Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A vitally important message for today's world culture, December 24, 1999
I currently live in Japan where I have seen the dark side of the American Cultural Machine. Thousands of years of tradition have been swallowed up in a couple years by a dominant American system that uses insidious and underhanded techniques to sell its products and become rich. This is a wonderful attack on the current dominant paradigm- Work Work Work Buy Buy Buy(and if this continues unabated we are asking for a global environmental nightmare). I am not an environmentalist but this book uses solid arguments and puts forth interesting ideas. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. It will give you a chance against the mega-corporations. Take back your mind and free will! This book is fun, interesting, and it could one day be seen as the book that started the newest counter culture: The Anti-consumer.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rich and Thoughty, January 7, 2000
By A Customer
Having followed Adbusters.org (Lasn's organization) for a number of years I was pleased to see this book consolodate, organize, expand and clarify a number of the articles from the last couple of years worth of AdBusters magazine. It is not a "self-help" book to teach you how to particiapate in the next WTO protest. For a manual like that you will need to pick up something like Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."What you can expect. A book that is rich in imagery, metaphor and illustration. It is backed up by 214 end notes (that range in credibility). I would suspect that: a) those actively engaged in downshifting will find it a rich and thoughty re-enforcement for decisions already made, b) those moderate consumers with the dull recognition that something is not quite right with our corporation saturated environment will find it a provocative reading that will contribute to a range of subtle to significant mental and/or life changes, c) those radicals committed to the overthrow of corporate america will find it either disappointing (for not going far enough) or as permission to use bent coins in vending machines, and d) those not wanting to think about themes of environment, corporate responsibility and media saturation will find it excellent fodder for re-enforcing stereotypes of "those wacko liberal leftists" In my case, it was gentle yet challenging prose with enough in the book for me to question, debate or aspire to learn more about. I was glad that it was not simply preaching to my previously self-realized reality.
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54 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An Unfortunate Muddle, December 13, 1999
This is one of the most frustrating books I have come across in quite some time. Frustrating because I WANT to agree with the author, but his disorganized hodgepodge of romantic philosophy and counterculture deifying devoid of any sort of firmly constructed reason or definition has rendered his position impotent and ridiculous. Since I'm a longtime fan of clever "culture jammers" who confront corporate hegemony and the public who condones it--such radical satirists as Michael Moore, Negativland, etc.--I thought that I would enjoy a book describing this movement and the reasons, ideas and people behind it. What Kalle Lasn has presented, however, is a half-baked melange of ranting and whining, riddled with vaguery, self-contradiction and utterly subjective fragments of ideology presented as absolute truths. There are perhaps ten pages of startling, valuable and well presented information in this 215 page book, the rest is an unfortunate muddle which says nothing more original than "corporations are bad" and "think for yourself." At one point, Lasn paraphrases Bradbury, saying that a culture jammer "Jumps off cliffs and builds his wings on the way down." With "Culture Jam," Lasn has jumped off the cliff, thrown a few handfuls of feathers into the air and left a big mess at the bottom.
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