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Book Review: ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’ by Neil Postman

June 2, 2013 By 4 Comments
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Title: Amusing Ourselves to Death Author: Neil Postman Publisher: Penguin Books Pages: 183 I shall open this review with the original foreword to the late, great Neil Postman’s most famous and enduring work ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’ written and released way back in 1985. “We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to … [Read more...]

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Book Review: It’s Time – My 360° View of the UFC

May 12, 2013 By 3 Comments
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It’s Time: My 360° View of the UFC Author: Bruce Buffer Publisher: Crown Publishing Hardcover: 277 pages Released: May 14, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-307-95391-9 * A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review. I am a fan of UFC and MMA in general, but not as big a fan as I once was (and even back during the time when I was a big fan, I preferred PRIDE to UFC). Anyone who has ever watched a UFC fight knows who Bruce Buffer is; the charismatic ring announcer, half-brother to legendary wrestling and boxing announcer Michael Buffer. What I didn’t know was that Bruce Buffer had written a book and that it was coming out on May 14th; that is until it showed up at my front door late last week. Seeing as how I hadn’t heard of the book before, I neither considered buying … [Read more...]

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Book Review: Last Train To Memphis & Careless Love (Box Set)

May 5, 2013 By 1 Comment
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Author: Peter Guralnick Publisher: Back Bay Books Genre: Biography Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Guralnick-Train-Memphis-Careless/dp/0316345237 In Peter Guralnick’s 1994 book ‘Last Train to Memphis’ (The Rise of Elvis Presley) and his 1999 follow up ‘Careless Love’ (The Unmaking of Elvis Presley) a post mortem rescue mission is attempted on the humanity of one Elvis Aaron Presley. Elvis Presley died a full twelve years before this writer was even born, and so I and many others can only look back on his life with an odd sort of disorientation from an unbridgeable distance of time and culture. Guralnick sets aside (although does not ignore) the countless debates about Elvis as cultural icon, public train wreck, and all the other well known issues surrounding him, … [Read more...]

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Book Review: 11/22/63

April 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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11/22/63 Author: Stephen King Publisher: Scribner Paperback: 849 pages http://112263book.com The novel 11/22/63 tells the story of Jake Epping, a (soon to be time traveling) high school English teacher (the job and life that Stephen King himself occupied before his whirlwind success started with the publication of Carrie in the late 70s) from Lisbon Falls, Maine, recently divorced, who is also teaching an adult GED preparation class in the evenings, after school. One of his pupils in that class is his own high school’s janitor, Harry Dunning, or ‘Hoptoad Harry’ as the kids have cruelly called him since time immemorial as it seems, due to his very pronounced limp. One of Mr. Epping’s assignments to his evening GED class is an essay to be written about ‘the day that … [Read more...]

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