Pop Culture Books

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan

Amazon Price: $9.60 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Amazon Marketplace: 141 new & used starting at $8.74

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> History
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Anthropology -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 447 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

You'll never eat the same way again! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a non-fiction account of the history behind the food we eat. This book describes the great industrial food complex and advocates local, organic foods. Extremely well-researched and well-presented. This was a compelling book and will likely convince you to change your eating habits.

More Frankenscience 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I am going to write a review here that I am sure that will get pummeled and give me nothing but nasty comments and a billion negative votes. So let me say some good things first. Pollan is a gifted writer, is engaging and entertaining to read. The book and it's premises though are a sure recipe for global disaster. Pollan is more even-handed and fair than most of the books trumpeting the perils of industrial farming, but let me please try to explain why these arguments are dangerously flawed. I will try and give and intelligent and considered response and those of you who must blast back at me, I only ask that your comments are equally considered.

Many people are scared of industrial farming, the inputs that are used, and the genetic engineering that is advancing farm science. Most of these fears are based upon "frankenscience" designed delilberately to be scary. Scary and sensational sells books, magazines, and newsprint. The "organic" label has been profitable to the tune of billions of dollars and will continue to be so. There is so much momentum in the press about the dangers of industrial farming and too much money to be made for it to stop. On the other hand industrial farming is not going to stop either. We have to eat.

In our society the best way to control how people think is to control the questions posed. When industrial farming is discussed it is presumed to be bad because it is "industrial" and there are chemicals involved. Ergo we have the slew of reporting biased against industrial farming. All of these books may even be right and everything they maintain may prove to be true. I doubt it, but even if it so we have a problem that is ignored by the media when experts pontificate about agricultural issues. The question isn't whether industrial farming is good or bad. The real question is, "there are over 6 billion people on the planet, and the population will grow to be over 9 billion. How are we going to feed everybody?"

The prescription of this book, more local farming and more organic food, is simply a recipe for billions of deaths through starvation. Many people hate it when facts don't fit their preconceived notions or agendas. In fact, I never seen a political party that doesn't suffer from this flaw. My response is neither political nor do I have an agenda. Although you may not listen to what I have to say, I feel compelled to try and point out the simple holes in the logic of this book. You may not thank me for it, but at least I will have tried. This book is irrational because it refuses to face the real question of how to feed everyone. A rationalist is a person who plays the hand of cards they are dealt, not the hand of cards they wish they had. They solutions offered in this book amount to playing the cards we wish to have rather than the ones we do have.

Here are the cards. Land can either be good farmland, tolerable farmland, ranch land, or non-arable. All of the good farmland and tolerable farmland in the world is already being farmed. There are no reserves of land in this world that would make good farmland. You can try to farm ranch ground, or poor farm ground, and you can pursue slash and burn farming in rainforests, but the problem is that the land will only be productive for a few years. After that it is uneconomical to farm it. By that I mean you will put more calories into the farming than you can withdraw. Moreover this land then is subject to erosion and other environmental problems. The simple math is this: there are roughly one billion arable hectares in the world and there are just over 6 billion people. Those are the cards we hold. Can we feed everyone? Yes, for now.

Here are the problems with local production and organic food: local production is fabulous when you can do it, but many people do not live where food is produced. Think of New York City. Obviously NYC cannot grow all the food it needs for its population. They need to import food. This is not a new problem. Ancient Rome was entirely dependent upon food produced in Egypt and other provinces. When people choose to live where the food isn't, there is a cost associated with getting the food to those people. There always has been. However, you also can't wish those people to move to where the food is, because their housing would take up all the farmground. So local markets theoretically work great for certain groups, but it is simply not rational to suggest local production as a solution to world food shortages. There is also a reason why the world looks like it does with densely populated non-agricultural areas and thinly populated agricultural ones. People can't live on the good farmground. Plants have to live there. Therefore, when you really think about it, suggesting local production as a solution is just a preconceived bias that in practical application would cause a lot of people to starve. Sure, some people get to live near the food, and it would be more efficient if they would eat the food produced right next to them rather than food that is shipped halfway round the world. Getting people to do so would make the system slightly more efficient, but it is not going to be the solution. It would be a bandaid on a sucking chest wound. Moreover, it wouldn't work anyway....people don't want it. They like eating bananas from central America, grapes from Chile, lamb from New Zealand, cashews from Vietnam, and cornflakes from Michigan. A diet of only local foods would be very bland compared to the diet to which we have become accustomed. So, you can wish for local production all you want, but those pesky humans are going to mess you up every time. They will pay lots of good money to have tasty foods imported from far distant places.

