I will be brief about this. Neil Postman's book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH is simply outstanding. As a detailed intellectual analysis, it shows just one reason for the non-book reading, Fox news-watching, anti-intellectual climate that currently pervades the United States in 2008.

The causes are many, but have a common thread--television--a medium which has insinuated itself into the mindlessness of popular culture--so much so that any ignorant, but photo-friendly fool or front-man (one old, or younger) along with his right-wing, neo-con, neo-liberal cohorts and advisors can TWICE ascend to the highest levels of political power in the U.S.

Can anyone read this book and not partially understand the devolution of critical reasoning that has produced such a total debacle of political and governmental competence--all of which were based on carefully crafted lies and smooth media presentations??? From lies about Saddam Hussein's WMD's or his link to Al-Quieda, to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, even to the outrageous stupidity of Kansas creationists. (If ANY of these people are the products of "intelligent design", God help us all!)

The culpability is readily seen in glib campaign promises about political "change"--which is ALWAYS trotted out at EVERY election cycle by EVERY slick politican in their sixty-second ads or 60 Minute interviews (which only proves just how stupidly gullible and mindless American voters have become.)

But Postman was right about Huxley--and wrong about Orwell. While the corporate masters feed the multitudes the utter mindlessness of reality television shows, info-tainment, and religious programming as predicted by Huxley, the thinkers and readers and the intellectuals in this society have been and are presently being subjected to an Orwellian nightmare of total information networking and surveillance. The thought-police are alive, busy, and growing like cancer on the body politic--monitoring computers, chat-rooms, e-mails, credit card purchases, library check-outs, medical, dental, and insurance records, even casino visits; using RFID's, GPS tracking, and even satellite and digital tv's for surveillance--all as authorized by the USA Patriot Acts. Books may not YET be banned (or burned ala Farenheit 451), but those who read them will be watched and monitored.

Both U.S. history and the FBI's COINTELPRO shows that many of these people will be set-up, run-down, arrested, and imprisoned--while the masses happily monitor their trials and phone-in their votes via some reality television show--perhaps called American Idolator, or better yet, American Heretics. ("Cops" and "Big Brother." are already taken.)

One million U.S. citizens are currently on the Department of Homeland Security's watch list. ONE MILLION!!! Can you feel the heat??? If not, don't worry...be happy. It's all coming soon to more people like you. Be sure to look for it. It's gonna be Hot, and one hell of a witch-hunt!!!

I will be brief about this. Neil Postman's book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH is simply outstanding. As a detailed intellectual analysis, it shows just one reason for the non-book reading, Fox news-watching, anti-intellectual climate that currently pervades the United States in 2008.

The causes are many, but have a common thread--television--a medium which has insinuated itself into the mindlessness of popular culture--so much so that any ignorant, but photo-friendly fool, and front-man (one old, or younger) with his right-wing, neo-con, neo-liberal cohorts and advisors can TWICE ascend to the highest levels of political power in the U.S.

Can anyone read this book and not partially understand the devolution of critical reasoning that has produced such a total debacle of political and governmental competence--all based on carefully crafted lies and smooth media presentations??? From lies about Saddam Hussein's WMD's or his link to Al-Quieda, to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, even to the outrageous stupidity of Kansas creationists. (IF ANY OF THESE PEOPLE are the products of "intelligent design", God help us all!)

The culpability is readily seen in glib campaign promises about political "change"--which is ALWAYS trotted out at EVERY election cycle by EVERY slick politican in their sixty-second ads or 60 Minute interviews (which only proves just how stupidly gullible and mindless American voters have become.)

But Postman was right about Huxley--and wrong about Orwell. While the corporate masters feed the multitudes the utter mindlessness of reality television shows, info-tainment, and religious programming as predicted by Huxley, the thinkers and readers and the intellectuals in this society have been and are presently being subjected to an Orwellian nightmare of total information networking and surveillance. The thought-police are alive, busy, and growing like cancer on the body politic--monitoring computers, chat-rooms, e-mails, credit card purchases, library check-outs, medical, dental, and insurance records, even casino visits; using RFID's, GPS tracking, and even satellite and digital tv's for surveillance--all as authorized by the USA Patriot Acts. Books may not YET be banned (or burned ala Farenheit 451), but those who read them will be watched and monitored.

