Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
24 Rating(s)
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Author: Neil Postman

Narrator: Jeff Riggenbach

Unabridged: 4 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook (DRM Protected)

Published: 01/01/2007

Synopsis

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.

About Neil Postman

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. His son Andrew Postman is the author of five books, and his work appears in numerous publications.

About Jeff Riggenbach

Jeff Riggenbach (1947-2021) narrated numerous titles for Blackstone Audio and won an AudioFile Earphones Award. An author, contributing editor, and producer, he worked in radio in San Francisco for more than thirty years, earning a Golden Mike Award for journalistic excellence.

Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on February 15, 2023

*A brief ‘update’ of sorts or rather some thoughts that I think might relate* I recently had a discussion about dreams and how when I was younger we were taught people do not dream in color, which was something both of us felt wasn’t true of our own. So I read up more on it and discovered those studi......more

Goodreads review by Rickeclectic on February 18, 2009

Disappointing. Read it if you have to (it is considered to be an "important" book for media folks), but otherwise, just read the following and skip the book. Mr. Postman is obviously a well read person and the book claims the values logic and argument, but his arguments are off kilter. This is espec......more

Goodreads review by David on January 31, 2009

Well, yes, Mr Postman. You're undoubtedly right in much of your analysis. And I suppose it was prescient of you to be so right way back in 1985 when you wrote this book. But having said that, I'm not sure what else to add. Here we are in 2009. Arnold Schwarzenegger is governor of the state I live in.......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on June 22, 2012

Amusing Ourselves to Death is the spiritual sequel to Boorstin's The Image. Postman wants us to realize that there is something inherently inferior about the information we consume through visual media. Forget television designed for entertainment - which is at least honest - and focus in something......more

Goodreads review by Old Dog on July 14, 2023

There are so many moving parts to the western world and its cultural decline. I have read several books now that pinpoint different areas as the main cause, and these books have convinced me that it is a combination of coinciding or connecting factors that culminate into our cultural deterioration.......more

Quotes

“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

“A lucid and very funny jeremiad about how public discourse has been degraded.” Mother Jones

“[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

“This is a ‘must listen’ for anyone who hopes to understand what the new ‘information society’ might be like. A well-produced effort for serious listening.”  Library Journal

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