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America's Meltdown The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society
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John Boghosian Arden
ISBN: 0-275-97639-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97639-2
240 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/2003
List Price: $62.95 (UK Sterling Price: £43.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: As entertainers, corporations, and even the government pander to the lowest common denominator, American life becomes increasingly vicarious, prefabricated, and bereft of meaning. This book examines contemporary American consciousness, considering the factors that have driven society toward gossip and sensationalism at the cost of substance and depth.

Celebrity news, video games, cookie-cutter schools, and shopping, shopping, shopping. As entertainers, corporations, and even the government pander to the lowest common denominator, American life becomes increasingly vicarious, prefabricated, and bereft of meaning. This book examines contemporary American consciousness, considering the factors that have driven society toward gossip and sensationalism at the cost of substance and depth.

Arden discusses the growing epidemic of acrimony, superficiality, attention deficit disorder, and complaints of ennui. He targets the reasons why American children have expressed their confused rage with deadly weapons, why a president boasts that he earned Cs in college, and why society has drifted into craving entertainment laced with violence and cheap thrills. The book is provocative reading for concerned citizens, as well as for scholars and researchers involved with contemporary American culture and society.
Table of Contents:
  • The Lowest Common Denominator
    Cyber Spaced
    Vicarious Living
    Infotainment
    Retail Government
    Lock and Load
    The Bottom of the Barrel
    Shopping and Dropping
    Men and Women Are from Earth
    Hyped Sports
    Waging the Soul
    Punching the Clock
    McMedicine
    Shrink Wrap
    Dumbsizing the Schools
    Mall Art
    The Spiritual Supermarket
    Transcending the Meltdown
    Rebuilding the Future
    Notes
    Further Reading
About the Author: JOHN BOGHOSIAN ARDEN is Director of Training, Department of Psychiatry, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Vallejo, California. Among his earlier publications are Consciousness, Dreams, and Self and Science, Theology, and Consciousness (Praeger, 1998).
LCC Class: 306
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