Bøker av Neil Postman

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever."e;It's unlikely that Trump has ever readAmusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.' -CNNOriginally published in 1985, Neil Postman's groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic mediafrom the Internet to cell phones to DVDsit has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.';A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.' Jonathan Yardley,The Washington Post Book World

In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it-with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth.

In a series of feisty and ultimately hopeful essays, one of America's sharpest social critics casts a shrewd eye over contemporary culture to reveal the worst -- and the best -- of our habits of discourse, tendencies in education, and obsessions with technological novelty. Readers will find themselves rethinking many of their bedrock assumptions: Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone watches the same television programs -- and television producers don't discriminate between the audiences for Sesame Street and Dynasty -- is childhood anything more than a sentimental concept? Writing in the traditions of Orwell and H.L. Mencken, Neil Postman sends shock waves of wit and critical intelligence through the cultural wasteland.

A no-holds-barred assault on outdated teaching methods-with dramatic and practical proposals on how education can be made relevant to today's world.Praise for Teaching As a Subversive Activity"A healthy dose of Postman and Weingartner is a good thing: if they make even a dent in the pious . . . American classroom, the book will be worthwhile."-New York Times Book Review "Teaching and knowledge are subversive in that they necessarily substitute awareness for guesswork, and knowledge for experience. Experience is no use in the world of Apollo 8. It is simply necessary to know. However, it is also necessary to know the effect of Apollo 8 in creating a new Global Theatre in which student and teacher alike are looking for roles. Postman and Weingartner make excellent theatrical producers in the new Global Theatre."-Marshall McLuhan "It will take courage to read this book . . . but those who are asking honest questions-what's wrong with the worlds in which we live, how do we build communication bridges cross the Generation Gap, what do they want from us?-these people will squirm in the discovery that the answers are really within themselves."-Saturday Review "Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner go beyond the now-familiar indictments of American education to propose basic ways of liberating both teachers and students from becoming personnel rather than people . . . the authors have created what may become a primer of 'the new education' Their book is intended for anyone, teacher or not, who is concerned with sanity and survival in a world of precipitously rapid change, and it's worth your reading."-Playboy "This challenging, liberating book can unlock not only teachers but anyone for whom language and learning are not dead."-Nat Hentoff