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Amusing Ourselves to Death

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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Amusing Ourselves to Death

By: Neil Postman
Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
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About this listen

 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.

©1985 Neil Postman (P)1994 Blackstone Audio Inc. Elections & Political Process Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV History & Criticism Media Studies Politics & Government Social Sciences Thought-Provoking Funny

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Critic reviews

"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)
"[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)
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I was drawn to this book because of my own professional involvement with television. It is an interesting and relatively unusual field of application for applied psychology, but there is little empirical basis, specific theory and/or literature, so I hoped that Neil Postman's text would be useful. It starts by contextualising and grounding the subject in a convincing and articulate manner. The basic premise that Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World', offer a good comparative view and way of thinking about social and cultural influences, and makes sense, when considering the development, role and function of television. Postman precedents Huxley's dystrophic vision of the future and hence the title 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' and his justification for this is worth reading. However, the latter part of the book, which becomes increasingly like a piece of polemic against current educational and religious practice, is tedious, not well substantiated, and seems to infer a romantic and, overly idealised view of how things were pre-television. Also, some systemic thinking about society and television would not have gone amiss. After all, the two develop in interaction with each other and are mutually influential and reflective. In other words, surely the television we have and the role/s and function/s it fulfils are no coincidence, so demonising and aggrandising one is reductive and naive.

Such a promising start

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it's got a lot of good points, still applicable even 30 years after its writing. the trouble is it's read by someone who sounds like a robot, reads too quickly, and often puts the emphasis in wrong places so sentences that should be jokes get read as serious.

good book, bad performance

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Applicable thinking today. The danger of entertainment similar to overeating. It will go wrong for us. And we think it’s just a bit of down time. Whoever puts it on our screens does it for a reason, which will have consequences for us.

Still relevant

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Great exposition on the difference between a written culture and a visual culture and how the latter is dumbing us down. Written in the 1980's but it's content and message is even more important today than ever!

Extremely articulate and well formulated arguments

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This book was in many ways ahead of its time. It shows how the trivialisation Aldous Huxley warned of has come true.

Prophetic

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Much food for thought! It was hard to believe this was written in 1985 and relates to the impact of TV rather than being a recent commentary about social media.

Relevant today

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A fantastic critique on the modern visual platform of social discourse. I won't bash the narrator because the recording is very old and the narrator is not a professional narrator but an eminent journalist and outhor. And, by the way, focusing on the performance of the narrator is precisely the point Neil Postman makes against TV and, in effect, the internet.

A rare book that can actually change a view

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A great author, fascinating topic, intellectually sound, heavy for some but a must read/listen. Enjoy!

WOW!

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Great ideas but they need to be digested. The fastest reader I have yet heard. I probably missed 70% of it

Brilliant book read far too fast

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This book might have been written some 30 years ago,but what it says about television can equally (if not more so ) be applied to todays Multi Media Soma.A Brave New World,where you don't need to worry about climate change,war or anything negative in the "Real World".Because you can enter your own world of virtual reality and manage a virtual football team or like some kind of superman wipe out an entire enemy.
An excellent book,which makes you think about the world we live in today.A thing that might not always be "a laugh" or entertaining,but is necessary if we want a better world for all and have humankind progress.
Some reviews have complained about the narrators speed of reading,but I did'nt have a problem with this.All I would say is,this is the kind of book were to get its full meaning.You may need to run it back at times,or as I intend to do,listen to it again.

Television:The Opium Of The People !

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