Amusing Ourselves to Death [Hardcover]

Neil Postman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity comes a sustained, withering and thought-provoking attack on television and what it is doing to us. Postman's theme is the decline of the printed word and the ascendancy of the "tube" with its tendency to present everythingmurder, mayhem, politics, weatheras entertainment. The ultimate effect, as Postman sees it, is the shrivelling of public discourse as TV degrades our conception of what constitutes news, political debate, art, even religious thought. Early chapters trace America's one-time love affair with the printed word, from colonial pamphlets to the publication of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. There's a biting analysis of TV commercials as a form of "instant therapy" based on the assumption that human problems are easily solvable. Postman goes further than other critics in demonstrating that television represents a hostile attack on literate culture. October 30
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (November 29, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670804541
• ISBN-13: 978-0670804542
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,076,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Mass Media

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars television's main purpose: education vs. entertainment, November 9, 2004

By 

jane - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amusing Ourselves to Death (Hardcover)

Neil Postman does a good job pointing out his ideas on the dangers of television and how it has changed our society and ways of life. He says it has degraded our culture, changing how we learn and educate ourselves and how we even practice religion. For example the news and politics. He explains that television shouldn't be a source for news because its only purpose is to bring us entertainment, I disagree because it seems to me that TV is one of the biggest sources we have to find out about the latest news, next to the news paper. There may be some programs whose purpose is merely entertainment (like the Jon Stewart Show) but there are also many programs whose goal is just to bring you the news. But one thing that I do agree with is how it has changed politics. It uses TV campaigning, which show the charisma and looks of the candidate, to lure in voters. It's no longer who has the better ideas, it's who has the more visual appealing campaign.

Postman's main idea in this book is how we have evolved our learning habits to television. We've come from learning from teachers through lectures which kept our brains active and made us ask questions about the subject, to reading which made us think about the material we're reading, to educational television programs which mostly make us brain dead and provide no education what so ever and purely entertainment. I do agree that most of television has no educational purpose and has dramatically influenced our learning ways that we now are hardly learning as much as people have in the past, but he has also missed those which do not fit into what he believes has no education or information. Now of days there are plenty of educational programs which do bring pure education along side with those that fit into of what he speaks of like The Jon Stewart Show and Barney.