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Favorable
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Boston Globe Joseph Rosenbloom
Iconoclastic and captivating.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Steven Zeitchik
Johnson is so busy gleefully puncturing balloons that you'll find yourself with him regardless of his rhetorical goals. [8 May 2005]
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Favorable
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Library Journal Suzanne W. Wood
[A] fascinating book. [15 Apr 2005, p.107]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
With the same winning combination of personal revelation and friendly scientific explanation he displayed in last year's Mind Wide Open, Johnson shatters the conventional wisdom about pop culture as pabulum. [4 Apr 2005, p.54]
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Favorable
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Salon Farhad Manjoo
Johnson is a forceful writer, and he makes a good case; his book is an elegant work of argumentation, the kind in which the author anticipates your silent challenges to his ideas and hospitably tucks you in, quickly bringing you around to his side.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell
Wonderfully entertaining.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Andy Battaglia
The book lacks the theoretical and scientific gravitas Johnson offered in his probing studies Emergence and Mind Wide Open, though. It's essentially a treatment of an argument that goes without saying.
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Favorable
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The Economist
Despite its occasionally pretentious tone, and its unfortunate narrow focus on America, this punchy, thought-provoking book is a welcome antidote to the pessimism and hand-wringing of those who see only decadence and doom in popular culture.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Walter Kirn
Johnson's argument isn't strictly scientific, relying on hypotheses and tests, but more observational and impressionistic. It's persuasive anyhow.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hyman
Johnson paints a convincing and literate portrait, and he shows himself to be a master of many disciplines, which deepens the well of his credibility.
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Favorable
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Bookslut Liz Miller
A fun, accessible read that examines what we really gain from guilty pleasures.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
If games are, as he says, repetitive and often frustrating, and if they make up for monotony by offering infrequent but exciting rewards, the same can be said for his book.
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Mixed
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Washington Post Bob Ivry
He seems blind to anything but the rosiest consequences of parking our butts in dark rooms.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Zoe Williams
Ultimately, though, it is only because the book has so much of interest in it, probes (as well as reprobing and rethinking, naturally) so interestingly into the components of modern culture that one feels moved to argue with it so closely.
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Mixed
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Wall Street Journal John Leo
By accentuating the positive, Mr. Johnson glides lightly past issues of content.
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Mixed
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The Independent Pat Kane
Undoubtely one of the better commuter reads at the moment.
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Unfavorable
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The Observer Steven Poole
The book affects an air of empirical, science-based analysis, but unfortunately Johnson wants it on the cheap.
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