Both U.S. history and the FBI's COINTELPRO shows that many of these people will be set-up, run-down, arrested, and imprisoned--while the masses happily monitor their trials and phone-in their votes via some reality television show--perhaps called American Idolator, or better yet, American Heretics. ("Cops" and "Big Brother." are already taken.)

One million U.S. citizens are currently on the Department of Homeland Security's watch list. ONE MILLION!!! Can you feel the heat??? If not, don't worry...be happy. It's all coming soon to more people like you. Be sure to look for it. It's gonna be one Hot time and witch-hunt!!!

I will be brief about this. Neil Postman's book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH is simply outstanding. As a detailed intellectual analysis, it shows just one reason for the non-book reading, Fox news-watching, anti-intellectual climate that currently pervades the United States in 2008.

The causes are many, but have a common thread--television--a medium which has insinuated itself into the mindlessness of popular culture--so much so that any ignorant, but photo-friendly fool (one old, or younger) with his right-wing, neo-con, neo-liberal cohorts and advisors can TWICE ascend to the highest levels of political power in the U.S.

Can anyone read this book and not partially understand the devolution of critical reasoning that has produced such a total debacle of political and governmental competence--all based on carefully crafted lies and smooth media presentations??? From lies about Saddam Hussein's WMD's or his link to Al-Quieda, to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, even to the outrageous stupidity of Kansas creationists. (If ANY of these people are the products of "intelligent design", God help us all!)

The culpability is readily seen in glib campaign promises about political "change"--which is ALWAYS trotted out at EVERY election cycle by EVERY slick politican in their sixty-second ads or 60 Minute interviews (which only proves just how stupidly gullible and mindless American voters have become.)

But Postman was right about Huxley--and wrong about Orwell. While the corporate masters feed the multitudes the utter mindlessness of reality television shows, info-tainment, and religious programming as predicted by Huxley, the thinkers and readers and the intellectuals in this society have been and are presently being subjected to an Orwellian nightmare of total information networking and surveillance. The thought-police are alive, busy, and growing like cancer on the body politic--monitoring computers, chat-rooms, e-mails, credit card purchases, library check-outs, medical records, even casino visits; using RFID's, GPS tracking, and even satellite and digital tv's for surveillance--all as authorized by the USA Patriot Acts. Books may not yet be banned (or burned ala Farenheit 451), but those who read them will be watched and monitored.

Both U.S. history and the FBI's COINTELPRO shows that many of these people will be set-up, run-down, arrested, and imprisoned--while the masses happily monitor their trials and phone-in their votes via some reality television show--perhaps called American Idolator, or better yet, American Heretics. ("Cops" and "Big Brother." are already taken.)

One million U.S. citizens are currently on the Department of Homeland Security's watch list. ONE MILLION!!! Can you feel the heat??? If not, don't worry...be happy. It's all coming soon to more people like you. Be sure to look for it. It's Hot!!!

I will be brief about this. Neil Postman's book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH is simply outstanding. As a detailed intellectual analysis, it shows just one reason for the non-book reading, Fox news-watching, anti-intellectual climate that currently pervades the United States in 2008.

The causes are many, but have a common thread--television--a medium which has insinuated itself into the mindlessness of popular culture--so much that any ignorant, but photo-friendly fool (elder or younger) with his right-wing, neo-con, neo-liberal cohorts and advisors can TWICE ascend to the highest levels of political power in the U.S.

Can anyone read this book and not partially understand the devolution of critical reasoning that has produced such a total debacle of political and governmental incompetence--all of which is based on carefully crafted lies and smooth media presentations??? From lies about Saddam Hussein's WMD's or his link to Al-Quieda, to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, even to the outrageous stupidity of Kansas creationists. (If ANY of these people are the products of "intelligent design", God help us all!)

The culpability is readily seen in glib campaign promises about political "change"--which is ALWAYS trotted out at EVERY election cycle by EVERY slick politican in sixty-second ads or 60 Minute interviews (which only proves just how stupidly gullible and mindless American voters have become.)

But Postman was right about Huxley--and wrong about Orwell. While the corporate masters feed the multitudes the utter mindlessness of reality television shows, info-tainment, and religious programming as predicted by Huxley, the thinkers and readers and the intellectuals in this society have been and are presently being subjected to an Orwellian nightmare of total information networking and surveillance. The thought-police are alive, busy, and growing like cancer on the body politic--monitoring computers, chat-rooms, e-mails, credit card purchases, library check-outs, medical records, even casino visits; using RFID's, gps tracking, and even satellite and digital tv's for surveillance--all as authorized by the USA Patriot Acts. Books may not yet be banned (or burned ala Farenheit 451), but those who read them will be watched and monitored.

