Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space (Console-Ing Passions)

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: Buy this book, whoever you are, if you are at all interested in television, visual culture, and electronic media. It's guaranteed to get you thinking, and it's quite likely going to change your opinions about the simplistic ways TV gets talked about by academics and non-academics alike. Take pleasure in the fact that this is one of the most lucidly written academic titles out there, but doesn't dumb down its analysis; McCarthy addresses her reader carefully, respectfully, and without a tad of the vapid academic insiderism exhibited in the Newport Beach reviewer's unexplained and to my mind inexplicable response to the book. Plus it's loaded with wonderfully illustrative photos and line drawings. A real treat.

Rating:
Summary: Good try, but doesn't quite work.
Review: McCarthy has hit on an interesting idea--television is as much a public as a domestic fixture. Unfortunately, she doesn't quite follow through. The book has the air of a dissertation, careful but uninspired in its research as well as in the conclusions the author draws. In the end, it's a disappointment.