Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$45.93

Paperback
$11.98

$11.98 with 33 percent savings

List Price: $18.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, July 8 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or Prime members get FREE delivery Sunday, July 6. Order within 2 hrs 25 mins.

In Stock

$$11.98 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Payment

Secure transaction

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$8.97

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

Gently used with light wear on the cover and corners. May have some writing or highlighting. Dust jacket or extras might be missing. May be ex-library copy. Ships direct from Amazon! Gently used with light wear on the cover and corners. May have some writing or highlighting. Dust jacket or extras might be missing. May be ex-library copy. Ships direct from Amazon! See less

FREE delivery Tuesday, July 8 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Monday, July 7. Order within 2 hrs 25 mins

Only 2 left in stock - order soon.

$$11.98 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Dream Books Co. and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (62) from $7.97 & FREE Shipping

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Daniel J. Boorstin

Follow

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Paperback – September 1, 1992

by Daniel J. Boorstin (Author)

284 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$11.98","priceAmount":11.98,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"98","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"PqnH5aBRsAF09TlgnOt27iARWdnsWmsR5pcWcs%2Fd6NB3hO12Nx%2BKZgqWV82AgrYvkudFXzMqOWwv1oxQtiv2r9lauZKYeh3aNQhshxcMBsxlGVJNZ0I%2F3S0FGJcGVQcJsc8%2Fqm827yg%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$8.97","priceAmount":8.97,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"97","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"PqnH5aBRsAF09TlgnOt27iARWdnsWmsRA%2BUXTZfdYxCeUezcNXzCk%2B31b5hbVxgHhPD1RWHMySfKNs61mugTBksE0XDfXMgqo5BXqKo3HhIMA2Z7bP5t26zddjpAIXOcZho2JlsQk6jHqhx2rGScmgZloa4SDXb3gBnwsw9YVkkcIinCvpsn8w%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Daniel J. Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions is an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.

"The book that best explains Trump’s dominance may well have been published in 1962. In The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin described the image as a medium—a photograph, a movie, a representation of life, laid out on pulp or screen—that becomes, soon enough, a habit of mind." —The Atlantic

“Boorstin’s book tells us how to see and listen, and how to think about what we see and hear.”—George Will

First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported—and the contemporary definition of celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image

“A very informative and entertaining and chastising book.”
—Harper’s

“A book that everyone in America should read every few years. Stunning in its prescience, it explains virtually every aspect of our mass media's evolution and seductiveness.”
—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad

“An engrossing book—sensitive, thoughtful, damning, dead on target and in most respects unanswerable.”
—Scientific American

“Excellent. . . It is the book to end all books about ‘The American Image’—what it is, who projects it, what effect it has at home or abroad.”
—The Observer

“A brilliant and original essay about the black arts and corrupting influences of advertising and public relations.”
—The Guardian

“Boorstin’s book tells us how to see and listen, and how to think about what we see and hear.”
—George Will

From the Inside Flap

First Published In 1962, This Wonderfully Provocative Book Introduced The Notion Of "pseudo-events" -- Events Such As Press Conferences And Presidential Debates, Which Are Manufactured Solely In Order To Be Reported -- And The Contemporary Definition Of Celebrity As "a Person Who Is Known For His Well-knownness." Since Then Daniel J. Boorstin's Prophetic Vision Of An America Inundated By Its Own Illusions Has Become An Essential Resource For Any Reader Who Wants To Distinguish The Manifold Deceptions Of Our Culture From Its Few Enduring Truths.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 1992
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679741801
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679741800
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.75 x 7.92 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #96,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #174 in Communication & Media Studies
- #250 in Communication Skills
- #633 in Sociology Reference

Customer Reviews:
284 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

284 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book exceptionally well written and thought-provoking, with one review describing it as a seminal work on American popular culture. Moreover, the pacing receives positive feedback, with one customer noting its slow and careful demystification approach. Additionally, they appreciate its image quality, with one review highlighting its good introduction to the world of image. However, the value for money receives mixed reactions, with some finding it worthy of the Kindle price while others disagree.

