Life

The story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty gossip and melodrama has turned everythingnews politics religion high cultureinto one vast public entertainment.. Neal Gabler calls them lifies those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks months even years: the death of Princess Diana the trial of O.J. Simpson Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton.Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phenomenon but the movies and now the new information technologies have so accelerated it that it is now the reigning popular art form.How this came to pass and just what it means for our culture and our personal lives is the subject of this witty concerned and sometimes eye-opening book. A thoughtful in places chilling account of the way entertainment values have hollowed out American life. --The New York Times Book Review