Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter (Hardcover)

Time Out Book of the Week
The championing of popular culture is most welcome ... a vital, lucid exploration of the contemporary mediascape.

New Statesman
This book is a satisfying experience.

New Statesman
Essential and rather brilliant.

Sunday Times
‘Thought-provoking … very persuasive’

Malcolm Gladwell
'Wonderfully entertaining’

Financial Times
‘A guru for Generation Xbox’

Arena
'We need never feel guilty about that 96-hour Grand Theft Auto session again’

Mark Thompson, head of the BBC
‘A must-read’

Product Description
Popular culture is often seen as nothing more than the production of endless entertainment video games, computer games, hand-held games, movies and music on computers. It's common currency to talk about the declining standards of today's culture to say that modern media is dumbing us down. In this complex and tautly written book, Steven Johnson presents a radical alternative: mass culture is making us smarter by consistently demanding more of our brains. So whether you watch The Sopranos or Survivor, turn on and tune in.

About the Author
Steven Johnson is the author of the US bestseller Mind Wide Open. His previous book, Emergence, was shortlisted for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Johnson's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's and The Guardian, as well as on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He also writes for Discover magazine and Wired.com, and was co-founder of the award-winning websites FEED and Plastic.com. He teaches at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and has degrees in Semiotics and English Literature from Brown and Columbia Universities.