Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death (PDF & Audiobook)

Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

By: Neil Postman

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 everything murder, mayhem, politics, weather as 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.

The book's origins lie in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on Orwell's "1984" and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's 1984, where they were oppressed by state control.