My Pilgrim's Progress: Media Studies 1950-1998

Original provocative and possibly prophetic.-- The New York Times . When his classic Within the Context of No Context was first published George W. S. Trow parsed televisions overwhelming dominance over Americas consciousness. In My Pilgrims Progress he returns with a provocative tour of politics and the media to show how 1950 got to be 1998. . The son of a tabloid journalist Trow was raised in the Deepest Roosevelt Aesthetic and found himself seduced by the ordinaryness of the Eisenhower era. It was a time when the Old World was giving way to the New. Perusing The New York Times of February 1950 he gives us America at the peak of its power with its politicians and celebrities (and the nearly hesitant advent of television) and the fresh terror of the H-bomb. At turns a cultural history a eulogy and a provocative commentary on contemporary America My Pilgrims Progress confirms Trows place as one of our most brilliant and incisive social critics.