Pacaritambo

THE CULTURE OF FEAR: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
by Barry Glassner. Condition: Used, 2003 Basic Books Trade Paperback, 19th printing. Underlining in firszxt chapter - the rest of the book is clean. Content: Reviewer: "This book is a meticulously-footnoted indictment of mass media's distortion of reality. Among the things that Glassner skewers is the media's portrayal of teen moms & young black men as destroyers of American society, road rage, plane crashes, & health woes related to breast implants. The basic premises that Glassner covers are these: 1) Mass media creates panics & hysterias from a few isolated incidents. 2) Anecdotal evidence takes the place of hard scientific proof. 3) The experts that the media trots out to make comments really don't have the credentials to be considered an expert. 4) Entire categories of people are christened as "innately dangerous" (like the aforementioned teen moms and young black men). Sometimes Glassner's tone towards media is very snide, which may turn the reader off. Nonetheless, I came away with a new distrust of nightly news magazines, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and others. Glassner goes for breadth rather than depth; many of the topics that he covered could be books in their own right. If you lean towards the Christian Conservative side, you won't like this book. Same goes for 2nd Amendment proponents, some Republicans and Libertarians. [1 copy available]
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THE DISSIDENT WORD: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1995
edited by Chris Miller. Condition: NEW 1995 Basic Books (HarperCollins) hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket). Content: A reminder from Amnesty International of the power of free speech in the face of oppression--and of the fact that ``ordinary people, not just journalists, novelists, and poets . . . can be saved by international opinion.'' In this collection of addresses delivered at Oxford University, six novelists speak to aspects of political dissent.: Andre Brink, Wole Soyinka, Edmund White, Taslima Nasreen, Gore Vidal, and Nawal El Saadawi. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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MUCKRAKING: Three Landmark Articles
edited by with introduction by Ellen F. Fitzpatrick. B&W era photos illustrate. Condition: UNREAD 1994 Bedlam/St. Martin's Press Trade Paperback, fourth printing. Tiny edgewear. Content: Reviewer: "This edition contains, three landmark articles that were all published in McClure's magazine in January 1903. The articles, "The Oil War of 1872" by Ida M. Tarbell; "The Shame of Minneapolis" by Lincoln Steffens; and "The Right To Work" by Ray Stannard Baker are indeed rare to find collected in one volume. Thankfully, for students of journalism and history they are collected here. When looking at all three articles, they might seem to a 21st century reader as a little flat and not all that shocking or sensational. However, if one looks back at some of the hokey pablum that many papers and magazines employed, these articles were nothing short of a bombshell. Some of the journalism of that era smacked of boosterism or partisan sentiment, but these articles were indeed beholden to none but the truth (or as close to that moving target as you can get). There is also a history of "muckraking" included. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: The Extensions of Man
by Marshall McLuhan. Condition: Unread c. 1970s Signet paperback, 10th printing. Pale shelfwear hinge crease with something odd: 2 colors of paper being used for the text. Light tanning to page edges. Interior clean and tight. Content: "An early copy of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose (1964) on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate. There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined." One of the most influential books ever published. [1 copy available]
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