The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

A text from my college days that made a big impression in me. Basically a guide to how consumerist propaganda works.

One of the best books ever written on media and politics. A must read.

This book has very interesting ideas, the only downside that should put this book to 6/10 is that it is filled with a lot of irrelevant and uninteresting dates, names and facts. The author sometimes begins to list every city name in which some random company had an event.What eventually transforms the rating 6/10 into 8/10 is the right assumption at the end of the book, the assumption that Walter Lippmann could not make in his book "Public Opinion", which is: "One of our grand illusions is the belief in a "cure". There is no cure. There is only the opportunity for discovery. For this the New World gave us a grand, unique beginning."

Well, it's easy to see where Chris Hedges got his inspiration for "Empire of Illusion". Boorstin's book, "The Image", came out in 1962 and attempts to peal back the layers of illusion, self-deception and blurred reality that characterized the United States of fifty years ago and today. Touching on a diverse range of topics including the concept of a "celebrity", press conferences, the decline of travel and the rise of tourism, Boorstin set the standard for books which try to see what America really is, not what Americans think America is. Reading "The Image" is like sitting in a barber chair watching yourself in a mirror sitting in a barber chair watching yourself in a mirror, looking at yourself in a mirror, ad infinitum. Boorstin never does quite make it to the final mirror, but he made a very good effort and produced a very readable book, at least that's according to "Reader's Digest".All in all, this is a very good look at modern America and its self-obsession and, despite advances in technology, is not at all dated. I would recommend reading  Propaganda  by Edward Bernays and  Public Opinion  by Walter Lippman to get a fuller understanding of public relations, advertising and the whole empire of illusions. PropagandaPublic Opinion

A fantastic and profound relevance to our current paradigm ( yet written in 1961 )