Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Neil Postman (1931-2003) was a media critic and professor of education and communication at New York University for over 40 years. He earned a master’s degree in 1955 and a doctorate in education 1958, both from Columbia University. While he began his career with a focus on education, he became best known for his work on media studies. Postman is the author of 20 books and countless articles, most of which are related to education, technology, or language—and often all three. At New York University, he founded the graduate program in media ecology, which studies media as an environment that impacts everything people do and perceive.

Postman’s knowledge and expertise on the subject of media make him highly qualified to write the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Perhaps his most famous book, it was written in 1985, but Postman had been studying the topic of television’s influence on society for more than two decades, at least since his earlier book Television and the Teaching of English (1961). He also wrote The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), in which he argued that the printing press had largely “created” childhood, at least as a social construct. Because television offers more direct access to information through simple images rather than complex words and thought, the line between childhood and adulthood became blurred in the 20th century.