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    Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit
    Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit
    Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit
    Audiobook7 hours

    Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit

    Written by Joseph Epstein

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

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    About this audiobook

    To his successful examinations of some of the most powerful forces in
    modern life-envy, ambition, snobbery, friendship-the keen observer
    and critic Joseph Epstein now adds Gossip. No trivial matter,
    despite its reputation, gossip, he argues, is an eternal and necessary
    human enterprise. Proving that he himself is a master of the art,
    Epstein serves up delightful mini-biographies of the Great Gossips of
    the Western World along with many choice bits from his own experience.
    He also makes a powerful case that gossip has morphed from its
    old-fashioned best-clever, mocking, a great private pleasure-to a
    corrosive new-school version, thanks to the reach of the mass media and
    the Internet. Gossip has invaded and changed for the worse politics and
    journalism, causing unsubstantiated information to be presented as fact.
    Contemporary gossip claims to reveal truth, but as Epstein shows, it's
    our belief in truth that gossip today threatens to undermine and
    destroy. Written in his trademark erudite and witty style, Gossip captures the complexity of this immensely entertaining subject.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 12, 2011
    ISBN9781452675466
    Author

    Joseph Epstein

    Joseph Epstein is the author of thirty-one books, among them works on divorce, ambition, snobbery, friendship, envy, and gossip. He has published seventeen collections of essays and four books of short stories. He has been the editor of the American Scholar, the intellectual quarterly of Phi Beta Kappa, and for thirty years he taught in the English Department at Northwestern University. He has written for The New Yorker, Commentary, New Criterion, Times Literary Supplement, Claremont Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and other magazines both in the United States and abroad. In 2003, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.  

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    Reviews for Gossip

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    • 4/5
      This was my first Joseph Epstein book, and it was as enjoyable as I'd hoped it would be. I will definitely pick up more of his books in the future.Before writing this book, Epstein looked around to see if a book like this has been written. As far as he could tell, it hadn't. This is the first book of its kind to explore the history of gossip, famous gossipers past and present, and how the internet and other technology is changing gossip, for better or worse. He also discusses good gossip versus bad gossip. I especially enjoyed his personal tidbits of gossip that appear at the end of each chapter.Let's face it - we all gossip, even if we try not to. And we all enjoy gossip in varying degrees. I would recommend this book for those who are interested in studying gossip's role in our society, and why we find it so hard to resist.(I received this book through Amazon's Vine Program.)