Select to learn more

Readability Insight Pacing Image quality Value for money

31 customers mention "Readability"29 positive2 negative

Customers find the book exceptionally well written and consider it a classic, with one customer noting the helpful suggestions for further reading.

"This was probably groundbreaking when it was written, in its observation of how many events in American life are things that are consciously created..." Read more

"...This book is a fascinating piece of insight, clarity, and honesty well worth the reading." Read more

"...five stars for uniqueness of premise and worthiness of its research/ anecdotes/ case studies. It is every bit worthy of the Kindle price." Read more

"This was one of the most influential books I've ever read. It changed the way I see our world...." Read more

15 customers mention "Insight"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and thought-provoking, with one customer noting how technological advancements have enabled the development of pseudo-events, while another describes it as a seminal work on American popular culture.

"...This book is a fascinating piece of insight, clarity, and honesty well worth the reading." Read more

"...criticizing authorship, but this one deserves five stars for uniqueness of premise and worthiness of its research/ anecdotes/ case studies...." Read more

"The book is an interesting artifact from the beginning of consumerism. At the time, Boorstin’s ideas were probably revelatory and exciting...." Read more

"...Well this book takes you on a ride that leaves you with new insights into the media and it’s power to influence events...." Read more

4 customers mention "Pacing"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one noting its slow and careful demystification approach, while others describe it as prescient and a relatively quick read.

"...So I'll stick to sharing my takeaway. The slow and careful demystification that Boorstin gives is a gift wrapped in warning...." Read more

"...A relatively quick read." Read more

"Boorstin's book, written almost 60 years ago, is extraordinarily prescient in the ways it depicts our media culture...." Read more

"Prescient and wise..." Read more

3 customers mention "Image quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the image quality of the book, with one noting it provides a good introduction to the world of image, while another describes it as a fresh perspective.

"...Internet has exponentially accelerated our ability to create and disseminate images. Social networking has added a new dimension to it as well...." Read more

"Fresh view from an experienced book...." Read more

"Good introduction to the world of image..." Read more

7 customers mention "Value for money"3 positive4 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's value for money, with some finding it worth the Kindle price, while others consider it a waste of time.

"...It was interesting, I thought, but a little radical and not that profound. Silly me...." Read more

"...It is every bit worthy of the Kindle price." Read more

"...is a waste of time and a pseudo-event...." Read more

"great value" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

David
Riveting and Mourn-inducing
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2017
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

There are plenty of summaries already available to unpack this book. So I'll stick to sharing my takeaway.

The slow and careful demystification that Boorstin gives is a gift wrapped in warning. This text is a totem for the American citizen, especially post-election 2016, to realize the deluge of illusion in which we have so surreptitiously been coaxed into abiding for over a half-century. Somewhere along the path of America's pursuit of prestige, we slipped into our own magic machine and ever so seamlessly believed we were always walking in the real world. In a phrase, we fabricated a national lie and therein fashioned a pantheon of larger and grander lies by which we have ballooning debt that we call wealth, sickness that we call health, propaganda that we call entertainment, and war crimes that we call American Exceptionalism. While Boorstin steered clear of the geopolitical, economic, and sheer existential consequences of the mass proliferation and commodification of pseudo-events themselves, I will say that we are living out all of the consequences of his warning, unheeded or unnoticed, to their logical end in the ultimate form of collective suicide on par with with David Applewhite's cult, Heaven's Gate. They believed in some great salvation on a spaceship hidden behind Hale Bop Comet. Applewhite's followers were warned and pleaded with, but were reticently unresponsive to the reality that they were on a path to destruction. The last and greatest illusion is that the United States is not imploding by virtue of belief that the very things we create to overcome our problems are not themselves contributing to our extinction. At best, this is Sparta, we are surrounded by illusions and we are going out in a blaze of inglorious bluster. Or, we can stop and course correct our hearts and love people and this earth with a better way of life in a culture of life as opposed to mass selfish consumerism.

