H. Crawford Knihy

ALL YOUR FRIENDS LIKE THIS is a topical, punchy and provocative look at how social networks are taking over the news. How do you get your news? Chances are not from a newspaper or the TV - that's so old-school. If you're anything like the rest of us, you get it from Facebook or Twitter. The great power shift from traditional media to social networks is happening right now. This boom means that, for millions of us, our first exposure to information about the world comes from our friends, not news media. But social networks don't do news the old-fashioned way. Because we share stories that make us look good, inspire us and fire us up, the tone and flavour of the news-making process is irrevocably altered. What does this mean for media? For journalists? The audience? Are we better off or worse off because of it? Highly topical, provocative and totally absorbing, ALL YOUR FRIENDS LIKE THIS does for the media what Freakonomics did for economics. If you're interested in the news, in what we read and why we read it then this game-changing book is essential.

In the fall of 1920, Sinclair Lewis began a novel set in a fast-growing city with the heart and mind of a small town. For the center of his cutting satire of American business he created the bustling, shallow, and myopic George F. Babbitt, the epitome of middle-class mediocrity. The novel cemented Lewis's prominence as a social commentator. Babbitt basks in his pedestrian success and the popularity it has brought him. He demands high moral standards from those around him while flirting with women, and he yearns to have rich friends while shunning those less fortunate than he. But Babbitt's secure complacency is shattered when his best friend is sent to prison, and he struggles to find meaning in his hollow life. He revolts, but finds that his former routine is not so easily thrown over.