved Postman right. He accurately foresaw that the young would inherit a frantically all-consuming media culture of glitz, gossip, and greed."

-Camille Paglia

"A brillant, powerful and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one."

-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"He starts where Marshall McLuhan left off, constructing his arguments with the resources of a scholar and the wit of a raconteur."

- The Christian Science Monitor

"This comes along at exactly the right moment.... We must confront the challenge of his prophetic vision."

-Jonathan Kozol

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

For the last third of the twentieth century, Neil Postman was one of America's foremost social critics and education and communications theorists, and his ideas and accessibility won him an international following. An influential and revered teacher, he was professor for more than forty years at New York University, where he founded the renowned Media Ecology program. Blessed with an unusually far-reaching mind, he authored more than twenty books, producing major works on education (Teaching as a Subversive Activity, The End of Education), childhood (The Disappearance of Childhood), language (Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk), news (How to Watch TV News, with Steve Powers) and technology's impact on culture (Technopoly). Amusing Ourselves to Death remains his most reverberating and widely read book, translated into more than a dozen languages. He was educated at the State University of New York at Fredonia and Columbia University. He died in October 2003, at the age of seventy-two.

Andrew Postman, Neil's son, is the author of five books, including the novel Now I Know Everything. For several years he was a monthly columnist for Glamour and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Magazine, among numerous publications.

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 014303653X
• ISBN 13: 9780143036531
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Penguin Random House Ireland; https://eu-contact.penguin.ie; ; Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street; Dublin; D02 YH68; Irland