4 books to read in 2017 for a stronger America – Medium

4 books to read in 2017 for a stronger America – Medium:
"...Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman
Should we manage to rouse our society from their televisions and smart phones to read these Great Books, we might indeed recover and retain all that makes our civilization civilized. Neil Postman, however, doubts our success.
Playing on the ideas of Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World and George Orwell in his 1984, Postman argues in his Amusing Ourselves to Death that civilization won’t fall to revolutionaries or communist regimes, but rather with a Huxlian “soma,” renamed entertainment.
He traces America’s progression from a thinking man’s experiment in self-government, to a petted man’s circus and demonstrates that today’s man has traded thought for amusement, action for titillation and gossip.
This sobering look at society’s descent into socialism sounds a provocative alarm and calls the sober minded to the wakeful life the liberal arts inspire."