Local production means local foods only. You won't get others to agree to that after they've tasted the goodies of the rest of the world. I sincererly doubt that most readers of this book are actually willing to eat only on what can be organically grown within 20 miles of their residence. If they are not, then they are just chanting, "do as I say, not as I do", which is the fault I find with this book and the author.

Suggesting organic farming as a solution though is frightening. Let's do that simple math again.....one billion hectares and six billion people. Right now, with incredible amounts of oil-based fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, chemical inputs, and, whoa, even scarier, genetic technology, we are just managing to basically keep those six billion people fed. Organic farming does without those inputs....and produces about 1/4 the equivalent yield. If the world switched to organic farming then 4.5 bilion people would have to starve to death. Even if you are willing to become the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world, people are not just going to sit there and slowly starve to death for you. No, they will fight for food for themselves and their children. When you do the math you will realize that organic farming is much more harmful than the "bad meat" chant (I'll get to that in a second). Organic farming simply equates into less food output. Less food = less people. Westerners, in a shocking display of hypocrisy, can extoll the virtues of organic farming, decry the use of chemical inputs, suggest local production, etc., while they are chewing on their bananas, dining in expensive restaurants, wearing their leather shoes, burning their oil in their luxury SUV. But we can't have it both ways. To the third world we appear as insufferable, arrogant, self-righteous, and astoundingly stupid hypocrites. Imagine yourself in a west African village explaining organic food and local market approaches. I've been there....they've done it that way for thousands of years. They'd think you were retarded for suggesting back-breaking labor and risk of starvation to have organic food. They have organic food, and they would love to swap places with you. After trying to grow your own food there for a year, organically, you'd want out too. Those villagers would love the chance to use modern inputs to increase their yields, and a trip to a US grocery store would seem like something out of a fairy tale to them. Before espousing organic farming and local production imagine yourself as the person who had to do the labor, moreover you life depends upon your success, and, additionally, say goodbye to anything more intersting than gruel to eat. This book offers answers that sound great in theory, but in real practice you'd find absolutely horrifying.

There are real problems with industrial agriculture, primarily its dependency on oil, but I'd prefer to see the author looking at the real problems and trying to craft solutions that can actually be made to work. Solutions that the other 6 billion people on the planet can live with and you can live with too.

Complaining about the $75 billion that the feds plug into American agriculture is not very well thought out. I'm not going to defend a single thing the USDA does.....but I am going to defend the reason why it started and why it has to stay. Despite being a capitalist country, we can't not have a safety net in regards to food. If we don't produce enough food in this country then people will DIE. Get it? It's a concept called food security because food is the most important thing in a society. If you don't believe that, just don't eat for two weeks. You can go without gasoline for two weeks, you can sleep outside if you have too, you can live without your DVDs....but try living without food. Since it is the one necessary item before all others, for thousands of years nations have had food security policies and practices. The people in power have to keep the people fed. If they don't, they won't be in power long. The United States is no different and never has been. We have been so blessed with good farmland and good practices that it has been 80 years since we had food shortages. Starvation is not a place any person or any country wants to be. Ergo, governments spend money on agriculture. Yes, sometimes they do stupid things, but food security can't be left to chance. The US Govt is not going to stop, nor should it, implementing policies for our food security. They may not get it right, there may be incompetence and corruption, but it is up to us to do something about it when they get it wrong. We should be deeply thankful that they don't leave food security to the "Free Market".

