Books like Dreadful Splendor by B. R. Myers

Neil Postman’s classic analysis shows how entertainment pressures transform politics, journalism, education, and religion, and offers a plan to reclaim media for public good.

The Shallows explores how computer‑delivered information reshapes human cognition, weaving Marshall McLuhan, communication history, and neuroscience into a comprehensive analysis of the digital age's mental impact.

Barry Schwartz explains how an excess of choices can create anxiety, dissatisfaction, and paralysis, offering practical strategies to limit options and enhance satisfaction.

Michael Harris examines how the pervasive Internet has eroded our ability to experience absence—silence, wonder, and solitude—highlighting the consequences for human connection, cognition, and culture.

Scottish beauty Elspeth MacGregor travels to Hell's Bluff to hire Dominic Delaney to lead her to the magical lost city of Kantalan, but at first he refuses -- the last thing he needs is to join a virginal scholar on a dangerous quest. But Elspeth's fiery will coupled with her silky hair and milk-white skin prove irresistible, and Dominic acts -- first with angry lust, then with a searing yet tender passion that brands her eternal soul and bonds them both to a heated and turbulent future. Through wonders and tragedy, across the untamed splendors of Arizona and Mexico, Elspeth and Dominic draw closer to their dual destiny: to experience the dark mysteries and magnificent riches of Kantalan... and to fulfill the promise of lasting love and the birth of a bold family dynasty.

Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973), heiress to the Post Cereal fortune, became a serious collector of French decorative art in the early 1920s. Her extended stay in Moscow as the wife of Joseph E. Davies, FDR's ambassador to the Soviet Union, sparked a passion for Russian art that continued until her death. Ultimately she formed the most comprehensive imperial Russian collection outside Russia. Mrs. Post's collection at Hillwood, her grand residence in Washington, D.C., includes paintings, furniture by such masters as Jean-Henri Riesener and David Roentgen, porcelain from Sevres and the Russian Imperial Porcelain Factory, objets d'art by Faberge (two superb imperial Easter eggs) and Cartier, and much more. At Hillwood, Mrs. Post displayed her Russian acquisitions in the context of her French decorative art. In this publication, Russian objects have been placed in their European context, allowing for the unique opportunity to rediscover the interaction of creative design between Russia and western Europe.

Entrepreneur Andrew Keen warns of what he sees as a narcissistic and cancerous culture developing with the invent of Web 2.0, whereby professionals are put out of business and the value of the media that we consume drops immensely.