The first 21 pages are interesting reading. If it ended there, the author would have a decent magazine article. But the text goes on adding very little to the first couple of chapters. The chapter on "the uninym" is a curiosity. I can't figure out how it supports the main claims. The chapter on generation and class unearths tired generalizations (I still don't understand how someone born in late-1957 is a baby boomer. I didn't give a damn about Vietnam or the Haight, but only about queues for gasoline.) Parts 2-5 of the book, the examples of the author's overall claims about propaganda, barely support the claims at all, instead indulging in descriptive and biographical information that is incidental to the claim. More to the point, the book is full of errors. Just a sample in case you're interested. Marshall McLuhan would be astonished to learn that he described TV as a hot medium and print as cold (p. 28). Everytime I feel I can explain McLuhan like a master, someone has to write something like this! The music chapters alone would have my students reeling: e.g., The Red Hot Chili Peppers are not a Seattle band (p. 108); they're from LA. REM was not poised to be the successor to Nirvana (p. 112); they made it big a decade earlier. "Shattered" was not a Rolling Stones commentary on the successes of the 80s (p. 124); I was playing it as a UCLA undergrad in 1978 . . . it's on the Some Girls album. The wordsmith of Bikini Kill is not Kathi Wilson (p. 127) but Kathleen Hanna.

I found the first 25-30 pages interesting and enlightening, then gradually lost interest, although there are some bright spots on pages 30-334. Don't get me wrong, it's worth reading, but it gets somewhat tedious as you move through the book.