Another problem overlooked in this book is one of labor. Before the green revolution about 90% of the world population had to work in agriculture. In America today less than 1% of our population has to do so. That frees up the other 99 of us to build cars and houses, write novels, practice medicine, run utilities, make movies and clothing....to do everything that brings us to the level of technology, wealth, and health we enjoy today. Without industrial farming we can't have those 99 people creating and sustaining our level of technology.

One last point. The whole "meat is bad because it takes eight pounds of grain to make one pound of meat". That's just embarassingly wrong, pure proganda, and thankfully Mr. Pollan doesn't fall into this particular trap. What that argument is really saying is that midwestern style feedlots that feed corn to cows are inefficient and oh my gosh! People could eat that corn instead! Then no one would have to starve. I've heard this argument meaning times before, from many likable people. The problem is that it's not true; moreover it is obviously not true if you think about it. It's an argument that serves the agenda of people who don't like people eating meat. It's an effectively convincing lie apparently, but it is misinformation serving to score political points. I don't care if people eat meat or not, but I do care when deliberate misinformation is used to create a public opinion. Well let me point out the glaringly obvious. Most of the livestock in this world, well over 98%, will never see a feedlot and they will never get to eat anything a person would eat. Hunh? What? By using a small fact, that to fatten a cow in a Kansas feedlot can take eight pounds of corn to creat one pound of gain, and shouting that to the world, you're left to assume that all meat takes eight pounds of grain to create. Not so. No, most of the cows, goats, sheep, chicken, and other beasties in the world that are slated to be our dinners eat things like grass, insects and weeds. Things we can't eat. In fact, I could make a perfectly good argument that based upon on the meat produced for consumption in the world, against all the grain used to create that meat, that it only take 2 ounces of grain to make one pound of meat! Therefore by not eating meat we're going to cause everyone to starve. As Mark Twain once said, "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics". Watch out for the lies and the damn liles, but never believe a statistic. Not even mine. Also be careful of believing what others tell you without thinking it through. If you think about it yourself you will realize that most livestock in the world forage for their food. They're not eating anything a human would eat. The "meat is inefficient" argument is only true if applied to an American feedlot and even then it is still specious (a damn lie) for two reasons. Here is the first reason: even those 2% of animals who get to spend a few weeks eating corn and millet in a Kansas feedlot, so that they wind up tasting better to us, still aren't eating human food. Pollan points out they are eating corn that humans can't eat and wouldn't want to eat. Therefore it is a damn lie that what the feedlot cow ate can have been equivalent to 8 times more food for the starving whomever. Now, the anti-meat group's rejoinder is going to be, "yeah, but the land that grows that non-human corn could have been used to grow real human food." Not really. Anti-meat people, because of their bias, tend not to really undrestand much about agriculture as a science. Yes, some of that land used to produce corn to feed cows could be put into human food production; and I guarantee once the need for it is there it will be put into human food production. Farmers make a lot more money on human food than they do on animal feed (humans have more disposable income than cows). So again, the implication of the anti-meat crowd is that we lost 8 times the calories we could have had....not true. If we needed those calories then humans would have gotten them and the pro-meat crowd would have to eat veal rather than steak. Humans are going to get fed before cows do. But the real problem with the "that land could have grown human food" argument is that it is wrong. Those people, because they don't know even the basics about agriculture, conveniently leave out the need for a little thing called crop rotation. It means you don't keep planting the exact same crop over and over again in the same place. You have to rotate crops. Some of our major crops, such as millet, sorghum, and corn, are grown for reasons other than direct human consumption. That turns out to be handy because it means we can rotate crops and keep yields up year after year. Let me try to explain. I could plant wheat five times in a row, but my yields will fall if I do. If I rotate millet into the cycle then maybe I only grow wheat three years and millet one year and sunflower seeds one year during a five year cycle. However, I'll have as much wheat out of my farm as you will have on yours if you tried growing wheat five times in a row. So it turns out the the millet I feed to my dairy or beef cows didn't really cost the world any extra food, did it? Indeed, now I get to eat milk, cheese and ice cream, maybe even a steak once in a while....

