Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America

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Summary: The book I've been waiting for.
Review: This book (While maybe not being the best organized) is excellent. If you care about democracy or the soverignty of your country or you think we live in a free society you should read it.

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Summary: Revolutionaries Unite!
Review: This book is a call to arms for all the people who feel that the overconsumptive ways of our consumer culture have become overbearing. Kalle Lasn has a lot of good ideas and a couple of cool ways to resist authority and corporate domination in our everyday lives. I think anyone today can relate to his arguements on some level. It is time we reclaim democracy and think about the long term affects that our actions will have in the future. My critisisms of the book are that sometimes he takes a simplistic view in terms of the good guys/bad guys ideology. He calls for revolution but he doesn't give viable alternatives to the capatialist society that we live in now. A must-read for anybody who is fed up and desires change!

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Summary: An Unfortunate Muddle
Review: This is one of the most frustrating books I have come across in quite some time. Frustrating because I WANT to agree with the author, but his disorganized hodgepodge of romantic philosophy and counterculture deifying devoid of any sort of firmly constructed reason or definition has rendered his position impotent and ridiculous. Since I'm a longtime fan of clever "culture jammers" who confront corporate hegemony and the public who condones it--such radical satirists as Michael Moore, Negativland, etc.--I thought that I would enjoy a book describing this movement and the reasons, ideas and people behind it. What Kalle Lasn has presented, however, is a half-baked melange of ranting and whining, riddled with vaguery, self-contradiction and utterly subjective fragments of ideology presented as absolute truths. There are perhaps ten pages of startling, valuable and well presented information in this 215 page book, the rest is an unfortunate muddle which says nothing more original than "corporations are bad" and "think for yourself." At one point, Lasn paraphrases Bradbury, saying that a culture jammer "Jumps off cliffs and builds his wings on the way down." With "Culture Jam," Lasn has jumped off the cliff, thrown a few handfuls of feathers into the air and left a big mess at the bottom.

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Summary: Instruction manual for zealots
Review: To preface: I am neither liberal nor conservative, but simply believe that individuals should educate themselves, think for themselves and question everything. SUPERFICIALLY that is what this book may SEEM to be about, but after finishing, I can only see it as a frightening bit of lunatic demagoguery which tells people that emotions=truth and that "Wrath...is good." Furthermore, Lasn seems to think that individualism and social revolution AREN'T incompatibles. So we're all supposed to be freethinkers...and think the exact same way? Liberal sheep and radical sheep are still sheep. This book reads like an instruction manual for zealots--something to make all the unemployed angry-young-men who still live with thier parents feel self-righteous. If you believe in individualistic thought, don't bother with this book...and if you should meet anyone who exhibits passionate devotion to it, I would recommend speaking in soft tones and not giving them anything sharp.