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    The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
    The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
    The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

    Written by David Mamet

    Narrated by Johnny Heller

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    For the past thirty years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system.

    But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart. He realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview. In 2008 he wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal,'" in which he methodically eviscerated liberal beliefs. Now he goes much deeper, employing his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political and cultural issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming.

    Mamet pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, he will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 9, 2011
    ISBN9781452674018
    The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
    Author

    David Mamet

    David Mamet’s numerous plays include Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award), American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow, Boston Marriage, November, Race, and The Anarchist. He wrote the screenplays for such films as The Verdict, The Untouchables, Ronin, and Wag the Dog, and has twice been nominated for an Academy Award. He has written and directed ten films, including Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, House of Games, Spartan, and Redbelt. In addition, he wrote the novels The Village, The Old Religion, Wilson, The Diary of a Porn Star, Chicago, and many books of nonfiction, including Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business; Theatre; Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama, and two New York Times bestsellers The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture and Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch. His HBO film Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, aired in 2013 and earned him two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing. He was cocreator and executive producer of the CBS television show The Unit and is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company.

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    Reviews for The Secret Knowledge

    3.5/5

    13 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Brilliant book. Highly recommended. Mamet's honesty is breathtaking, and he delivers it with a skill and wit that perhaps only he could muster.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I was reluctant with this one because I thought from the title that it would be really depressing. It is, in a way, but Mamet's dry humor and insight into human nature make it very enjoyable. It is a true Intellectual work, in the best sense of the world, weaving history, the Bible, literature and psychology together to show what makes people believe certain things and how that translates into political reality. I have truly learned a lot and I highly recommend it. The audiobook is very well done, great choice of the reader. I completely forgot it wasn't Mamet himself talking- it sounded very natural.

      By the way, I read the play November that apparently caused Mamet to "come out" as a conservative (it's mentioned at the beginning of this book). It is also very good. I have reviewed it separately if anyone is interested.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      From knee jerk liberal to knee jerk conservative. I wanted to like the book, but it was too predictable, too rambling with little new to the debate(s).

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      A damned frustrating book. I had hoped that Mamet, with his almost legendary insight into the nature of modern society, would be able to offer some worthy critiques. But instead, I find a ragged cynical Tea Party convert, able to offer none but the most useless and infuriating of cliches, defending Sarah Palin and Deepak Chopra, dismissing science as a hoax, and claiming that there is a conspiracy conducted by the entire spectrum of leftists. It's a damn shame that Mamet has fallen so far, and a damn shame that people will waste their money.

      1 person found this helpful