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Rating: 
Summary: stupid stupid stupid
Review: did i say stupid..
this is the stupidist book of all time.
i saw family fewd..i went to many taping....free tikets
it wasn't that good of show....it was stupidi saw little house on the prarie..it never burned to the ground i wonder what my doctor's name for this book would be..
i bet......it would be..... within the context of.....the stupid group' this george trow guy....whats with the w.s..? william swift ?.....big deal. i kind of drunk right now...right now...as i write this..
im looking at my hands....my own hands...as i type this... sounds stupid....huh......... great book george.............lets meet over chili and beer and discuss.......dh
Rating:
Summary: It's not that kind of book.
Review: If you read Within the Context of no Context expecting it to be a logical, orderly, scholarly work, you'll be sorely disappointed. Other scholars have tackled the same concepts much more thoroughly and persuasively than Trow did or ever could (extremely condensed list: Saussure and Barthes). But it's not that kind of book. It's the kind of book that you can't agree or disagree with. It's the kind of book a twelve-year-old could read. It's the kind of book you read large portions of to your roommates in the middle of the night. It's the kind of book you spill wine on. Trow does have a great deal of wisdom to offer in his quirky little book, and it's just as poignant today as it was in the seventies. But please, don't try to throw him into some scholarly realm. Some books don't need your assent to carry truth.
Rating:
Summary: stupid stupid stupid
Review: one doesn't want to admit it, but trow is dead-on in this book. these aren't observations that are new in any way, but they are presented in brilliant, crystaline prose that one can't exscape or deny.
Rating: 
Summary: At Least his Heart is in the Right Place
Review: One thing is almost guaranteed: the dumbing-down consumer- energizing mass media will always be with us. Politically, it is untouchable. It is created and owned by the left, which pretends to hate it and defended by the right, which pretends to like it. So I suppose we should treat Mr. Trow's criticism of the media like Samuel Johnson's dog. We shouldn't focus on how badly it's done, but marvel that it's done at all. Alas, it really is poorly done. Mr. Trow tries to be stylish and clever, but sacrifices reason and coherence to achieve it. He doesn't define his terms, so that his meaning is often ambiguous. In several places, one could draw two equally valid but contradictory interpretations of his text. If you look at the blurbs on the cover which praise the book, it is very clear what is wrong. Except for Michael Tolkin, the half dozen or so writers praising the book are a who's who of our brain dead media. Having John Irving lament the "terminal silliness of our culture" is like having Ronald MacDonald slam the terminal fattiness of our cuisine. And that's a pity, because Mr. Trow has some important things to say. As one who has admired Mr. Trow's work since his lovely play, The Tennis Game, these essays were very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse now
Review: The New Yorker has turned the entirety of its magazine over to a single work four times. John Hersey's Hiroshima, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, cautionary and apocalyptic all, were three. The fourth is this book. Within the Context of No Context went out of print almost instantly after it was published in 1980. Nobody got this book in 1980. It's a difficult read, in a voice that is diffuse, associative, and allusive, and at the same time makes direct assertions about the way things are, which few of us are comfortable reading. It's not a book that people were quite ready to read in 1980. Except for newsmen. People who made their living by drinking out of the firehose and transforming the experience into column inches understood this book right away. (These are the same people who don't need anyone to explain the first sentence of The White Album to them.) Trow put their unease into words. And for 15 years Within the Context of No Context existed in a kind of samizdat, a thick sheaf of photocopied pages handed from one reporter or columnist or editor to another. You shouldn't buy this book, ideally. Someone should give you a copy of it, Xeroxed from The New Yorker, saying "Read this. This makes sense. This makes everything make sense." 22 years later, it's much easier to read and understand, to criticize and quibble with. It's no longer prophecy. Unlike the apocalypses that John Hersey and Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell were warning us about, the one Trow outlined has already happened. We've even gotten used to it.
Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse now
Review: The New Yorker has turned the entirety of its magazine over to a single work four times. John Hersey's Hiroshima, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, cautionary and apocalyptic all, were three. The fourth is this book. Within the Context of No Context went out of print almost instantly after it was published in 1980. Nobody got this book in 1980. It's a difficult read, in a voice that is diffuse, associative, and allusive, and at the same time makes direct assertions about the way things are, which few of us are comfortable reading. It's not a book that people were quite ready to read in 1980. Except for newsmen. People who made their living by drinking out of the firehose and transforming the experience into column inches understood this book right away. (These are the same people who don't need anyone to explain the first sentence of The White Album to them.) Trow put their unease into words. And for 15 years Within the Context of No Context existed in a kind of samizdat, a thick sheaf of photocopied pages handed from one reporter or columnist or editor to another. You shouldn't buy this book, ideally. Someone should give you a copy of it, Xeroxed from The New Yorker, saying "Read this. This makes sense. This makes everything make sense." 22 years later, it's much easier to read and understand, to criticize and quibble with. It's no longer prophecy. Unlike the apocalypses that John Hersey and Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell were warning us about, the one Trow outlined has already happened. We've even gotten used to it.
Rating:
Summary: Re: Context of No Context and Cozzens
Review: Within the Context of No Context is a perceptive and melancholy essay (and a better read than its sequel, MY PILGRIM'S PROGRESS) about the effect of mass communication on the national psyche.
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