The Image - by Daniel J Boorstin (Paperback)

About the Book

The author introduces the seminal concept of "pseudo-events"--such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are staged solely for publicity--and redefines celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". The result is an essential resource that distinguishes the deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.

Book Synopsis

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."

Review Quotes

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

About the Author

Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans, a trilogy (The Colonial Experience; The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004.