Amusing Ourselves to Death
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Ranked #1 in Citizenship, Ranked #1 in Media — see more rankings.
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Reviews and Recommendations
We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Amusing Ourselves to Death from the world's leading experts.
Austin Kleon Earlier this year Postman’s son Andrew wrote an op-ed with the title, “My dad predicted Trump in 1985 — it’s not Orwell, he warned, it’s Brave New World.” Postman wrote: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.” (Source)
Steve Lance Neil Postman took the work of Marshall McLuhan – who was putting out early theories on media – and built on them. However, Postman was far more observant and empirical about the trends occurring in the media landscape. The trends which he identifies in Amusing Ourselves to Death, written in the 1980s, have since all come true. For example, he predicted that if you make news entertaining, then it’s a short slippery slope until you start making entertainment the news and, as we have seen, he was absolutely right on about that. He was also right about the fact that, whilst we were all concerned... (Source)
Kara Nortman @andrewchen Also a great book on the topic - Amusing Ourselves to Death https://t.co/yWLBxKumLQ (Source)
Stephen Kinsella @AlanReillyIRL @t0nyyates @WhelanKarl Yes! Fantastic book. So glad you're re-reading it. (Source)
Timothy Burke @ParkerMolloy oh, this is great. I used a lot of this book when teaching Persuasion in Media classes 15 or so years ago. (Source)
Tristan Harris Recommends this book
Rankings by Category
Amusing Ourselves to Death is ranked in the following categories:
- #29 in Communication
- #27 in Communication Skills
- #30 in Critical Thinking
- #2 in Culture
- #22 in Current
- #40 in Education
- #34 in Entertaining
- #33 in Entertainment
- #2 in Events
- #18 in Humanity
- #29 in Intellectual
- #5 in Propaganda
- #34 in Research
- #6 in Rhetoric
- #36 in Smart
- #39 in Social
- #10 in Social Engineering
- #44 in Social Psychology
- #20 in Social Sciences
- #24 in Social Studies
- #11 in Sociology
- #14 in Technology
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