Most arguments about food production can be picked apart like I tried to do in the above. The arguments are created to support someone's idea of how they think things should be. They have an agenda, and then they seek facts to support their agenda. I don't have an agenda, but I do see that we have problems. An increasing world population, decreasing genetic variety, soil getting tired, erosion, lack of technology, experience, and inputs for Africa and much of the rest of the third world, depleting phospate reserves, depleting oil reserves, and inconstant weather are all going to be challenges as we go forward. I'd love to see a well-reasoned and rationally sound blueprint that, politics and agendas aside, considers how we are really going to feed 6 billion people now, 9 billion people in 30 years, and how to do it consistently for the next thousand years. This is the real question, and billions of people are relying on us to provide real solutions, ones that everyone can live with. This book unfortunately doesn't do that.

Editorial Review:

A New York Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us—whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Amazon Marketplace: 134 new & used starting at $12.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Econometrics
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1563 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe

Rules of the Game

Neil Strauss

Amazon Price: $17.13 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $13.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Gender

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Neil Strauss, the New York Times bestselling author of The Game, presents Rules of the Game:

I. The Stylelife Challenge
Master the Game in 30 Days

II. The Style Diaries
The Pickup Artist's Companion

Questions for Neil Strauss

Amazon.com: Yours has to be one of the strangest career paths in the book business: from rock critic at the New York Times, to cowriter of memoirs with rockers and porn stars, to bestselling seduction guru. Do you ever wonder how you got from point A to point Z?

Strauss: Oddly, I never do. Instead, I wonder why it took me so long to get to point Z. And then I wonder if people are going to stick with me when I go to point whatever-is-after-Z next. I guess that would be point AA--which, come to think of it, I've already been to with Dave Navarro while writing his book.

Amazon.com: You write in the introduction to Rules of the Game that you thought The Game was your "last word on the subject," and you were ready to get on with your life. But, like Michael Corleone, you got pulled back in. Why was it so hard to leave?

Strauss: Good simile. Someone else compared it to Donnie Brasco. There's something about the seduction community that sucks people in. I've seen college kids drop out of school; doctors quit their jobs; and celebrities take huge career risks to pursue this knowledge.

It may be because, according to the Kinsey Institute, most men think about sex every two minutes. But our society has never given them tools to safely fulfill these desires. Once they find out there's a way to learn to be more successful with women--and see evidence that it works--they tend to dive in headfirst. Perhaps because, when it comes down to it, this is why we're really here.

Amazon.com: Do you meet women who have read The Game? What do they think? And with the thousands of people out there you have trained and the many more thousands who have read the book, are women starting to recognize the strategies? Do they ever say, "Hey, you're playing the Game on me"?

Strauss: I've run into some women who've read the book to learn about the male mind, and they've all been positive about it--the book, that is, not the male mind. It's the women who've heard of the book but haven't read it who want to burn it.

And actually, a guy at a book signing the other day told me he got caught using one of the openers. But he still walked away with her phone number. His advice: on the rare chance that it happens, don't get scared and scamper off. Instead, use it as an opportunity to start a conversation about the game itself and whether it works. If they've read the book, this obviously means they're interested in the subject--and now you both have something in common.

Amazon.com: Rules of the Game is actually two books: the Stylelife Challenge and the Style Diaries. The first book is pretty straightforward: a 30-day plan for "Mastering the Game." But the second one is not what you'd expect in a self-help book. Can you explain what it is and why you included it?

Strauss: I didn't want to just give people a self-help book, and promise that their life will be sunshine and unicorns forever. I wanted them to know that with knowledge and power come a new set of challenges and problems. So the black book contains seduction stories from the dark side of the game, and the fact that, as the German director Fassbinder put it, "We were born to need each other, but we still haven't learned how to live with each other."

