Building a Bridge to the 18th Century - by Neil Postman (Paperback)

About the Book

Acclaimed cultural critic Neil Postman looks back to the 18th century at the humane ideas he believes Americans would do well to embrace anew as a new century begins.

Book Synopsis

In Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, acclaimed cultural critic Neil Postman offers a cure for the hysteria and hazy values of the postmodern world.

Postman shows us how to reclaim that balance between mind and machine in a dazzling celebration of the accomplishments of the Enlightenment-from Jefferson's representative democracy to Locke's deductive reasoning to Rousseau's demand that the care and edification of children be considered an investment in our collective future. Here, too, is the bold assertion that Truth is invulnerable to fashion or the passing of time. Provocative and brilliantly argued, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century illuminates a navigable path through the Information Age-a byway whose signposts, it turns out, were there all along.

Review Quotes

"Patient, humane . . . [Postman] may well be ahead of his time." --San Francisco Examiner

"[Postman's] most ambitious attempt yet to help America survive the future." -- The New York Observer

"[A] critique of the claims made on behalf of technology, along with a defense of old-fashioned liberal humanism."--The New York Times Book Review

"A refreshing antidote to the current mania for starry-eyed futurism. . . . Reminds us that Goethe and Voltaire . . . might be better guides into the twenty-first century than Bill Gates or Alvin Toffler." --Utne Reader