Both U.S. history and the FBI's Cointelpro shows that many of these people will be set-up, run-down, arrested and imprisoned--while the masses happily monitor their trials and phone-in their votes via some reality television show--perhaps called American Idolators, or better yet, American Heretics. ("Cops" and "Big Brother." are already taken.)

Can you feel the heat??? If not, don't worry...be happy. It's all coming soon to people like you. Be sure to look for it. It's Hot!!!

I will be brief about this. Neil Postman's book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH is simply an outstanding exegesis--showing just one likely reason for the non-reading, anti-intellectual climate that pervades the United States in 2008. The causes are many, but many have a common thread--television has so insinuated itself into the mindlessness of popular culture, that any ignorant fool, along with his neo-con, neo-liberal cohorts and advisors can ascend to the highest levels of political power in the U.S. Can anyone read this book and not partially understand the devolution of critical reasoning that has produced such a total debacle of political and government incompetence--based on carefully crafted lies and smooth media presentations??? From lies about Saddam and WMD's, to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the stupidity of Kansas creationists. (If these people are the products of "intelligent design", God help us all!) This is readily seen in the glib campaign promises about political "change" trotted out at EVERY election cycle by EVERY slick politican in sixty-second ads and 60 Minute interviews--which proves just how stupidly gullible and mindless American voters have become. But Postman was right about Huxley and wrong about Orwell. While the corporate masters feed the multitudes the utter mindlessness of reality television shows, info-tainment, and religious programming as predicted by Huxley, the thinkers and readers and the intellectuals in this society have been and are presently being subjected to an Orwellian nightmare of total information networking and surveillance. The thought-police are busy and growing--monitoring computers, chat-rooms, e-mails, credit card purchases, library check-outs, medical records, even casino visits--all as authorized by the USA Patriot Acts. Books may not yet be banned (or burned ala Farenheit 451), but those who read them will be watched and monitored. Both U.S. history and the FBI's Cointelpro shows that many of these people will be set-up, run-down, arrested and imprisoned--while the masses monitor their trials and happily phone-in their votes via reality television shows--perhaps called "Cops", or maybe "Big Brother." Oops, they already have shows called that.

This is exactly what I wanted and in perfect condidtion as well, which is an added bonus. Thanks!

"In watching American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw's remark on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read." John Ackermann

Neil Postman in his book,'Amusing Ourselves To Death', looks at the impact of television culture on the way we live our lives, understand our present and future and how we gather our information. We need to understand the effects of living in a television society. As he says "We are in danger of creating a trivial culture that will spawn a race of people who adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." Once we are a television society, we have lost control. We can attempt to control television's influence when we understand the dangers. Neil Postman suggests that Americans ask 'what we are laughing about and why we have stopped thinking.' We have all heard the phrase, The Dumbing of America.

Roger Waters, of 'Pink Floyd' read Postman's book, and he was so taken with the message that one of the best CD's of this era was written. The song 'Amused To Death" tells us the story.

The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me
Why I am so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"

Ackerman tells us that "Television has altered the meaning of "being informed' by giving us disinformation. Disinformation means misleading information;misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information. Information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads us away from knowing. The television industry did not deliberately set out to misinform us, but when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the result."

Over the past fifty years since the advent of television, we have allowed conversation and communication to become trivial, and to lead into entertainment. TV is a medium of entertainment. TV is a series of programmed images and pictures. Unlike a book we do not have to concentrate to obtain the meaning of a picture. This is the mechanism by which TV can make any subject meaningless and trivial. It is possible to "amuse one's self to death", considering that the first thing to go will be our vision of reality and to comment intelligently. And this is why Roger Waters CD "Amused to Death" had the power to unleash our subconscious. We are living the album. We are all slowly amusing ourselves to death. We are entertaining ourselves into a stupor. The best things on television is junk, and no one is threatened by it. We do not measure a culture by its output of junk, but by what we claim as significant.

