Empire of Illusion
The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
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Empire of Illusion
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Yen
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By:
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Chris Hedges
About this listen
We now live in two Americas. One - now the minority - functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other - the majority - is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority - which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected-presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade level.
In this "other America", serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture - attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies - to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
©2009 Chris Hedges (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 318
Chris Hedges examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues that there are five pillars of the liberal establishment and that each of these institutions has sold out the constituents it represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Integrity-Can You Tell Me Where It's Gone?
- By Mel on 06-14-12
By: Chris Hedges
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Unspeakable
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Chris Hedges, Michael Quinlan
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 369
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 328
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 324
Chris Hedges has been telling truth to (and against) power since his earliest days as a radical journalist. He is an intellectual bomb-thrower who continues to confront American empire in the most incisive, challenging ways. The kinds of insights he provides into the deeply troubled state of our democracy cannot be found anywhere else.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Complexity of corporate neoliberalism explained
- By Dwayne on 11-09-16
By: Chris Hedges
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The Greatest Evil Is War
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
In fifteen short chapters, Chris Hedges astonishes us with his clear and cogent argument against war, not on philosophical grounds or through moral arguments, but in an irrefutable stream of personal encounters with the victims of war, from veterans and parents to gravely wounded American serviceman who served in the Iraq War, to survivors of the Holocaust, to soldiers in the Falklands War, among others. Hedges reported from Sarajevo, and was in the Balkans to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Another amazing title by an amazing journalist.
- By Zzzing on 12-28-22
By: Chris Hedges
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War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Chris Hedges
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 296
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful, perceptive, personal
- By Cx30 on 08-08-07
By: Chris Hedges
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I Don't Believe in Atheists
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Chris Hedges
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 107
There are two radical and dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: Christian fundamentalists, who see religious faith as their exclusive prerogative, and New Atheists, who brand all religious belief as irrational. Too often, the religious majority - those committed to tolerance and compassion as well as their faith - are caught in the middle.
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1 out of 5 stars
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An author who knows little but thinks he knows all
- By GLENN on 04-16-09
By: Chris Hedges
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A Genocide Foretold
- Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Ali Nasser
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5
A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence.
By: Chris Hedges
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Our Class
- Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 95
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Story5 out of 5 stars 95
Chris Hedges has taught courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history since 2013 in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University at East Jersey State Prison and other New Jersey prisons. At East Jersey State Prison, his class set out to write a play of their own. In writing the play, Caged, students gave words to the grief and suffering they and their families have endured, as well as to their hopes and dreams. The class’ artistic and personal discovery, as well as transformation, is chronicled in heartbreaking detail in Our Class.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Riveting Story and Reality
- By Gregorio Bueno on 11-22-21
By: Chris Hedges
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The Culture of Narcissism
- American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
- By: Christopher Lasch
- Narrated by: Barry Press
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 206
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
When The Culture of Narcissism was first published, it was clear that Christopher Lasch had identified something important: what was happening to American society in the wake of the decline of the family over the last century. The book quickly became a best seller.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Analysis from the 1970's good bad and ugly.
- By Carl A. Gallozzi on 02-24-20
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Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
- By: Richard Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 163
This book throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fifty years later, still valid today
- By David Evan Glasser on 11-13-18
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How Propaganda Works
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy - particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality - and how it has damaged democracies of the past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Philosophy
- By Amazon Customer on 04-18-21
By: Jason Stanley
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Collateral Damage
- America's War Against Iraqi Civilians
- By: Chris Hedges, Laila Al-Arian
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 15
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian spent several months interviewing Iraqi war veterans to expose the patterns of the occupation and how it affects Iraqi civilians. The testimonies of these soldiers and marines provide a disturbing window into the indiscriminate killing of unarmed and innocent Iraqis that is carried out daily by the occupation forces.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Vivid and Relevant: one of the best war books...
- By Kevin on 06-18-14
By: Chris Hedges, and others
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Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
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When China Rules the World
- The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
- By: Martin Jacques
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4 out of 5 stars 151
According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lucid explanation of global economic trends
- By David Blake on 01-04-10
By: Martin Jacques
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The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- By: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 116
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
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The Sickness Is the System
- When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself
- By: Richard D. Wolff
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
The coronavirus pandemic, the deepening economic crash, dangerously divisive political responses, and exploding social tensions have thrown an already declining American capitalist system into a tailspin. The consequences of these mounting and intertwined crises will shape our future. In this unique collection of over 50 essays, The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, Richard D. Wolff argues clearly that "returning to normal" no longer responds adequately to the accumulated problems of US capitalism.
By: Richard D. Wolff
What listeners say about Empire of Illusion
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Matthew
- 11-19-20
Honest
Sounds like the previous reviewer was upset this book wasn’t what he wanted it to be. The author honestly lays out dire the situation we, as Americans, are in. I’m sorry they didn’t find the hope they were looking for.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 06-26-20
Amazing
While depressing this book is a must read given the current state of affairs. Must purchase
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 01-19-21
Great listen, but not when the kids are in the car
interesting insight and almost crystal balling life in 2021. Went a bit overboard with the porn stories, but was still a great listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Gregorio Bueno
- 05-08-21
Breathtaking Reality of a Country
This book is a great immersion into our society and what is causing our division. The rising of authoritarian figures that focus on corporate greed and push us against each other. Knowledge is power and it enable us to become a better world.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Zachary
- 11-20-23
Prophetic in its understanding of America’s Future
Early in the book its examination in minute detail of our garish culture made me feel like a dog whose master shoves its nose in its shit while saying, “No! Bad!” It emphasized the very shallowness of our culture and then carries this over into the shallowness of our politics, our scholarship, and our religion. Written in 2010, it nonetheless anticipated the rise of a shallow, right wing populism that would feel safer under a dictatorship than under the failing structures of our existing order.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Adri16
- 06-26-19
Chris Hedges
Hedges consistently brings sharp analysis to U.S. society, the corporate state and imperialism. Excellent book!
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dee Butler
- 04-30-20
Excellent and rare exposure of the Truth
Few books I have read that are as erudite and convincing if the absolute collapse of the American empire.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Noah
- 01-08-19
I think if more people read Chris Hedges..
The world would be a better place. No author has impacted me more than he has. This is my favorite book of his. I just finished it and I think it just changed my life. It's so powerful. His ability to diagnose society is impeccable
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- D. S. Turner
- 12-21-19
Graphic language describing violence & pornography
The premise that Americans are distracted by illusion, celebrity status, and trivia is correct. The information could have been delivered without the repeated detailed graphic depictions & statements from porn stars and the descriptive violence regarding wrestling. I wanted the information but it was a painful & disturbing listen. The narrator did not convey that he was disturbed by the graphic reading.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Thomas R.
- 02-19-25
Excellent
A great look at modern society. I was surprised it didn’t touch on Guy Debord and ‘Society of the Spectacle’, but it still covered a lot. This book proved to be very prescient. Starts out hilarious, then becomes shocking, then revelatory, then depressing, and finally finishes hopeful. It was very entertaining, and had an abundance of substance and style.
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