All of our reaching for perpetual pleasure is built on one lie: that we can achieve greatness through infinite growth in a finite reality; that is, a world of limited resources. No one country can not should be so greedy as to plunder and colonize other nations to satisfy itself in the grounds of its self-proclaimed supremacy. Free-market capitalism is built on this lie. And all derivative "benefits" are merely temporary pleasures on the downside of a bell curve. At some point, some unfortunate generation of Lemmings--if not now--are going to be saddled with a bill that will come due. There will be no alternative planet or spatial salvation to thwart or defer what is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of manufactured apocalypse--a final and consequential pseudo-event.

We have been warned.

The mistake any reader can make is to read this book and only conclude that it was entertaining and to then simply walk away unchanged and, to borrow from Christianity, essentially unrepentant.

Read more

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Martin Zook
Is it the information age we live in...or, the age of contrivance?
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2011
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
If much of what passes as news today strikes you as contrived, then this likely is the book for you. Although it was first published in 1962, it remains most relevant today as Boorstin's revelations are still at play half a century after he brought them to our attention, even after the newspaper industry has largely become outdated, as TV news has fallen by the wayside, and even more so as digital media flood every cranny on Spaceship Earth.

"In the twentieth century...we expect the papers to be full of news," Boorstin notes early on in the text. And, according to Boorstin, therein lies the root of the media's evil: it has to meet the bottomless pit of our demand for news, which helps explain why a local TV station in Washington this week devoted extensive air time to a 10-year-old kid who aspires to be a food writer and sponsored a grilled cheese sandwich tasting event at his home.

The electronic media had not driven a stake through the heart of newspapers, although p.m. papers were being trimmed by TV and radio when Boorstin first published The Image. But the emergence of electronic media has accelerated the trend of producing contrived news to meet the public's insatiable demand.

The pressure to create images of news events has resulted in the emergence of celebrity, Boorstin notes. We see that throughout the day with celebrities offering opinions on things of which they know little or noting, washed up movie stars hawking insurance to the elderly, and movie actors testifying in front of Congress. We have singing and dancing contests to birth the next celebrities in litters with a gestation period corresponding to the TV viewing season.

But where I think Boorstin missed the mark was in thinking that celebrity would supersede the hero. The hero - with an annual extravaganza on CNN, hosted by their star hard news reporter, has adopted quite nicely to the demand for heroes, whether on the battlefield, the home, or the playing field, by fastening on the cape of celebrity.

The ideals of American have been overshadowed by the contrivance of images of America that do not consider the consequences of their creation, according to Boorstin. No where have we proven this more than in our accumulation of wealth and consumption, which is contrived as a virtue.

The downside to the age of contrived images, Boorstin concludes, is that it belittles all that it attempts to exalt.

This is still an eye popping read. And, at less than 300 pages, it won't tear you away from the blogs on the Internet, or Twitter news' 150-character packets, for too long.

Read more

31 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
William Whyte
This was probably groundbreaking when it was written, in ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This was probably groundbreaking when it was written, in its observation of how many events in American life are things that are consciously created for effect rather than things that spontaneously arise. Though Boorstin was very much a conservative, his take, that the artifice of spectacle in America forces cynicism on the observer, mirrors a Marxist / Situationist analysis. The exception is where exactly the two analyses put the blame: Situationism sees it as a conspiracy; Boorstin sees it as something unfortunate that has arisen without any conscious agenda other than producing "content". Since it was written, the extent to which big events are stage managed has only increased (remember "Mission Accomplished", anyone?) and this book is unlikely to surprise anyone any more.