I would think that several minutes of murder and violence would be enough for many sleepless nights. We watch the news because we know that the 'news' is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to speak. Everything about a news show tells us this; the good looking newscasters, their pleasant banter, the music that opens and closes the show, the film footage, the humorous commercials. These suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for crying. A news show, is a format for entertainment, not for education or reflection. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. But everyone goes to television for all these things, which is why television plays so powerfully throughout our land. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Neil Postman says, "For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage, but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada."

We know that no matter how grave news may appear, we soon shall see commercials that will devalue the importance of the news. This is a key element of news and that allows us to believe that television news is not designed as a serious form of public communication. Our teenagers in particular are taught to believe that television is entertainment, so that the nightly newscast should not be taken as a serious responsibility.

This past political season is a prime example of the myriad of issues that have not been examined, but the entertainment value of the candidates has been examined ad nauseam. One reason why the political contest starts as soon as the President is sworn into office. What have we become, why are we laughing, the Dumbing of America is here.


Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 06-14-08

I had to read this for a journalism class, and it was torture. Postman seems to use an awful lot of words to say what could have been expressed in just a few. Yes, he's intelligent, but his point is fairly basic and should be stated so. Most people will not want to read this because many parts are hard to grasp, and he goes on and on. Was this his master's thesis or something? Totally unreadable for people of today.

Postman says a number of negative things about TV while claiming that he is not against TV. Surely he could have given the same message in an essay instead of a whole book. He's not the first to say that people don't think for themselves much anymore and are too influenced by the media. Others have said it better, though, and have it pertain more to today.

Postman reminds us that there are two prominent 20th century dystopias -- Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World -- and argues forcefully that despite having side-stepped Big Brother we are letting Soma and the Feelies in the back door. His argument revolves around television especially, warning that this innocuous amusement carries with it the power to destroy us without even a little bit of coercion. Think about the commercial: In 30 seconds it promises a simple solution to every problem in life, suggesting that the way to paradise is 19.99. We are quite amused by these seemingly harmless commercials, but in fact they warp our view of reality to such an extent that real life is sucked out of us.

The book is a couple of decades old, so we're missing any analysis of more recent developments in entertainment media, but its prophecies have been proved true many times over since its publication. MTV culture, 24-hour cable news and political pundits, the iPod, and YouTube more than vindicate Postman's warning: We are amusing ourselves to death, soaking in so much vacuous media that we are no longer living real lives. It would be interesting to see his reaction to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, as they lambast the same ridiculous system he does, but from within the amusing medium rather than from outside it.

A particularly nice feature of the book is its media history synopsis. Postman recounts the rise of the printing press, the invention of "the daily news," the impact of the telegraph and television, and so on. Only by looking at history can we hope to imagine a world different from today's, and therefore only by looking at history can we hope to change the world.

But this history betrays what I take to be the author's overzealous loyalties to print. I accept that books (real ones, not something by Danielle Steele or Bill O'Reilly) are vastly superior to primetime tv or the latest Michael Bay flick (though maybe not to masterpieces of film), but it looks like Postman is still holding out hope for a thoroughly modernistic logocentric utopia. One of the best points of this book is that the medium itself (and the culture surrounding its use) constrains and even tells messages on its own -- anyone ever wonder why televangelists offer quick fixes for all of life's ailments, just like tv commercials? And while Postman has critiqued the message of TV -- that nothing is so bad that it can't be fixed in 30 minutes, that a mental world is more real than a physical one, and so on -- he doesn't adequately analyze books. If all we're counting on is print, which seems to be Postman's alternative to today's entertainment culture, we're still not living in the real world because we're still living disembodied mental lives rather than real, physical ones.

That criticism aside, please read this book. His analysis ranges from the Second Commandment to Sesame Street, is acceptably readable, and exposes a huge problem. Read this book and never watch the news again.

If you want to understand our world, your kids, your life, and why things are so messed up, this is a good place to start. It will motivate you to make big changes in your life.

One of the best books on the danger posed by entertainment to our civic community.

This book asks questions that we need to be asking but aren't. How can we not at least question the media and technology that we take in like oxygen? It's an important read and I recommend it to anyone who isn't apathetic.

If you like people like Colin Wilson, you will love this well written and well thought out book. It is like listening to Colin Wilson without the references to literature but the lessons are intact.

