The Disappearance of Childhood

Interesting, and not terribly encouraging. I wish there were a 21st-century update. Writing in the early 80's (updated in 1993), Postman observes that children are being treated like little adults, and adults are beginning to act like children. Pubescent girls are held up as sex symbols in advertisi......more

Thoughts, so many thoughts. 1. Neil Postman is my foremost favorite cultural critic and Ideas Man. He is not a progressive and he is not a conservative; he is just a refreshing mix of big ideas that I don't hear anywhere else and could certainly not have thought up myself. I don't experience him as p......more

As usual, Professor Postman makes some solid points, way ahead of his time. However, this work falls a bit short of his previous works in losing his arguments through extended ranting. It's a short read, though, and worth the fewer than 150 pages it is. "If one cannot say anything about how we may pr......more

Postman considered this his most important work, and I am inclined to agree. I prefer it to his much more well-known Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I found somewhat underwhelming (whaddya gonna do if you've already read Huxley/McLuhan/Ellul/Kaczynzki?). The Disappearance of Childhood is prescient......more

I was on a good reading streak this year when I picked up Postman's book. For someone who is very critical of TV, Postman must have spent a lot of time watching TV in order to reach some of his conclusions. The book is very dry; while very thin, it is not fun to read and it took me a long time to ge......more