Granta Books
Available: 08/15/07
5.08 x 7.80 · 256 pages
978-1-86207-952-6 CDN $19.95 · pb

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Big Babies

Or: Why Can’t We Just Grow Up?

Michael Bywater

Have you ever wondered what happened to grown-ups? Day by day, we grow more focused on the quick fix, the ticking-off, the expedient lie, the jingle, the obsession with safety, the horror of risk, the apportioning of blame.

Michael Bywater argues that the baby-boom generation is now running the show, and its own commitment to perpetual infantility is reflected in its unstoppable drive to infantilize the rest of us. Ranging from the White House to Buckingham Palace, from MTV to the BBC, from mission statements to Viagra spam, Bywater examines advertising, music, politics, the health industry, education, religion, fashion, sports and publishing, and makes a fierce and often hilarious case that, in almost every area of our lives, we are inexorably becoming Big Babies.

“Bywater excels at chronicling, with vitriol, sarcasm and grotesque exaggeration, the outrages and excesses of [our] infantilized world.” (Toronto Star)

MICHAEL BYWATER is a writer and broadcaster. He is the author of Lost Worlds.