Amazon.com: Part of the story of The Game was the tension of what happens, after you've become proficient at the Game, when you find someone you love. Is that the point: to go from player to lover (or, ulp, husband!)? How do you do that? Or does playing the Game become its own end for some people?

Strauss: If you master the game, then you also must master your own fears and insecurities. And overcoming these destructive traits can only help you have healthier relationships. That said, the downside to learning the game and then falling in love is that you have to be strong, because there are a lot more options than there once were. So for readers who are having trouble: the secret to monogamy is realizing that the fantasy of being with someone else is usually better than the reality. You can't do better than love.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

Hunter S. Thompson

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 111 new & used starting at $7.07

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Journalists

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 416 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review, Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its trunk, they stow "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they manage to consume during their short tour.

On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first-rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic genius. --Rebekah Warren

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Michio Kaku

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Doubleday Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $13.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> Physics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future.

From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we know them today. He ranks the impossible technologies by categories—Class I, II, and III, depending on when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:
· How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to observers “downstream”
· How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars
· How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
· Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics, although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one
Kaku uses his discussion of each technology as a jumping-off point to explain the science behind it. An extraordinary scientific adventure, Physics of the Impossible takes readers on an unforgettable, mesmerizing journey into the world of science that both enlightens and entertains.

Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium

Dick Meyer

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Crown Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $12.47

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Political Science -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors to our deep disenchantment with our own culture:

Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of their lives in public spaces
Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-fulfillment
T-shirts that read, “Eat Me”
Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market themselves
High-level cheating in business and sports
Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom
Multinational corporations that claim, “We care about you.”
The decline of organic communities
A line of cosmetics called “S.L.U.T.”
The phony red state–blue state divide
The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the insinuation of both into every facet of our lives

You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a moment’s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails America’s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just clicking in an online contribution).

Meyer argues—with biting wit and observations that make you want to shout, “Yes! I hate that too!”—that when the social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the sixties collided with the technological and media revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us and we wonder why.

Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit and Bowling Alone.

10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children

Shmuley Boteach

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $9.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Philosophy of Religion -> Judaism
Subjects -> Parenting & Families -> Parenting -> Babies & Toddlers -> Child Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why do I have to repeat everything? Why does every conversation end in an argument?

Communicating with our children. Conversing. Connecting. When did it become so difficult? And how do we begin to change it for the better?

This book was designed to help parents answer these important questions, and it is based on two fundamental ideas: The first is that there are no bad children, and no deliberately bad parents -- but that sometimes, despite the best of intentions on both sides, there can be bad relationships between parents and children. The second is that, as parents, we must do everything we can to save those relationships, to reach out and really communicate with our children, because it is only through talking to them that we can create an environment for inspiration and change.

In this compelling book, Shmuley Boteach, passionate social commentator and outspoken relationship guru, walks you through the critical conversations, including: cherishing childhood; developing intellectual curiosity; knowing who you are and what you want to become; learning to forgive; realizing the importance of family and tradition; being fearless and courageous. As a father of eight, Rabbi Shmuley speaks from a wealth of experience. He has written a book for parents of children of all ages, from toddlers, who are just beginning to become aware of the world around them, to adolescents, who must learn to navigate all sorts of tricky social and academic pressures.

10 Conversations will help you stay connected to your children so that they develop the kind of strong moral character that leads to rich, meaningful lives.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Chuck Klosterman

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 119 new & used starting at $5.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> Love, Sex & Marriage
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 124 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

