Audience of one : Donald Trump, television, and the fracturing of America /
A generational work that, using television, reframes America's identity through the rattled mind of a septuagenarian, insomniac, cable-news-junkie president. In the tradition of great cultural figures like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozi...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company,
[2019]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
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| Summary: | A generational work that, using television, reframes America's identity through the rattled mind of a septuagenarian, insomniac, cable-news-junkie president. In the tradition of great cultural figures like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozik traces the history of television and mass media from the early 1980s to today, and demonstrates how a "volcanic, camera-hogging antihero" merged with America's most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president. Beginning where Postman left off, Audience of One weaves together two compelling stories. The first charts the seismic evolution of television from a monolithic mass medium, with three mainstream networks, into today's fractious confederation of "spite-and-insult" media subcultures. The second examines Donald Trump himself, who took advantage of these historic changes to constantly reinvent himself, from boastful cartoon zillionaire to 1990s self-parodic sitcom fixture to The Apprentice-reality-TV star and, finally, to Twitter-mad, culture-warring demagogue. A trenchant, often slyly hilarious, work, Audience of One provides an eye-opening history of American media and a sobering reflection of the raucous, "gorillas-are always-fighting" culture we've now become. |
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| Physical Description: | xxiii, 325 pages ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781631494420 1631494422 |