This is Postman's most famous and widely read book (as is attested by the more than 100 customer reviews here on Amazon) and it is, as other reviewers have suggested, a classic in the Media Studies field. The songwriter Roger Waters was inspired enough to title his album "Amused to Death" after reading Postman's book (although Postman states in one of his later works that he himself would never stoop to listening to the likes of a "Roger Waters").

Instead of giving the usual plot synopsis here as other reviewers have done, I would like instead to perform for you a Media Studies reading of the book. That is to say, instead of reviewing the book's contents, I would like to draw your attention to the medium and format of the book itself, and in doing so, point out what this reveals about Postman as a philosopher.

To begin with the most important point: there are no pictures. Anywhere. And not only is this true of Amusing Ourselves to Death, it is true of every single one of Postman's books. This should alert us to something very important here about Postman: he is iconophobic. He is engaged in a battle against images of any, and every, kind. Not even Marshall McLuhan was so antipathetic to the use of images and illustrations, for his very first book, The Mechanical Bride, is a series of commentaries upon advertisements. In the age old battle of the Word vs. the Image -- a battle which goes way, way back before the twentieth century to the Iconoclastic debates amongst the Greek Byzantines whose iconophobes were in fact influenced by the aniconism of Islam, an entire religion which, like Judaism, had been based upon a rejection of images -- Postman, in this tradition, definitely aligns himself on the side of the Word against the iconophiles, be they Catholics or Hindus or lovers of comic books, or whomever.

Also, you will not find any references to works of art of any kind in this book. Postman apparently has an antipathy to painting and imagery of any kind whatsoever, be it "classical" or electronic. It is important to point this out because it reveals, in the tradition of Harold Innis, Postman's essential "bias" in this book. Indeed, Postman's dialogue with Camille Paglia, published in an old issue of Harper's, underlines this point, for Paglia is as much an iconophile as Postman is an iconoclast. "In the beginning was the Word," Postman quotes, as though to clarify his own personal theology, before proceeding onward with his dialogue with Paglia.

The next thing to notice about the book is its brevity. It is very short, as in fact, are all Mr. Postman's books, for Postman has been quoted as saying that he does not believe in writing long books, and that if one cannot express oneself in two hundred pages or less, then one has no business writing a book. The bibliography, accordingly, is also short, and so apparently Mr. Postman did not feel the need to read many books in order to write this book.

For Postman really only has a single point to make here, and it is an important point which he argues persuasively and eloquently: television is taking over our culture, and all our thought patterns in every aspect or division of our culture is taking its cue from the syncopated, discontinuous and ahistorical "mentality" of television. How this has affected our reading habits, and whether those reading habits still continue, albeit in a changed manner, Postman fails to address. For people have not stopped reading books; instead, they continue to read books, but their expectations of the book have changed. The brevity of Postman's book is itself perhaps an example of what happens to sustained intellectual discourse in the Electronic Age: books get shorter because our attention spans (Postman's included) have shrank. Nobody wants to wade through books on the scale and magnitude of Spengler's Decline of the West or Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit. I notice, furthermore, that the sorts of books which Postman exhibits in his Bibliography are, one and all, short books.

Thus, here is the secret of Postman's book: Postman himself suffers from the very same attention deficit disorder that he castigates others for having suffered at the hands of Electronic Society.

Hmm. One would expect a professor of Media Studies who was as well read and thoughtful as Postman to engage our attention for a while longer. If this book is the greatest thing Postman ever wrote, then we must confess, alas, that Postman's work does not contain a single magnum opus on the level of a Gutenberg Galaxy or an Understanding Media. Perhaps this fact in itself is evidence of a general decline in intellectual and literary ability in our culture during the latter half of the twentieth century.

The reader should not understand that I am saying that there is anything wrong with Amusing Ourselves to Death. But we should learn to understand its limitations in order to appreciate its place in the pantheon of Media Studies classics, upon which list, after all is said and done, Amusing Ourselves to Death places relatively low.
--John David Ebert, author Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

It seems unlikely that a book labeled "Current Affairs" could have a shelf life of more than a few years. It seems preposterous that a book dealing with television and referring to Dallas and Dynasty could have anything to see twenty two years after being published. Yet Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, now in it's "20th Anniversary Edition" continues to be read and studied and to hold influence. Even today it is used as required reading in many high school and college level courses. Though written by a man who made no claim to Christianity, few modern books written by an unbeliever have been more widely read and quoted by Christians. It truly is a remarkable little book.

