A provocative, eye-opening look at the way media shapes every aspect of our lives.

Just when you thought there was nothing new to say about the media, along comes a book that transcends the conventional wisdom with an original vision, one that unites our most intimate personal concerns with far-reaching historical trends in an accessible way. From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of mass terror, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from hip-hop nation to climbing Mt. Everest, from blogs to reality TV to the Weather Channel, Mediated takes us on a tour of every department of our media-saturated society. And at every turn we see ourselves as we are, immersed in options, surrounded by representations, driven to unprecedented levels of self-consciousness-and obliged by these circumstances to transform our very lives into performances.

Sophisticated, satirical, sometimes searing, ultimately forgiving, Mediated tackles everything we take for granted and reintroduces us to it all as if for the first time. You'll laugh, you'll squirm, you'll agree, you'll object-but you'll find more Aha! moments packed into fewer pages than you've ever come across before.