Amusing Ourselves to Death

'The world is choking on screens. Just as this book foretold.' – WASHINGTON POST

In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a groundbreaking polemic about the dire effects of television screens on society, ushering us into a dystopia resembling Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It became an instant classic.

Today, we live in an age of social media, screen addiction and artificial intelligence. From the infinite scroll and waning attention spans, to dwindling literacy rates and the loss of critical thinking, Postman's warnings about the dangers of the screen are more prescient than they've ever been.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, news, education, and even religion become subject to the demands to what we now know as the attention economy.

With a brand-new foreword written by Jonathan Haidt – the bestselling author of The Anxious Generation – this is the definitive examination of how we are willingly sacrificing our ability to reason in the name of entertainment.

---

'The 40-year-old book that predicted today’s dystopian politics.' – TIME

'When you read this book, you have to keep reminding yourself that he’s talking about television and Reagan, not the internet and Trump.' – OBSERVER

'Few writers are prophetic. An American media studies professor called Neil Postman was... His great insight was that the way we entertain ourselves matters.' – THE TIMES