Postman had that rarely quality of being able to see behind a fad, behind what was late and great. He saw the significance of the rise of the image and the fall of the word, the rise of amusement and the decline of discourse. He saw that television would soon saturate every area of our lives and taint the way we understand politics, religion, education and every other area of importance. As we now transition from a television-based culture to a computer-based culture the image remains central. Perhaps we have already amused ourselves past the point of no easy return. Television is remarkably effective at doing what it does best--entertaining. Postman had no argument with television is a tool of entertainment. In fact, the best things on television are its junk and no one is seriously threatened by this. Where television fails is in attempting to do the more serious work that has traditionally been carried by the written word.

Postman makes it his goal in this book to make the epistemology of television visible, demonstrating that television's way of knowing is hostile to typography's way of knowing, and not only that, but it is inferior to it. "Serious television" is a contradiction in terms for television speaks only in the voice of entertainment, never of serious, weighty, discourse--the kind of discourse that is essential to politics, religion and education. Television's influence has been relentless, transforming our culture so that every area is now considered a venue for entertainment.

Electronic media, led by television but being superseded by the computer, has changed the way we view the world and the way we carry on any kind of public discourse. Gone are the days when content was of overwhelming importance. Instead we deal with sound bites, with discordant images torn from any kind of context, and with style when in former days we relied on substance. Politicians win and lose election campaigns not on the basis of what they say, but on the basis of how they look when they say it.

Throughout the book is an interesting interplay between Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. In the latter an oppressive regime dominates the world while in the former the people allow themselves to be overcome by levity, by entertainment and by pleasure so that they have no need of an oppressive regime. They were controlled by their amusements. Huxley, Postman argues, had it right. And I would tend to agree.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is a good read, a disturbing read, a thought-provoking read and, dare I say it, a must-read. It deserves its status as a classic and, though already two decades out of date, it is as timely as ever.

People Need to Open their minds to the truthsof television. Neil Postman has done a great job on presenting the fall of literacy and th erise of entertainment. Great Book

Enlightening and ominous observations of how large media influences society. Seems to go over the top with some (not all) of the conslusions and predictions in the closing chapters of the book, though. This was written pre-high-volume: cable-TV, internet, blog, Google, MySpace, XM... Not sure if the author is still alive, but it would be interesting to read Postman's assessment of effects of these new media saturation "vectors" that were unforseen by him in the early 80s.

As pointed out by numerous other reviewers, Postman has pointed out a central problem in U.S. society (as well as in many other "developed" nations). As the book is a good few years old at this point, we can look at the predictions and see how many have come true. A disturbing number of the predictions have. Something that has occurred even beyond Postman's predictions, however, is the extent to which actors and singers and athletes shape the "average citizen's" opinions. Why does anyone care what a particular singer or actor thinks about an issue, as opposed to anyone else? That anyone allows their opinions to be shaped in this manner, and to spend hours reading magazines about celebrity lives and relationships, is as troubling to me as any television program. That all being said, the solution may not be to turn off the television. Television is here, it isn't going anywhere, and there are a few nuggets of value there. The key, as has been repeated by countless others, is to be selective in what is being watched, and to be particularly careful in helping to shape our children's viewing choices. I make sure I am aware of what my son is watching and THEN I DISCUSS THE PROGRAM with him. Did we get anything out of the show, or was it just entertainment? There is intelligent media out there. Television is not evil in and of itself, and you can find mindless media in any form. I would be happier with my son watching an episode of "House, M.D." or "Meet the Press" than his reading many of the books on the best sellers list. Mindless is mindless, whatever the medium. Postman himself points out that some occasional entertainment is not the issue, only when this becomes our main way of receiving information. One can watch SOME tv and also be a serious reader. One can develop the patience and analytical abilities necessary to truly analyze complicated issues. We all have a duty to find books and programs (be they television, radio or video or whatever) and to ignore or severely limit the fluff.

