How TV Can Make You Smarter

Product Description How TV Can Make You Smarter is a lively guide that shows readers the numerous emotional and intellectual benefits of TV. Contrary to conventional wisdom, television can do more than help you veg out, chill, and escape. Author and TV critic Allison Shoemaker rewires our thinking to show readers how to take advantage of our 24/7 access to this ever-evolving medium. • TV is a powerful tool and How TV Can Make You Smarter will teach you how to use it. • Covers a wide selection of diverse genres from scripted comedies, dramas, and classics to reality and beyond • Find acceptance in embracing "bad" TV, and learn to love yourself in the morning. Lessons include learning how to gain empathy (Mad Men), broadening your perspective (Rupaul's Drag Race), and discovering how working within boundaries (Doctor Who) or breaking them apart (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) can be good for you. Part of the HOW series, the accessible and authoritative guides to engaging with the arts the world, and ourselves. • Filled with smart, unintimidating content in a giftable foil-stamped package • Great gift for TV and movie buffs, Netflix and Hulu subscribers, DVD owners, and anyone who loves to unwind with television • Packed with insightful tips and tricks for making the most out of what you watch • Add it to the shelf with books like Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson, and I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum. Review "A convincing and spirited argument for the benefits of TV. Critic Allison Shoemaker posits that television provides 'access to some of the greatest art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries' and that 'to discuss, debate, and dissect' these shows 'can, and will, make you smarter.'... TV binge watchers and pop culture fans will relish Shoemaker's fun and enlightening outing." -- Publishers Weekly About the Author Allison Shoemaker is a TV and film critic based in Chicago, IL.