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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorConvergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
Henry Jenkins · 322 pages
Outstanding Academic Title Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.Henry Jenkins, one of America's most respected media analysts, delves beneath the new media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman · 412 pages
Discusses the ways in which the mass media are manipulated to present the news according to an underlying elite consenus which affects the manner in which similar events in different parts of the world are presented.
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
Herbert Marcuse · 282 pages
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
Farhad Manjoo · 257 pages
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay · 360 pages
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l
Everything Bad is Good for You
Steven Johnson · 255 pages
Forget everything you've read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, intelligent, and convincing endorsement of today's mass entertainment, national bestselling author Steven Johnson argues that the pop culture we soak in every day-from The Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons-has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rot
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You
Eli Pariser · 300 pages
The hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling--and limiting--the information we consume. In 2009, Google began customizing its search results. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, this change is symptomatic of the most significant shift to tak
The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
Barry Glassner · 279 pages
In this eye-opening examination of a pathology that has swept the country, sociologist Barry Glassner reveals why Americans are burdened with overblown fears. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise mon
The Age of American Unreason
Susan Jacoby · 357 pages
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence
So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Jon Ronson · 313 pages
"From the internationally bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most overlooked forces. For the past three years, Jon Ronson has been immersing himself in the world of modern-day public shaming-meeting famous shamees, shamers, and bystanders who have been impacted. This is the perfect time for a modern-day Scarlet Letter-a radicall
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno · 192 pages
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
Peter Pomerantsev · 272 pages
"Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible is a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new pow
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Noam Chomsky · 103 pages
"Chomsky's backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control has been updated and expanded into a two-section book, and redesigned following the acclaimed format of his Open Media anti-war bestseller, 9-11. The new edition of Media Control also includes 'The Journalist from Mars, ' Chomsky's 2002 talk on the media coverage of America's 'new war on terrorism.' Chomsky begins by asserting
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Daniel J. Boorstin · 315 pages
First published in 1962, this book introduced the notion of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported—and the contemporary definition of celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” Since then Daniel J. Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essenti
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture
Andrew Keen · 232 pages
Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen claims that today's new participatory Web 2.0 threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. In today's self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an ent
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
Jonathan Crary · 144 pages
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life. Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable non-t
Drug Wars
Curtis Marez · 380 pages
Inaugurated in 1984, America's "War on Drugs" is just the most recent skirmish in a standoff between global drug trafficking and state power. From Britain's nineteenth-century Opium Wars in China to the activities of Colombia's drug cartels and their suppression by U.S.-backed military forces today, conflicts over narcotics have justified imperial expansion, global capitalism, and state violence,
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
Owen Jones · 298 pages
"In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from 'salt of the earth' to 'scum of the earth'. Moving through Westminster 's lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones lays bare the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, and reveals a far more complex reality: the increasing poverty and desperation o
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire
Tim Schwab · 496 pages
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood
Maureen Ryan · 348 pages
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Susan Faludi · 592 pages
*Skillfully Probing the Attack on Women's Rights* "Opting-out," "security moms," "desperate housewives," "the new baby fever"--the trend stories of 2006 leave no doubt that American women are still being barraged by the same backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestselling book of revelations. Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fi
Ways of Seeing
John Berger · 166 pages
How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever."Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we e
The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories
Frank Rose · 361 pages
Wired contributing editor Frank Rose introduces readers to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world--people like Will Wright (The Sims), James Cameron (Avatar), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and dozens of others whose ideas are changing how we play, how we chill, and even how we think.