As pointed out by numerous other reviewers, Postman has pointed out a central problem in U.S. society (as well as in many other "developed" nations). As the book is a good few years old at this point, we can look at the predictions and see how many have come true. A disturbing number of the predictions have. Something that has occurred even beyond Postman's predictions, however, is the extent to which actors and singers and athletes shape the "average citizen's" opinions. Why does anyone care what a particular singer or actor thinks about an issue, as opposed to anyone else? That anyone allows their opinions to be shaped in this manner, and to spend hours reading magazines about celebrity lives and relationships, is as troubling to me as any television program. That all being said, the solution may not be to turn off the television. Television is here, it isn't going anywhere, and there are a few nuggets of value there. The key, as has been repeated by countless others, is to be selective in what is being watched, and to be particularly careful in helping to shape our children's viewing choices. I make sure I am aware of what my son is watching and THEN I DISCUSS THE PROGRAM with him. Did we get anything out of the show, or was it just entertainment? There is intelligent media out there. Television is not evil in and of itself, and you can find mindless media in any form. I would be happier with my son watching an episode of "House, M.D." or "Meet the Press" than his reading many of the books on the best sellers list. Mindless is mindless, whatever the medium. Postman himself points out that some occasional entertainment is not the issue, only when this becomes our main way of receiving information. One can watch SOME tv and also be a serious reader. One can develop the patience and analytical abilities necessary to truly analyze complicated issues. We all have a duty to find books and programs (be they television, radio or video or whatever) and to ignore or severely limit the fluff.

I can't rate any book higher than 4 stars but let me say that by page 20 I gave my borrowed copy back because I had to have my own. Neil Postman isn't what I consider light reading but what he has to say is definately worth the effort. I found many of his thoughts provoking enough to pull out the red pen to underline. If you are sick of the drive-by-media, tv, show business, and all of the nonsense distractions conjured in our electronic age this is a book you will enjoy.

interesting reading this book some 20 years after it was written. most of his ideas about the future seem to have come true. reality TV is not. celebrities are increasingly fake and people are unable to have a decent conversation. a large % of the population doesn't read beyond magazines any more. however, the internet has had an impact. you need to type to surf the net and that means the typographic age is having a come back of sorts.

Postman's book is a harsh diatribe against the television industry and its effects on intellectual discourse in the United States. Postman argues that television, especially when compared to the written word, cannot foster deep, rational thought in its viewers, because it requires absolute passivity from them. Television can only be about entertainment, and its cultural dominance, Postman argues, has had negative effects on education, politics, and religion.

The first half the book dedicated to Postman's updating of the famous Marshall McLuhan postulate, "the medium is the message." Postman agrees, but takes it even further, stating in chapter one that "the medium is the metaphor." What he means by this is that our language -- how we communicate -- is only a metaphor for reality. We describe as best as we can what we see and know, but our method of communication circumscribes how and what we can actually communicate. Postman argues that whichever mode of communication we chose to communicate with -- be it oral, written, or televisual -- each comes with its own set of limitations. That is to say, "the form excludes the content." Some ideas simply can't be expressed by certain forms, which should be obvious to anybody who has tried to write a sarcastic email without the appropriate smiley face at the end.

Postman then guides the reader through a history of communication, laying out eras where oral, print, or visual communicative forms were culturally dominant. For Postman, the print era (or "age of typography"), which he dates roughly from the Reformation to the 19th century, is when rational argument reached its pinnacle. The form of the written word, Postman argues, requires the marshalling of evidence and the presentation of that evidence in a logical order on behalf of the writer, and patience and discernment on the part of the reader. Only in the printed word could complicated truths be clearly and rationally conveyed. During the 19th century, when print had reached hegemony in communications, rational thought was most most valued. A striking example that Postman provides is the Lincoln-Douglas debates. While these were certainly public spectacles (usually held at state or county faires), Postman presents them as if they were dueling long-form essays. In one particular debate (Peoria, October 16, 1854), Stephen Douglas went first for three hours, after which Lincoln suggested everyone go home to have dinner and come back in the evening. They did, and when they returned they were treated to another four hours of oratory, starting with Lincoln's rebuttal of Douglas. This sounds more like a paper session at an academic conference than a political debate, which is Postman's point exactly. Lincoln and Douglas did in fact write their speeches out, to make sure they made sense, though neither man was insensitive to audience response. In this era -- the era defined by typography as the leading communicative form -- major public figures, be they politicians, preachers, or activists, were expected to be able to make a long, rational, public argument, and the people were willing to listen to it. They weren't bored into a catatonic state by long speeches at all, Postman says, but rather interacted with the orators to encourage them, or challenge them to stay on point.