Read more

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Devan Traynor
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A fantastic and profound relevance to our current paradigm ( yet written in 1961 )

Read more
Report
Peter Simon Jones
Still Painfully Relevant
Reviewed in Japan on October 17, 2013
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The Image
Boorstin

As I have decided to do of late, rather than give my own opinion per se. I have chosen to extract some of my favourite ideas and quotations so that you can get an idea of what this text is about.

“Television allows us to be the actors we really are.” (p.28)

“The people must be informed! Most pleas for “more information” are therefore misguided. So long as we define information as a knowledge of pseudo-events, “more information” will simply multiply the symptoms without curing the disease.” (p.37) N.B. For Boorstin’s ‘pseudo-events’ we might substitute Baudrillard’s idea of ‘simulacral’

“Knowledge of pseudo-events - of what has been reported, or what has been staged, and how - becomes the test of being ‘informed’.” (p.40)

“The celebrity is usually nothing greater than a more-publicised version of us. In imitating him, in trying to dress like him, talk like him, look like him, think like him, we are simply imitating ourselves.” (p.74)

“The American tourist in Japan looks less for what is Japanese than what is Japanesesy. He wants to believe that geishas are only quaint oriental prostitutes; it is nearly impossible for him to imagine they can be anything else.” (p.106)
“Whether we seek models of greatness, or experience elsewhere on the earth, we look into the mirror instead of out a window, and we see only ourselves.” (p.117)

“If art and literature were to be made accessible to all, they had to be made intelligible (and inoffensive) to all.” (p. 119)

(on censorship) “The real tyrant is not the Hays Office or the local censorship, but the film form itself.” (p.148)

“Photography, as practiced by the millions of do-it-yourself photographers, is not, oddly enough, a way of producing images with a life of their own detached from their maker (which as T.S.Elliot observes, is a true characteristic of a work of art). Instead photography becomes a form of narcissism. “Have you seen my snapshots of the Mona Lisa?”” (p.170)

“(N)ot truth, but credibility, is the modern test ... For everybody, then, it is more important that a statement be believable than that it is true.” (p.227)

“I suspect we suffer abroad simply because people know America through images. While our enemies profit from the fact that they are known only, or primarily through their ideals.” (p.243)

“The Graphic Revolution (a key concept of this text) has offered us the means of making all experience a form of mental chewing-gum, which can be continually sweetened to give us the illusion that we are being nourished.” (p.258)

Read more
Report
Marie L. Broch
Superb
Reviewed in India on April 13, 2021
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Required reading if you don’t want to be fooled by our contemporary systems. And interesting and fun

Read more
Report
Biffo
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
One of the best books ever written on media and politics. A must read.

Read more
Report
Elvis
Interesting observations that are still relevant today.
Reviewed in Germany on November 3, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book has very interesting ideas, the only downside that should put this book to 6/10 is that it is filled with a lot of irrelevant and uninteresting dates, names and facts. The author sometimes begins to list every city name in which some random company had an event.
What eventually transforms the rating 6/10 into 8/10 is the right assumption at the end of the book, the assumption that Walter Lippmann could not make in his book "Public Opinion", which is: "One of our grand illusions is the belief in a "cure". There is no cure. There is only the opportunity for discovery. For this the New World gave us a grand, unique beginning."

Read more
Report
Translate review to English

See more reviews

Buy new:

Save with Used - Good

Follow the author

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Paperback – September 1, 1992

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Frequently purchased items with fast delivery

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Daniel J. Boorstin

Customer reviews

Review this product

Customers say

Select to learn more

Images in this review

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting and Mourn-inducing

5.0 out of 5 stars Is it the information age we live in...or, the age of contrivance?

4.0 out of 5 stars This was probably groundbreaking when it was written, in ...

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Painfully Relevant

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting observations that are still relevant today.

Riveting and Mourn-inducing

Is it the information age we live in...or, the age of contrivance?

This was probably groundbreaking when it was written, in ...

Five Stars

Still Painfully Relevant

Superb

Five Stars

Interesting observations that are still relevant today.