Big Babies: Or: Why Can't We Just Grow Up? [Hardcover]

I suspect [this book] might change our world... it details, in shocking and visceral and wincingly recognisable fashion the way in which we are treated, by government and advertising and people who write signs and, well, everyone really, as if we are all mewling infants who have to be told, essentially, look look shiny shiny coin coin every forlorn second of every babyish day. --The Observer

Sharp, very funny and slightly disturbing...it is hard to know which group should be more despised: that which bosses and patronises with its imprudent warnings or that which feebly acquiesces. But one thing is certain: neither is likely to read Big Babies, for it is far too intelligent, witty and original to appeal to any of these infantile minds...Bywater must be our leader, Big Babies our bible. --The Telegraph

Michael Bywater [is] a wonderfully sharp and witty writer, whose sentences sing and dance, whose fluffiest paragraphs are held up by a steal core of thought. --The Scotsman

"Raises serious social issues while cracking plenty of willy
jokes"

"A polemical, often side-splitting rant which highlights, most
brilliantly, the creeping infantilism and dumbing down of Western culture"

"A wildly overstated and, therefore, immensely enjoyable tirade"

"Bywater gives the bars of our playpen a good, satiric shake:
readers... have nothing to lose but their dummies"

"Funny...thought-provoking and amusing"

Have you ever had the feeling that, in some hard to define way, we are throwing away two and a half millennia of Western civilization, bit by bit, as our culture becomes more and more infantile? That day by day we grow more and more focused on the quick fix, the ticking-off, the expedient lie, the jingle, the spin, the catchy slogan, the obsession with safety, the horror of risk, the terror of complexity, the preoccupation with surface, the apportioning of blame, the instant gratification? Have you ever wondered what happened to grown-ups? Michael Bywater turns his penetrating eye on the state of Western culture, from politics and the media to show business and science, and concludes we are all Big Babies now. He argues that the Baby-Boom generation is now running the show, and its own commitment to perpetual infantility is reflected in its unstoppable drive to infantilize the rest of us. Ranging from the White House to Buckingham Palace, from MTV to the BBC, from mission statements to Viagra spam, Bywater examines advertising, music, politics, the health industry, education, religion, fashion, sport and publishing, and makes a fierce and often hilarious case that, in almost every area of our lives, we are inexorably becoming...Big Babies.

Michael Bywater is a writer and broadcaster, and wrote for many years the Lost Worlds column for the Independent on Sunday. He has written three books, including Lost Worlds (Granta). He currently teaches Tragedy at Cambridge.