In the modern (television) age, however, things are different. Following the maxim "the form excludes the content," political discourse is no longer about rational argument, says Postman, but about entertainment and appearance. People get bored if television images are too static, so change has to happen, and frequently. There's no time to lay out a rational argument, but no matter, the passive audience doesn't want long, convoluted logic anyway. Television makes its viewers demand constant stimuli, so if things take too long, people just tune out. Debates rarely last even 90 minutes (poor Stephen Douglas), and politicos are lucky to get five minutes on a particular question. Not that they're expected to give a logical answer, anyway. In fact, they can repeat catchphrases as much as they want ("lockbox!" "it's hard work!") as long as they don't look bored (Bush 1992), condescending (Gore 2000), or annoyed (Bush 2004). Who really remembers what was said at the debates in the last presidential campaign anyway? Indeed, did those commenting on the debates immediately following ever really analyze what was being said? In rare cases, such as on PBS, you'd get issue analysis, but for the most part television political commentary was limited to "how did the candidate come across to voters?" "Did he appear honest? Likeable?" Postman says that we're no longer in the Age of Typography, but rather in the Age of Show Business. Television's rules control how we communicate today, even if we aren't on television ourselves.

Take, for example, religion. Postman spends a chapter on religious discourse in the modern era, basically laying into television preachers. Postman (who was Jewish) found some televangelists intelligent, others insulting and emotionally manipulative, but, above everything else, they were all entertainers. There was very little theological depth compared to say, Jonathan Edwards or even Charles Finney. Postman comes to two conclusions about religion on television:

The first is that on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion a historic, profound, and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as a second banana. The second conclusion is that this fact has more to do with the bias of television than with the deficiencies of these electronic preachers...


The point is that in the Age of Show Business, nothing escapes becoming entertainment. Postman reserves special scorn for the way education and news are handled by television. The news chapter is specially informative. Our news programs (even the "serious" news shows), he says, are basically entertainment, because they have music introducing ideas and pretty people ("talking hairdos") telling the stories. News items are stripped from local context, commodified, and given to the viewer in bit-sized chunks, separated by the "now.... this!" phenomenon, which serves to make the viewer dismiss it all as meaningless candy he or she can do nothing about. The "now... this!" phenomenon can be tried on any news broadcast. Tonight, for example, and update on the Iraq will be followed by ("now.... this!") Britney Spears' latest escapades. Postman says this serves to reduce it all to meaningless trivia.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is definitely a polemic. Postman starts off the book with a comparision of George Orwell's 1984 with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, stating that the point of his book is exploring the possibility that Huxley's dystopia was correct. Unlike 1984, where people are controlled by violence and pain, Huxley presented a world where people are controlled by giving them every pleasure they want. For Postman, television is the device that controls us by entertainment and pleasure. Is Postman provocative? You bet. But he does raise important questions about our uncritical acceptance of what we see on television, and our easy adoption of any new technology that comes down the pipe. Amusing Ourselves is a book that should be read and discussed by as many people as possible.

This is truly a classic. I read this in college, as a political science major, and have been lending it out to my friends, my parents' friends.... Now I have to buy myself a new copy because mine is so tattered. And one for a friend for X-mas.


Marina Kushner
Author
The Truth About Caffeine: How Companies That Promote It Deceive Us and What We Can Do about It

The cover art of headless viewers watching television says it all. My only brush with the late Neil Postman came when he spoke at the university I was attending in the northwest. A breezy east coaster, he was unaware of the need to step on eggs. During the questions, one woman said, "Mr. Postman, how can we help children have self-esteem?" to which he replied, "I don't want them to have self-esteem; I want them to esteem something other than themselves."

After the stunned silence I and a few others rose and started clapping; it was very much as if life had been returned to Pepperland in Yellow Submarine. I've been clapping inwardly ever since, as when I read this book.

There are hundreds of reviews of this book, which created a stir everywhere. Everyone (except the people running TV) seems to have read it. Most readers find it smooth going. However, those who don't want to tackle the book can still wrestle with the ideas. In Postman's essay collection, Conscientious Objections, he replies to the question "Why are books so long?" with the answer that they don't have to be, and as an example gives a short version of this book.

The basic thesis is that along with George Orwell's 1984 in which civilization lapses into a dystopia (opposite of a utopia) ruled by oppression and violence, there was the opposite vision in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that society would be destroyed by indulgence in pleasure. Postman says that while you can make a good case for the first view, the second is in full swing. Now if only the desperate networks would read this book and (re)turn to making good TV.