TY  - BOOK
AU  - Hedges,Chris
TI  - Empire of illusion : the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle
SN  - 9781568584379
U1  - 302.23 
PY  - 2009///
CY  - New York
PB  - Nation Books
KW  - Mass media
KW  - Popular culture
KW  - United States
KW  - Mass media and culture
KW  - Intellectual life
KW  - Literacy
N2  - Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion.

Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion
ER  -