Rating: 
Summary: The Dark Side of Sesame Street
Review: For me, the most memorable part of Postman's analysis is the critique of the hypermedia blitz of Sesame Street. He describes how children are dazed, frustrated, and bewildered as bits of potentially interesting information are extended to them, and then yanked away just as the child is starting to engage. Has Sesame Street been destroying our expectation that paying attention will be rewarding? The result of this random parade of flashes, this free-form multimedia collage, is not an emancipating nonlinearity that supplements structure and coherence; but rather, sheer disintegration and fragmentation of attention.
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Summary: Shows how TV has replaced thought in decision making
Review: Postman's book reads as a blueprint for anyone desiring to market products and politicians in 1990's America. No one who really wants to understand what motivates our politics, our buying decisions and other aspects of marketing should be without this book. Postman shows what a "literate print/thought based people" are like and how TV has replaced all that hard thinking with pictures and images designed to achieve easy buying decisions based on emotional manipulation. Shows how TV is turning us into a nation of "D" Students and makes to case for severe limitation to this intellectually toxic medium.
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Summary: Very well presented critique of TV's effect on U.S. Society.
Review: How the advent of the entertainment industry (predominantly TV) has reduced the desire of U.S. society to rationally consider the world about itself. We desire to be entertained instead. Well written and carefully presented
Rating:
Summary: Frighteningly accurate.
Review: This book is a wakeup call to the entertainment and advertising industries. I pray it doesn't fall on deaf ears.
Craig Evans, author: "Marketing Channels: Infomercials and the Future of Televised Marketing."
Rating: 
Summary: Great insight on how the media effects our culture.
Review: If your interested at how the media can change our thoughts and ideas, read this book.
If you have anything to do with the media, this book should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: One of the best books I have ever read. Period
Rating:
Summary: An insightful look into television's influence on America
Review: This book takes you through and explains the different ways that society has communicated in the past and present, while discussing ways in which the medium itself has effected the message. The logical way in which Mr. Postman reveals the effects of television on American society are very insightful. I would recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in the effect of television on a societ
Rating:
Summary: The Cultural Suicide of America
Review: Though the theme of Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" should be a virtual truism for the thinking members of the human race, it nonetheless remains an extremely valid and highly relevent piece of social criticism for Americans that are concerned with their country's intellectual and cultural decline. What was initially introduced as a great innovation to humanity has become the premier poison of American society. The television, compared to which no other device of corruption can claim more victims, has waged a violent war not for but against the minds of men.Postman points to a period of America's past, barely over a century ago, in which he argues one can find the most literate society in history. Though such a claim is, of course, debatable, it is more significantly intended to draw our attention to the phenomenal and depressing decline in American literacy since the advent of revolutionary communication tools, like the telegraph and the television. Gone are the times when simple, working-class men like Thomas Paine could influence his countrymen with brilliant literary essays like "Common Sense", "The Rights of Man", and "The Age Reason". The Lincoln-Douglass presidential debates, of which a single debate would last for hours and exhaust every conceivable issue in politics, would bring to shame the superficial, puerile squabbling of modern-day presidential candidates. Virtually every influence during that period, from domination to rebellion, was fueled by the power of the pen. In an environment that had not yet been polluted by addictive imagery and music, the voice of the people was established through the medium of the written word. And then came television. What television introduced was not just a new means of communication, but a new means of delusion, control, and intellectual corrosion. The television serves for a disturbing number of Americans as the only window to reality. The insanity that one finds in this window has become the dominant American world view. American values are what one finds when one turns on the television. These values appeal to the lowest, most primitive animal instincts that have ever debased human beings. Americans are no longer guided by the noble principles of reason but rather by their animal desires, which are easily exploited by commercial interests. The mindless storyline of the soap opera, the idiotic ranting of the music video, the barbaric release of testosterone in professional football, have all reduced American culture an orgy of stupidity, a stupidity that plays a perfect role in the context of consumerism. Modern discourse is no longer appreciated for its intellectual content but by virtue of its value as a means of entertainment. This irrational standard has adulterated every aspect of modern American life. Politics should serve as the most poignant example. Rather than addressing complex issues in the specific and comprehensive fashion that characterized the Lincoln-Douglass debates, the modern presidential candidate wins his votes by mud-slinging and mindless sloganeering. We are lucky if the modern presidential candidate is even educated in current affairs. We can bear witness to the most deplorable example of this decadent trend in our own day, that of George W. Bush, whose ignorance on foreign policy exceeds that of a schoolboy. His example should serve as a testament to the truth of Postman's 1984 thesis, of how mindless and superficial modern politics has become. Unfortunately, the standard of entertainment does not stop at politics. We witness this standard in education, art, and even religion. The financial and influential success of first-class imposters like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, and Pat Robertson demonstrate the ignobility into which religion in America has plunged. To anybody that holds even the most modest concern for the intellectual health of modern society, it should be a crime to ignore Postman's book. It is a call for Americans to wake up and realize how far they've allowed themselves to fall into intellectual and cultural decadence. Furthermore, we should acknowledge the fact that this cultural infection is not being contained within U.S. borders. Globalism is forcing American values into every nation on earth. America does not need to send her armies to colonize other peoples. She just has to send her television programs.
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Summary: Postman's best and most effective criticism
Review: Unlike his later works (Technopoly), this book is well argued presenting a solid argument for how "television values" have altered modern discourse. Read with his later book "How to Watch Television," readers are given a compelling description of how modern media present less than you see. This book builds nicely upon and extends the work of McLuhan giving clearer and more accessible examples. Though the book itself over 15 years old, it holds up well even if the examples are fading from memory. His arguments about what qualifies as "news" or "debate" are almost too obvious to ignore. Postman's writing shines is in pointing out the profoundly disconnectedness of TV news and commercials (Chap. 7: "Now... This") or the simplification of American electoral process (Chap. 9: "Reach Out and Elect Someone"). Much of this helps underscore the "Huxleyan Warning" and give the reader a strong sense that WHAT is called news is no longer as important or significant as it was a century ago. The faults in this work are more in overstatement of the desirability of late 19th century literacy and discourse. Chap. 4 (The Typographic Mind) starts by praising the ability of the crowds to pay attention to 3 hour long, scripted Lincoln-Douglas debates. After spending several pages describing the amazing knowledge and patience of the audience he hurriedly glosses over how these occurred in a "carnival-like atmosphere." He doesn't suggest that the audience may have been less than "intellectual" or possibly more interested in yelling "You tell 'em Abe" at a good insult. Nor does he further suppose that some of crowd may have simply been interested in seeing the debaters, hearing their voices, or discussing their appearance in later gossip any more than people do today. The idea that attending the "event" for "event's sake" was a cause is not raised either. Bottom line... This book is an excellent analysis of media effects and coherent presentation of how the "medium is the message." McLuhan fans will enjoy it as an example Marshall never wrote --but may have strongly enjoyed both in it's subject and opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Postman's guessing is not proven
Review: Postman's arguments are rarely based on hard science, he is very polemic. There is a book by a media scientist who takes apart all auf Postman's arguments in "amusing yourself to death". But he is not saying that Postman is wrong on everything he is justing saying that Postman is guessing and that he cannot prove his findings at all. Just too sad, that I don't remember the name of that book. Anyone?
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