There's quite a bit of intelligent analysis and thought-provoking insight packed into the pages of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which is a little surprising considering how darn stupid most of Klosterman's subject matter actually is. Klosterman, one of the few members of the so-called "Generation X" to proudly embrace that label and the stereotypical image of disaffected slackers that often accompanies it, takes the reader on a witty and highly entertaining tour through portions of pop culture not usually subjected to analysis and presents his thoughts on Saved by the Bell, Billy Joel, amateur porn, MTV's The Real World, and much more. It would be easy in dealing with such subject matter to simply pile on some undergraduate level deconstruction, make a few jokes, and have yourself a clever little book. But Klosterman goes deeper than that, often employing his own life spent as a member of the lowbrow target demographic to measure the cultural impact of his subjects. While the book never quite lives up to the use of the word "manifesto" in the title (it's really more of a survey mixed with elements of memoir), there is much here to entertain and illuminate, particularly passages on the psychoses and motivations of breakfast cereal mascots, the difference between Celtic fans and Laker fans, and The Empire Strikes Back. Sections on a Guns n' Roses tribute band, The Sims, and soccer feel more like magazine pieces included to fill space than part of a cohesive whole. But when you're talking about a book based on a section of cultural history so reliant on a lack of attention span, even the incongruities feel somehow appropriate. --John Moe

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

Neil Postman

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 85 new & used starting at $6.48

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Movies -> Video -> Technical
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Television -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Disinformation Means Misleading Information--Misplaced, Irrelevant, Fragmented or Superficial 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 12 people found this review helpful.

"In watching American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw's remark on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read." John Ackermann

Neil Postman in his book,'Amusing Ourselves To Death', looks at the impact of television culture on the way we live our lives, understand our present and future and how we gather our information. We need to understand the effects of living in a television society. As he says "We are in danger of creating a trivial culture that will spawn a race of people who adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." Once we are a television society, we have lost control. We can attempt to control television's influence when we understand the dangers. Neil Postman suggests that Americans ask 'what we are laughing about and why we have stopped thinking.' We have all heard the phrase, The Dumbing of America.

Roger Waters, of 'Pink Floyd' read Postman's book, and he was so taken with the message that one of the best CD's of this era was written. The song 'Amused To Death" tells us the story.

The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me
Why I am so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"

Ackerman tells us that "Television has altered the meaning of "being informed' by giving us disinformation. Disinformation means misleading information;misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information. Information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads us away from knowing. The television industry did not deliberately set out to misinform us, but when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the result."

Over the past fifty years since the advent of television, we have allowed conversation and communication to become trivial, and to lead into entertainment. TV is a medium of entertainment. TV is a series of programmed images and pictures. Unlike a book we do not have to concentrate to obtain the meaning of a picture. This is the mechanism by which TV can make any subject meaningless and trivial. It is possible to "amuse one's self to death", considering that the first thing to go will be our vision of reality and to comment intelligently. And this is why Roger Waters CD "Amused to Death" had the power to unleash our subconscious. We are living the album. We are all slowly amusing ourselves to death. We are entertaining ourselves into a stupor. The best things on television is junk, and no one is threatened by it. We do not measure a culture by its output of junk, but by what we claim as significant.

I would think that several minutes of murder and violence would be enough for many sleepless nights. We watch the news because we know that the 'news' is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to speak. Everything about a news show tells us this; the good looking newscasters, their pleasant banter, the music that opens and closes the show, the film footage, the humorous commercials. These suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for crying. A news show, is a format for entertainment, not for education or reflection. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. But everyone goes to television for all these things, which is why television plays so powerfully throughout our land. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Neil Postman says, "For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage, but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada."

We know that no matter how grave news may appear, we soon shall see commercials that will devalue the importance of the news. This is a key element of news and that allows us to believe that television news is not designed as a serious form of public communication. Our teenagers in particular are taught to believe that television is entertainment, so that the nightly newscast should not be taken as a serious responsibility.

This past political season is a prime example of the myriad of issues that have not been examined, but the entertainment value of the candidates has been examined ad nauseam. One reason why the political contest starts as soon as the President is sworn into office. What have we become, why are we laughing, the Dumbing of America is here.


Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 06-14-08

Editorial Review:

Originally 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 media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it 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 controlof our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

The Age of American Unreason

Susan Jacoby

Amazon Price: $17.16 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pantheon Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $12.90

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Popular Culture
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Media Studies
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Communication -> Media And Society

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 92 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.

Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.

At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarching crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.